Guild of Writers

It's been a long time coming but I am delighted to finally be able to release my maiden age for general exploration: Ahrkane

No doubt the textures could be improved (and perhaps will in a 2nd release) but I hope the story and puzzles are challenging and interesting.
This is designed as a single player age but may prove difficult (for some) to solve so do persevere! Observation skills and keen clicking are required.

Couple of notes:
Age may take a little while to load - there are many animations, sounds etc.
Leaving the age will cause all animation states to reset.

Description from/for ULMServerLinkBook.inf:
Episode 1\nCome to the aid of a friend whose mysterious discovery threatens to cause great harm. Solve the puzzles and take the first step to uncover the truth hidden beneath.

Here is the zip file for download. It includes linking book cover and panel images. Please may this be uploaded to Drizzle/KI.
http://www.box.net/Ahrkane

Do let me know if you find any major bugs (or PM if you need a hint). I'd love to hear from anyone with an opinion and from any who complete the age as it stands (a message in red on a wall should indicate when that has happened) - so I can assess difficulty level etc.
Credits are given within the age itself.

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Ahrkane_1.jpg (36.58 KiB) Viewed 3898 times

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Ahrkane_2.jpg (37.12 KiB) Viewed 3898 times

Happy exploring!
Ekimmai

Okay, it's on UAM now. It looks very good, and I look forward to solving the puzzles!

Awesome age! I love the puzzles and music!

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although I'm stuck at the red room

After doing a bit of Alcscripting myself, I can imagine how hard all those pressure plate things and automatic doors must've been to make.

The animations look really great, I never saw something comparable in another fan-age, and they can seamlessly stand next to the ones Cyan made (except for maybe that auto-opening door behind the blue one, if you approach it from the back it swings through the avatar ). The puzzle is also great, and I especially like one of the ideas
However, due to its lack of an SDL file, the age will be horribly broken when played online

diafero wrote:However, due to its lack of an SDL file, the age will be horribly broken when played online

I believe the plan is still to have SDL states. However, as a temporary solution to the only partially saving states currently ALL animations have their persistent states excluded, which makes it even more multiplayer incompatible.

Anyway ekimmai, if you still want me to add SDL states you can send me your blend file (with textures packed). I don't know how long it will take though. It looks like this is going to need a lot of SDL variables and I need to completely understand the puzzles (so far I haven't even solved the age). So I probably need a couple of weeks.

Thanks for the early feedback and offers of assistance on future improvements!
It's encouraging to hear all my hard work might not have been entirely in vain

I should point out that not all apparent areas in the age are currently accessible

Re the SDL states - I would be very interested in having the age updated at some point but care would be needed to ensure that linking out from one location (behind a closed door for example) and linking back in again would not enable the explorer to circumvent a puzzle element or indeed "break" one of the key animations (due to multiple trigger points). No doubt this could be achieved with the right know-how though!

Some of the sound effects are a little dodgy: they seem to echo (i.e. play twice) when a button is pushed. If anyone knows the reason for this then do please let me know as the wav and ogg files are fine as far as I can tell.

E

RE-RELEASE

Following feedback I am re-releasing Ahrkane with the following "improvements":

1. Two "swing"-style doors now work differently - remaining open for as long as the explorer is in the vicinity - rather than swinging/sliding open for a limited time only. This avoids the need for the explorer to back up and re-approach the door to trigger the open/close animation.
2. Added a new element to the red room which I hope will serve as an aid to solving the puzzle and give more fluidity to the overall age.

I should also have mentioned that the age is set in a "modern day" world/time environment where knowledge of ages, linking etc is scarce.

ddb174 - please can you do the honours with updating the age on UAM? Thankyou!! (Same link as before for downloading age)

Ekimmai

You changed the sequence prefix of the age with that release... this is a VERY BAD thing (TM), even more since you did not even warn us about this. In case I did not write this often enough, NEVER change the name OR sequence prefix of an age after it was released. You can change both of them at once, but NEVER EVER change only one of them.
Even worse, both your old (444) and the new (445) prefix conflict with already existing ones: http://alcugs.almlys.org/ListOfSequencePrefixes

SORRY Diafero! (I haven't felt so chastised in a long while ). I changed the prefix whilst I was testing the new version and forgot to put it back. Should I change back to 444 and re-upload now, or will that cause more problems??

Oh yes, in my defence I've not stolen anyone else's allotted prefixes; 444, 445, and 446 are all reserved for me (Id'no=Ekimmai) - I just haven't updated the names on the list (and have had awful problems logging on to Alcugs to edit the page). You can scrub the "test age" entry against "Id'no" if you are able to edit for me

E

ekimmai wrote:Should I change back to 444 and re-upload now, or will that cause more problems??

I prefer to change back to 444 because we get no problems then to put it in the UAM.

edit: I changed the entry for Prefix 444 in the Alcugs Wiki. Please take a look if it is okay for you.