Runecasting

Welcome to the Peninsula

2011-06-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

Writing a guide to the dalimond quest chain - essentially recording everything as I plowed through it with my ancient. By now I've sent a few characters through the lengthy line. Going to tell you this: It IS worth your time to do them, even if they are highly challenging sometimes for the level set.

Order, Backstory Revisions - Runos

2011-03-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

(Current year: 570 BR - Two years before ashlander vandus dies. There has been hostilities in the past years between humans and dragons. Attitudes are emerging about how best to deal with them, the helian education method and the lunus power method.)

Born to two adult dragons, both varying shades of flat grey, a hatchling peeped itself into the world. As they gazed upon their new daughter, both were proud. They gave her the name to follow her in life forever: Run'osun.

In time she would learn everything a dragon sought to learn. Her parents too, attempted to learn from the bipeds who were busy skittering around below. Most dragons of this time were simply content to ignore them. Some studied them. Run'osun's parents were thinking perhaps they, as they studied them, could also learn from them.

It didn't take long for them to set out an experiment using their daughter - they thought she could benefit greatly from it.

They thought of becoming friends with the town they had been studying. At first the townsfolk were frightened, but seeing that they meant no harm, the dragons soon simply became friends. In time it would allow for their daughter to receive some additional lessons and tutoring from a local wizard. She would take a role as his live-in apprentice, much to the happiness of the two parents who felt they could no longer teach anything of use to their beloved child, nor did they want to send her to the academy where it was rumored many pro-lunus views had been taught.

Day to day, the hatchling assisted with various tasks and in exchange, was given a place to sleep and an education better than most of the town children could aspire to. She gathered herbs, went to town for books and supplies, and cleaned the tower. He taught her the basics of magic, reading, writing, among many other things. Her parents visited her every morning to hear of her progress, and every day they beamed with delight.

(Current year: 562 BR. Several years have passed on. Run'osun has been learning much, and every day her parents came to check on her. In the world, Ashlander Vandus had died and the great schism has occurred. Her parents are very clearly helian.)

On occasion traders would come knocking on the door bearing strange magic things for the wizard, whom happily purchased several new tomes for his library, artifacts, trinkets, hard-to-get regents. One of these arrivals would be the beginning of the end.. for everything. Quite simply, he purchased an enigmatic magic tome. As he read through the first time, it opened the doors of his mind... and he was sure he had devised a way to become immortal! No longer would he fear his encroaching death. He was deadset on living forever.... no matter the cost.

The once good wizard backstabbed his apprentice for it.

Run'osun was placed in a time field in the tower vault, an area where time stands near still magically to preserve the hatchling in an optimal state for working. For him, it was simply a matter of asking the curious and naive young dragon to wait there in that empty spot a moment to assist him with a spell. She had done it before here and there, so she was eager to help, as always.

Knowing her parents would come the next morning, he slipped into their lair overnight and murdered both of them in their sleep. Not wanting anything to be wasted, many dragon parts found their way into his stores and onto black markets. He would claim their hoards another day, he thought to himself, and warded the lair off to keep looters out.

The next days were spent concocting the right pattern to etch into the hatchling's scales. He went back to the lair to keep the barrier erect and returned to his tower. He spent another week concocting a pattern for himself. The hatchling was no issue, the time barrier saved it from certain destruction from runic feedback as the pattern developed. Upon completion, he stood back and gave her a final inspection, and approval.

But now he looked at himself. Now he would have to endure crippling pain to carve into himself his required runic marks. Slowly, tediously, he progressed through the night. Carving, healing himself, screaming in agony at the torment he inflicted upon himself. But he kept going until it was done because he had come this far... and the reward would be wondrous.

He went outside, scarred but radiating power. His marks drew off the power of the hatchling's soul, the one kept in stasis. It pulled only hard enough to take everything, but leave a thread attached to the hatchling. Only enough to keep her alive remained hanging onto her little shell, and all that was drawn from Run'osun gave him immense power. Despite this, everything he had done now created a madman fueled by lust for power and greed.

Now it would be that he would claim his treasure left behind in the lair.

Ascending the hill to the mouth, his barrier flickered weakly. Anyone at this point could have walked right on through, but he removed it and proceeded. It was a true labyrinth - but what do dragons build that are not such? He had to explore for days on end (finding he no longer needed to eat or sleep, conveniently) to find the chamber where the two dragons pooled their hoards together.

A quick gesture, and he had moved it into his tower's basement vault, where it pooled up around the tiny dragon and her containment field.

But it wasn't that simple. Nothing ever is. He had murdered them both here in this immense cavern. This gave their shades a restless disposition. There is only one thing that can make a dragon roll over in its grave, however: the loss of its hoard.

As the massive pile of priceless treasure vanished, the halls recoiled with an ethereal howl so loud that the earth in this small area shuddered violently. Then he saw them. Both of them. One behind him, the other in front.

He didn't get to leave. The ghosts maimed his body until they were content and watched him bleed as he had to them. He thought it would be okay... he had the immortality. He shouldn't be able to die this way!

He was wrong. He may have discovered how to never age another day and live an infinite lifespan. He may have discovered true power. But he is no god... he bleeds like any other and right now, he had almost none of his blood left in him as he lay broken on the lair floor. Then he felt it. As his soul was losing grip on him, the hatchling's soul was pulling much harder with every moment.

With one final agonized wail, the wizard's soul was ripped out of him, dragged to Run'osun, and consumed by the hatchling's magically bound soul. As he was consumed, his marking burned into her body forever, completing the pattern. The ground under the lair shook again as his body exploded from magic gone horribly wrong. The entire hillside and lair was gone, leaving a mound of broken dirt and rock.

The barrier would hold up an entire 584 years. The tower above had fallen to ruins and crumbled long ago. The vault had held up so far, keeping its treasure and the dragon sealed away and forgotten by all. The town was no longer there, only its ruins left by a war that they had lost.

At long last the final piece of the tower collapsed atop the runebound dragon. A magical explosion as the barrier suddenly vanishes leaves a crater a kilometer in width, caused by a fatal flaw in the markings.

(Current Year: 22 AR. Much has happened while the world rolled on without her. The ancient council returned recently, the withered aegis are renewing an attack. The sleeper was decimated, and the withered aegis was formed while she was being held frozen in time.)

Most people die when they have the ruins of a tower fall on them. But it would seem these runes in a more complete state seemed to have presented her the true immortality, an artificial gift and curse. The runes were thoroughly flawed, and she would face many issues trying to come up in this new and strange world.

Skaalkaar:

She doesn't remember how she got there. In fact, come to think of it, she doesn't remember anything. What was her name? Where did she come from? What is she? What and why are these marks all over me? She has to sit down and look around. She has a lot to figure out. In time, the only word that comes to mind is '...runos...' - as if a fragment of something important from before. Mabey that was her name? It'll do.

Lava - Version 2!

2010-04-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

So I discovered that if you play with shaders, you can do all kinds of weird stuff. I was looking for the lair lava stuff though. In the process Runos so far has learned 'don't eat gnomish alchemists'. They tend to carry mushrooms which make for seeing all kinds of weird stuff.

Thus far, it would seem runes has eaten quite a few alchemist gnomes (although she wouldn't directly admit it, how shameful!), and hasn't quite figured out how to get the lair lava shader to work.

Lairshaping Resource Spreadsheet

2010-04-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

I love to build my lair, but I hate trying to find a calculator or using Microsoft's computer calculator. The HCC is great but the only thing that irks me it it tells you all the resources you need, but not what you need if you placed 5 maelstones and left for a while, only to come back wondering how many bricks go into those 5.

I present to you so far my solution: Spreadsheeting!

Providing you work at optimal in a tier (As I made it for myself, and so far only work t1 and t2 at opt) you can pop in the number of units to place on your numerous chambers and Pow! Insta-stuff.

Known Issue: Only covers T1 and T2 and only calculates at optimal craft skills. I'm willing to add tabs for other tiers, providing someone can get me the info on tier 3+ for components.

Download coming soon(tm)

For the Love of All Things...

2009-08-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

Do you know how much I'd like to cry every time I see someone scream or flame on the forums? Seriously. I think some people need to calm down. The game has bugs. The game has flaws you don't like. It might have some creatures or lore you find distasteful to you. Uh oh, nerf bat... qq qq qq.

Ugh, I swear, so much of it that these stupid Unown on my pokemon cartidge as I catch them in the ruins are even doing it now:Really. All silliness aside it is a serious matter. It just leaves me speechless on how disrespectful and quick to blame, flame, and toss words people can be. They forget people are people (even behind disembodied text names) who have feelings, eat, sleep, work, and have happiness and awful moments in life. And best yet, do you even know who is in a rut at the time in their life? Do you really want to be stabbed when you are already down? Thought not.

Would you read the forums if you had to put up with it? Think of it. Come to a place out of common courtesy to see what everyone wants to tell you and only to find them stabbing and kicking you down. All the god damned time. I'm pretty sure you'd develop forum-induced depression.

So do me a favor all ye who read here, be nice to the Virtrium people and your fellow community members!

Scroll

2009-07-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

I got bored. Here is the result, which is going right on the forum:

A new scroll sits here, carefully flattened against a clear section of the wall next to the board so as to not obscure anyone else's things. The parchment has become singed in some places from the heat of dralk, perhaps while it was being posted, but now it seems to resist the heat flawlessly. It doesn't appear to be sticking to the wall using essence glue or well... anything! Maybe it is the runes that protect it from fire and hold it up...

Return of Runecasting

2009-07-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

All files have been set up with the permanent hosting solution and now are available again at your leisure.

Happy tweaking!

The Neverending Wall of Eggs

2009-04-20T22:30:00.001-07:00

I love dragon cave. But a signature can only hold so much, so now I'll just reference this page for daily clicks, as I now have another thing that has grabbed the attention...

Dragon Eggs

Pokemon Eggs

Valenth

[ThisIsAPlaceholderForNow]

Dragonbreaths aside, next WIP.

2009-03-10T17:48:00.001-07:00

Was thinking of perhaps something I hadn't the guts to do before; tweak the golems of istaria in their stone, gem, and metallic glory as dragonbreath seems hardcoded. The models themselves are pretty good but look more plastic, so I would like to experiment in tweaking the texture a little bit to bring out their shine. As for lava and ice golems, I think they look fine enough on their own and will remain unchanged.

Here is the plan:
#1 - The golem texture. Find out which is which.
#2 - Find out what piece goes where, by numbering each side rather visibly.
#3 - Find out if the textures are shared between all three, if they are unique.
#4 - Depending on results, go forward with either one or three textures.

Update March 11:

Figuring out which is which, I figured I could 'paint by number' to find which faces go where. Turns out that using this method also shows me that the UV mapping of the golem's model possibly isn't going to be playing nice in the game (The bronze at least, the sandstones seem unaffected), as I managed to make camouflage golems, effectively. Still fun looking though.

Initial Adventures in Dragonbreath

2009-03-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

So begins the preliminary work to figure out the inner workings of dragonbreath; how does it work, what kinds of textures do what, and getting the right one for a desired effect.

First up however, and most important of all: which file is it? After poking around I think I might have found the firebreath agh file, but we shall see if it is correct with a simple test that involves kittens. Why kittens? Because they are soft, fluffy, and oh so random. Random picture of kitten used for testing purposes only.

First attempt, the kitten breath failed meaning there is something else at work. I didn't find any other agh files, so I cheated a bit and peeked at someone else's breath mod just to grab the filenames and inner workings of it all to start (T'was the bubblebreath). Turns out that indeed, there are no agh type things, just some new kinds that I have not yet played with.

Upon further investigation, the def files that these other ones run off of are exceptionally complex. With this, the only logical way to continue is to try to break down what the heck is going on in these huge files of script, which at current is leaving me in the twilight zone. I'm thinking of using a mod for further study into their mechanics, but possibly also to base new breaths off of due to the complexity of the def files, until I can grasp on my own how they work.

~~~

After a good bit of playing around, I've found the game won't let you do anything with custom def files, so it may be that unique breaths are out of the question, unless someone comes along and explains a process as they have done it.

Sadly for now the breaths are shelved.

Time to figure out something new

2009-03-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

So let me stop to sit down and think briefly: what's next?

Most of the things done so far were out of an itch to improve. Aside from banners and tapestries (Of which, more shall be around for sure) a lot of terrain and such has been done.

I'm planning to experiment with dragon breath next, among the new things to come.

I would like to declare user feedback time; is there a thing you want fixed really badly? Please note that I cannot fix the actual meshes or things that are not just retextures in the game, or add new content.

Leave your thoughts as to something you would like to see done as a comment.

Ebon Dralk

2009-02-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

Although I reckognise that it was probably for a feel more than a look, volcanic rock is not red. Most times it is black or grey, like obsidian or the common basalt. Modifying the original texture, it now looks a little more like volcanic rock would be. Update on downloads later once I find the other texture that is still red, and do a flyover to ensure quality.

As we can see, there is another texture I have to find yet, but a little change like this can reflect many places and look wonderful.

Update: Found that other one and swapped it up. Did a last check based on Atlanna's comment to see that finding obsidian is ok still (they have not gone invisible and are shiny nodes).

As I am content that this texture mod is all good to go, you may download it from here.

Question: Why are the paths still red-ish?
Answer: The paths are stones when you look up close, have orange-red lava underneath giving a red tone, but when up close the stones themselves appear to match the black. I have left them as is for this reason, but also because I'm sure you want to know where the road is for the speed bonus.

Welcome to Runecasting

2009-02-24T04:12:00.000-08:00

I'm finding I really have come to love blogger for being easy to use and also to make good looking websites very quickly that work for the applications I want to use them for, so after having begun tales of order I've scrapped the website on my hard drive for a blogger page to display the texture mods.

This means you can get your hands and claws around the chalkboards, stone panels, water mod, and the lava mod, and any other things I feel possessed to conjure and replace into the world.

I want to make my own textures!!

2009-02-24T03:55:00.001-08:00

Slow down sparky! Its not all that easy. But I can tell you how to get your stuff working and playing nicely with Istaria.

Firstly, you will need the AGH viewer to grab the file you want, mainly for the file name and path structure. Go browse a bit and grab what you want, noting how you got there through the drop downs, this is the exact same as the folder structure.

Go to your resources_override folder in windows explorer (shortcut to bring it up if you have the keyboard with the start button: start + e) and create new folders to match the structure that the file you wanted laid in. For the water mod, its \resources\terrain\ as an example. You will put your file in the end folder, so in this example it is \terrain\.

Go to the normal resources folder and copy player_commands.def. Copy it to resources_override\resources\.

Scroll to the bottom. You will see this:

{
string name = "clearTutorials"
string abbrev = "cleartut"
string usage = "[no parameters]"
string description = "Clears all tutorial history flags"
int numParams = 0
}

It should be sitting above two }s. Make sure you leave the two at the bottom or you can really screw things up! Add the following code:

//purgeTextures
{
string name = "purgeTextures"
string abbrev = "purgeTex"
string usage = "[no parameters]"
string description = "Purges all texture and image resources for immediate reloading."
}
//aghConvert
{
string name = "aghConvert"
string abbrev = "agh"
string usage = ""
string description = "Converts an image to AGH format"
int numParams = 1
int minParams = 0
}

Save the file (The one in the resources_override, don't touch the normal one).

What you have just done is create two commands that are essential for you. /purgeTex forces the game ingame to dump or unload all loaded textures and reload them, so you can see your work without restarting the game. This also will sometimes generate all agh files that have not been generated, so its very useful, just make sure that the agh already existed. /aghConvert will just up and convert your file.

The game is picky about what format though, make sure your files are .tga (Targa) format, in their appropriate override folder location or it wont work.

The process to make a new horizons texture from here is to make it, save it as a tga in the right folder with the name of the texture you are replacing, then load up the game and type /aghConvert filename.tga (no folder path). You can then /purgeTex to see what it looks like, or restart the game if it doesn't work this time (it will next time). As you adjust and resave the tga to get it right, delete the old agh with the game running and /purgeTex to generate and load the new version.

As I said, it isn't so easy... but hopefully this helps. Happy texturing.

Lava Texture Override

2009-02-24T03:08:00.000-08:00

Its still a work in progress, but I'm posting it now so you can help me continue to blow your istarian mind with shinydroolrawrawesome... okay, moving on...

I looked for a good picture and found one from national geographic, and used the photo as a base to work with, so giving credit where credit is due!

National Geographic is good at photos for reference, I love them.

After some tweaking and playing around to find what texture was what, I hit it on the head and found the lava pool texture, happily swapping it for the new one I had worked out. It is not yet fully up to snuff because of how some lava pools are arranged and built, and apparently I'm finding the texture is used in MANY places other than lava pools. Lets take a looksie shall we?

Obviously used in lava pools. While the ones in dralk look pretty decent, there are some in the wild that dont look so good because of how they had been built, making this an unusually hard task. That kaleidescope effect is also driving me insane.

A place I never expected: Smelters! The texture just looks all kinds of weird here in a spot I actually had not realized about using the same texture.

The following are two other textures not yet included in the lava pack.

Lair rooms have interesting but not so realistic looking falls, but if you can shrug that aside...

It does make the raging flow of lava in your grand hall, lair, etc look like what most lava in the real world does, and its very nice! In fact, it looks absolutely amazing in a T2 Lair, let alone a grand hall.

The second pack for lairs will be available soon. The first lava pack for outdoor fountains can be found here.

Dragon Tapestries - Chalkboards

2009-02-24T02:45:00.000-08:00

Chalkboards can be pretty useful tools, and a way to send a message around. Of course sometimes someone might use your board to send out a message when you don't want them to. Chalkboards are also really fun for hatchies to play with too, or as a teaching tool. Possibilities are endless.

Replaces the dragon healer tapestry, in a traditional way.

And so I present the chalkboards thus far!

Graffiti between Helian, Lunus, and some random naka-duskael, making a chalk warzone:

Just the dragon messages:

And just the 'I was here!':

Feel free to download the Full Board, Dragon Only, or Naka Post.

New board type: Hatchie Scrawls. Awww, so cute!

Download the hatchie scribble chalkboard from here.

Dragon Tapestries - Stone Lair Panels

2009-02-24T02:09:00.001-08:00

From a time before the addition of a billion lair tapestries, comes the previously unreleased stone panel collection.

It will replace the dragon healer panel, as again, it is from that old time when that is all there was, and I am sure everyone hates looking at depressing dragon skeletons in their home anyways.

It comes in four delicious flavors.

Carving with a crack:

Uncracked Carving:

Cracked Plain Panel:

And lastly, just a plain panel:

So if any of these suit your fancy, feel free to download the Cracked Dragon Carving, Uncracked Dragon Carving, Cracked Panel or Plain Panel.

Help! Install Instructions?!

2009-02-24T01:42:00.001-08:00

So you are a little confused as to the installation of ... stuff. Its actually pretty simple, so lets walk through it. We will use the water mod file just to show you how it is done...

You will need a copy of winrar or similar program, something that can open the rar format. While I recognize that there is the whole zip thing and know some people moan and complain about rar format, please understand it is just a much more efficient format to use and I exclusively prefer to use it over zip files.

Notice that once you have it open, it has a folder called 'resources'. This is important because we have to preserve the directory structure.

To get the stuff into the game, its really quite easy from here. Simply extract the resources file folder to Istaria's resources_override folder and the rest of the work is done for you already. When you load up the game and have done everything correctly in this override folder, the textures will appear where they are supposed to.

Water Texture Override

2009-02-24T01:26:00.000-08:00

The water used to annoy me to no end, it looked pretty awful and as a result took away from the game's beauty as an expansive ocean of eyesore. I mean this literally, the terrain textures are so pretty and then you hit water and your eyes wanted to roll out of the sockets as the unusual looking water conflicted with the nice looking textures. After a week of tinkering and figuring how how the process works, through trial and error and a lot of random words we cant post here when things didn't go as planned, the final form of the texture appeared much to the squealing delight of not just me, but also the istarian community.

While I didn't think it was widely used for the longest time, when I rearranged my website and deleted the file in prep for another site (which never got to where I wanted it, hence this site), to see people wonder where it was and have it offered on mirror sites was well... nice for me. Feels good to have done something people enjoy using.

You can download the water texture from this link.

Preview of what this does: