Kidnap Mod
Offline
Forum
Stranded II General Kidnap Mod
Poll
You want it sooner without map or later even with map?
Only registered users are allowed to vote
| Sooner! | 19.40% (39) | |
| With map! | 73.13% (147) | |
| NEVER, bother off!!! | 7.46% (15) |
201 votes cast
Re: Kidnap Mod
Guest
I was hoping that a few comments as I went through might help you out--often times someone going through the first time will see things that the people who have been working on it from the beginning don't see--the human mind is too good at ignoring what we are not focusing on at the time.
So again, thank you so much for your work on this modification of a great game. And actually, I've seen much, much worse in games that companies expected me to pay for! (I still have a couple of commercial games lying around that I could never get to work. . . come to find out, the lead guy doing the programming on the basic platform for the game said that he couldn't get it to work, either!
I see very little difference between free and paid games in terms of overall quality. The biggest differences seem to be in the packaging (although most game manuals are still pretty bad. . .) and, of course, the marketing.
So don't feel you have to apologize for this Kidnapped mod--it is good work I am only trying to help you out a bit by pointing out some things I didn't understand when I played through it.
Keeping that in mind, I have another suggestion or two:
(1) As I was going through the adventure portion, I ended up on a dead end a couple of times because I had done something too early.
Specifically, being a bit upset that these bozos had the gall to kidnap me, I set fire to their little bamboo monument before I left the camp at the beginning of the game. "Serves them right!" I said to myself.
Problem is, the thing burned to the ground way before I got to that item in the quests, so when I told the boss the monument was burning, he called me a liar! But there was nothing left to burn.
So I had to go back and restart, being a little more constrained in my own version of justice!
Perhaps it might be good to add in a version of the war chief's (forget his name) messages so that you have a third option. This way when he gives you this quest, you can reply "I already burned it." Then he would say something like "so my spies told me--good work!" and go onto the next quest.
(2) I ran into an interesting behavior in the Adventure mode of your excellent Kidnapped mod: When I built the trash bin I noticed that when I came by it all the flies would be circling the top of the can, round and round. So if I stood back a bit and just clicked on my net as they came around, I could easily catch many flies in just a few seconds.
I don't know enough about how the game is put together to know whether this is a characteristic of the Stranded 2 game itself, or whether it snuck in somehow in the modification. I noticed what might be the same phenomenon for other creatures--especially the birds flying around the mountain and the Raptors circling round the SW part of the island.
By the time I finished the game there were probably 20 parrots, and maybe as many as 40 of the "big black birds" flying around and around in the exact same path. This doesn't affect the game at all, but I found it interesting. (In my game, there ended up with a big clump of black birds--probably a dozen or so tightly layered on one another so that the overall effect was that of a much bigger bird--because each succeeding bird overlapped the one below it slightly.)
I did figure out (after dying like a peasant who forgot to bring his pitchfork to the battle!) that as long as I stayed inside the path of the raptors in the SW desert area, they would continue their big loop around the outside of the area. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I could kill them fairly easily if I got behind them in their circuit. They just kept traveling around and around as I would cut a corner to catch up, shoot a couple of arrows from behind, then run to catch up with them. Apparently they couldn't react to someone shooting them from behind.
Again, I have no idea whether this is a feature of the game itself. Until this adventure I had never dreamed of *chasing* the raptor! I was usually way too busy trying to run away. . .
(3) And another possibly helpful hint: It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out that I could sleep in the buildings inside both the native camps. As long as I stayed out of the the first hut and the back of the kitchen (trying to sleep there at any point in the game would pull up a message saying "you shouldn't sleep now") I could sleep in any other building in either camp.
However, in order to unlock the advanced building options I still had to build my own structure, but it didn't seem to matter where. So I built a little shelter off in some corner somewhere and slept in the nice new wood buildings, with bed and everything. (That is a great addition to the game, by the way--those wood buildings rock!)
I guess I would suggest either unlocking those other buildings without requiring the player to build a hut, campfire, etc., or to make some sort of in-game comment that might give a hint to the player that those basic buildings still need to be built, even if you are using the buildings, campfires, etc. in the native village.
Or maybe I am just (still) crazy and everyone else got it right off.
(3) With the animal seller, I don't know if you intended this, but it is possible to get the wool from the sheep without paying anything. This is because the guards can't quite reach the two outside corners of the fence. So you can slide in between and click on a sheep to get the wool.
(4) Also (and AGAIN I don't know whether you intended this. . .) I managed to open the gate to the area with the sheep before I talked to the man selling them. A sheep came out and stayed in that small building the entire game. Perhaps you might have the man interrupt someone trying to open the gate--something like "Hey! What are you doing! You'll need to pay for any animals you let escape. . ." Then he can go into his sales talk about the various animals for sale.
(5) I noticed that I could buy small animals from him, but only once. After that the small animals weren't in the choices. This might be what you intended, though, as it helps to avoid players coming back time and time again to buy even more butterflies!
(6) When I started, I killed all but two of the bad natives inside the ccmpound where I was being held. I didn't bother the two standing guard on the outside of the walled area. But when I returned later in the game, they didn't seem to notice me at all. I wandered around, used the campfire and well to fry up those Kiwi Steaks, and they never took another shot at me. Is this intended? I thought they would be trying to kill me after I escaped, so that if I came back into the camp, they would immediately attack me.
(7) The car is way, way cool. (You gotta be careful about momentum in a car with no brakes! This never even occurred to me until I actually tried to stop not nearly far enough from the ocean. . . at least my son--learning to drive now--didn't see me.) (Don't change it--it's great. . .It just became really clear to me at that point that I was taking some modern inventions way too lightly. I'm glad for brakes in my car!)
(8) Are there antidote potions on the island anywhere? In one go I got surprised by a scorpion (nasty little things!) and discovered that I had not seen any potions or healing plants. Perhaps I should have built herb beds before going into that part of the map? Or did I miss them somewhere (always the most likely answer.) Perhaps the trader could sell them, or at least the herbs needed for someone to make their own.
Again, thank you, and again and again.
Your modification is well done and is an asset to Stranded 2.
Vagabundus
first,why you write so long posts? (no offence intended)
second,do you check mods deeply to judge or play for fun?cause when i see those long posts i think "wow! this man is overjudging prblems with mods too much!"
Vagabundus has written
I guess I would suggest either unlocking those other buildings without requiring the player to build a hut, campfire, etc., or to make some sort of in-game comment that might give a hint to the player that those basic buildings still need to be built, even if you are using the buildings, campfires, etc. in the native village.
Well, you can actually go to the system file of Stranded II and change it so that you unlocka llt he buildings from the start. Just go to mods>Stranded II>sys>Building.inf and do some thing like put "unlockbuilding x;" and then just put one for every number of the buildings ( list is shown above). That way if say, you did it for a tent you can just build a tent, and unlock all the buildings.
.... though I am not VERY good at code I have before made slight modification the the code and it worked out well (setting all skills to unlock at 1, setting log weight to 10g, etc)
I believe these issues are experienced by other players and that some players might "give up on" the mod if they get frustrated trying to figure something out. It's one thing if someone gives up because they can't figure out a puzzle--another thing altogether if they run into some technical glitch that isn't apparent from the in-game information.
I may be just overlooking something obvious, which is why I try to be thorough in reporting the issue and in telling what steps I have tried or exactly what it is that seems to not be working as I think it should.
My posts of this sort are very long.
On the other hand, I don't end up causing the twelve-in-a-row "did you try this?/do this, you idiot/what operating system are you using/how about this?" strings of posts. To my mind, these are the true waste of space and time.
So "no", I'm not trying to diss any mod.
*If there is one that is not worth the time to go over it, I dump it--it's not worth my time, either.
*I try to be systematic about my suggestions, so that I am not misunderstood (no doubt the #1 cause of wasted time/space in e-land.), and so that anyone who wants to help can see what I have already tried, and exactly what it is that I think isn't working quite right. It's no help to an author to read an incomplete description of a problem and then waste time trying to duplicate it so that it can be fixed--only to find out (after another ten posts) the problem only happens when the green duck is on top of the coop.
*I read the previous posts to be sure I am not repeating something others have said. Like everyone else, I am not perfect and I regularly miss things. Still, I try to stick to things not yet mentioned--the exception here is if I have new information to add. So, for example, someone might post "I get stuck in the doorway leaving the chieftain's palace" I might add--and I've had similar problems in other places, such as . . . "
*When I do mention something that doesn't seem to work, I will try to think about how this particular glitch might have occurred. Some types of mistakes happen easily and tend to be harder for the author to spot.
*I try to only mention stuff that affects game play. I won't post something saying, for example "I think the penguins should be purple--black is so . . .last year. . . ANYONE OUT THERE AGREE WITH ME???" The sorts of things the author chooses to do that fall along the "artistic discretion" category don't need my opinions taking up space.
*Never do I appeal to other players to support my points with their own posts--it's all about helping the author make the product better, not about creating some sort of social movement so that I can be at the center of things.
*I am careful to give positive feedback so that my post doesn't read like an all-out-attack. Especially for open-source or free programs, I try to be encouraging, putting my suggestions in the "it's good, but maybe this might it even better" tone.
*I don't follow up my post with more posts pointing attention to my first. I am making these suggestions as a courtesy to authors who have given many hours already as a gift to others who enjoy their programs--I do not need to make a big deal about it, and if the author doesn't want the feedback, then he/she doesn't need to do anything. . . I won't repeat it or demand some sort of an answer later, if the author doesn't get around to answering my questions/suggestions
*I also try to use subject lines that make it clear I am making a game improvement suggestion. That ought to make it easy for someone who doesn't care about the whole improvement/editing/troubleshooting process to skip my post altogether.
So I am truly sorry if I have written anything that might offend you . I did not mean to do that. (and I suspect that if I put my mind to trying to offend someone, they would not mistake it for anything else. . .) However, I believe this approach is appropriate and helpful feedback for authors--and much more helpful than the "you rox--this is awesome!" sort of comment.
Now that I have explained the "why", do you still think I am wrong to make the long posts? If so, what am I missing?
Thank you,
Vagabundus
Admin/mod comment
another pointless spam post. please don't do this again. /DC"all-out-attack".
Help please
GuestHelp me please
Here is step by step how to do it
http://www.unrealsoftware.de/forum_posts.php?post=66848&start=291
im just wondering cause this is a very good mod it's in my top3!
thats sad cause i realy wanted it 
You can just delete the line saying lockbuildings; and no need to do all that you said, much easier.