SoF: Dialog & storyline revision.

[Sapient]

For Caverns of Flame you misspelled "shredding" as "shedding."

As for Epilogue, I'm not going to review the spelling and grammar for that one yet because it has some story elements that should be reviewed by zookeeper (and possibly LordBob) first.

[zookeeper]

Okay, so I've finally taken a closer look at this, reading through almost all of it. It's mostly a good improvement, but there's quite a few bits which I think warrant some light tweaks. I'll see what I can do.

[Pewskeepski]

Oh wow, I thought everyone forgot about this

Well I'm still interested in this, and I can still modify anything that needs to be tweaked.

[zookeeper]

I haven't yet compiled a list of things I'd like to see revised further, but one thing that I think stood out a bit was the way Durstorn was willing to surrender the sceptre to the elves, rather than being possessive of it. I'd imagine that anyone seriously affected by it would become a bit too attached to it to let it go that easily.

[zookeeper]

I completely forgot about this.

Stay tuned.

[Pewskeepski]

Eh, I forgot about it too. But I did a quick search to find that it's all still on my computer so I'm ready

[zookeeper]

A month later...

I've applied the changes to the first scenario, and while the text is pretty good, I ended up having to make a lot of small corrections here and there (dashes, typos, capitalization, commas, tribe->clan, etc). But I'm not a native speaker so I'm not necessarily 100% correct either. Anyway, the one remaining thing I'd like to change "energy" in the phrase "lust for power and energy" into something else.

Also, since the changes aren't in a patch format, it takes a long while to copypaste each line into place, so if you could do that part yourself it'd certainly speed things up a lot.

[Pewskeepski]

I swapped out 'energy' for 'immortality', is that better? I also changed a few semi-colons to periods so they wouldn't be so overused.

[LordBob]

D'oh, I had completely forgotten about this as well. Fortunately, I was able to find back what notes I'd taken. I'm now in the middle of reading the last few scenarios

Anyway, the updated first scenario sounds a lot better than the original version .
Regarding Energy vs Immortality, how about "conquest", "battle", or "domination"? With the idea that the ruby tends to draw out men's worst instincts, leading to rash decisions and a war-mongering behaviour ? (which we repeatedly witness on Durnstorn throughout the campaign)

[LordBob]

Me again. I proofread and did some changes in the last two scenarios. I've outlined changes using the "+/-" patch syntax

One thing that strikes me though: I don't think I've seen anything about story parts in the files I've read. Is this normal ? Are we leaving those unchanged ?

Regarding Durnstorn's will to forsake the sceptre, I agree. It might sound more plausible if he wished to rush out against all odds and meet the elves in battle, especially if you consider his bloodthirsty behaviour in earlier scenarios. Naturally such blind recklessness would be considered madness by the others, leading to Thursagan's move.

[Pewskeepski]

Wow, your epilogue is a lot better than mine

Regarding Durnstorn's will to forsake the sceptre, I agree. It might sound more plausible if he wished to rush out against all odds and meet the elves in battle, especially if you consider his bloodthirsty behaviour in earlier scenarios. Naturally such blind recklessness would be considered madness by the others, leading to Thursagan's move.

Agreed. I'm going to take another pass through all the scenarios and rework anything iffy.

One thing that strikes me though: I don't think I've seen anything about story parts in the files I've read. Is this normal ? Are we leaving those unchanged ?

Not sure, I never gave them any thought until now. I could probably go to work on them too, if there's any thing that may require change.

I've added Lordbob's changes, and fixed a few typos. Sorry they aren't in patch form; I don't know how to do that.

[LordBob]

Same here: I would gladly help translate these updated dialogs to patch format, but I'm a complete noob with WML. Is there maybe a page in the wiki that explains this patch format ? (a quick search left me empty-handed)
Or, at the very least, what can we do to ease your work ? Does it help if we deliver an updated .cfg complete with the new dialog?


I have yet to take a good look at story parts, but considering the quality of the original dialogs, my guess is that they would benefit from a revamp as well. Plus, some of them might not make sense anymore with the changes we brought.


On a side note, I'm getting worried that now the characters are refering too much to the passing of time. A lasting impression from reading these last two scenarios is that they're always going "fifteen years this, fifteen years that". It wouldn't hurt to do a second reading with this in mind and see if we can remove some of those references.

[tr0ll]

when yall are happy with the new texts, i will make patch files for zookeeper. no point doing that if they are going to be rewritten the next day

[Pewskeepski]

On a side note, I'm getting worried that now the characters are refering too much to the passing of time. A lasting impression from reading these last two scenarios is that they're always going "fifteen years this, fifteen years that". It wouldn't hurt to do a second reading with this in mind and see if we can remove some of those references.

Maybe... From the characters perspective it has been a long time, so I think it makes sense that the years would come up in their conversations, at least the ones between Alanin and Haldric. As you suggested, I read through and was thinking maybe Haldric should just say "I sent Tenvyr to get an update on their work" without the "Years ago"?

I also went through the 2nd and 3rd scenarios and made a few tweaks. Nothing big, though.

[LordBob]

Oh, well, forget I said anything. I read it again, and now it doesn't really bother me. I think that feeling was caused by reading the last scenarios in a single shot, but on a scenario-by scenario basis it's not so bad.

I might still propose some changes in scenarios 2-3, especially the dialog of the elves.