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Post by UrQuan on Dec 9, 2017 2:38:50 GMT
Seventh Sense S (download) v1.24.6 Alright boys, here's what's going on....
Over the last couple of years I have worked on Seventh Sense. First, to implement the missing Grand Master awards. As I closely adhered to the format of Kamikaze's original awards in style and implementation, I quickly came to many of the same conclusions as he did, several years ago; The Grand Master books are not as well suited for achievements. They books have a stronger narrative now, which leave less room for genuinely interesting decisions by the player, and are much longer, therefore more linear, which exasperates this problem. In any case, I did the best job I could given these constraints. During this time I learned enough of the code, the editor, and programming in general, to eventually entertain the possibility of implementing another missing piece in Seventh Sense; the New Order series. Around the same time I also started working on what would in time become a relatively extensive UI overhaul. Neither was trivial given my functionally zero programming experience, but I learned quickly. Some of the New Order books are possibly still more linear than the Grand Master ones. There are interesting sections but it was impossible to find any "theme" across the books to fulfill, like how the awards are traditionally. As I already struggled with that while making the Grand Master awards, I knew I had to rethink my approach: The New Order awards are much smaller in scope, and you have a chance to gain most of them on a blind play-through (and are almost all awarded mid-book). I also started making custom icons for every award, of course making the process even more laborious but I'm very happy with the results for the New Order awards so far. Since then, in Dave's absence, I finished the New Order series as well as the remaining Grand Master books. All the Grey Star series code is done also, but I'm hoping to wait for the next Project Aon release before making the books. With more auto-processing in the editor, the books are now very quick to make so that won't be a problem. The next step for me is finishing the New Order awards.     So far I have chosen not to post about my progress. I did not want to put any undue pressure on Dave to release the next version of Seventh Sense. Unfortunately, during this long period of inactivity many long-time members and Seventh Sense players on the forums have not returned (including commentator, whom I wanted to ask to write the new journals for me). At last, given the two new Lone Wolf apps released just in the past several months, I slowly started to feel like the ship had sailed, that people were moving on. I wanted to move on with the release. Since Seventh Sense is open-source, then if I thought the official Seventh Sense release wasn't arriving fast enough, nothing was stopping me from making my own version public... I was only hesitant to do that without Dave's acknowledgement at least. After Dave projected his return for this September, and I did not hear from him since, or since May, I started to consider making this post at some point in the next few months, which I guess is now. While this version of Seventh Sense is compatible with existing profiles, it bears to mention that this is not an official Seventh Sense release, and will not exist in parallel with the official version, once Dave returns. There are also some broad-stroked changes by now that ultimately might not receive Dave's blessing. I have tried as best I could to conform to the Seventh Sense license, which is why the final Grand Master books are not playable (while technically the previous books shouldn't be either). This is a conundrum for me because I don't want to step on Dave's toes in any manner, but maybe you will think it's stupid to withhold the books deliberately. I would definitely appreciate any comments on what the community thinks I should or should not release and in which time frame. For now though, the first two New Order books are playable! Voyage of the Moonstone and The Buccaneers of Shadaki.
Given the absolutely massive amounts of changes compared to the old 1.17 release, including some amount of "conversion" code that used to be prone to break stuff, I want to take it slow. Also, this script-based installer drove me insane trying to get it to work properly, and Windows SmartScreen which complains about unsigned executables like that nowadays anyway. If everything goes well though, I will release the next book within the next several days. Edit: Mydnight's Hero released! Edit: Dawn of the Dragons released! Edit: Wolf's Bane released! Edit: The Curse of Naar released!
Seventh Sense S (download) v1.24.6
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 9, 2017 2:39:21 GMT
Some things of note:
Awards are now cross-profile, so you don't have to worry about starting a New Order play-through even if your main profile is stuck on Book 17.
Both the Gameplay Rules and Options menus have been quite heavily streamlined. The old Gameplay Rules are still available by editing the settings.txt file in C:\Users\....\Documents\Seventh Sense, if there is something you were using and still need. Note also that some of the UI related things are still work-in-progress. Most recently I changed the paper background which is why there is only really one option available at the moment.
Hardcore is in the process of being rebalanced. You can read the Error Reports thread for some of my thoughts about that. Since these are breaking changes anyway, I'm hoping to introduce some other planned features at the same time (which will differentiate Hardcore a little more from By-The-Book). Current Hardcore play-throughs are not invalidated, and if you wish you may start new Hardcore play-throughs with this "intermediate" ruleset, but in terms of the Hall of Fame, which admittedly is very much in limbo at the moment, but for the future it would not be fair to allow Hall of Fame submissions with the old Hardcore rule-sets.
Prodigy characters have been nerfed quite significantly, and the Grand Master awards in terms of difficulty are really balanced around a legacy character now. For the future, another planned feature is being able to start from Book 13 with a pre-made character (this will also replace the 're-roll' option coming into the Grand Master series), but for now you should prepare a legacy character for Prodigy, starting from Book 1.
The Grand Master awards are sparser on hints than the awards before them. This was a deliberate decision; I felt the linear nature of the books would make the awards too easy or too chore-like otherwise. It was however, a tough balance to strike, and especially as I erred on the side of caution for now, many awards will inevitably be too hard. Each release I will add some hints based on user feedback, so please comment on any progress with your awards, or what general direction of difficulty or types of awards you want. There are some completely new types of awards which I would like your opinion on also.
Both Minimum and High Combat awards for Grand Master are without hints altogether at the moment, in part for my own laziness, but the High Combat awards now follow a strict formulae: The maximum amount of combats attainable with any possible combination of Disciplines, and without any RNG involved. The old High Combat awards have been rebalanced according to this same scheme.
Here is the full changelog:
Faithful Son of Sommmerlund
Easy ---> Moderate
8 combats -> 8 combats
Opponent of the Silent Brotherhood
Hard ---> Moderate
10 combats -> 12 combats
Brumalmarc's Redeemer
Easy ---> Moderate
8 combats -> 10 combats
Bandit's Bane
Moderate
10 combats -> 13 combats
Assassin of Vassagonia
Moderate
10 combats -> 14 combats
Mercenary of Lyris
Moderate
8 combats -> 11 combats
Skarn of Legend
Moderate
8 combats -> 12 combats
Champion of Tharro
Hard ---> Moderate
12 combats -> 12 combats
Warrior of Zaaryx
Hard
10 combats -> 15 combats
Liberator of Torgar
Moderate
8 combats -> 6 combats
Warrior of Yanis
Expert ---> Moderate
12 combats -> 13 combats
Warmarshall of the Royal Estates
Hard ---> Moderate
15 combats -> 15 combats
Other rebalanced awards:
Sniper of Ruanon
Easy ---> Hard
Kai Master
Moderate ---> Easy
True Kai Master
Hard ---> Easy
Kai Grand Master
Moderate
True Kai Grand Master
Hard ---> Moderate
Kour-tas-Kai
Hard ---> Moderate
Kour-tas-Ikar
Expert ---> Expert
14 CS / 24 EP -> 10 CS / 20 EP
Fire of the Sun
Expert ---> Hard
Light of the Moon
Hard ---> Expert
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Post by Nym90 on Dec 9, 2017 6:19:10 GMT
Given how long Dave has been absent, I think it is appropriate to go forward with this, given that you have made every effort you reasonably could to contact him.
I'm excited to see Seventh Sense back in action after such a long hiatus. I think implementing the New Order series is a particularly good choice given that Dave previously indicated he was not interested in including the New Order books himself. I'm also looking forward to seeing the Grey Star books finally in electronic form for the first time.
While apps such as the Lone Wolf Saga and the Kai Chronicles are convenient for those with smart phones, neither matches the functionality or customizability of Seventh Sense. It is by far my preferred way to play the books in electronic form for that reason.
I downloaded the installer but am getting the following system errors when I try to run Seventh Sense S: "The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCP140.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix the problem." And then a second error message that is identical except for indicating that "VCRUNTIME140.dll" was not found.
Unfortunately reinstalling the program did not fix the issues. Any suggestions? I am using Windows 10.
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 9, 2017 7:51:30 GMT
Given how long Dave has been absent, I think it is appropriate to go forward with this, given that you have made every effort you reasonably could to contact him. I'm excited to see Seventh Sense back in action after such a long hiatus. I think implementing the New Order series is a particularly good choice given that Dave previously indicated he was not interested in including the New Order books himself. I'm also looking forward to seeing the Grey Star books finally in electronic form for the first time. While apps such as the Lone Wolf Saga and the Kai Chronicles are convenient for those with smart phones, neither matches the functionality or customizability of Seventh Sense. It is by far my preferred way to play the books in electronic form for that reason. I downloaded the installer but am getting the following system errors when I try to run Seventh Sense S: "The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCP140.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix the problem." And then a second error message that is identical except for indicating that "VCRUNTIME140.dll" was not found. Unfortunately reinstalling the program did not fix the issues. Any suggestions? I am using Windows 10. I nearly had time to hope there wouldn't be any more problems with the installer  Edit: The runtimes are bundled with the installer now. |
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Post by tycho on Dec 10, 2017 23:09:47 GMT
Hello, I'm a long-time lurker here and I was amazed when I found Seventh Sense, it is such a great programm to play Lone Wolf. I also love the achievements (although some are a bit too frustrating/vague). Every few days I check into this board mainly to see if there is any progress with Seventh Sense, knowing of course that there is sadly very little activity here. I was all the more gladly surprised to find this great update now! Thank you! Now I can work on some GM achievements and I already played the two NO adventures. I'll be looking forward to more and I especially would like to see books 18-20 released if at all possible. I appreciate your work greatly. I literally came out of lurking and finally registered to say how happy I am about this update  I also found some bugs. Is it ok to post it here? - the NO Kai-Master weapon +5 bonus does not work. The special effective bonus does work (for example Valiance +8 against magical). - book 22, section 54: you have to discard one backpack item and one weapon, but after that all options are greyd-out, can't progress. - book 22, section 278: can't sell Crystal Prism (very minor, but still). And finally some questions about achievements: - the GM series achievement "use Helzhezag until it is destroyed", does it start counting at book 13 or already in book 12? I like this one - the Kai series achievement "book 1-5 completely unarmed", I tried this today several times and it did not work, I have no idea what I could have done wrong. Maybe it's bugged? Also is this a new achievement, I don't remember this from before? - book 1 and 3, "you have 33 seconds/one minute", are these also new? Do you have to complete the whole book in that time, or what? I know these are the two books you can complete without a single fight, but still. Keep up the good work! |
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 11, 2017 9:26:23 GMT
Hello, I'm a long-time lurker here and I was amazed when I found Seventh Sense, it is such a great programm to play Lone Wolf. I also love the achievements (although some are a bit too frustrating/vague). Every few days I check into this board mainly to see if there is any progress with Seventh Sense, knowing of course that there is sadly very little activity here. I was all the more gladly surprised to find this great update now! Thank you! Now I can work on some GM achievements and I already played the two NO adventures. I'll be looking forward to more and I especially would like to see books 18-20 released if at all possible. I appreciate your work greatly. I literally came out of lurking and finally registered to say how happy I am about this update I also found some bugs. Is it ok to post it here? - the NO Kai-Master weapon +5 bonus does not work. The special effective bonus does work (for example Valiance +8 against magical). - book 22, section 54: you have to discard one backpack item and one weapon, but after that all options are greyd-out, can't progress. - book 22, section 278: can't sell Crystal Prism (very minor, but still). Thanks for the kind words, and very much thanks for the bug reports. In regards to the Kai Weapons, just want to make sure: you are playing on Hardcore or Prodigy right? On Hardcore the loss of that bonus is deliberate, much like the Sommerswerd in the Lone Wolf books. For Prodigy I should probably allow it though. There are no Prodigy-style features at the moment in New Order, so I will also disallow manually selecting that for the very moment. You can still continue your current play-through of course. It starts already on book 12. This one is not exactly for the faint of heart as you may imagine, so it might get nerfed still. Oops, that unarmed award used to work but I recently broke it, it seems. It's prone to bugs because unarmed combat used to work differently in Seventh Sense back in the day. Yes, those are the other new type of award I was talking about, and indeed you have to complete the whole book! I can attest they are very much doable, but of course require practice and some knowledge of the books. My fastest time on book 1 was 27 seconds so there is even some leeway, as weird as it may seem. The timed series awards are much more lenient in terms of the time requirement, but of course are much longer, and still require intimate knowledge of the books. Once you have tried any of those, I would really like to hear your opinion on them, even if it's negative. And in general, any comments on what types of awards you guys like are appreciated. |
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Post by hemulen on Dec 11, 2017 12:01:33 GMT
I concur. Nice work! Must have been quite an undertaking.
Seventh Sense has always been my preferred Lone Wolf reader. While it would be great to finish the GM series, I understand your decision to start with New Order / Grey Star.
I already had all the achievements from the Kai / Magnakai series, so these new ones would be another reason to revisit the older books.
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 12, 2017 6:08:49 GMT
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Post by John Bryntze on Dec 12, 2017 17:23:46 GMT
Oh my God!!!! my dream come true... thanks so much UrQuan!!! so happy there be a Grey Star also... best Christmas present ever... thanks!
I know Dave approves Grey Star and Second order, he didn't want to do that anyway. He wanted however do up to 20.
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Post by tycho on Dec 12, 2017 20:58:13 GMT
Yes, I was playing on hardcore, it makes sense then.
I just got this one. Actually it was easier than I imagined, very doable, no nerfs needed imo. When Helshezag broke near the end of book 16 I had 19 max EP left and I didn't even fully optimize my book runs. Sure, it took several retries per book and I combined it with going for all the minimum combat awards, which helped. But with a fully CS optimized legacy character on Prodigy with the Helshezag +5 CS bonus on top, you get +11 against basically everything. Just a matter of avoiding unnecessary fights then. Very fun achievement.
The timed awards on the other hand I'm not a big fan of. I can certainly see that it's doable and I could probably train myself to get it, but it seems very stressful. Does the time limit start from section 1 or is preparation already timed?
And another achievement question for book 21: collect all three artefacts.
Those are the Iron Skull, Siyen Crown and Kutyan Emerald, correct?
If I'm not totally mistaken and missing something, you must have Kai-Alchemy to get the Emerald but you can't have Kai-Alchemy to get the Skull. Can't get both?
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 12, 2017 21:46:40 GMT
Yes, I was playing on hardcore, it makes sense then. I just got this one. Actually it was easier than I imagined, very doable, no nerfs needed imo. When Helshezag broke near the end of book 16 I had 19 max EP left and I didn't even fully optimize my book runs. Sure, it took several retries per book and I combined it with going for all the minimum combat awards, which helped. But with a fully CS optimized legacy character on Prodigy with the Helshezag +5 CS bonus on top, you get +11 against basically everything. Just a matter of avoiding unnecessary fights then. Very fun achievement. The timed awards on the other hand I'm not a big fan of. I can certainly see that it's doable and I could probably train myself to get it, but it seems very stressful. Does the time limit start from section 1 or is preparation already timed? And another achievement question for book 21: collect all three artefacts. Those are the Iron Skull, Siyen Crown and Kutyan Emerald, correct? If I'm not totally mistaken and missing something, you must have Kai-Alchemy to get the Emerald but you can't have Kai-Alchemy to get the Skull. Can't get both? Okay, good. I think I remember it being so hard because I played it myself with By-The-Book back then, and thought I would allow Prodigy for good measure, whereas that helps a lot of course. It starts from section 1 if you "restart this book from section 1". Turns out this one was the hardest of them all!.... You are right, of course. |
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Post by Nym90 on Dec 13, 2017 5:05:14 GMT
Using Helzhezag through book 16 isn't so bad (avoid combats and use Kai-Surge to try to end combats as quickly as possible). The really hard part will be then getting through book 17 and beyond with the reduced max EP.
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Post by uziel on Dec 13, 2017 8:01:09 GMT
This is simply amazing UrQuan! Truly outstanding stuff. Like tycho, I've been lurking for a long time now, checking periodically over the last year or so.. hoping to see an update from Dave, but I equally fully appreciate that work & real life stuff always has to take priority. Just checked into the forums for the first time in weeks, and I was blown away to see this. Already downloaded and installed Seventh Sense S and it rocks dude!
Truly mind blowing effort you've put into this mate. Dave created what is easily (in my humble opinion) the best LW program out there, and you've built upon his masterpiece. Can't thank you enough!
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Post by Dave on Dec 13, 2017 15:30:03 GMT
I echo the sentiment of everyone else here: Awesome work, UrQuan!
Reality has hit me - My life has simply changed enough and my priorities are different enough now that it is a sad fact I will likely never get around to finishing what I planned to with Seventh Sense. I still consider it a general success, though, as I was able to complete the Kai and Magnakai Series, and especially considering that I, and opera singer/voice teacher, learned C++ programming just to make this thing... (not that it's programmed well, but it works.) Anyway, I look back at the last year or two, and my work on this project has slowed down to practically nothing. I am involved in a lot of performances and projects at work and in the community at present, and that won't lighten up in the near future; couple that with trying to be a more engaged spouse and father, and the truth hits: Seventh Sense is on the backburner indefinitely for me.
However, I'm delighted to see that it's not on the backburner for others! UrQuan, you've done amazing work here! I just logged in today for the first time in months, and I saw your private message with lots of the changes you are making and proposing - you have my blessing to move forward full-steam ahead (not that you need it, but if you want it, it's there)! I feel like the project has been taken over by very capable and talented hands.
When Christmas break hits next week, I will address some the questions in your PM, as well as list here in this thread some of the design goals and additions that I had planned/hoped for, in case those spark ideas for you and the community. I have some fun ideas that already have some ground work laid in the code... really cool stuff that I think everyone would enjoy.
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Post by tycho on Dec 14, 2017 4:41:01 GMT
Bug Report:
Book 22, section 105:
after the fight you have to retrieve your Kai Weapon, the retrieve option is colored red and clickable but there is no weapon in the "Lost item" section, can't progress.
Hardcore Mode seems broken, at least in the Kai books. It now allows (and forces) you to take additional disciplines above the starting five in each book. I think it worked as intended in the NO books, at least in the previous patch.
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