My Lord Duke,

[Andreas the Wise]

May I draw your attention to a matter which, I am sure, is as close to your heart as it is to mine ....
http://www.micras.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=823 (refer to last post in thread)

That Harvey and Bill never finished the Control of Destiny game, and when you get to Eclipse you'll find ... that you can't go any further. They've left you hanging in the middle of an awesome plot divide. I don't know what you can do about it, but I demand, as my Duke, you do something ...

[Jonas]

What?!
This is terrible! I demand they give the full version!

I have a problem too... I have met Boss and then I can't get further anymore... (there is a picture of a room but nothing happens)

Who find the finished version will get the treasure of Kildare!

[Andreas the Wise]

Oh, is that in Snowbound? Just after the ship crashes, yes? I had that problem too. The only way to solve it is to go into the RPG maker file, find that map, move one of the three people down two squares, and then play that bit again ...

[Jonas]

Oh, is that in Snowbound? Just after the ship crashes, yes? I had that problem too. The only way to solve it is to go into the RPG maker file, find that map, move one of the three people down two squares, and then play that bit again ...

I think I'm back in Jasonia (with Matt etc.), it's after I got to the Fire tower. When it goes to Jasonia where the others are (just escaped out of prison). Then I go to a city called 'New Thalassa' and there is Boss, he wants that I go to the forest...

[Andreas the Wise]

Ah ...
Did you do the Erikia subquest or not? I think I didn't do that bit because I did the Erika subquest ...

[Harvey Steffke]

May I draw your attention to a matter which, I am sure, is as close to your heart as it is to mine ....
http://www.micras.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=823 (refer to last post in thread)

That Harvey and Bill never finished the Control of Destiny game, and when you get to Eclipse you'll find ... that you can't go any further. They've left you hanging in the middle of an awesome plot divide. I don't know what you can do about it, but I demand, as my Duke, you do something ...

Good LORD. You got all the way to Eclipse!? With the exception of Scott, I don't know anyone that actually made it out of Sunscorch.

[Jonas]

May I draw your attention to a matter which, I am sure, is as close to your heart as it is to mine ....
http://www.micras.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=823 (refer to last post in thread)

That Harvey and Bill never finished the Control of Destiny game, and when you get to Eclipse you'll find ... that you can't go any further. They've left you hanging in the middle of an awesome plot divide. I don't know what you can do about it, but I demand, as my Duke, you do something ...

Good LORD. You got all the way to Eclipse!? With the exception of Scott, I don't know anyone that actually made it out of Sunscorch.

Sunscorch? That's the easiest part!

[Andreas the Wise]

Though Jonas, you got a fatal error and had to get one of my later games ...

(Harvey, I know of several fatal errors if you'd like to know them to fix them).

But please say you have a later version of the game ...

[Jonas]

Though Jonas, you got a fatal error and had to get one of my later games ...

(Harvey, I know of several fatal errors if you'd like to know them to fix them).

But please say you have a later version of the game ...

I couldn't use the saved game you send me, remember? So I began again.

[Harvey Steffke]

A version past the beginning of Eclipse? No. Truth be told, I haven't really touched it in about a year now and am not entirely sure how to progress from that point. I have an 8 year old outline that I've been following amazingly well given how much I've improved as a writer since then, but the individual little scenarios baffled me and I drifted away from working on the game.

You can tell me fatal errors if you want, but in return you must tell me which characters you liked and disliked. Because I honestly have no idea which ones are popular.

[Andreas the Wise]

Ok, lets see if I can remember a few:
Current map fixes make you start in Snowbound with no party or money - not good.
Invading the Aquata castle, the first time you go in through the sewers. The second time (when you play AI, Bill and Jason separately), AI can walk into the kitchen room, but can't leave it - it thinks he was in the sewer and wants him to wash, and because he wasn't in the sewer, washing in the sink doesn't register ...
Inn in Snowbound where you can first choose your party - if you return later to that inn (after the bit you choose it for is over and you go back to a standard party), it'll ask you to take someone with you, even though you already have people in your party.
And when in Kajar Snowbound, just after the Hope has crashed, you talk to the leader and meet Empress/Scott, the three party members standing there don't rejoin you when the exchange is over, meaning you can't actually move out of the room because they're solid ...

And characters - Jason was annoying at first, not being able to attack high, but he grew and me, and I certainly loved him by the end. Erika's awesome. Bill and Matt are fine (did Matt totally change face between the two games? I played the demo of CoD1). Enjoyed Empress for the brief time I had her. AI was good as fairly strong (sorry, I'm thinking largely in battle terms here). Loved SaiKar - always had her in the party when I could. Magus was great fun when I had him. Never got Scott, wish I did because he is one of the one's still around. Gman was alright, if odd (in terms of battle - great in the storyline). Awaldock was pretty neat. Thandeyela (can't quite remember how to spell it) was alright. Wombat was awesome - double attack, magic and healing? How could you not love her? Zak was good. Mthia I would've liked to be able to control. Katie just got annoying. Oh, wasn't particularly interested in Eios. Never got to LightEning. Really wished I could of got Lord Stone. Didn't particuarly like Amy ...

This is more on battling with them than other things, but, after all, in an RPG you select the good characters to fight with, and grow to love them as you spend so much time with them ...

[Jonas]

The second time (when you play AI, Bill and Jason separately), AI can walk into the kitchen room, but can't leave it - it thinks he was in the sewer and wants him to wash, and because he wasn't in the sewer, washing in the sink doesn't register ...

No, AI must go in the sewer.

[Andreas the Wise]

That's a little later, though ...

[Jonas]

In this game I didn't play the Erika/Matt plot. After I got to sleep in the Inn (after the Fire Tower, etc.) when I played with Jason, I play again with Erika and Matt.

I go to Thalassa and talk with a guy, named Bos:



He joins the team but after that I see only a chamber (first, Erika is telling something).



I don't see Erika or someone else (but I can open the menu). So I'm trapped on that part...

[Andreas the Wise]

Harvey, I'll leave this to you, I didn't do that bit of the game ...

[Jonas]

Jas... Harvey! Help me, please:worship

[Ari Rahikkala]

Good LORD. You got all the way to Eclipse!? With the exception of Scott, I don't know anyone that actually made it out of Sunscorch.

Uhh, I guess I never told you, but I played through the whole game in a couple of days after getting it. This includes every branch of the Chaos invasion (spoily information helped here), fumbling a bit with some of the more difficult battles (I've got to give it to you - the fight with JDS *is* well done, even if it kind of comes out of nowhere plot-wise and JDS never was that big a villain ), etc..

Wombat was awesome - double attack, magic and healing? How could you not love her?

Last I heard, Funky Wombat was a guy .

Never got to LightEning

AFAIK he's not playable in COD2. Scott recalled what to do correctly, he just misremembered the effect of the choice: If you tell Elos to GTFO, you'll find Ari Whatshisnameagain and be able to tell him to join your party. He's not a very interesting character and not all that great in a fight, but at least his theme music is the only one that's lifted from a game I really like .

Anyway, my favourite characters in a fight were Amy and Mithia. Amy because time magic is just awesome (even if the offensive spells are resisted too often to be useful, except in bossfights - I can recall slowing down JDS more than a couple of times!). She's physically weak to match, but not so weak as to not be a riot to play. Mithia because she's so fast in the first place ... or is she? I mean, Erika was plenty fast, maybe I've mistaken them for each other in that respect but... oh, well, for what it's worth, I recall being really impressed by Mithia's fighting skills.

[Andreas the Wise]

Woah, spoilers ...
But I couldn't do the Assasinate subquest, said that bit of the game wasn't done yet ... and UEC wouldn't join me ...

[Jonas]

Wait... Wombat is a guy!?

[Harvey Steffke]

That error's bad. Like, the weird type of bad. You shouldn't be in that chamber for another bazillion hours. I haven't touched RGPMaker for a long freaking time though so I'm not going to try to fix it. I know someone around here has had some minor experience with it and managed to program themselves out of errors in the past. The map you should be teleported to when Elos joins is the "character joins" planet overlay thing. The event on that map should take it from there.

Wombat's a guy.

Assassinite's subquest isn't available because I embarassingly never really had any good ideas for it.

Ari's character is a little half programmed. The idea was switching between dolphin and human forms would help a lot - human Ari was supposed to be the mage and dolphin was more of a stronger attacker - but I never really made it work properly and feel quite right. It was on the (very long) to-do list.

To get UEC to join, you have to go against Jason's intuition to ask him to join. Three times in fact you have to decide not to ask him. After the third UEC gets a little offended that he was never asked to join the party, at which point you can safely accept him. He's only a temporary character for the attack on Jasonia Palace at that point and leaves after that scene. There was going to be a way to permanently recruit him later and it wouldn't matter if you get him earlier or not.

Thanks for the testimony on Amy. Time magic is sort of like PSI magic in the sense that most enemies have really bad resistance to it compared to elemental spells, so you can land things like slow on enemies that resist a lot of other stuff. I've always kind of worried that she was too weak though.

Mithia's very fast. Erika's the fastest character in the game stat-wise, but I think Mithia is faster when you can use her because she has some pretty cool gear on. Mithia was intended to be only a temporary character for chapter 5 but, due to overwhemling popularity, I kept bringing her back. You can't recruit her permanently yet, but the option is at the end of Erika's little subquest, and you can start that subquest in the current game if you talk to her on the Hope before going to Eclipse. Actually, there's a few subquests you can start if you don't go immediately to Eclipse. There's four of those shad guardian bosses (Spark, Fnord, Skyline, and Giant Squid) and I think you can recruit Thomas Hubert in Sunscorch.

... talking about this sort of makes me want to work on it again.

[Jonas]

Ow, ow, ow... I hate errors.
I can't play with those errors...

[Andreas the Wise]

Ah, found the Squid and Fnord (sorry, I laughed seeing a monster named after an award ceremony ...), found Spark easy, of course, couldn't find the other ... and didn't find Erika's subquest, better do it ...

So your points for subquests are based on atrocity?

[Ari Rahikkala]

Fnord (sorry, I laughed seeing a monster named after an award ceremony ...)

[Harvey Steffke]

Award ceremony!!! True story: the MCS almost named the PLANET Fnord way back when. Back when Scott and UEC ran the organization, there was a lot of interest in a single unified name for the planet and so they ran a poll to see popular choices. My and Bill's submission, and generally the most well-known name at the time, was Micron. Fnord was a joke choice, but this was back during the Menelmacar days and a lot of people like Archetype supported Fnord, half because they thought it was a cool word, and probably half just to spite Bill and I (we weren't friends, to put it lightly). The Fnord poll choice won by a few votes and so the MCS was going to name the planet Fnord when I told Scott in private that since the Fnord choice won I was going to abandon my FIoJ land claims on the MCS (this was before the Apollo Foundation's territory was wiped, so Jasonia was still on the map) and pretty much declare Apollo culture dead, killed by Archetype. The next day the MCS announced that they had chosen to name the planet Micras. They also issued a very strongly worded statement against being theatened, intended for me of course.

If it weren't me, we'd all be on Fnord right now! So yeah, there's a little bit of a reason why I think it's evil. indeed. I suppose Scott still liked the word though and named the award ceremony that later on.

Strange note: the seven optional nasty elemental bosses are all named on Scott's personas. Spark the Talking Dog was his character in Treesia that fought during the War of the Ochids against the Infero Mage. Giant Squid was his persona during Audentior. He named a demon that had posessed him Fnord. Skyline refers to the Apollo Skyline, his newspaper. The three not in the game right now are the Oracle of Yaanek; his voice of crytpic wisdom from Hyperborea, PArkshire; for Peter Arkshire, a character he's used a few times in literary stuff, and Sagart; the position he held in the Treesian religion.

I'm weird, I admit it.

I assume you fought Spark before going to Eclipse and not in chapter 8. In Chapter 8 you can fight him with Jason/Sai'Kar or Tahn/Empress or Scott /Gman before leaving Snowbound to go fight JDS in Jasonia. You're pretty low level there so the Spark fight then is the hardest fight in the game. It's possible but really hard... kills me on occasion actually.

Regarding the character subquests, they're based entirely off progress through the game. No points required. Erika's subquest starts after she gets bonded with the Wind Song. Talk to her on the Jasonian Hope and she should give you some sort of hint. Returning to the place where you fought Magus (the pillar in Snowbound) is where you can fight Skyline.

[Andreas the Wise]

No, I fought Spark as soon as going to the tower became available, before the Blackbird was repaired ...
And I meant points for the plot split subquests ...

[Andreas the Wise]

OK, found the Skyline and the Awaldock/Erika fight. Is it actually possible to go further in Erika's subquest though? I can't find out how to attack Alassaht. And is Awaldock's subquest even programmed - I talk to his dad with him in the party and he just ignores me ....

I would love if you did finish it, or at least post that final storyline ...

[Jonas]

I'm making my own game, for Batavië (in Dutch).
If it's finished, and works well. I could translate it.

[Andreas the Wise]

That would be great! I started making one of Gralus's magical adventures but got a little bored (and I'm no good with graphics ...)