Unofficial Arcanum Patch v080510 Released

[GameBanshee News]

The unofficial Arcanum patch has made steady progress and now hits version 080510. It is available on RapidShare, Terra-Arcanum, Computergames.ro, and Gamer's hell.

Here we go. I've put a lot of work into this one, spend a lot of hours tracking and fixing bugs, finding and restoring lost content. The main feature of this release is that sprite mirroring is disabled. I was very interested in this matter from the very beginning, I even contacted Leonard Boyarsky this week (and he was kind enough to forward my question to Tim Cain, those guys are really amazing), and in the end, encouraged by Tim Cain's words I hacked the engine myself. Basically, the number of animations is now almost doubled, near 200 mb of disabled animations are back. Without any kidding, this is the most important and revolutionary update to Arcanum since its release back in 2001.

Among other things, there's also a restored conversation of Gilbert Bates and Loghaire Thunder Stone. The full list of additions is as follows:

-Fixed the Paralysis Grenade schematic, now it uses correct components.
-Fixed basic proto issues with the Telegraph Operator in Tarant and Wino Whitewash: correct soundbanks now.
-The Blade of Xerxes which the adventurers fetch for you now uses correct art.
-A dead body in Gorgoth's Pass and a skeleton in the Wolf Cave are no longer resurrectable.
-Vincent now has negative alignment and is no longer resurrectable.
-Added missing descriptions to a cabinet in the Black Mountain Clan and a dresser in the general store in Tarant.
-Fixed a broken line in Gildor Nightwalk's dialogue.
-Sprite mirroring is disabled, the game now uses all 8 rotations for every creature (the number of animations is almost doubled).
-Updated WorldEd: turned off sprite mirroring, fixed some wrong window sizes (they were too small to show all flags), fixed some typos. Note: this is based on WorldEd 1.0.7.0.
-Fixed a wrong word order in the dialogue for Evil Virgil with Joachim.
-A Dark Elf Bandit in Dernholm Pits now has correct race.
-A half ogre Molochean Hand agent in Stillwater and Gideon Laier now have negative alignment.
-If you have Chukka in your party and asked him to wait somewhere while you killed Bates, then Chukka will attack you on sight.
-Edward Teach won't appear in Black Root if you killed him in Ashbury or on the Isle of Despair. Killian Drake and his cronies won't appear in this case as well.
-Magick-Tech penalty icon now has its own art.
-Fixed the ending when Maximillian returns to Cumbria, but Lianna Pel Dar is dead. Now it uses a correct sound clip.
-Now you can give a pistol to Cynthia Boggs in all cases.
-Lorria now gives you a pistol in all cases.
-Ashbury's guards don't give blank rumors anymore.
-Caladon citizens don't give blank dialogues in the late story state anymore.
-Fixed descriptions for the Medallion of Beauty and the Strong Poison.
-Dragarons now have soundbanks.
-The Magick Ring from the Uncharted Cave is now usable.
-Removed artefacts from all target icons.
-Fixed problems with Kietzel Pierce's dialogue. Now you get different dialogue options if you lied to him about the bow.
-An infinite XP loop in Jason C. Guy's dialogue is now fixed.
-Kietzel Pierce and Clarissa Shalmo now actually have master training in their respectful skills.
-The Dagger of Pain and the Bow of Ecclesiastes no longer have an empty spell menu.
-Teleportation to/from the Half Ogre Island is disallowed.
-Ring of Protection now gives DR+10 bonus, as its description says.
-Fixed various typos in Raven's dialogue. Also removed a broken line.
-Fixed a typo in Magnus with Bingham dialogue.
-Mrs. Morgan's quest now gets botched if you kill JT, and she will attack you once you speak to her again.
-Mrs. Morgan's lines don't get repeated if you already have the quest.
-Mrs. Morgan won't mention JT's quest if you killed him before taking it.
-Fixed basic proto issues with Mrs. Morgan: now she has a correct soundbank.
-The Witch's Dagger doesn't have an empty spell menu anymore.
-Fixed a mistake in the description of Haggle skill.
-Fixed a bug with getting infinite fate points by killing and resurrecting Gilbert Bates.
-Fixed a typo in the dialogue for Virgil after seeing Joachim's telegram.
-Fixed a typo in Gilbert Bates' dialogue.
-Added a missing script and an internal name to Kerghan's journal. This affects several lines in Gideon Laier's dialogue.
-Bullors' crate will now disappear from the docks once you use it.
-Fixed a bug in Renard's dialogue, it was setting a wrong global flag, thus breaking another quest.
-Fixed a mistake in Virgil's response about the Crash Site.
-When Adkin Chambers is healed and leaves Stillwater it now affects the number of citizens, so now it's possible to get the Butcher of Stillwater reputation in this case as well.
-The conversation of Gilbert Bates and Loghaire Thunder Stone is restored.

[galraen]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I can't help thinking that the guy's got far too much time on his hands. I cannot understand why anyone would spent tha amount of time he obviously has for what to me is such a pointless patch.

I played this game to death years ago, I never had any meaningful technical problems with it apart from one or two broken, but unimportant, schematics. I just don't get it at all.

[Brother None]

Originally Posted by galraen

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I can't help thinking that the guy's got far too much time on his hands. I cannot understand why anyone would spent tha amount of time he obviously has for what to me is such a pointless patch.

I played this game to death years ago, I never had any meaningful technical problems with it apart from one or two broken, but unimportant, schematics. I just don't get it at all.

It's not nearly as bad as the forum wars waged over the two competing Vampire patches, is it?

I don't think it's that weird. Both Arcanum and Fallout 2 worked pretty well with their last-released patches, yet both have (had) enormous modding projects to finish the work. Killap's patch and later restoration project for Fallout 2, this for Arcanum.

Considering there haven't been any games of the kind or level of Arcanum/Fallout 2 for years now, it's not that weird that some people would turn back to take a swing at patching these games and/or adding missing content (this patch also does that, somewhat).

[galraen]

I may have been a bit harsh Brother, but it just seemed to me that the patch was just fixing things that weren't really important, more of a wash and brush up than an actual patch. Most of the fixes mentioned were cosmetic or fixing typos or dialogue errors most people wouldn't have even noticed. But stuff that would actually make a difference to gameplay, such as broken schematics seem to have been ignored.

[Brother None]

Originally Posted by galraen

But stuff that would actually make a difference to gameplay, such as broken schematics seem to have been ignored.

Nah.

They're kind of washed under by the pile of smaller fixes, but there are a number of fixes for missing dialogue, broken endings, broken items and broken schematics.