cytheraguides: Welcome to the chat! We’ll be starting shortly.
Automod has been enabled for the channel.
cytheraguides: I’ll be doing a quick audio test in a moment.
sfiera: Sorting out some audio issues. Testing? Testing?
cytheraguides: we’ll be back in a moment!
Mercy453: Who in Inpher?
Mercy453: The commentators are not as loud as the ruffians, but they are audible ^_^
Mercy453: Possible idea for Cythera v2: Make it possible to actually drink the kesh, and become addicted, which can only be cured by the eighth-degree Restoration spell. 
Mercy453: Not to mention you can buy flax elsewhere and sell it here for profit.
gandreas13: For the record, it is the end of bronze/early iron age.
Mercy453: You cannot get more money for flax regardless of the haggling skill.
CaptainNiceHD: Yep, you left your money on the table back in LKH
Mercy453: Catamarca music rocks, but is so loud compared to your voices :\
gandreas13: I put a lot of things in the game that had no real purpose in the plot, but were fun/interesting to do
darthselax: You could pick up the Sapphire Book in the Judge’s House.
Mercy453: One minute: dying of plague, the next: jumping up and going to the bar.
CaptainNiceHD: That’s House Strymon for you.
Mercy453: I heard someone in House Strymon killed Opheltius.
darthselax: Also, the various side-plots and stories in Cythera were exceptionally well-done.
darthselax: Indeed, those House Strymon people can’t be trusted….
gandreas13: If I just got cured of the plague, I know going to the bar would be one of the first things I’d do.
Mercy453: Better than going to work, which is what he usually does, depending on the time of day.
darthselax: Indeed, I tend to have most success finding Demodocus at Bryaxis’ house.
Mercy453: I agree wholeheartedly about Mr. Andreas adding much fun extras. I think the fact that we’ve been playing for 20 years is a testament to that.
darthselax: Quite.
Mercy453: Did he get the light staff?
darthselax: No.
Mercy453: He needs it!
Mercy453: All reptiles have six legs. I thought everybody knew that.
darthselax: Did you set Meleager’s attack strategy?
sfiera: Six limps, at least. Dragons are four legs + two wings.
mossrc: Glenn, what were your main ispirations/influences with the story and the world design?
gandreas13: Too bad there’s no easy way for me to attach pictures here - I’ve still got the diagram for the house powers on a whiteboard (as well as other stuff)
Mercy453: I believe the diagram is in the hintbook? Or is yours more in-depth?
cytheraguides: I’d love to hear some of your insights! sorry about the audio issues :(
cytheraguides: I think the desktop discord may be able to stream audio better than the browser but not sure
gandreas13: Story was most influenced by the *Riddle Master of Hed* trilogy by Patricia McKillip (plus having a history minor)
gandreas13: It was in fact based on existing ruins - I don’t remember for sure either
Mercy453: Ooh, books to look up
darthselax: Most interesting.
gandreas13: The city overland was rendered from the city data programmatically.
gandreas13: I was too lazy to keep updating those sprites as I change the city layout
CaptainNiceHD: You can put Milk in a buck, but doing the same with Wine is a Crude and Boorish Thing To Do
darthselax: You probably should mention why you moved the bucket before picking it up.
darthselax: ("Your deeds stain your soul…")
Mercy453: Don’t forget the kelp.
Mercy453: You said you’d do a speedrun, right?
gandreas13: A "read every book, scroll, and parchment" run!
darthselax" An excellent suggestion.
octomun: 100% speedrun!
CaptainNiceHD: What about (obscure thing here)?
darthselax: Indeed. The golem hunter, the cult of Scylla, the Cypher Manuscript (which I am still curious about—it’s like no one else seems to register its existence though I believe Tavara has a copy), etc.
darthselax: (Regarding interesting books)
Mercy453: I want to talk about the Cipher Manuscript. Maybe gandreas will settle once and for all whether Magpie wrote it ^_^
gandreas13: I didn’t want to make a game where you had to grind to get to level 99 to defeat the *big bad*, so the system was set up to have some simple progression, but that would happen in the course of adventuring.
gandreas13: In many ways it was more an *adventure* game with RPG like elements, with a more traditional RPG UI
Mercy453:: Cythera is the perfect mix of story and RPG
darthselax: The backstory is very excellent. There are so many things to explore and to speculate about.
CaptainNiceHD: Same
darthselax: You might mention Elder Diones’ workshop (though time might prevent you from visiting it).
darthselax: (To Wizard: ask our sister on pronunciation of all things Greek.)
CaptainNiceHD: Timon: Archeologist Wizard, PhD
Mercy453: We do have that interview for the pronunciation, I think
gandreas13: I pronounced it "sigh-THEER-a"
Mercy453: That’s it, we have a pronunciation! The end. (Twenty years of wondering and pronouncing it differently every time we play it…)
gandreas13: Did anyone ever figure out what the Cronla name is an Easter egg for?
Mercy453: No! :o
darthselax: I didn’t even realize it was an Easter egg to be honest.
Mercy453L I will wonder forever if you do not disclose!
darthselax: Your followers are starving.
gandreas13: After 20 years, he’s the spoiler: It is an anagran for *Loc Nar*, which is from the film Heavy Metal.
darthselax: Hence, they attack slugs for food.
darthselax: Very interesting. The name sounds familiar, but I’m not certain I’ve seen that one.
Mercy453: An anagram! That’s brilliant, I never would have guessed.
octomun: was there originally supposed to be seldane food?
octomun: (mushroom steak, etc.)
gandreas13: It was supposed to hint that "hey, this might give me power, but it will go bad for me in the end if I use it"
darthselax: Out of curiosity, how long would a Seldane enternity be in Cythera years?
gandreas13: It’s phonetic version ancient Egyption
darthselax: Did you learn Awareness?
darthselax: You can now, I believe.
gandreas13: That full world map was also generated from the game data (with some Photoshop magic)
darthselax: Tavara is a very interesting subplot. I used to think he was the main villain before beating the game and discovering otherwise.
gandreas13: *Tavara" - anagram for *avatar* (an Ultima reference)
CaptainNiceHD: Ironic!
Mercy453: Happy you used your death strike on the bomb chest now?
darthselax: You realize you have no weapons to hurt the demon, right?
Mercy453: Meleager doesn’t fight with staffs…
Mercy453: You cannot blow up a demon with a bomb. See Sely’s youtube videos :P
darthselax: Can’t Timon cast Mystic Arrow?
Mercy453: He’s paralyzed, go get the book!
Mercy453: I do not think the staff will work. Is a staff classified as magical?
darthselax: I don't think you can do it at this point. I'd revert to saved.
darthselax: Never mind. Hector is rather tough.
darthselax: Workshop and below might trigger responses
darthselax: Daemon does as well.
Mercy453: To see the "white room", one of your followers must be in the passage while you are in Alaric's study.
Mercy453: I think she sleeps until 10
Mercy453: You have to look at the kesh in Aeneas's inventory
gandreas13: They are basically rhinos
Mercy453: Unicorns are reptiles. It's in a book.
gandreas13: Still, one horn = unicorn
darthselax: Ur-Sylph is another interesting story. One wonders if he's strong as Omen says. One is also curious about why Ignae is referred to as treacherous. The events surrounding the fall of the North Pillar (and the apparent subsequent fall of the South Pillar) are one of the fun subjects to speculate about.
darthselax: I would say he and Ignae are perhaps the most interesting elementals.
darthselax: Ignae is also interesting because he is referred to as the cunning and tricky one despite all of the scheming of the Undine.
Mercy453: I love how gandreas decided to make unicorns these big ugly six-legged reptiles that happen to have one horn ^_^
gandreas13: Unicorn was a deliberate thumbing my nose at fantasy tropes
Mercy453: The whole game somewhat defies fantasy tropes ^_^
Mercy453: I guess we do have the helpless maiden in distress, but that's all I can think of.
darthselax: Yes, something was annoying me when we named him.
darthselax: I wonder what could possibly have been annoying me at that time...
CaptainNiceHD: Fetch Cademia into Oblivion!
darthselax: Didn't Fetch also have a range limit?
darthselax: I recall you had to be standing right next to the object.
Mercy453: Wow, you still have savefiles that old?
gandreas13: There was also a debug mode that let me create arbitrary objects, teleport to any location, etc...
darthselax: We save a lot of unusual things.
Mercy453: That would be fun to play with :]
gandreas13: That should have been removed
Mercy453: Wizzy: Do you maybe want to show the dead quy in the northwest corner of each zone?
darthselax: Wasn't that a fishing rod on the floor in the corner?
Mercy453: The fishing rod was right beside you... on the floor, not in the chest
gandreas13: It was a balance between compression factor and speed of decompression
darthselax: IT WAS ON THE GROUND NEXT TO YOU.
darthselax: The fishing pole that is.
gandreas13: Yeah - it was that balance
gandreas13: I had a compiler from the scripting language
Mercy453: Did Alaric and Magpic *both* join when you asked Alaric?
octomun: magpie's place is with alaric
Mercy453: I wonder how the gate guard will open the gate now
darthselax: Fetch?
darthselax: There are unused character spaces in the save files. It is possible to create mindless drones in these spaces.
darthselax: One can make an army of Alarics though they do not have dialog or portraits.
darthselax: Use resist fire.
gandreas13: If you really want a challenge in hacking the game, get it to play Ultima VI (because I had a version of the scenario file it that did)
Mercy453: :o
darthselax: That is very impressive.
darthselax: Use resist fire.
gandreas13: You'd have complete convert the U6 data files
Mercy453: I like how Wizzy just ignores you, Sely. Story of your life?
darthselax: Yes.
darthselax: He can tune me out on "yes" or "no" answers.
darthselax: "Join" is being tested, isn't it?
darthselax: Just grab Alaric.
CaptainNiceHD: A shocking plot twist!
gandreas13: Don't trust anyone
Mercy453: Don't trust anyone... sounds like a hint about Cythera 2
Mercy453: We trusted the Seldane when we beat the game, now there's going to be consequences
Mercy453: Ooh, the think-a-dot!
gandreas13: Cythera 2 would have had the subtitle "Shattered Realm"
Mercy453: We've theorized about it at length, but I'm sure we haven't come close to figuring out what your ideas were ^_^
CaptainNiceHD: Ooh! A name!
darthselax: I recall that. One of the prophecies seemed (to me at least) to hint at Alaric's fall.
gandreas13: I still have my Think-A-Dot
Mercy453: I have one too ^_^
Mercy453: (Thanks to Pallas Athene)
Mercy453: I wonder if the island of Cythera would have been shattered, or the entire Reality.
darthselax: I also wonder how Diones came by the device.
Mercy453: "Can computer games really be fun? Think-a-dot is a computer game and is fun!"
CaptainNiceHD: That Sapphire book traded to the seldane?
gandreas13: It would have been broken into separate floating chunks (which would occasionally line up to let you get from one to the other)
Mercy453: Oh wow, moving islands. That would have been so cool!
darthselax: Sounds like very extensive damage.
CaptainNiceHD: "The Earth and Sea shall part, the center cannot hold"
gandreas13: Yeah, one of the first parts would have caused you to find Magpie, who would be driving around a cart with an ornate coffin in the back
darthselax: Indeed.
Mercy453: Oh my! Was Alaric in the coffin? :o
gandreas13: Maaaayyyyybeeeee
Mercy453: wow oh wow this is golden
darthselax: "The Bird of Two will bemoan his fate, and that of the Third."
sfiera: Do you still have the Amulet to use on him?
Mercy453: I can see how our entire TS universe is devastatingly misled
Mercy453: Would the player in Cythera 2 have been Bellerophon from the original game, or a new character?
darthselax: "Air and Fire shall wreack havoc, and Night shall fall." This makes me wonder if Ur-Sylph regains interest in life or if there are other Sylphs ("...last great Sylph" doesn't necessarily mean last).
gandreas13: 68K support was a total nightmare to try to get any sort of reasonable performance.
gandreas13: "Hey, this is cool (on PPC)... but it doesn't work on 68K"
gandreas13: Plus things like the lighting was totally different between the two (since 68K required dithered pattern overlay, while PPC could actually dim colors dynamically)
Mercy453: My husband played Cythera on a 68K, and found it satisfactory, so I guess your great efforts helped at least one person ^_^ ....but he didn't register it.
gandreas13: Plus the memory limitation are the direct result of many of the bugs
gandreas13: I don't think 68k supported "wind" animation in the trees
Mercy453: Did Ambrosia require the 68K capability?
gandreas13: Now a days none of the restrictions I had even remotely exist anymore
Mercy453: So at the core, the worst problem Cythera had was the timing. It's really sad :(
Mercy453: Wizzy I think the Chimera pronunciation is more lime shimmera
Mercy453: *more like
gandreas13: Yeah, Blobbo is an emergent puzzle
sfiera: I think it rhymes with Cythera
gandreas13: Hard K sound is correct for Chimera
Mercy453: I stand corrected.
darthselax: Yes,
Mercy453: Too bad you can't pull the Crolna shard from Pelagon's corpse ):
Mercy453: I like the bad end where you give Pelagon the shards and he starts blowing up everyone with the Crolna. I wished I could do that with the Crolna when I had it!
darthselax: Indeed. He lives quite close to the Scylla Temple.
darthselax: Alaric refuses to have dealing with ghosts.
darthselax: He's the Land King--not the Necromancer.
darthselax: Generally, most of the Tavara subplot areas are fun areas.
darthselax: There's a very rich backstory (including the Sword of Heroes as Wizard notes).
Mercy453: "He's the Land King-not the Necromancer" Who's going to break it to Rapierian that he's not the landking?
darthselax: Fair point, though I was actually referencing Sauron in the Hobbit.
darthselax: Four daemons
darthselax: In the second one
darthselax: One in first one
darthselax: Tavara (apparently) is also there.
Mercy453: I didn't know a ghost could be paralyzed.
darthselax: Necromancers, of course.
Mercy453: I guess even a ghost needs to wear an odd helm
darthselax: Though he has no dialogue and takes no actions. It is unclear to me if the liches retain real memories and plans or if they are just echoes and shadows of themselves.
Mercy453: They certainly seem inactive, especially Tavara
Mercy453: Though I think UrSylph said Tavara was suicidal but immortal
darthselax: (The two dead Seldane are presumably from previous hacking).
Mercy453: The ring is in the coffer
CaptainNiceHD: You're already wearing the ring
darthselax: He said Tavara still dreams of revenge and is too deluded to realize he won't attain it.
darthselax: You are wearing the ring.
sfiera: cccccchrltlkekdvijcircegegjkivdgkunkkvlncvni
sfiera: cccccchrltlkcvbigilbfgkhtcrjndhurglujcgdklvj
darthselax: You have been here before. Observe the two dead Seldane.
sfiera: (ignore that)
darthselax: Get the bombs
darthselax: There are too many doors
Mercy453: Fiery was your cat in the chat?
Mercy453: Rune of blocking and rune of pain work
darthselax: Midnight?
sfiera: Ceci n'est pas un chat
darthselax: Mouse over them.
darthselax: She is sometimes in the dining hall.
gandreas13: I was really happy with the way the adult polyp turned out
gandreas13: (He was actually made out of 9 different sprites)
Mercy453: Confirmation that hydra and polyp are the same species!
octomun: The hydra was always my favorite graphic
Mercy453: The trouble with hydra is I can't figure out a way to hack my save-file to turn myself into one. I could be one tile of one..
octomun: I especially like the ones in Maayti and the Scylla cult that move around
gandreas13: And scylla is also the same species
darthselax: Is the in game speculation about polyps, hydras, and polyps incorrect then? (The theory in there is that the hydra was the female polyp adult and the scylla the male one as I recall.)
gandreas13: Hydra mother, Scylla father, polyp immature
Mercy453: I am so glad you came to this livestream, gandreas ^_^ I learned so much
clockwise_emac: Yes, thanks for participating!
darthselax: I agree wholeheartedly. It has been a real pleasure and an honor. Thank you for coming by.
gandreas13: With the debug build cheat codes it took like a minute or two
octomun: Buzzy is I
octomun: (Buzzzzy, rather)
sfiera: Is Buzzzzy here?
gandreas13: I'm glad you've all found fun with it even after 20 years
CaptainNiceHD: (vIsitor here)
darthselax: Do you have a Tree of Life save?
gandreas13: It's too bad I never got that side quest looking decent enough
darthselax: It's an extremely interesting quest. It took years for anyone to find it.
gandreas13: I really can't speak to any of the licensing/distribution issues, since it is ultimately Ambrosia that holds those rights
Mercy453: I wonder what rights Ambrosia can hold when it doesn't really exist anymore
gandreas13: Well, they may not "exist", but the rights would have gone somewhere. I'd have to try to find my original contract to know any more
darthselax: You'd be surprised. Freespace is stuck in limbo since two or three almost defunct game studios own different parts of it.
darthselax: (Comment directed to 453's statement.)
gandreas13: The problem with a "modern" version is that it isn't going to be popular with the way the engine looks, so then you start redoing everything
CaptainNiceHD: You never know. Vintage "classic-style" games are in style at the moment.
gandreas13: It is ok to be deliberately retro 8 bit, but not for actual retro 8 bit
gandreas13: I did get it partially running on iOS, but the UI was far from "good"
darthselax: I don't know. One could release it with old graphics on a new engine and allow for modification on the part of users to update the graphics. Freespace Open did something like that (though admittedly the graphics updates occurred over a period of years).
Mercy453: Partially running on iOS? That sounds very difficult
gandreas13: Been nice to look back on it after all these years
Mercy453: I'm so glad you don't hate it ^_^
darthselax: I call Wizard that "strange guy I don't know at all"
gandreas13: 40 year holodeck
gandreas13: Goodnight all
clockwise_emac: Thanks guys!
sfiera: Cythera VR
cytheraguides: thanks for joining, everyone!
darthselax: Good night. Thanks again for stopping by.
cytheraguides: that was a lot of fun
sfiera: Now, lunchtime