Cheers, by Maggie

Adventure ID = 46
Date Submitted = 2001-05-20

Author's Description:

Cheers Introduction: "It's the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, and time for a grand party! Tiryns is the perfect spot, but many items need to be gathered and suitable housing built for our elite guest list. We must make our city the most beautiful and cultured in Greece. And while most of the region is peaceful, some stubborn pockets of hostility must be quelled before the world arrives at our door."

Sorry for the large download... the sound files take up a LOT of room, even zipped up.

Cheers is my first adventure, fairly simple, and created with the beginning or intermediate player in mind. Veteran players may wish to increase the difficulty level for a greater challenge. It is a leisurely adventure, with plenty of opportunities to make money, receive lots of love letters, and build to your heart's content.

Remember, to avoid the "empty bug," make a COPY of the "Cheers.pak" file and place it in the /Adventures subdirectory.

Making the sound files was a real fun project, despite all the giggling going on around my house when I was trying to record the narration.

Enjoy the adventure. Your comments, of course, are welcome.

Best,
Maggie
LisaLev@aol.com

  

Player Comment posted by Cyclone on 7/22/02

This is the first custom quest I attacked among the custom quests, and while my comment is late (I got Zeus with Poseidon earlier this year, yet Poseidon hasn't worked yet...but that's another story), I must say that I did thoroughly enjoy this one. It's rather interesting trying to build a city without being able to upgrade your homes due to the absence of fleece, in episode 1. I ended up with a small stock of money in the first colony, and that damn mutt Cerberus forced me to start over, because my colony design forced me to replay the episode (every time I put up a damn Agora, he'd walk in and torch the thing, eventually driving out the unfed population). If my second try had not featured some hunting lodges near the map entrance, I may not have finished this one.

My only real noted glitch: there was no road at the entrance point in the island colony, so I pretty much wasted a month figuring out what I was supposed to do. Also, I doubt that having Poseidon's sanctuary in the colony was really necessary; I mean, we had no marble there! Other than that, this was a well-designed adventure, and the sounds made it all the more entertaining. I'm tempted to create sound files for some of the other adventures here now, too, so keep your eyes peeled for that, if it happens.

And if I ever get Poseidon working, I'll try those quests, too, Maggie. If they're as good as this one, I'll have a good time!
  

Player Comment posted by Annie on 5/27/01

Thoroughly enjoyed your adventure even though it was only at beginner level. Lots of opportunities for city building as well as interesting challenges.
  

Player Comment posted by Annie on 5/27/01

Thoroughly enjoyed your adventure even though it was only at beginner level. Lots of opportunities for city building as well as interesting challenges.
  

Player Comment posted by Annie on 5/27/01

Thoroughly enjoyed your adventure even though it was only at beginner level. Lots of opportunities for city building as well as interesting challenges.
  

Player Comment posted by Annie on 5/27/01

Thoroughly enjoyed your adventure even though it was only at beginner level. Lots of opportunities for city building as well as interesting challenges.
  

Player Comment posted by Osiris on 5/26/01

What can i say? Keep up the good work and create more, please.
It gave me a lot of fun to play your adventure. Thank you.
  

Player Comment posted by Sir Dumbicus on 5/23/01

Disregard all the gigglings because the end results were well worth the effort. Your voice was perfect for the audio renditions and really "captured" my attention.

Have been called back to work so wont be able to finish before the weekend. Oh well! Dead sheep don't need sleep anyway. Nice landslide bit.
  

Player Comment posted by bobT on 5/21/01

Well all I can say is great :) I downloaded the adventure earlier today and could not leave it until I was completed. What a great change to have some audio files :).

Your map work and detail was excellent and I found no bugs to speak of. The colony episodes were refreshing and yet still nicely balanced and challenging. I felt sorry for some of my sheep which were trapped in a landslide with no way out and no shepards could get to them either :(

Had to watch as they slowly dropped off. hehe

All in all excellent. Thanks for the great game play and refreshing story line.

bobT
  

Player Comment posted by Maggie on 5/21/01

Thanks for your kind comments, Bob! I'm SO glad you enjoyed the adventure.

I do have to admit to making the landslide-side of the meadow on Eretria much more inviting than the other side of the meadow.

I guess your poor dead sheep are a minor payback for all those long walks you made me take on YOUR maps. (Evil grin.)

Best,
Maggs

  

Player Comment posted by DJF on 5/21/01

Thanks for the sleepless night! Just got to the last episode, and so far this adventure is excellent. If you don't mind, what program and microphone did you use to create the mp3's?
  

Player Comment posted by Maggie on 5/21/01

DJF wrote:

"Thanks for the sleepless night! Just got to the last episode, and so far this adventure is excellent. If you don't mind, what program and microphone did you use to create the mp3's?"

Thanks DJF! Glad you enjoyed Cheers! For software, I used "Cool Edit 2000" (www.syntrillium.com) to record the narration. I downloaded and purchased the full program, but a free demo version is available. The program allows you to record sound and save it in all kinds of different formats. The MP3 conversion-compression is much better than any other utility I've tried, so the resulting files were much smaller (which is important, because all those files once zipped, have to come under the two-meg upload requirement here at Zeus Heaven). Thanks again to Cleavus on the forums for pointing me to Syntrillium's website. Using Cool Edit, in order to get the smallest file size possible, with the least degeneration in sound quality, I opened each new file with the following parameters: Sample Rate - 44100; Channel - Mono; Resolution - 8 bit. Then I recorded the narration. Then I hit "SAVE AS"; chose MP3 format and using the CoolEdit Presets, chose the "32 kbps for voice." After fooling around with various settings, I found the above gave me decent voice quality with the smallest file size and highest compression possible. (I was anxious to make sure the files were small enough to fit within the upload limit. As it turned out, the adventure STILL didn't fit the two meg limit, so I had to get rid of a third colony and downsize the adventure accordingly in order for it to come under limit.)

For hardware, I used a cheap microphone I purchased at Office Depot for about $10 or $12! It's a "Labtec AM-242 NCAT." A better microphone -- one that softens breath pops and exhalations on such consonents as "p" -- would definitely be nice! If anyone knows of such a mike, please share that info with us!

Have fun!
Best,
Maggs