a Builder's Tale

So here's where it's at

2012-01-15T11:10:00.006-05:00

So here is the stage of modelling that trumped me in the past, and just about did again this weekend, until I figured it out. The stage where you designate your texturing borders, and export them for 2d imaging. Well really it's 2 parts, but I never properly accomplished part 1 before and I have now. Essentially you are trying to unfold the 3d model into 2d parts that can then be painted in the stencil you see here.

A checker pattern is usually applied, as on above, to make sure that your texture resolution is consistent. As you can see, the arms appear as long rectangular checkers similar in size to the main body. That is ideal.

The reason this is necessary is because you actually have to size the body parts in the stencil, and you can actually end up making some body parts different resolutions if you don't keep the proportion. Any piece you see on the stencil can be completely resized and throw everything off. They have all been manually adjusted by me after the program did it's horrible guessing on generation.

For those interested in how close I am to a viable output for this crocodile (and future animated models) I think I have broken it down as a work flow:

1 - 3d Modelling - done
2 - Texture mapping - done
3 - 2d Texturing - Next
4 - Defining bones and "rigging" - wtf (ok I kinda know what it is)
5 - Animation sequences
6 - Importing using engine recognized methods

So physical work wise, once you have 1 and 2, you've done most of the actual time consuming work. The rest comes to knowing the engine and how to import to it, which I imagine will be a huge pain but not necessarily a long time once I've done it once.

Animation may be a day or two, but I find it a rather fun and fluid process... everything's already made, and is not being altered, you just move parts around and try to do it in a life like fashion. I look forward to it.

The early Shaughn gets the Croc

2012-01-06T10:48:00.008-05:00

Well sometimes it pays to be one of my four readers. For reasons unknown, my fatso model is now a corrupt file and will have to be started from scratch. But since I have a request for a crocodile, I thought now that I have no project, why not try that first. I took a gamble and decided to apply my cube modelling technique to a cylinder, in the thought that it would better suit the initial shape. Modelling this way is basically manipulation from a rough shape; the closer that shape is the less adjustment you have to do later, so it made sense).

From a humble, shapeless beginning. . .

... I soon gained confidence that I made the right choice, and had the skill to manipulate the extra vertices on a 12 sided cylinder...

... I wasn't going to do the head at first, as obviously it will take more skill and need to be split into two halves (as I'm assuming Shaughn wants this crocodile to attack by biting as opposed to nose spearing the player). But I gained a little comfort with the concept of "cutting" polygon faces in half, and was able to make a distinct mouth extend from the flat cylinder end that was his neck:

So there you have it, using only shaping with no texture at all, it does actually somewhat resemble a quadruple-amputee crocodile. The real detail comes in the texturing, as that's where the bumpiness, texture and colour realism comes from. And to be honest, I think I will have less trouble animating than texturing as I've stated. Particularly since I have no 2d software knowledge at all. I think I'll try GIMP as it seems to be the way to go.

My Next update will certainly include some legs if nothing else.

Update: seems like either 3ds or my computer is borked because I lost my crocodile work in the same fashion. Colour me pissy. I redid it all.

Big Fat Update

2012-01-01T13:59:00.004-05:00

Turns out that foot was destined to become a fatso after all.

There's unlimited potential to create other biped's once you have a model done, and it looks like fatso is about at the 2/3 torso mark, so I'll keep this updated.

Out with the Old?

2011-12-31T15:45:00.011-05:00

Well the year is almost up. Does anyone care? I guess it's the end of the world this year as well ;) so that's newsworthy.

I've been thinking of what I could fill this blog with and my (currently reduced) spare time. There is certainly enough games to talk about, and I welcome new neverwinter nights 2 modules from my fellows, although this blog will certainly be less centric to that theme.

As I said, spare time is fewer these days, and my career may change again next month. Hopefully towards a job that has nothing to do with computers or sitting so that I can actually use my computer when I come home for games / hobbies. Which is not the current case, with the knife like pain in my left eye from ridiculous amounts of unwavering computer use at work leaving me incapacitated.. So here's hoping.

Some areas my blog may take are the highly fun fields of speculation (is there a new D&D game on the horizon? Toolset? etc) and general game talk, or talking from my rear end on the odd night as I am so doing.

I decided one way I could do a little hobbying without tying myself to any toolset, was to just try my hand at modelling. Of course my models could be made to work in varying sets if I can put in the time and desire to learn the steps of making them compatible. I started a great tutorial for making some anime looking cartoon girl warrior, but after 2 hours I had only gotten as far as the foot. But I read a head a bit and I think I got the basic idea of "cube modelling". Theoretically this technique can make anything. Like most things however, there are different and better ways to do certain things.

For now though you can see how my series of ugly pixelated lego blocks becomes a functional foot.

Now the problem here is I started modifying the girls perfectly formed foot into a large, more beast like foot. Then I added two pincer-like toes. Now the question is what do you do with this?

I had a couple ideas in mind when I began the model. It could become the foot of an ogrillion or flesh golem (explains the missing toes). But then of course adding claws and it quickly becomes a demon foot or dragon like foot if you add a rear claw.

I also considered making it human again and creating a clone of the fatso model from infinity games. And who wouldn't want that?

I suppose I can modularize this model and actually finish it that way without going insane. The foot is done, and it's one project within a project. Next can be the leg.

But I still have to quickly decide what the model is... kind of stupid to not have decided first, I know. Bearing in mind that the foot can still be reformed, toes added, etc, any suggestions? I'm trying to think of a D&D creature that was painfully missed in NWN2.
If I build it it could be ported to varying games I imagine.

Dead community

2011-10-13T19:25:00.004-04:00

Well, like it has been, the NWN2 community is in massive decline.

I feel like you can discuss it more readily here than in a forum full of fan kiddies who put in days of effort to drown you out in a pile of argumentive posts.

Let's look at facts. The early mods of this community cleared 20k downloads in a year. Now they are hard pressed to hit 1k. I can't make it any simpler than that. Typically, something is considered defunct when it reaches it's "half-life". Well for that, even if we ignored the first explosive 6 months of NWN2, that was a solid 3 years ago.

But like I said, when anyone ever pointed out the decline, they caused a sh*tstorm of angry replies from people. Mostly people who never posted or add anything to the forums, but they always appear to rant like lunatics about its never-ending and always growing appeal. And then disappear again, leaving it to near silence as 100 posts per day became 10 per week.

I remember one particular poster who joined about 2 years ago asking if it was viable for him to start in this community, a project he had a long time frame for. It was not an accusation, just a question if the community was still valid. Surprise surprise there was another volley of "this ocmmunity is BETTER than it was before". Except this time it wasn't the old deny-er guard, because they had moved on. The few stragglers continue this denial, and even tried to claim it was the "prime" of the community, because 3 year production mods were coming out and NWN2 was going to steam etc etc.

Now what fuels this furious denials, and sometimes out right bs in the face of facts (claiming a community that is a percentage of it's former size is in it's prime or growing, for example) is beyond me. It's beyond me because I have long agreed the community was in decline, but I ended up staying longer than these blindly angry deny-er types, who today aren't even around to keep up the facade.

I really just find it a mystery what they really accomplished. Rather than paint an at least somewhat unbiased view based on facts, they lie, deny, quit and are never heard from again. Were they trying to trick new modders into joining and wasting their time? Convince others, or just them self? Either way they failed because they are gone, and others are not joining.

Really you have to decide for yourself however, when the community lacks an audience for you, as a modder. For me, my Islander would have done well to be released about a year sooner. Most of my fellow modders who I swapped ideas with in the early days (and by early I mean nearly a year after MOTB as thats when I joined), never saw me complete my campaign, nor play it, nor comment on it.

Everyone who has released a campaign that took more than a year (which is why some argue we are in the prime, because of the "multi-year" projects coming out) has abandoned the community immediately after. Some names?

Harp and Chrys
Trial and Terror
Misery Stone
Trinity

I'm sure if you're a follower you can fill in the other names.

I get a giggle out of the fact that as I wrote this, it took all of 8 minutes for someone to show up and write a pissy reply to my post on this topic. From the same person who fits the category above, of having nothing to say until his community's glaring emptiness is pointed out.

And there are a lot more visual cues than simply watching your module getting 2 to 3 downloads per month in the top ten list, or my rough math that tells me we are below 2% of our one time popularity with downloads and viewership.

Look at the forums themselves; our moderators have neither posted nor "moderated" a post in months. When the police leave the inmates to guard themselves, you know something less than ideal is going on. The vault fills with more spam than commentary and the ability to even upload has evaporated. People are already speculating where you can release works at this point.

I don't see why this is an issue; life moves on, and a 2006 spec game should not be expected to last into 2012. My only regret is there is no real successor; the dragon age toolset does not offer a decidedly better product so much as just newer, and it's overwhelming difficulty has seen its community misfire and shrink in only one year.

It could also be that people modded at a time in their life when they had too much spare time like myself, and simply had to outgrow it.

Anyway I figured I owed any of my 2 readers an explanation rather than a simply drop off the internet which I saw many of my fellows do and found rather... haunting. Haha it's like they were ashamed of it and wanted to "die to the modding world". Well here is where I went.

Personally I think it's a little sad the community wasn't just "shut down" formally around 2010 rather than see it in the state is has become. Not that I expected something like that, but it would be more humane. You got a handful of persistent hard working talent, and no audience at all, with more and more dysfunctionalities appearing daily.

Should a superior toolset product show it's head I may well be interested in a lesser capacity, but the complexity has really gotten such that it's more than a full time job to even use the full range of tools available.

What do I know?

2011-09-25T09:47:00.002-04:00

Well as some may have figured out, I have paused my icy episodic adventure for the community project, which will actually see a little more work from me than this adventure would have produced.

Unfortunately there has been a big delay as our group hak isn't working. I'm trying to work around it but limiting your tools and variety of items to use also limits your inspiration at times.

I've been looking to maybe partner up with at least one veteran modder and making a decent game of it. I figure this community project would be a sneak preview. I was thinking it could be even more but it seems a lot of my submissions will be much larger than the others, so not quite the same experience.

City Adventure
I'm not quite sure what the NWN2 toolset can do for my city adventure I got cooking in my mind. It may never happen as it is fairly ambitious. On the other hand I have no problem at all chapterizing it and have learned how to build that way. Additionally I'm not sure what toolset I would use. I want real legitimate control over the architecture, and nwn2's collection of "prefab" placeables does nothing to help this, and I (and the population of the vault/forums seem to agree) am simply getting tired of seeing the same tired old models ad nauseaum. But Dragon Age's tool set has all of six monsters. So really, what do you do with that??

And you can rotate placables in all directions, but you cant resize or recolor anything. Puke. It's like having to choose one meal for life, between two essential piles of food, with each one givine only half of what you need to keep from dying of nutrition.

I wonder if there is a new toolset on the horizon...

1 month episode: Still alive

2011-07-02T17:09:00.003-04:00

Yes this thing is going. It's amazing how fast post dates get away from you during the summer.

The project will still be a 4 week total effort, I just haven't been able to do anything recently. I've got about 2 weeks into it and really it's just time to ramp ahead. I'll let you know as momentum picks up and anything you can add to my modules forum post for ideas would help fill it in.

For future reference, offering even a slightly circular or branching path to achieve a goal (even if all branches are required, but can be done in random order) adds considerable time to a rapid fire project. A Live Forever style module, as nice and well written as it is, is MUCH quicker to make.

Additionally, I am wondering how to handle party chatter. It will be central to this ongoing series because they are basically your supporting cast. The problem is I don't believe in instant raise deads after battle or for the sake of conversation, so I am trying to get a handle on how I would ensure you spend enough of your time alive to get in on all of them. Ideas?

Skipping the dead companions line isn't really an option here as it was with Islander, as there will hopefully be some pretty intricate comedic exchanges that don't fit the bill with the punch lines missing.

Concepts introduced for the Adventure Episode

2011-06-04T12:17:00.003-04:00

Here is a quick video and breakdown of systems I put in that will hopefully be used in any future campaigns I make. For sure they will debut in this 1 month adventure episode.

I recommend using 720p on youtube and make the screen full to see what is actually going on.

The video

Things to see in the video:

Infinity style floating text descriptions on ALL click placeables that have descriptions
Custom parka hood (hehe not that big of a deal)
Non standard room sizes - check out the inn carefully. Rooms and halls are tight, small and in rectangular, cube, or whatever size and shape I want.
Temporary black roof vfxs: note how despite using placeables for non standard room sizes, I can still conceal the contents of the room until the door opens using a black vfx and a destroy nearest black vfx on the room's door scripts. The engine will only hide the contents of the standard rooms.

I find these systems go a great deal toward the more artistic and immersive infinity style that I like. Text descriptions don't open in a window which blocks everything and generally forces you to stop and read rather than read while you continue to observe/play. Also having interiors that don't as much resemble lego land has been great. Being able to tuck little rooms into narrow dark halls seems much more realistic and cluttered. As in real life.

I included pics of the early morning view of parts of the town. I really like how the sun hits it at this time of day, almost gives it a Dragon Age style of realism, with lower res but I think the snow hides it well.

1 month challenge

2011-05-23T17:34:00.004-04:00

Ok back to modding, so back to blogging (I'm sure many assumed the death of both).

Some of you may have followed my thread here:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/167/index/7156713

Now, never one to chime in with ideas that everybody (but me
) should do, I was definitely planning on implementing.

So that's what I did. I silently took up the 1 month module challenge, and I am 2 weeks in. I adopted the quantam leap style concept for an adventure "episode" of which an entire series could be built. I may give myself one extra week just because of the time spent on the pocket plane which would serve as the lobby for this and any future "leaps" into adventure.

I've decided to give it that kind of "more than one path" capability that was great in BG, and I imagine in a few P&P conversions from what I hear. It's not that complex, basically you can go around town questioning people, or if your theiving and spotting skills are keen enough, you can jump the gun and discover a bad guy in your midst earlier, and force the ensuing town meeting.

Now for this, even with 2 ways to get there and an unlinear method to communicate with the townsfolk to find out the true problem in town, got kind of complicated. So despite the brief "don't think" philosophy of this episode, some planning was in order. There is no way I could do this on the fly in game and keep all the webs stranding together.

Got a little garbled as I ran out of space, but I can figure it out easily.

Biggest challenges I've faced was fighting the urge to redo and over-expand areas, and to add a bunch of custom content one piece at a time. Leads to a lot of conflicts. Future note: check it all out first, and make one full hak, and move forward.

Another thing I really need to stop doing is baking/running areas for no apparent reason. If the area looks good in the toolset I don't need to go through the 3 minute process of getting in game and walking through it.

Here's some shots. I've finally found an excuse to be able to do any terrain I want, and I was itching to do a snow theme.

This is the pocket plane episodes begin in. The safe "home lab" where your gnome boss
sends you on jumps to places on faerun that are "karmacally unbalanced"

Release

2010-11-24T22:12:00.000-05:00

Alright it's releasing whenever it hits the vault after a sunday night upload, wether my final voice actors are ready or not. Life is too short.

The final week

2010-09-27T18:55:00.004-04:00

Well thanks to some handy resources from Shaun the Mentally Unstable One, I now have 6 new vocalists to make my project come to light. This week I run through everything recommended by my players and final grammar checks.

Simultaneously, my audio soldiers will record and give life to this campaign. I'm really glad it worked out because 3 years ago when I set out, I wanted to have BG2 style voice overs all along (the sparingly used ones, and rarely in cut scene format). It's going to put the polish level in near respectability with the talent I have assembled for the often ignored audio portion of modding.

Right now I have to do some checks and balances on the combats in the tour-de-force that is chapter 3.

This is the final week for my part; just whatever time it takes for all the voices to roll in after, people have been pretty punctual with this new group however.

The Islander Experience

2010-09-21T19:12:00.005-04:00

So now that Islander is complete and tested and re-completed, posts from here in will talk details.

Play time: 20 hours
Party size: 6
Companions: 2 forced, with 6 more to fill the final 3 spots, swappable throughout the game.
Level: 1 - 6 (finishing well into level 6 with exp)
Combat: Moderate
Skill use: occasional, but essential when required, few skills ignored completely
Traps: Average in number, but definitely requires rogue abilities
Weapons: 1 to 2 unique magical varients of each type featured in infinity games
Armor: 1 or 2 suits for each type of dexterity range, some class specific
Magic use: heavy. Wands and scrolls make even your low level mages more "magical".
Tactics: occasional, yet essential. Some encounters are really just this side of impossible without the proper plan.
Combat style: fairly fluid easy' common battles, with distinctly tougher bosses
Dialogue: lighter than average
Puzzles: sporadic
Non-combat quests: above average in quantity
Characters: built with personalities, light but often memorable dialogue
Alignment: good
Race/Gender: any
Chapters: 3
Custom Additions: prefab and existing custom content from the community as well as never before seen placeables created by myself, and a completely re-invented spell effects array. All the most popular spells up to level 3 have new effects.
Music: custom new track by Hoegbo

That's it for now...

Pre Test complete

2010-09-08T16:36:00.002-04:00

One of the players in the pool has gotten through the entire campaign. The others are slower but have advanced through chapter 1 which is essentially where every issue was, as expected.

Not only have I corrected their issues but I have done some area "finishing" so to speak, making merely functional areas more realistic and bustling.

I added somethings strictly for fun and to more closely fit the Islander claim; I said there will be challenging boss combats, so I've added some where there was no "boss" character before.

Now it truly is down to voice acting only.

While we wait: What I have learned of the nwn2 toolset

2010-08-10T14:04:00.004-04:00

The more I try to fix all the crap in the toolset or engine issues, the more I realize you will never fix it all, even if you waste that time. The thing about most of the bugs (primarily for my troubles and this example, initiating a conversation in a fail proof way) is that they are kind of low percentage random fails. You can't figure out why they fail so build these elaborate catches and exception scripts and then 3 people test it and it fails in two more ways.

For those who insist on using this broken product, of which there are several reasons to do so now that it has mature custom content, allow my last 3 months of hell to produce a lesson for the rest of you.

The secret cure: knowing that scripts and engine functions will work the majority of the time with random failures, place absolutely everything in question in a repetitious system. The one thing the engine has going for it is that everything has heartbeats. Using this to consistently try and re-try your intended action until it works, is the best fit way to seamless force something to work, even if a small delay gives a player pause, they will happily shrug it off and resume when it works six seconds later.

My Example:
Problem: Companion talks that occur on rest at the tavern

My approach: choose the conversation, assign it to the PC as talking to them self, and let the others join as their nodes come up

Issues:
-PC failing to talk because some action bumped it
-NPCs failing to say their line for whatever reason
-future conversations not making sense because prior ones failed at some point
-Companions /roster members going scripthidden permanently because the conversation failed and the call at the end to restore them can never fire

Fixes:

1 - The PC now, rather than being paralyzed, scripthidden etc etc in a vain attempt to get them to actually follow their action que and converse, simply is given a begin conversation repetitiously with no delay until the PC actually accepts it.

pseudo code:
do {BeginConversationWithSelf(PC) }
while (PCNotInConversation);

I noticed that this can call the script like 2000 times a second, but it works, and as soon as the PC actually accepts and is in the conversation, it stops, satisfied that whatever failed attempts may have occured, it has suceeded now.

I do not advance the conversation "counter" until in the final node of the talk, knowing that the conversation will have executed full at that point and the next rest-conversation is now allowed. This I had in long ago however, due to the random companion failures to speak that can be addressed by this method. I use a set int on the final node of the conversation, so its not directly in the script at all when it comes to advancing the rest talk counter.

2 - Fixing the "stuck invisible" roster members

While resting or leaving the area restored "in-party" members, if a conversation broke and everyone was invisible, the roster members (out of party companions) were gone forever.

I tried and wasted about 2 weeks trying to solve this, setting them to un-invis right before a rest talk (in case they were invised by the previous one) but this was still obviously a bug, I also set it to uninvis all members at the end of the conversation, as well as entering the tavern. While re-entering would re show the roster, in the end it was a bunch of work for what was still, a bug.

Final solution: in the taverns heartbeat script, if the PC is not in a conversation, then neither can his roster members be, there fore, set all roster members to VISIBLE if the PC is in the area and not conversing:

Pseduo-code for the tavern heartbeat script:

if (PCIsInTavern)
{ If (IsPCConversing (FALSE) ) SetAllRosterMembersVisible() };

This second method rather than using an infinite while loop simply fires every 6 seconds on the heart beat. By the time the player even notices they are gone they are already reappearing.

So really there is two options for a fail safe, either an infinite loop for instant trys and re-tries or the heartbeat wait, which is 6 seconds. Note that certain commands could cause an overflow error if using the infinite loop so I recommend the heartbeat whenever possible. The overflow error doesnt appear to be fatal though, it just means the script will fail, but if you are retrying it anyway it should resume the next try once the overflow is resolved.

I got this idea from looking at Obsidian's own way of making a conversation mandatory, via the CreateIPSpeaker() function. It simply spawns an IP speaker and keeps trying it every heart beat.

No weeks of frustration, no blocks of code for every possible failure. Just a clean, single line, that keeps knocking the door till it opens. This is ultimately the best and most efficient way to deal with something you know will randomly fail, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Current Status

2010-08-01T13:11:00.000-04:00

I had to rip through my game again discovering a crap pile of problems in 1 run. The 2nd run the storm kind of faded and it was just 2 things. One of which is a problem with the game itself and nothing I can fix.

So my game is zipped up, complete and playable at any point. Im trying to get people to actually do that for me while I get a couple more vocals into it.

That's where it's at.

Forum death

2010-07-21T08:00:00.004-04:00

All forums nwn2 and nwn1 say "this forum is now closed"
and show a post by chris priestly at 12:57 or 12:58.

I can get to the main index but not the individual forums so I assume this is some kind of attack?

Wouldn't that be my nightmare wasting 2 years on my campaign and not even getting it out there.

Idle waiting: Not quite

2010-07-17T11:01:00.002-04:00

It took about two weeks but I finally got a formal tester going and had to fix some oversights before it was worthy.

While it is being played I am doing the proverbial twice over, where you go back and touch up very old decisions with a more modern mind and skillset. Sure I've done some polish but I am also thinking about what looks more appropriate themeatically.

http://img97.imageshack.us/i/fantasy1t.jpg/

http://img202.imageshack.us/i/fantasy2x.jpg/

The townspeople all wear summer clothes so I thought the companions, at least in their unarmed outfits should as well. It was a drastic change for the dark haired companion, who's personality is pretty formal and "non-romantic" if that's the right word. But then I thought hey she could have a xena type of outlook, where she dresses a little more feminine but doesn't draw attention to it. What do you think?

Using the ever summer outfits I was also able to do a scene where one npc is taking a bath that is pretty heavy on cinematics. It's a PG game at worst, but I think showing some humanity gives it good depth.

Once you get some decent armor everyone is fully covered anyway but the companion portrait remains in the "xena outfit" for the tall female companion so it adds to the high fantasy theme I want.

Note* Fantasy yes, stupid no; there is no bikini chainmail or bottomless plate armor where the crotch/buttock area is completely exposed and people are supposed to believe it's worth 5 or more to Armor clas :/

Its done... I think.

2010-06-23T23:23:00.001-04:00

An unusual set back. I finished the campaign as stated and have just been ssmoothing edges and trying to add voicings, and I am unable to get anyone to test it. Literally have heard no interest in it. And its a play test too, not a beta :(

Let this be a warning to those of you who are still months or years away from release.

Is It Done Yet? or I Hate Cliff-Hangers

2010-05-14T16:45:00.002-04:00

I just finished the "epilogue" of chapter 3 aka the end of the game. I haven't given it an "EPILOGUE" banner screen like I did with the prologue because the tale isn't finished. But the Campaign is.

At long last I can go through it in a relaxed "brush up" pace, where I just make little improvements here and there and add nodes so your companions are less quiet. I need to send this off to my testing personnel, I'll send it as just chapter 3 so they can focus on what might actually cause problems and not what they've already seen.

I've noticed a lot of people post about hating cliff hangers or unconcluded campaigns where the author never came back to finish them. I may become one of those thanks to this ending. I'm really not sure however I do know one thing, the toolset I can marginally live with, but playing nwn2 has become impossible. I've watched the game go from a humble, smooth running original, to a bugs piled upon bugs pile of unplayable garbage two expansions in. There is no reason to believe that will ever change so like I said, a good chance I will become one of those cliff hanger authors that everyone hates. But the ending seems to fit so good :)

I would not mind getting some commentary on my cliffhanger situation. Note however, that even if I eliminated the cliff hanger it would not end the tale, as the whole concept of islander involves "growing" into an adventurer and then heading to the mainland to solve problems there, with the game ending with the voyage to the mainland. But the cliffhanger will certainly leave a nagging mystery for anyone who has been paying attention to the plot the way through.

Beyond the End of the Road

2010-05-04T18:55:00.004-04:00

I've wasted about a week trying to get conversations to begin without possibility of interruption, still not entirely sure that's even possible.

The game ending is now finished... you can fight your way right into the epilogue, which will be fairly extravagant in my campaign, but nothing too time consuming.

I miss the days when blogspot allowed me to use links or pictures.

pics

new levels of customization

2010-04-23T23:08:00.006-04:00

Man I should have changed the UI long ago. Would have prevented me having to fit every speech into ridiculously small 3 lines or less chunks. Which would mean a lot more fluid typing and less work in the conversation editor.

At first I tried the Overland map UI as others recommended and fooled with the width to make it bigger. But even at its default size, its too big for those of you using the old 5:4 or 4:3 monitors. I want the player to at least be able to see their avatar, plus a small amount of space, even on narrow screen monitors which most of you seem to still have.

I then realized that I didn't need all that width if I just add more height, the text can wrap. I have a lot of space now, but by changing the graphic I have a smaller footprint (only 440 wide). Obviously microsoft paint is all I had, but for now its a template. But with my plainer template, I was able to go wider and longer in all boxes without it looking bad / overlapping the frame edges. So it's smaller, but bigger :)

These screens are all in 1280x720 format, as close to the 1280x1024 format everyone seems to use, as my laptop would get. It's the width that is the concern, so its completely comparable to ensure the UI is not oversized.

Even those borderline specs where people play at 1024x768 should be able to see their avatar nicely.

Since as we've discovered in my last post that blogspot no longer accepts my imageshack pictures (or any perhaps) here are links, I guess:

OLD UI (overland default)

http://img265.imageshack.us/i/oldui.jpg/
New
http://img218.imageshack.us/i/newui2.jpg/
http://img227.imageshack.us/i/newui.jpg/

heres a bit of a view of the scene from the prior post below. Its the gold titan, the final wave before all hell breaks loose and you die. Im saving the actual visuals (such as a giant eruption of green ectoplasm) for testers and players.

http://img408.imageshack.us/i/spires2.jpg/
http://img231.imageshack.us/i/spires1.jpg/

EDIT: And apparently I can't even use links, so if someone knows why the hell they all turned to blank whitespace after I post I'm all ears. All HTML I enter doesnt display and the image upload doesnt place it inside once i click done.

In the mean time I hope you don't minde triple clicking to copy these for a peek.

All the Colours of the Rainbow (at the end)

2010-04-18T22:17:00.004-04:00

So as I said, I only had the two final combats to do. I decided, as it seems I always do, to do things out of order. The final combat... well it's more of a combat marathon. It could probably be it's own chapter (not quite ) time wise.

I spent the whole weekend on it and it really only functions in crude form. It works, and the unexpected VFX creations are there, but I have to give it a little more script work and polish so it plays better.

Picture if you will:

A giant wizard spires at the center of a toxic forest full of resident gaths, and evil humans and ogres arriving regularly through said spires.

On your discovery of the spires, you set up a force, as your guardian arrives with the town guard to attempt to somehow disable the spires, and until then, hold back the waves.

Before you can even begin to examine them, they snap to life, bolts of electricity crackle and flash between them and focus on the pad in the center. A massive magical hum shakes the area and an explosive portal blasts open and out marches a dozen troops. Defeat them quickly as they will be followed by more, with wizards, Dragon Age style ogres that take a full group to tackle, in 8 waves.

Then at last, your antagonist arrives. He protects himself with a chromatic field, and molds the earth using his theurgic powers. Unfortunately for you, your own mountains are rich in rare metals, and only server to make this man unbeatable. He sends metallic creations after you, that get large and more devastating with each wave.

Finally, he creates a giant titan of gold that all but devastates you, leaving most of your party dying on the ground.

Your guardian declares this antagonist cannot be stopped. But you managed to defeat his titan and rush to him, still held back by his chromatic shield.

"That was one of my pets", he states flatly. "Already your party is dying. And I have many more", and with that he summons 2 golden titans equal to the first that was all but unstoppable.

As timing has it, the portal, which had been relatively quiet, activates again, and more troops arrive...

And this is where the actual true final battle starts... :)

This is how it will (does) work and now I just have to put in the pre-amble chatter as the party sets up for the spire activation, rathern than how it is now where u just step on a trigger to make the next wave come.

Whatever shortcomings my campaign has, hopefully the ending will overcome them. I think it's a good formula really, to put your best work (where you go above your normal tolerance for polish) at the front and end.

The strong start will get people to at least play the campaign, and the big finish will be the freshest thing in their mind as they leave the experience behind. Throw a couple neat things at chapter ends, and you've got a decent reward system, where playing the game leads to great cut scenes and revelations.

Omptimizing Areas

2010-04-11T15:02:00.004-04:00

Everyone has a thing or two that bothers them. For me, one of the worst is when people start sounding off on something they don't actually know. I am thoroughly convinced that 99% of the internet is based on this kind of content. So I want to clarify the issue of how to handle walkable/non walkable areas and objects in NWN2 toolset.

First of all... if you convert everything u can to environment objects and use walk-mesh cutters, you have obviously read on some optimizations and good for you.

I've heard in the past a pseudo expert tell people to cut down their walk-mesh cutter use because it slows down the game. Well imagine that, something that was designed to reduce hit detection calculations and "speed things up" slows down the game. Well it doesn't. This is what happens with a walk mesh cutter:

It is calculated during baking (which does add BAKE time) and then made into the overall mesh of "walk/don't walk" on the map. It is never calculated again in-game, it simple becomes a simple walkable/not walkable check just like the rest of the non walkable area in the map.

When to use walk-meshes:
-INTERIOR: when an object does not need to be used or hold scripts, but should still block movement, after converting it to an environment object.
-EXTERIOR: Never

I've opened many prefabs, and I'm startled to see the great, far beyond my talents, span of artwork, that is just full of 50+ walk mesh cutters in an exterior area.
While this is fine in-game, when baking these mammoth exteriors, the walk-mesh cutter calculations take longer than the final "tile" part at the end.

Using the walk-mesh cutter outside is not a good idea. They were designed for use in the interior, where you cannot alter the walk-mesh in any way, as it's all tiles.

In terrain editing, in the terrain painter tab we have two options to do this: walk and non walk. And you can paint them right down to a triangular sliver this way.

Some may say they are using walk-meshes to fit the "Exact" shape of a rather detailed object. This isn't a valid reason as objects that are more precise than a triangle on the surface-mesh, are too small for the player to walk into anyway. That is, you are being more precise than the engine recognizes.

Lastly some shadow commentary: Most of you probably know to turn off casts shadows to gains some efficiency. But in the spirit of gaining as much "loss-less" shadow reduction as possible, always turn these options off for smaller items that are already in the shadow of a larger item. Example, some rocks that are directly beneath a tree. Their shadow won't be seen anyway, so by shutting these types of shadows off, you may not have to shut off any visible ones. And thus you preserve the realism.

Generally you will keep "receive shadows on" and remove the casts shadows, and there should be no difference in the visuals. Turning receives shadows off can be dicy, as to the trained eye certain objects will look completely phony.

Once again I'd just like to say these prefabs are extreeemely artistically great and will be used well in my campaign.

Campaign Update

Well I am basically down to two areas, which are done except the two boss fights. So I guess that means I am two (major) battles from being a finished alpha test, where someone can play it to the end. After that, I just want to redo the writing because I rushed it all and am not at all satisfied with it, and add some voice acting.

Can anyone help?

2010-04-07T09:25:00.002-04:00

I have a simple request. Any recommendations for software you have personally used to sucessfully recover lost nwn2 work via delete/format?

Thanks

Modding Twilight

2010-03-24T21:30:00.002-04:00

It's getting close to the end so I took a quick run through of the game so far. A lot of things are slightly delayed, and one broken when it comes to conversatitonal triggers. They are totally incompatible if you arent fully up to 1.23 patch so I guess I will look into those before my final modding push.

I found a really nice screenshot of the 2nd to last area that really kind of gives the high-fantasy theme, with the horizon that seems to lead into limitless possibilities. So here it is.

Humour in an RPG... at least I tried

2010-03-21T22:56:00.002-04:00

The subject of humour is something I've decided to touch on due to the last hour I spent trying to make this over-bred dandy "faint" and stay fainted after you destroy his guardian in your attempt to rob his estate.

Again one of the reasons I found BG2 to be far more entertaining than, NWN2, and still more so than DoA, was the use of humour. To digress slightly, BG2 was the source of my inspiration to mod and many of the mechanics are borrowed from it, such as the party size (of 6), the NON player created companions who have actual lines to speak, and the way they speak (they talk to you when ready, it's not an issue you can force, which was another thing that kept me playing BG2 eagerly).

With DoA, I knew it was to be a dark setting but quite frankly it's too stiff. Far, far too stiff. Constant conflict and desperation at every turn offers little to play for, as you never get to stop and simply take in a scene. With humour, nwn2 made some attempt, but for too few.

I think the only really feasible style of humour given the limited animations, and dated english terms, is in using over the top personalities. And I've gone with this in a few spots, realizing my own campaign had been fairly bereft of humour outside of the bard companions dogged persistence in the sport of skirt chasing.

In the photo above, you are ending the "stealth/robbery" quest, one of my attempts at non-combat/dynamic gameplay. You end up in the master bedroom and the owner sets his magic guardian on you. Once you kill it, he passes out in fear, leaving you free to rob him blind. Probably not actually the best example of character humour, but I just wanted to use this screenshot somewhere.

This is the type of humour I never laughed at as a teenager, but as I grew up I learned to be highly entertained by the sheer "smack you over the head"-edness of the characters, who's only unpredictability is just how much MORE they fit their stereotype than you even expect. Futurama delivered me many of such moments, and it always fills me with disdain that they didn't last, while the simpsons have been on for 80 years and ran out of stuff in 1997. (I literally remember having a discussion with my high school friends that the simpsons has gotten weird and forgetable and had no more material that year). Digressed again :)

Humorous characterizations to look forward to in Islander:

-A sociopathic gnome sorceror (companion/death threatener)
-A "charlie sheen+shakespeare" hybrid bard with a penchant for the party's cleric
-A "valley girl" beholder with verbal diarhea
-A twitchy dwarven rogue who quakes in his boots at any sign of trouble

I think at this point I might continue releasing details of exactly what Islander is about. I wasn't going to, but then I realized of all the 4 people who read this it isn't really going to spoil anything.

I will be finishing the final area/battle of chapter 3 and releasing it to a tester who has already tested 1/2 to see how it goes. And then that's it. No further development, I will fix up what is broken, finish the unpolished areas and add the companion conversations (I'd say about 15 hours work would cover all that).

Where have I been?

2010-03-20T19:09:00.002-04:00

Well in point form:

After windows 7 I was unable to patch and I even have a new laptop with vista 64 that wouldnt patch for a week.

Got the vista 64 laptop working at least.

Bought a midi keyboard to make some custom tracks. Little did I realize there were thousands of dollars to pay to get any decent sounds, so I'm working on mostly solo pieces like a piano only form of chamber music and things like that.

Did not realize how amateurish my piano keying ability was so I'm practicing before I record anything but I do have a pretty suitable little bit written out for an mansion theme.

I asked in the forums how to do soz style nwn1 dialogues and with speaker switching. Did not get an answer to my surprise maybe one of you know? And if so do I have to make cohorts to switch speakers or can companions be used?

Saw a great medeival "B" movie today

2010-02-16T01:01:00.003-05:00

I'm just piping in to spread the word of a really good 2009 movie I saw on the movie channel today. It was two near two hour parts, they played back to back.

It appeared it was a made for tv type of movie, Knights of Bloodsteel, total time 240 minutes.

Apparently it was also made here in Canada so yay for us. Despite its low budget as a TV movie thanks to CGI and bigger budgets, it actually stands up as a theater movie in terms of effects and sets, there's just not millions of huge action scenes like LOTR or something.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1264363/

I recommend watching. A really unique spin on goblins and other races, I won't spoil it more than that. Mose notably about it is it stars Davide James Elliot (aka J.A.G.)
and Christopher Lloyd (the scientist of back to the future(s) movies)

Tired of NWN2... really.

2010-02-11T17:17:00.006-05:00

Be forewarned this is pretty much a flat out bitch, but I am also trying to get something fixed so you may want to skip to the end.

For the entire span of my NWN2 history I have always had to deal with annoying shit that shows me why I will never buy atari trash again. However, having already began many months (and upgraded hardware) to make a big campaign, Im stick with what I have till my project is at least out. But as a player Ive always had to deal with my character jerking all over the place in game to the point where it was unbearable. Then I figured out a spyware scan would reduce it, until it got bad again. Until...

... the 1.22 patch and beyond. Now the problem is 100% of the time, is unrelated to spyware and even persists on brand new computer installations, I'm talking 3 diff windows versions, xp to 7, different computers, desktop, laptop, a diff laptop. And its no longer spyware related. Some of you have experience the weird lag where you run halfway across an area and then warp back to the start. It seems to be interrelated and I get that too, but also, every single time I stop running my character jerks all over the damn place. Its a major piss off and the only reason I could tolerate it is because I mostly mod, o nly going in to test briefly.

But its so bad now I cant ignore it. I cant test my own work on a theif quest because the jerky movement makes my character run out of hiding on his own. Theres a big thread for others with the problem:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=699897&forum=116

A quick summary: we determined that a revert to v1.21 stops it. And I was doing that, until... I spent an entire saturday trying to figure out why my speak triggers are f*cked and then I tried the game on my laptop which is 1.23 and they work fine. So yet another day of my life wasted on what should be an instant task, and I have honestly lost track of how many times Ive done this one stupid script that atari left to the wind without telling anyone and I lost a day of life screwing with what should be automatic but I DIGRESS.

So what I am asking here if anyone can volunteer, do you have the problem or not, and either way, what is the main details of your comp, processor, vid card, windows version, DX? Thanks for any reports here.

In my own attempt to do more than my share to get this piece of shit working since obsidian obviously wont, I disabled virtually EVERY service and app and the bug still persists. There was even critical windows processes disabled!

To be honest as much as I hate further using this abomination, I have a lot invested in it and it finally has enough custom content that would make a great sequel. But with what I've seen even before this bug Im about ready to pack my bags for dragon age the second I release. I can't even give proper due to my fellow modders as this bug stops me from enjoying other mods, I tried Trinity recently. The only way I can get them to play smoothly is in v1.21 and with the random bugs it seems to cause i cant tell if its a legit bug to report or my fault for having an old version. But I'm really at my wits end with this shit and pretty much regret starting my campaign 2 years ago.

Brief report

2010-02-07T15:27:00.002-05:00

Well I am just working as usual, on weekends only. I've taken a run at one of the larger items on my list and once I figure out why my triggers are bugged it's done. I seem to have contracted some kind of strept throat or something so Im a little lazy.

In other news my college may go on strike in a few days so maybe I will have the time for a power surge to the project completion then.

The work update, random thoughts on Dragon Age

2010-01-30T14:06:00.005-05:00

Well I have itemized all the work I need to do before the test release as promised. Still need to polish the game then, but it will not stop anyone from fully testing. And while they are testing I will do the voicings, load screens, and touch up of areas left a little bare like the big mountain lake and mountain pass. And of course balance the combat one final time based on the results of the testers.

So that's my list. I figure for each item listed its doable in one sit down, which is about 3 hours, assuming I don't screw around. I'm hoping the list helps this. I already crossed some out today as you can see.

Just a random thought and then a random pic to keep the entries interesting.

Dragon Age: Isn't it a little stupid with its overuse of blood? I mean it's dark, we get it. The blood combat is fine, but the fact that my party can't be bothered to wipe blood splattered all over their face off after hours of travel, and even flirt with each other, STILL covered in blood is more than distasteful. And the blood dripping all over the map when we travel? Geeze, settle down there bioware.

Now some random images: I have created iron elementals

They look like they are hitting hard and they do. They are almost impossible to injure with weapons as well, so after a test, 3 was clearly too many at once.

Who is this thing anyway? Probably will never be seen outside of playing the entire game cause I think I'll refrain from spoiling ALL the coolest areas with preview shots when I put it on the vault.

Quick updates: a work breakdown

2010-01-26T22:41:00.004-05:00

It's time to instill some direction and finality to these last stages of completion.
I'm going to create and post an itemized list and then we'll all know where I'm at cause I'm sure it would show some promise for a rather obscure deadline.

I had some fun making a really cool boss fight at the end, but the VFX are being a piece of s-h, they just simply refuse to delay the sounds and end the visuals when I specify. Just another bug in this piss poor toolset. I honestly want to create one sequel to this project, but I can honestly say if I do/do not, I will never buy this atari quality garbage ever again. I can count probably.... 20 or so weekends I spent screwing around with 1 buggy thing, or making work arounds etc, and I'm now fairly convinced my project should have been very close to the 6 months I originally estimated.

Ah, once again I modded heavily for one day and my eyes are absolutely killing me. I can't pick up a laptop for 2 minutes to type this without immediate constant pain. There must be something really wrong with my orbs when it comes to view digital screens. I'm ok for three hoursish a day, once I try to push it I can't do anything computer related for a week or more. It's like the cords are snapping off behind them. Ironically I have VERY good ergonomics and sit back about a full foot farther than most do, if not more. I can also see fine print VERY well. It just hurts when I do it too long.

I need to focus on schoolwork anyway for the weekdays but I can't look at computers there either.

A little of this and that... final area

2010-01-23T16:20:00.006-05:00

I'm still working on the big finish, as usual I am wishing I had done everything in order, as going back certainly sucks when you have the end in sight. On that note I'm doing a few things to keep it interesting, the latest, I created a gauth beholder by modifying the beholder abilities to be "less lethal", less numerous and less frequent. And now we have a tidy CR 6 gauth beholder.

These are just images from the final area (a collection of 2 or 3 areas depending on how you view it I guess)

Ive also got an idea to make mirror image look more like it should... just using a card board humanoid figure and having it appear around the caster in numbers of 4 to 6. I'll post it when I do it.

And I did....

Title: Where Have I Been ? or.... Almost Broken Monitor

2010-01-21T00:24:00.003-05:00

Well obviously school has started back up and I have limited time for much other than tying the knots that finish this thing. There isn't much if any room at all for any new areas or other time consuming creations.

Fortunately even with this constraint, I was able to find a perfect fitting prefab to make a small side-area that ties together and adds intrigue to the larger area it branches from.

It's a pretty cool little distraction to the combat heavy, IWD style combat crawl that is chapter 3. Who doesn't enjoy an audience with wise elder trees. It worked in Family Guy.

I am doing my best to cut things smaller and tighter without cheating the player out of play time. The reason it is so critical for me to do this fast is that I don't multi-task well: when projects become active at school, I have a hard time focusing on hobbies. When I'm concentrating on modding, the same is true and so I hope to have it done and enjoy my freedom. Even once I am done the playable game right to the end, there is some work to be done with voice actors so I cannot possibly streamline things too much.

I bought a HD enclosure for an unused HD and have been using it to do a back up every few days. I cannot stress enough how valuable this has been as I lost the largest area of chapter 3 to corruption and was this close to doing serious damage to something when I remembered my new backup system. (Likely the only thing I would have damaged would have been my interest in the campaign ever finishing :) )

I'll do my best to shake my natural tendencies and keep at this for a quick but complete end to the campaign.

"Reflections" of a builder

2010-01-04T12:09:00.004-05:00

So in finally getting reflections to work, I got an idea. Probably someone else has thought of it but I dont care because I came up with this on my own. I saw nice polished/reflective marble floors when playing the Witcher, and I thought too bad nwn2 cant do that. Then I thought hey maybe it can.

With a water height level of .05, pure white coloring, absolute stillness and reflection power of about 1.1, and a .4 bias I have nice elegant looking polished floors:

If you are going to do this, be sure to elevate rugs to a height of .1 or they will reflect too and that aint not good!

To answer other questions, my problem with the reflections was that it was counter intuitive. I assume when the "bias" setting says: refractions / reflection in that order, you slide right (towards the word "reflection") to reflect more, and vice versa. Since I never tried much lower than .8 and had very little reflection I would then crank it to 1.0 and basically never got reflections.

As for the polish settings, I started out a lot higher and it got a little weird and kind of had a buggy multiple tiling blur. The settings I have are probably the most you want for polished floors. The odd weirdness occurs like black tiles at certain angles but for the most part is passes quickly and is worth the effect.

I had forgotten I left two quests in the lurch in chapter 1. So there's some fun doing extra work. But then again, I had an idea for an interesting encounter with a certain high end creature, and there's no reason he cant be in one of the quests rather than on his own at the end of chapter 3.

Black looked particularly slick in game, when everything is moving.

Eye strain

2010-01-03T01:01:00.002-05:00

If anyone is familiar with using the computer too long (Im sure you are, but its something I like to avoid) I can definitely say its not worth it for the extra few hours of modding in 1 day. It's been three days since I beat dragon age (all in 1 long day) and my left eye hurts so bad I can hardly sit down at a monitor for 10 minutes. Hope this stops soon or theres no way this project will finish.

I've got to thinking, and I don't see why combining ideas from two outdoor areas into one can't be done. I will get to use both ideas I wanted, and not have undue extra work. By my estimate the 9 days I have left will accomodate ONE large are from scrap not counting scripting and encounters. Since I have the area largely done, but none of the extra, it's time to finish this thing. Every time I think I am adding one little thing I want another and another so it stops here.

I got the reflective water to finally work (counter intuitive toolset settings nice isn't it?). I also yanked up the vertical on the mountains the way I really wanted it, so you can compare this to the pic in the previous post and see how much greater it is!

I am having a lot of trouble with the lake edges. I've cleaned it up quite a bit already but I am finding it impossible to find settings that will make a nice uniform rounded edge. I think I need to use a little large brushes than I had been, but there's still several around. I never could keep sharp edges from popping up in my exteriors which is why I have avoided them. I wonder what the magic trick is though.

And just for fun is a sneak preview image of the final area (yes I've decided its final, first it was then it wasnt, now reality has set in lol )

The Assembly line begins

2009-12-31T00:11:00.002-05:00

Well I am doing everything I can to get this out during my semester break (which is till the 11th I think).

I keep falling into my old habbits of screwing around with something stupid but time consuming (and ultimately maybe unecessary) like trying to control my companions in a cut scene. They keep running all over in the most irritating fashion possible when I've gone through numerous hoops to prevent it. CutSceneImmobilize and forcing a jump to a precise way point is not enough most times. Then it works, but 1 in 3 tries someone is still puttering around. I look forward to leaving this toolset behind for DA: O. There is a lot of things done better in that toolset such as how your party is perfectly lined up and facing the right way at every cut scene. I will miss the fun things NWN2 has like multiple particle effects and the 3 ed D&D rules. Then again I hear 4th edition will totally botch those, so maybe that point is not valid.

So specifically to my project, I can NEVER get my water to reflect. I crank the reflection power to full 10, and the bias, and I get green watercolour paint as my result:

Perhaps any of my readers will be able to help. Before we go further though, yes I know how reflection settings work and it does work in game for the OC or other mods, mine just never reflects. I have noticed it gets better if its during sunset or sunrise but I use default settings, so if anyone has a quick way to set my scene up to mimic sunrise sunmoon settings do tell!

I'm also looking for suggestions on how to make the stone/dirt hills blend into the grass nicely. I just cant envision it, should it be a rough drop of about 6 feet, or a smooth hill that gradually grows more grass? What kind of textures?

Working on it... barely

2009-12-20T00:23:00.005-05:00

Well my last final exam was this morning. I thought I would procrastinate longer for sure, but here I was working on it already today. Chapter 3 is removed from all the areas I've been working on for 2 years so it has an element of freshness to it. Here are some shots of the mountainous isle, the last area of the campaign. Above is the shore. I kind of stole it off the vault and modified it without too much butchering of the higher quality art. As always, click the images to see a full size version. Sorry but I was lazy and these are just toolset shots, lacking the fine settings. It's conceptual though.

This next area is scary... I'm attempting to build a whole exterior myself and I gotta say its not my forte. This is an early shot, with much left to do but I would welcome any advice to make it look more like the linked pics, of Lake Louise, near Calgary.

I'm hoping for the treed in like crazy effect:

SAMPLE IMAGES

However I see how this might be unrealistic since trees that heavy will slow things down and there are no individual tree cut out 2d placeables, whose low overhead would make this possible. So in lieu of that I'd just like advice on making this look more convincing.

I'm in touch with voice actors and Im racing to finish so they have something to read and we can cut this diseased limb off by new years. :) But man it's really hard forcing myself to do it right now but maybe having nothing to do for 2 weeks will improve my motivation.

LATE EDIT: I did happen to find relatively cardboard cutout trees by accident in the RWS cliff pack so yay for that. Still looking for general tips now to "reality"-ize the area or at least improve it.

Passage of Time

2009-11-24T21:16:00.005-05:00

So as my birthday looms in the next few days, I am reminded of just how long I've let this project drag out.

At this point, I have tried playing DA: Origins and it's fun. But I think I can safely say I prefer finishing my campaign before finishing more.

I'm kind of in a lull now, you know the kind where... the toolset is kind of like an ex girlfriend you aren't seeing right now. But you often get back together, and although she seems distant at this exact moment, once you get back around her, everything seems familiar and like you haven't left. That's where I'm at in a nutshell. Well, at the point where I'm NOT seeing her currently.

This is for the best since it's the final two weeks of school and then I'll have two weeks to hopefully wrap this up.

I wonder what people think of changing (expanding) a work already mostly complete. I have 3/4s of chapter 3 to do and it's finished. But I'm feeling the need to make the campaign something broader; until now I just focused on making the quests as fun, physically rewarding, unique, and doable in any order as possible, with a huge helping of custom content. Now I feel like I would like the companions to have some depth, and an increasingly philisophical verbage to their banter.

I just wonder, how bad does shoe horning actually come off to the player? For me I've never noticed it when someone said they did in their campaign. But if I don't know how the project looked previous I don't know what polish might have been ruined. Assuming I don't do it stupidly though (like having silent companions for 2 chapters and all of the sudden a 16 hour running cut scene) is it likely it will be an overall enhancement?

Once again I long to go back in time and PLAN the campaign exhaustively, and even do all or reasonably close to all dialogue first. Then I would know when the story is complete, as I find I only stray because it seems things are missing. One can rip out an impressive amount of work if it's pre-planned so that you don't stop and think. Right now I just feel the need to outlet some thought-provoking concepts; illustrate a point of view on life after death in the realms (and life before, and again after, for some), a remark on mortality and aging. Too heavy maybe, but I think I can delivery it in a way where one can choose to stop and ponder or just reply with generic "you're crazy/you need some rest" remarks like a good little monkey and continue with the conflict.

Early troubles

2009-11-09T17:46:00.006-05:00

Turns out my campaign was quite horribly corrupted. Im working around it, trying to finish it completely, despite a persistent journal bug. At first I was just going to cut it short, but as it showed signs of cooperating, I've actually gone ahead and added not only the content originally planned in the final 2 side quests, but some bonus cut sceneage to make it a lot more story-based. Not just throw-ins to give some personality to the NPCs but some thought out stuff, complete with epic symbolism and foreshadowing.

I have to say cut scenes were not an early interest of mine, but it's almost as addicting as custom particles. Gives me a good reason to make some as well to show all the spectacular dream-scapes and powers being used. Regular conversations I prefer to do in NWN1 exclusively, but when doing something cinematic or from a dream or vision, that's when I let cut scenes out of the box.

So I was on a good role, but school work has picked up and at the same time I am finding toolset work more tedious again. I will just plow to the finish with the release version coming no later than december. Whatever is there at that time will be the finished game.

Here's an example of such a scene, where I did my first real ventures into bloom use. Really makes the magical white balls blurry and dreamlike.

Click twice to see the full size images, rather than the 1/4 size one it links to. THANKS :)

I never even gave personalities to the companions until now. In the end my hope is the story, (though light on words when compared to works like Azzen's new "Live Forever" campaign), should be compelling and thought-provoking enough that the campaign would have seemed empty without it. I'm only one third done and it already feels that way to me.

TESTING TIME.... Alpha alpha alphaaaa

2009-09-27T18:31:00.001-04:00

That's right it is time for Alpha testing, in the month of september as promised, I kept my dead line! This has to be a first for modders and commercial software makers, right?

Anyway I have no idea where I am going to put these honking files, please comment if you know a spot.

Thanks.

-EE

2009-09-16T16:09:00.004-04:00

Well I have declared alpha testing this month, and basically set out to have one play through front to top to make sure everything worked from A to Z. Of course it didn't, but the good news is I have not only fixed bugs but while at it, made a lot of the non-working quests (which would have been left out of alpha for now) workable, so it will be a more complete alpha test in the end.

As always, I've found reasons and excuses to create more custom VFX. Here's a screen shot update of a quest that will now function in any release, alpha and beyond.

Well these guys don't belong here!

And you don't belong here!

So much to do with so little effort...

2009-08-27T11:46:00.006-04:00

I am definitely going to release a VFX override after this campaign for general use. Just to override the boring same old every day spells. There is so much that can be done in little 10 minute efforts.

Picture the earthquake spell for examble (or any AOE knock down spell). You could have the bigbys fist graphic show up, do its open handed down ward slam animation. Except you could have two fists appear and slam the ground as the initiation of the earthquake.

I've already reenvisioned popular low level effects and here is some more visuals:

Mage Armor - The key here is to update the spell without making it look too fantastic and therefore more powerful than it is. I've opted for rotating columns to give the impression of magical defenses at work.

Fireball - Everyone knows magic fire is green. If you don't you need to watch more obscure 80's tv shows. Either way there are way too many stock orange fire explosion vfx in game. It needed a change.

Bull's Strength - pour that sugar on me mr giant fist!

As a more concrete statement on where Islander stands; I am in the final area (3 of 3) of the final dungeon of chapter 2. I have to put in some landscaping and some interactions and one big cutscene and well... it's done. Polish and two optional quests will be added later but it will be a stand alone, playable 2 chapter campaign at that point and the testing calls will begin.

Alpha close in sight...

2009-08-26T15:20:00.004-04:00

(click image for high res - full size view)

Well it looks like I might actually have enough "game" to make a late alpha test of both chapters 1 and 2. Some optional content will be missing, but there should be more than enough to qualify as a functioning stand alone campaign.

I've been keeping with the spell effects touch ups as promised, and am still learning more things that can be done. Check out the new bull strength vfx! I'll half to flip the other fist over somehow, but I think you can get the idea.

More sizzle, less fizzle

2009-08-20T21:32:00.004-04:00

It occurred to me that the whole of the game, both in original expansions and other provided modules, is relatively repetitive and with little variety. Talk, fight, buy stuff, fight, fight, talk.

And frankly that was perfect, if done just exactly right, like in Infinity engine games. However, despite the temptation to skip all scripting and lay down some mundane time absorbing dungeons to fill out my campaign, I have had good success with quick and easy scripting that didn't require outside help. And with it, a change from the standard options of "fight or die". Indeed, for some areas in the 2nd chapter, fighting is an option that cannot succeed (although still provided :) ).

Picture if you will, running your party across narrow planks as a plague of insects runs hot at your heels, and should they catch you, you will be covered in an instant and devoured. Too numerous to fireball into oblivion (and well, before you even have fireball powers), your other option is to jump into a whirlpool in a dark, seemingly shallow water pool, wi th the full weight of your armor pinning you for certain under the water...

If you can't picture it, it's here.
It doesn't do the area justice, but that just saves more for the game.

God willing this project will be ready for testing by September, since I certainly won't have time after.

Special Effects you won't see in your typical vault submissions

2009-07-31T13:54:00.003-04:00

I've been doing a lot of scripted effects lately. You can really get bogged down though doing fairly unimpressive things that take a lot of work. Knowing this I've added a lot of "sizzle" scripts and spared the steak if it wasn't necessary.

Examples are an earth elemental who dies, but splits into two with a little flash vfx thrown in, and my latest: A stoney graveyard of petrification victims, complete with the ability to smash their statuey forms into rubble:

Rolling Stones!

simply click to see the three stages of the process.

The Setting

2009-07-15T11:31:00.000-04:00

Far to the west of the southern sword coast, an archepalego that is completely unknown to the outside world thrives with a small population of mostly humans. Scarecely more than a generation ago, the their grand parents fled the continent of Faerun and escaped the cruelty of their lords and masters. They named their new home the Avorin Islands.

Led on an impossible year-long voyage by a man who came to be known as "The Founder", they gave up everything and took a single boat on a journey in so long that all food would spoil, and no one could possibly follow.

It is here the hero and his childhood friend were raised, well schooled and trained on the history of Faerun and other continents, but yet secluded in the peaceful community of the small islands.

Master Fane was less than a father but more than a mentor as he trained the hero of the story in a rounded curriculum, including combat, history, and law. The fate of the PC's parents is unknown, but what is known is that Fane was not born of the Avorin Islands, but rather settled here shortly after the hero's birth, as he sought "retirement" from his adventuring days.

Fane seems a tad young for retirement however, and as the hero reaches age, they start to find their surroundings a little snug for their liking. Soon after however, the Avorin Islands are revealed to be somewhat larger than at first thought... and somewhat more dangerous, as a new threat is about to unfurl...

The Resurrection

2009-07-15T10:38:00.000-04:00

Few remain who would remember when I joined the community over a year ago and announced the development of a campaign named Islander. I have been purposely quiet about it since as it had more or less been worked on faithfully for about 3 months and then more or less ignored during a college school year.

At this point it continues, some re-working, re-learning and some actual progress. The main hurdle that kept it back so long was a lack of pre-planning. Now with a main plot path ironed out it moves rather quickly. So I will be adding information here to re-introduce the concept and help me keep on track.