Saw a great medeival "B" movie today

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 )