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I've been sick as a dog the last couple days,...
November 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I've been sick as a dog the last couple days, though somehow along with popping Advil like candy and sleeping way too much, I managed a bit of work on the module. There's some key pieces of custom content I need for the first module, many of which I whipped out yesterday and this morning. This screenshot is a bit dim, but it shows off a simple cannon model, a burned-out crystal, and a die. I actually made six versions of the die placeable, one per face. As to why I need all those odd things, I suppose you'll have to play the module.
This morning I also did something I wasn't sure was possible, I created an animated placeable. It's a fan, with slowly rotating blades. I'm limited to using existing animations, and there's a spinning rock that I ended up editing and putting in my own things. I still need to texture it, but that shouldn't take too long.
The voice actors have also been quite busy as of late. Derek has been cranking out voices like nobody's business and I got in touch with GingerBeer to work on more of Robert's voices. One of the things I'd like to have are custom voice sets for the main NPCs, so they don't sound weird in battle and such.
I also have a good chunk of bugs I need to sort out. The mirror puzzle will be the death of me, I'm sure. I now have the light beam working, but the mirrors aren't moving and I can't test to see if the beam reflects.
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Today's Pirate Card is Press Gang, a fun litt...
November 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Today's Pirate Card is Press Gang, a fun little card that lets you take control of your foe's creatures. It can be a little expensive to cast, as the cost scales with the cost of your opponent's creature. Still, there's nothing so satisfying getting your enemy's dragon to roast its former master.
I sunk some more work into debugging and testing. At this point, you can get from the beginning of the module into the main action, though there's still some major show-stopping bugs after that. I also coded some trap laying workarounds for the final battle, though I need to test it. I have more dialog and cutscenes to polish. Like most things in life, the key is to plod along until it's done. Slowly getting there.
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I've been remiss, so here's a quick Pirate Ca...
November 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I've been remiss, so here's a quick Pirate Card update. Pint o' Grog provides one of your creatures a short-lived but powerful boost. They gain fifty hit points and a serious attack bonus, making them a serious obstacle for even the biggest of foes. It makes for a great early game card, when you can only summon a tiny little creature.
I made excellent progress yesterday and it looks like the entire prologue can be played through. I yet again swore that I'd never string so many heavily scripted semi-cutscenes together. I still need a bit of polish, fiddling with the cameras and animation. The main issue for me is that it takes a minute or two to load up the game and test out my changes, making the "guess and check" method a lousy troubleshooting approach.
As for today, I plan on more bug fixing and polishing of the various conversations. I still need to do serious QA work of all the areas before I can turn it over to the real testers. I'm still not sure how much more there is to do. The final battle requires tweaking and the "school" level probably needs a bit of work. It's been so long since I made the areas, retesting them is almost refreshing.
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Another quick update
November 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
Another quick update. I spent hours yesterday working on the various introduction cutscenes. I have a much better feel for how to get them to work right. There's a ton you can do, such as having carefully placed cameras and setting animation for a variety of characters. Like the rest of the toolset, it's quite powerful, but requires lots of time and attention to details. Hopefully I can get all the prologue finished today and start in earnest with the main module.
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Somewhere between all the Thanksgiving festiv...
November 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
Somewhere between all the Thanksgiving festivities and watching my son play with his new Wii, I managed to sneak in some development time. Mostly I've focused on the prologue, getting the various camera angles and character animations working, along with getting the scripting kinks worked out. It's coming along and I think with a bit more work I'll actually be able to get into the main action for the module. It's nice to feel like I'm actually making progress.
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The amusing bugs continue
November 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 The amusing bugs continue. This morning I discovered one of my NPCs having problems sitting in a chair. It's a fairly common problem, so I'll ponder the available workarounds or perhaps wait for a patch. The good news is that the first section of the prologue actually works, moving me from place to place, possessing NPCs for their conversations, and so on. Of course, then it got stuck, leaving me invisible next to an elf sitting on air.
It's a family weekend for me, celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. I'm not sure how much development time I'll manage over the next few days, but I suspect I can sneak down on occasion.
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I continue to have fun with custom content, w...
November 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I continue to have fun with custom content, where "fun" means all sorts of odd bugs. Today's involves the candle model, which I turned into a torch. There's part of the campaign that has the players moving around with dim lights, so it's one of those required items. Unfortunately there seems to be a problem with the hook points where the flame appears. If I don't have a hook point, I can't attach a flame. If I do have a hook point, I get a weird model error. I'm sure I'll work it through, though for the moment I have Bizarro Candle.
I made some good progress yesterday, fixing and finding more bugs. The mirror puzzle is dramatically broken, though I took some steps to take care of it. The switch from 10 meter to 9 meter tiles had me multiplying position values by .9 in my scripts. I still have errors where it can't find targets, so I've got some work to do.
Other bugs include issues with cutscenes breaking horribly, custom content showing up in the toolset but not the game, and all around weird behavior.
There's a fun game in there somewhere. I feel like I'm uncovering the muck and slime to find the gem underneath it all.
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I was incredibly productive today
November 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I was incredibly productive today. I found and fixed a bunch of bugs. I discovered that the bulk of the sound clips were in the wrong format, so I did a mass conversion and added in the new ones that I've gotten recently. Right now I'm waiting on one major NPC voice and the first module is pretty well done. I still have a long way to go and much to polish and test, but it's not feeling quite so overwhelming.
I spent some time with the final battle last night. It was quite challenging, with my entire party laying dead in short order. Still, the AI generally behaved and acted in interesting ways. If the old NWN commands to create traps don't appear shortly, I think I have a workaround. The goal is to make the final battle epic and requiring great strategy. I also want to make sure that the careful player can take advantage of a number of things to get through without too much trouble.
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Since I'm crazy busy, I'll whip out another P...
November 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Since I'm crazy busy, I'll whip out another Pirate Card of the day. Today's is Death Pact, an unusual little card that can turn the tide late in the game. If the playing field is littered with corpses and it's time to tidy up, this card will get rid of them in addition to giving you life for each one cleared. The gotcha, of course, is that there has to be bodies on the field. It makes for a poor early-game card, when you have little manna and there's not a corpse on the screen.
Yesterday I did some more bug testing and fixing, boring but necessary. I also did some experiments with how modules and campaigns work. I was sorely tempted to break the first module down into a series of smaller modules so that each chunk could be quickly tested. Sadly it would be too much rework to be worth it. I'm pretty sure I'll do that for the second module, though.
Derek, one of the new voice actors, is sending along some great stuff. I've encouraged him to improvise a bit and some of the material is comedy gold. Yesterday it was a father, a cat, and a bartender. We'll see what tomorrow holds. I still need to attach it all to dialog, but it's nice to have the material ready to go.
I'm frantically busy today. Hopefully I can find the time to work on fixing a few bugs. Some of the testers are having problems with the Pirate Card game, probably because the install process is so confusing. I'm sure we'll sort it out.
Slowly getting there.
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Yesterday was a bit slow, though I managed to...
November 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Yesterday was a bit slow, though I managed to work on different parts of the campaign. For starters I got the burn scripts working. Mostly it was a matter of getting the right visual effects. While I was there, I added a damage-specific death effect. It's still not perfect, but burning things go up in a puff of smoke, cold makes them freeze, and so on. There's still some odd issues, so I may go back to tweak it later.
I sunk a bunch of time trying to get custom spells to work. One worked great, right out of the box, but nothing else seems to work. I toyed with going to a boring "Activate Item" approach, but it means I can't have custom spell effects. I've opted to put that away until after the next patch.
I'm testing this morning, making yet another huge list of bugs to fix. I fixed a few yesterday. The set items now work properly, giving additional bonuses when you wear more than one. Hopefully I can find some more time to work on it today.
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Yet again I'm reminded how I get a little obs...
November 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Yet again I'm reminded how I get a little obsessive sometimes. There's only one underwater area in the first module, yet I sunk a bunch of time making it just right. I finished up the shells and got some kelp in, retexturing one of the trees in order to get the color just right. They sway nicely in the "current".
I also got a nice little present from the folks at Atari/Obsidian. They gave me a second copy of NWN2 for services unmentionable in public (get your mind out of the gutter). That let me test the Pirate Cards game in a multiplayer setting. The good news is that it worked like a charm. My first character set up an offer for a game (not playing for gold or ante). The second picked it from the list of standing games and selected a deck. Finally the first character got a pop-up conversation saying who the challenger was and then accepted, picking a deck as well. It's complicated, but neat when it all works.
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I hunkered down last night and got serious ab...
November 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I hunkered down last night and got serious about custom content. I'm getting a much better feel for what things to watch for, what's required, and so on. I love being able to have the toolset open, export a new version of the model, and re-select the appearance to see the updated version. When I first put the crab into the module, it was this massive thing that took over the screen. It took a couple tries before making it something tiny and cute.
Most of these are straight NWN ports, which turned out pretty well with normal maps. I haven't bothered with higher resolution version, though I'd like to try that next. There's a bunch of high-res Sigil placeable models I could work on. The hardest part with NWN2 modeling so far is that models are almost always a single mesh and you can only use a single texture per mesh. That means lots of the NWN models will need to be retextured if people want it in the game.
I finally got a flintlock in the game, as a placeable. I'm not sure if the current modeling tools don't handle weapons well yet, or maybe I'm using the tools incorrectly. In either case, Adinos volunteered to lend a hand, which is much appreciated.
My to-do list is miles long, as usual. I have a bunch of voice actors to get back to, music to put into the game, areas to flesh out with these new placeables, and endless QA work. I'm hoping there's a fun game in there somewhere. It's amazing how much work and how many details it takes to get there.
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I'm going to do a quick post, in case I don't...
November 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
I'm going to do a quick post, in case I don't get another chance today. I've been very busy, but in a positive way. I worked more on custom content, getting some NWN placeables ready for NWN2. I think I have the critical stuff for undersea areas. I'd still like to get low-poly versions of the Sigil models bundled with the high-poly ones. Sadly the model import/export tools don't seem quite good enough.
The offers from voice actors are pouring in, faster than I can respond. I filled in another NPC's dialog today. It's looking like nearly every character in the first module will have voice acting, which is truly remarkable. Big kudos to all the folks who have offered help.
I'm also plugging away at the module itself, sprucing up the place with the new organic placeables. I have three different types I'm working with - "wall goo", "pods", and "mushrooms". Combining them together makes a very nice effect.
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I'm forgoing the daily pirate card image to s...
November 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 I'm forgoing the daily pirate card image to show off a couple new placeables I worked on today. The mushroom is actually a NWN placeable that Schazzwozzer worked on long ago. The NWN2 version has been updated with a normal map, texture map, and specular map. It looks great, in my opinion, especially with proper lighting. I also whipped up a star fish, something I'll need in addition to various shells, kelp, and so on.
Other than my custom content forays, it mostly feels like I'm doing a lot of bug fixing. Yesterday I when through a list and fixed most of them. This morning I sat down to play and found a bunch more. Many of them are show-stopping bugs, and a few of them are really bizarre. Conversations aren't firing or are greatly delayed. Areas that should be walkable seem to be blocked. So, I've got a bit of work to do.
Hopefully I can catch up with some of my e-mails today too. I'm a bad, bad boy.
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One of the nice things about having all these...
November 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 One of the nice things about having all these Pirate Cards graphics is that I can whip out a screenshot on a dime. Today's card is Lighting Bolt. It's simple, cheap, and very effective. It does a whopping twenty points of damage to the biggest creature. Even better, if there's no creature on the playing field, it'll hit your opponent's avatar. It's an easy way to get an early edge in the game. Still, you can only have four in your deck and it's often better to have creatures which deal damage turn after turn. One of the nice things about the game is that there's lots of different ways to win.
It's been crazy busy today and I'm completely failing to keep up with my various correspondences again. I did manage a bit of QA time this morning. Lots of things don't work properly, though some things miraculously did. The henchmen can now be controlled and come back to life after combat, just like the official campaign.
If one party member survives a fight, the plan is to have them come back to life. I used to think this made combat too easy, until I was completely wiped out by poor planning on my part. Saving periodically is a good idea.
I'm going to try to hunker down and work on fixing the major bugs, getting things to a point where QA can actually play through a bit. Until then, it's mostly just a collection of pretty areas that don't work right.
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Very quick update today
November 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Very quick update today. I managed to get in more of the placeables from NWN1. Custom content is pretty slow compared to other things, and I spent a lot of time yesterday fiddling with MDB, 2DA, and DDS files. Lots of little details have to be just right, and I'm still having problems with a few pieces of content.
Today's picture shows off a couple "ambiance" placeables, trying to go for a Geiger-like organic look. I'm really enjoying NWN2's flexibility in scaling placeables. I haven't added tinting yet, though I'm not sure it's entirely needed.
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Just a quick update
November 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Just a quick update. I'm back from Portland, where I managed a little work on the module and a bit of actual playing. The big fun was working with the model import tools. They're still a bit touchy, and some models import file, while others don't at all. My first was from the Sigil placeable set, way back when I created some high-poly versions of the NWN placeables. The privy wasn't entirely for comedic value. I decided a massive underground complex would seem a bit silly without appropriate, er, facilities.
I went on, bringing over some of the models I'd made for the prototype. Sadly the flintlocks aren't coming across, though I don't know why. Hopefully we'll get some better import tools as the weeks go on. Still, after working with the default placeables, getting any new stuff in is loads of fun.
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The Blood Master is one of the two fun little...
November 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 The Blood Master is one of the two fun little vampires in the Pirate Card game. It has the unique power of becoming greatly strengthened whenever it kills an opponent. It makes for an excellent addition to an undead deck.
I was a modding machine today, waking up at 4:30 in the morning and working until my family woke up. All the areas are "done", meaning I've added sound, placeables, lighting, and tweaked all the creatures. It's a good feeling.
I still have much to do before I can pass the module off to QA. There's lots of scripting changes to NWN2. Chatting with the creator of Infinite Dungeons, he passed along a good workaround for the absence of the create trap scripts. I also want to test out the new companion scripts, especially the parts of the module where you take control of another character. Finally, there's the custom content. So far I haven't added anything new, but at a minimum I have to get the flintlock pistols in the game.
Somewhere in there I want to play the official campaign. Maybe I'll get a little time at grandma's house, though I promised my wife I wouldn't foist the kids on her mom while I play on the computer. At least not for the entire time.
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Getting back to the Pirate Card of the day, t...
November 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Getting back to the Pirate Card of the day, today's is the Steel Automata. It's an ideal defensive card, rugged and giving an AC bonus to all nearby creatures. It works well with decks that deal non-creature damage, such as the infamous Hurricane, Pyrotechnic Blast, and Lightning Bolt.
I repeatedly come to the conclusion that I simply don't have enough time for everything. Today I'm behind on e-mail though I've made great progress on the first module. I'm finishing the polish on the last few areas and beginning to tip-toe into converting to the new functions. I swapped in the death system used in the official campaign (all members in the party must die before having to reload). It may get swapped out again if QA proves it to be too easy or difficult. I also put in the new companion system, so that you can directly control the members of your party.
There's still a few difficult choices I need to make, such as working around the lack of a CreateTrap function. There's a few places where I use such a thing, though I might have an acceptable alternative.
I'm off to Portland with the kids this weekend, seeing the Star Wars exhibit at OMSI. Strangely, that might give me more time than usual to work on the module, as the grandparents tend to hog the kids for themselves. Plus they have high-speed Internet access, so I won't drop off the grid. Isn't technology marvellous?
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My life is far too busy, as proven by my post...
November 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
My life is far too busy, as proven by my posting via laptop next to my kid's bath. Today was actually pretty productive. Every area from the prototype has been transferred over. I actually managed to make a passable shipboard scene, though I may redo it with a bit of custom content.
Most of the areas have had at least preliminary work, though of course they need even more. I even managed a bit of testing, quickly making note of a dozen bugs in a few minutes. The good news is that some of the cooler effects actually worked great, though more tweaking will be needed for sure.
In terms of tomorrow, I have more areas to polish. I'd also like to fiddle with some custom content. There's a utility that tilts placeables that I'd like to try, along with getting flintlock pistols in the game.
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It looks like I have a bit more fiddling arou...
November 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 It looks like I have a bit more fiddling around before the Pirate Card game is released, so I'll continue my Card of the Day awhile yet. Today's is Pyrokinetic Barrier. It's an "anti Zerg rush" sort of card, for those familiar with the Starcraft reference. It cheaply puts out a barrier that damages attackers, killing weaker ones in a few turns. I ended up toning the spell down considerably as it made it nearly impossible to win with small creatures. Now it just makes it difficult. Against huge creatures with lots of hit points, though, it's not as useful.
I hunkered down and worked on getting Pirate Cards ready to ship. My big issue at the moment is that the install requires players to make changes that could cause problems in the future. I also have files in five different directories, which is rather confusing. Hopefully in a patch or two we'll get better resource management. In the meantime, I may have a few people do some double-checking and make sure there's no game-stopping bugs. I briefly panicked when the GUI seemed to break, but after recompiling, started working again.
I continue to play the official campaign, which is more fun than I'd hoped. There are certainly traditional RPG elements and clichés, but I'm having a good time and learning things along the way.
I managed a bit of time on the conversion over the weekend. At this point, I'm mostly working on adding placeables, lighting and so on. I did have fun with a puzzle/trap area. It's deadly if you're not paying attention, but the player should have plenty of warning.
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Work continues on the first module
November 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Work continues on the first module. At this point all but one area has been transferred over. I've learned a lot about bringing things from NWN, including carefully going through the inventory of containers so that they have the right icons and such. I still have lots of areas to add detail to, placeables and lighting and so on. I also need to make sure things work as expected. Some from NWN simply aren't going to be possible in NWN2 due to custom animations. For those, I'm working around as best I can.
I'm still waffling on the Pirate Card game. I feel guilty knowing that any install I do now will break things for folks. Hopefully we can see a new patch that gives better options for custom content.
I'm still forging ahead with the conversion, in between playing the game a bit. There's still so much to do before it's ready for QA to take a look at it. Slowly getting there.
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I've been crazy busy as of late
November 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
I've been crazy busy as of late. I managed a bit of time today, adding placeables and such to a bedroom I had forgotten on the third level. I also played around with various resource configurations for the Pirate Cards game, coming to the conclusion that the best solution is a patch that makes things easier. I might still release a beta version before then, but it'll come with big warning messages that not cleaning up properly may cause your game to stop working.
My guilty pleasure continues to be playing the official campaign when I'm at all able. I'm getting some neat ideas from how they did certain things. It's also interesting how they structured the campaign - a lot of little modules strung together with a map and keeping track of variables. I also like some of their creative uses of placeables. The cavern pools look quite nice.
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It's finally here
November 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 It's finally here.
After installing, I quickly loaded up the Pirate Cards module to make sure nothing exploded. Then I thought I'd take a peek at the official campaign, if only for a minute. I went through the character creation steps, admiring the various outfits for each class, and jumped into the tutorial.
Then something funny happened. I started really enjoying myself, doing the various challenges and snickering at the subtle humor. By the time I finished the tutorial, I realized it was past my bedtime and I hadn't done anything with Dark Waters.
This morning I was a bit better, getting the various pieces of custom content working for the Pirate Cards game. It all seems to work, with the only downside being a rather complex installation process. There's five different directories where things need to be put. I may end up throwing together an installer of some sort. The good news is that it's fun. Here's a peek at a larger version of the game, custom GUI and all.
I'm going to see if I can resolve the packaging issues and put together a beta test, hopefully in the next day or two. In the meantime, I'm going to sneak back into the official campaign whenever I get the chance.
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Today's card of the day is Voodoo Chant
November 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2
 Today's card of the day is Voodoo Chant. It's an interesting "double whammy" card, damaging multiple creatures in play and giving the resulting life to your avatar. If the battlefield has a number of creatures in play, it can make a huge difference in the game, especially if most of the creatures aren't yours. It's also a card that scales with the power you have. Early on, it only affects a few creatures. If you have many generators, you can affect all the creatures in play. Needless to say, deciding when it's best to play the card can be somewhat of a challenge.
Well, people are starting to get NWN2 today, though I suspect I get to wait another day due to overnight delivery. I'm eager to poke around and get all the improvements from the pre-release version.
Yesterday I made a huge amount of progress importing things from the prototype. Most of the 6th level has the key placeables, creatures, and doors ported over. I cleaned up a bunch of items, giving them icons and such. I also created a handful of new items whose descriptions I'd written up during the drive back from the coast last weekend.
Today I hope to get the new items in, continue the transfer from the prototype, and generally continue the grand conversion. Fun, fun, fun.
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About Me
I've won multiple awards for my Neverwinter Nights modules, which I've been working on since the year 2000.
In the real world, I'm a web developer for a healthcare organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
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