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Well, it looks like the mirror puzzle is work...
December 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
 Well, it looks like the mirror puzzle is working properly. Light bounces around in a realistic fashion and I can hit my desired target without too much difficulty. There's a number of things I could polish up, but it is just a prototype after all. I'm mentally prepared to rewrite big chunks of the code for Dragon Age. Sometimes it seems like an awful lot of work for a little puzzle, but I suppose it's that sort of variety that makes the module stand out.
I worked on more dialog issues yesterday, putting things I'd written down into HTML form. I also finished up a few dialogs that I hadn't quite completed. Pretty soon it'll be time to do some mapping and area planning. I have some things penciled out that need to have lots of detail filled in. I enjoyed writing the PnP style room descriptions that would pop up as the PC entered, so I'll probably do the same for this campaign.
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I'm up to 38 dialogs having just copied over ...
December 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I'm up to 38 dialogs having just copied over my writings from last weekend. Most of the new ones are pretty short, but the number still strikes me as big. I still have plenty more to do too, so getting to 100 dialogs for the first module wouldn't surprise me.
Though I haven't tested it, I'm fairly sure the mirror puzzle isn't done yet. My current method for finding where the light goes next only takes mirrors into account and I need to make it more generic. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.
I also ordered Rome: Total War and Pirates! for, er, educational purposes. I'm still mulling over different ways to handle the ship movement and combat, and I'd like to see some examples of large scale battles. The plan is for both of them to make appearances in the module. Hopefully I'm not being overly ambitious.
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I've returned from my holiday journey north w...
December 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
 I've returned from my holiday journey north where I managed to put in some quality writing time. Most of the time was spent on a single scene which expanded into a fairly large chunk of the game. It's the first of the combat heavy sections, yet it still has a fair amount of dialog.
I'm also working hard on the background of a particularly tricky character. I hesitate to call him a villian, as I'm trying to make his actions both understandable and horrible at the same time. There's always risk when shooting for the more complex opponents and the easy path is to go with the evil megalomaniac. I'm trying for someone who starts out meaning well but is deeply flawed. Well, we'll see how it goes.
I think I finally got my mirror puzzle working properly. It'll need some more testing but I was able to push the mirrors around and get the light beam to move around in some complex ways. The next step will be to see if I can "solve" the puzzle and get the light shining where I want it to be.
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I think I finally tracked down the issue with...
December 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I think I finally tracked down the issue with my mirror problem. It turns out the GetFirstObjectInShape function is buggy and simply won't work for what I'm trying to do. So, it looks like I'll have to make my own method for determining which object lies in the path of the light beam. It's nice to know that I'm not completely crazy.
I finished putting in the last of the dialog into NWN. Of course, now I have yet more dialog to write. I'm hopeful that the next few days will give me some quiet time with my notebook, which I've been wanting to do for awhile.
There's a fairly large section of the game that involves a lot of talking to people. I'm trying to balance it so that it could be rather short if you wanted as well as providing some interesting insight into the characters. We'll see how it pans out.
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I've copied 20 dialogs into NWN
December 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I've copied 20 dialogs into NWN. It's a tedious process but I'm nearly done. Over the weekend I also managed to write out a new dialog in my notebook. It turned out to be surprisingly funny as well as providing some insight into one of the characters. So far this first module seems a little dialog heavy, mostly because I've got a lot to do to introduce the characters.
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The work to HTMLize everything continues
December 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
The work to HTMLize everything continues. Already it seems easier to find what I'm looking for. Copying and pasting dialog into the toolset is a little tedious, but I don't have much more to do. It also gives me a chance to reread and edit things as needed. Hopefully I can finish the conversion up today and start in on the endless dialog this game seems to require.
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Life got pretty busy for a few days, though I...
December 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
Life got pretty busy for a few days, though I did manage to turn my hand to the great DA project for a bit. I've expanded my project to take NWN dialogs and make them readable on the web so that they include comments, speakers, and script entries. I'll probably expand as needed over time. I've also been putting my word processor dialogs into NWN, which is slow going.
It's been a treat to reread some of the earlier dialogs, which nicely convey the relationship between the PC and his friends. There's some funny lines that strike a chord with me, something I'd like to continue in the module. Next week I'll be traveling for the holidays a bit and I'm hoping to spend some quality time with my notebook. There's endless dialog to write yet, especially the village area with lots of NPCs.
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I've been working away at converting things t...
December 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I've been working away at converting things to HTML as I'm able. I've also been filling in holes as I discover them, such as some ideas for loadscreen text, assuming we have loadscreens and a place to put custom text. I'm ever hopeful.
I also had a couple ideas for some scenes with a particular visual impact. It would take some modeling work on my part, but should work out nicely (again assuming it can be done with the new graphics engine).
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Well, I finally had a scripting project of mi...
December 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
Well, I finally had a scripting project of mine succeed, hopefully breaking the curse of the last few weeks. I threw together something that takes the xml output of the Mod Packer utility and converts it into a nicely formatted HTML page. You can take a look at a sample here.
What that means is that I'll probably start copying dialog into the NWN toolset and exporting it out periodically. Then I can create a master page for different parts of the module and link to the various dialogs.
Hopefully all this organization will pan out over time. I never did a formal postmortem on my NWN modules but I'm still trying to apply my lessons learned to make this next project go more smoothly.
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To save my sanity, I put away the mirror puzz...
December 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
To save my sanity, I put away the mirror puzzle for the moment and instead focused on writing. I cranked out a rather lengthy dialog with lots of different options due to the game state - those always take awhile.
I'm also coming to the conclusion that a single massive file that contains everything is simply unwieldy. I'm going to start breaking out maps, dialog, journal entries, and so on into different HTML files. Ideally I'd put the dialog into NWN then export out and convert it to HTML. We'll see if I can understand the file formats well enough to pull it off.
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I thought I figured out the issue yesterday
December 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I thought I figured out the issue yesterday. It looked like I had mixed up some variable names and all I needed to do was unmix them up. Sadly, when I actually went to test it the light was again headed off in a weird direction. I took some good notes, though, and can hopefully figure out what went horribly wrong.
I'm starting to get the urge to do some writing today, especially after doing all this technical scripting for the last week. I really appreciate being able to switch between the different aspects of making a game. When I get bored and frustrated with one thing, I can switch over to another.
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You'd think that having a master's degree in ...
December 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
You'd think that having a master's degree in science would let me intuitively understand the mathematics behind reflective surfaces. Sadly, I still haven't gotten the thing working properly. Part of it isn't entirely my fault - the facing value of the mirror was 180 degrees from what I expected. Even when I flipped it around it reflected the light in a completely unexpected direction. I'll have to break out the pencil and paper again to try to figure out what I did wrong.
I've also been toying with an idea that I'm not sure will pan out. Ideally I'd like to get the dialog in a form where it can be easily translated, spoken by voice actors, edited, and so on. There's a handy GFF to XML translator that can take dialog put into NWN and export it out. From there I should be able to display it on a web page for others to see. Even more ideal, I could export it into a Dragon Age compatible format, saving me loads of typing. Well, we'll see. It may not be worth the fiddling for the moment.
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Well, I managed to get my mirror test somewha...
December 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
 Well, I managed to get my mirror test somewhat working today. I'm now displaying the path of the light leaving the mirror and it quickly became obvious that my reflection calculation was lacking, though I don't think it's going to be too hard to fix. After all of this, I'll have a generic mirror and light reflection system. I suppose I should keep throwing mirror puzzles at the player to make up for all the time I've spent on this, but I do understand they're only interesting once or twice.
My ship movement prototype isn't going as well. The first time I tried it the game locked up. I've fiddled a bit more, though still somehow keep locking up the game. Some dedicated testing time is clearly in order.
Finally, I managed to write a few more dialogs and type them up. I'm still trying to decide the best way to store all of them. Right now I typically edit in Word, though I'm debating converting them to HTML. I'd like to better support online editing and prepare things for voice acting. If I was really hardcore, I might consider making a web-based application to store all this stuff. Hmm.
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Friday I continued working on scripting, hope...
December 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
Friday I continued working on scripting, hopefully getting my ship movement scripts working properly. Unfortunately I ended up getting Vampire: Bloodlines, which is sucking up all of my gaming time (pun intended). I haven't tested the ship script or the fixes to my mirror puzzle. I also did a bit more mapping and wrote some dialog yesterday. Hopefully I can get some more done today. I can usually find the time to scribble a sentence or two while watching the kids play.
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I've been on a scripting kick lately so I dec...
December 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I've been on a scripting kick lately so I decided to dig into my ship-to-ship combat system. I've already done some prework long ago. It used a weird control system - the PC would be invisible on an ocean map and the PC's ship would try to move towards the PC's location. Unfortunately it didn't work very well and I shelved it for many months.
Now I'm switching to a dialog-based control approach. We'll see if it works any better.
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I actually broke out the game and toolset las...
December 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
I actually broke out the game and toolset last night and did a little testing and debugging. I think after the lengthy debug process with Demon, I was feeling like I'd rather have electric shocks applied to my eyeballs than do more debugging. Fortunately that sense of dread seems to have worn off and I was able to get things done.
Mostly I worked on a prototype for a mirror puzzle. I got things mostly working - the mirrors moved around okay, though reflections didn't work quite properly. Hopefully I can add some more debug code today and see if I can get it working. Ideally I'll be able to prototype the more complicated parts of the game in NWN so that it's easier to implement when Dragon Age really comes out.
The other thing I'm working on, something I've fiddled with for months, is a ship-to-ship combat system. I've waffled back and forth between turn based and real time, debating how complex I really want it to be. Yesterday I tried to break the problem down into much smaller steps, starting with simply getting a ship to move around an ocean properly. Just that is likely to take a week or two to get working properly. Lots of hard problems.
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I did some more behind the scenes work today,...
December 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN2
 I did some more behind the scenes work today, putting together my build notes in a more organized fashion. I also dusted off my mirror puzzle, making my custom mirror a bit bigger (before it was knee sized) and starting in on the scripting. I think I've picked a preferred method for getting light to reflect properly. Hopefully some of the functions I've picked will show up again in Dragon Age. Ah, the joys of prototyping.
I've already gotten some e-mails from people who would like to volunteer. It's still a bit premature, probably by a year or so. Hopefully I can leverage my so-called fame to amass a horde of evil minions to help with things such as music composition, voice acting, editing, 3D modeling, translating to other languages, and of course the endless testing that's usually required with such things.
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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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