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NWN 1

The other day a coworker asked how I found th...

December 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The other day a coworker asked how I found the time to work on this little project. Well, I woke up at 4:30 this morning and have been plugging away ever since. I entered in more Woodhaven dialog, but have primarily been finishing up the Chronomancer quest, getting it ready for the Bioware writing contest.

There's some scripting and a tiny bit of dialog left, not to mention testing and editing and such. Still, I'll almost certainly be done in time. I'm not quite satisfied with the way it turned out. Some elements are very different and unique, but there's not as much branching as I would like. Branching dialog gives the player the feel they have more options and control over their lives, but it raises the word count considerably. I may end up working on a second quest, which is much more focused, and either submitting that one or submitting both. We'll see.

Since it's the last day of the year, it's traditional to look back and reflect on how things have gone. A year ago I was working on the mirror puzzle on the first level of the first module and hadn't had a single team member join. Now I'm knee-deep through the second module and have a seemingly huge team of people helping out.

Some things have gone really well. I like how the story has come together and I enjoy writing the interactions between the main NPCs. The first module, while seemingly a simple dungeon crawl, has a lot of fun and unique combats, systems, and amusing banter. The second module is starting to show off the piratey feel, with interesting places and characters really popping up.

Running a team has been harder than I thought it would be. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time needed to manage everyone, tasks aren't always coordinated well, and I always feel like I'm not able to give the personal touch I need. Turnover has been fairly high, with people vanishing for an assortment of reasons, not all easy to fix. One writer was called up to active duty, for example.

On the other hand, they've also produced some amazing things. The music department continues to make magic with their tunes. The QA folks stoically go through my most horrible spelling and scripting bugs. Sunjammer's scripting systems bring added flair to the module. Razvan's models are prolific and beautiful to behold. The voice actors are ramping up and producing some amazing stuff.

As for the year ahead, it may be even more exciting than this last one. NWN2 should be released, so I'll be busy converting the prototypes into the final modules. While I'd like to say that I'll have the entire campaign prototyped, the reality may be that I'm only finished with the first two modules. Keeping the later modules shorter and more focused may be a necessity if I'm going to ship in a reasonable time frame. I miss the Shadowlords days when I put out five modules in nine months.

So, here's hoping for a good new year. Hopefully we can ship something soon after NWN2's release that's both bug free and fun.

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As usual these days, I'm feeling terribly beh...

December 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

As usual these days, I'm feeling terribly behind on all my various responsibilities. I've been spending a lot of time with my family these days, so work on the module has been slower than I would like.

This morning I typed in some of the massive amounts of dialog I've been writing, as well as creating the Woodhaven area. For some crazy reason, I ended up making a rather complex NPC that you "win" as the result of a competition. It's fun toying with the player's expectations and giving them a "prize" they don't necessarily expect.

There's still much to do. Hopefully I can get to my backlog of e-mails in the next few days. My apologies to everyone who's trying to reach me.

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Not a lot to report

December 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Not a lot to report. I've been writing, writing, and writing. Between all the various family events, it's hard to find time to actually touch the toolset.

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Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous...

December 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous post-solstace to everyone. Strangely enough, I was a writing maniac yesterday, doing some of my best work in the middle of the Christmas party. I think it was all those chocolate-covered espresso beans I downed, giving me the writing power of ten mortal men.

So far, I've written nearly all the dialog for the Dominator quest, planned the combat, and done some rough mapping. I wrote the dialog for three of the characters in Woodhaven, nicely wrapping the arena combat into a real story line. Woodhaven may turn into a more interesting place than I'd planned, with possible political and romantic entanglements. We'll see how ambitious my writing gets.

If I can manage to get the kids to behave, I may have a couple hours of writing time in the car this morning as well. Today might be fairly productive despite the whole "celebrating with family" thing.

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Well, I finally got around to checking the bu...

December 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I finally got around to checking the bulletin board this morning, now that I'm in Portland and have fewer responsibilities. It helped that I woke up at 4:30 in the morning too. I think Razvan is actually an elf in disguise, treating me to new Christmas models because I've been a good little boy. This latest image is one of the two new ships he's working on, bringing the ship total to some incredibly vast number. Now that Obsidian has confirmed that static models should be importable without any problems, I feel much better about our ambitious plans.

I brought my computer along with me on my trip, but discovered that I left an important cable behind. It looks like I'll be doing writing without access to the module, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the way up, I wrote and planned. I penciled out some possible ways to work in some XCom-style gameplay, minus the aliens and ray guns, of course. Before anyone panics, the things that I want to steal are: base building, research, developing an elite team of soldiers, and slowly unraveling mysteries.

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I ran into an amusing bug yesterday that I on...

December 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I ran into an amusing bug yesterday that I only just resolved. In the middle of a fight, the arena master would suddenly start attacking the psionic projections, leading to his untimely death. I fiddled with the factions a bit and everything worked out nicely.

It's now to the point where fights actually work out fairly well. The player has the advantage in that they can change form at will, while the computer can only do it every six seconds. The computer's pretty good at choosing the optimal form to fight the player. I need to do some more testing and polishing, but it's coming along nicely.

As an aside, both the first and second Neverwinter Vault interviews are up. There's some pretty big pieces of information, some good, some bad. I like the description of area painting and the new scripting functions. Not releasing a model exporter is the biggest blow, which may cause a variety of problems for our project. I'm hoping the community can address the problem like they did before, but it may push things out a ways.

I'm traveling today. Hopefully those two hours in the car will translate into writing time. I'll probably bring my computer along with me so that work might continue. Who knows, I might even check e-mail and message boards, which I'm sure have been piling up these last few days.

Update: It looks like I can breathe a sigh of relief on the model exporter. Static models are no problem, only animated ones. Things like flintlocks and ships should hopefully be just fine.

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Thanks to my daughter who can only nap in the...

December 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Thanks to my daughter who can only nap in the car, I put in an hour or so of quality writing time yesterday. I focused on the Bioware writing contest, putting myself further over the 3500 word limit. I'd like to consider myself beyond mere numbers at this point, though it still irks me how bad my estimation skills are.

I woke up this morning and turned my peak creative brain towards why the foes in the psionic combat were showing up invisible. Soon enough, my brain had the answer - they were doing it because they had no other choice. Soon enough, I realized the error of my ways and gave the NPCs the skill to change into other forms. I picked a third rank opponent and soon enough I was facing a red dragon and things were going poorly.

It still needs a lot of work. The PC can't change into all available forms due to a menu problem. The balance doesn't feel quite right. The AI needs tweaking in order to make it more intelligent. I need a lot more mental bursts (sort of like spells) to liven things up. I need to build up the island itself that hosts these initial combats. Still, progress is being made and it's turning out approximately how I envisioned.

I'm on the road tomorrow, travelling to Portland. That may mean more writing time or more interruptions to my project time. We'll see how it goes.

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I made a bit of progress

December 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made a bit of progress. Yesterday was our family's Christmas, the first of three, so it was full of people and toys and such. Early this morning I managed to code in some more Forms and put in better informational messages so the player gets a sense of what's going on. I think I broke something along the way, as my opponent's creature is invisible at the moment. Ah, well, time to write more debug code. I'm used to it by now.

I also came to the realization yesterday that I have three unfinished quests that I'm working on. I don't mind too much, as it can be more fun to move from project to project, but at some point I need to hunker down and finish things.

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It sometimes pays to be obsessive

December 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It sometimes pays to be obsessive.

Last night, among all my various games and such, I opted instead to continue working on the psionic combat system. At this point, most of the significant bugs are worked out. I added in a few new creatures as well, though I can see that I want to add even more to keep the game interesting. I'm currently doing a bit of balancing. Before, games went on a bit too long. Now, the Red Dragon form only takes a handful of combat rounds to defeat a rat. This latest image shows the dragon's foot and a bit of rat sticking between the toes.

The next step will be to create a quick ranking system that allows the player to progress through this little quest. I'm shooting for something relatively simple, so I may just auto-create some opponents via script, rather than trying to hand create each one with custom dialog. Keeping things simple is my latest mantra, otherwise things will never get done.

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I'm having a hard time working on the project...

December 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm having a hard time working on the project as the days seem filled with family things. I did manage some debug time, fixing the menu that lets a player switch between the various forms. Of course, the AI player just keeps the default incredibly weak form. The next step will be to get the AI doing somewhat intelligent things. The code's there, taking all sorts of factors into account, such as the relative strengths and weaknesses of each form, the current hit points, the foe's hit points, and so on. I just need to make it work.

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I made a ton of progress on the psionic comba...

December 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made a ton of progress on the psionic combat system yesterday. The core of the scripts are finished being written and everything compiles. Of course, just because it can compile doesn't mean much. I started up the game for the first time this morning and a whole bunch of things didn't work properly. So, debugging is the next thing I get to work on.

I also need to come up with a good way to do a tournament-style progression. I have a tentative plan at this poing, letting the player work their way up through the ranks until they can achieve their goal. I'm hoping for something that's not too fancy.

I started my vacation today, so I'm officially off of work until the beginning of next year. I'm not sure what that means in terms of project time. It may mean more for some aspects and less for others. There's a ton of family events happening, but I usually get in some good writing time while driving from place to place.

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I took a break from writing to put into pract...

December 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from writing to put into practice some of the scripting ideas I've been having lately. Most of what I've done so far is groundwork, defining data structures, variables, and other boring stuff. I decided to at least test a tiny bit of functionality by making the "spirit gathering" part of the system work properly.

As of ten minutes ago, it works just great. I can use the knife or totem on myself and it highlights all the creatures in the area with spirits I can steal. I can use the knife on dead creatures. Presumably, I can use the totem on peaceful ones, though I haven't tested that out yet.

Once a player has gathered up a few spirits, they're now accessable to them when doing psionic combat. They can change forms, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. They can apply "bursts", healing their creature, giving them extra attacks, and so on.

I think the system will be moderately complex. It's not at the same level as the Pirate Cards game, nor do I want it to be. In a sense, it's more of a very complicated game of rock, scissors, and paper.

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I haven't peeked at the word count lately, bu...

December 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I haven't peeked at the word count lately, but I know it's pushing towards the 4,000 word limit. I even forgot a whole new final phase, which I'm only now getting to. Fortunately the Bioware FAQ does state "That being said, this is not a hard word count; it should be the writer's target." I suspect I'll be in the "writer's target" word count when I'm done. Hopefully I can tighten things up a bit. I have another quest that I'm thinking of that might make for a much less chatty submission. We'll see how it goes.

I managed to spend some time penciling out the psionic combat system, complete with constants, variable names, functions, and basic pseudo code. It all needs to be polished up, but hopefully should make for a fun little system.

It's similar to the arena combat in Demon, in that you have a proxy creature fighting for you. Instead of just watching, however, you can change your creature's form as well as applying short-lived bursts. The different forms have different upkeep costs, which drains from the same pool as your other psionic skills. If you run out of "focus", your creature reverts to a rather weak form and there's a good chance that you'll lose.

I still need to actually write some code for this whole thing, but I'm hopeful it's entertaining enough to be worthwhile.

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Well, I'm at 3,600 words at the moment and ju...

December 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm at 3,600 words at the moment and just got into the final phase of the quest for the Bioware writing contest. I have about 1,000 words in one particular dialog that I could probably trim without losing much. I'll do some aggressive editing after I finish this final section. I also have a few words used up by a test dialog, though not too many. It's nice to slowly making progress.

I've been in all-day meetings at work and doing family stuff each night, so my various game "responsibilities" are sliding a bit. I did manage to scribble out some coffee-induced ideas for psionic combat. It has the potential for being fun, though I better put it in a lot if I'm going to spend the time making an elaborate system. I keep reminding myself to keep things simple wherever I can. There's already enough complex things in the game.

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It's getting almost comical how badly my esti...

December 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's getting almost comical how badly my estimates of the word count are going. I'm at 3300 at the moment, and I'm not quite finished with the fourth phase. So, yes, it's fairly certain that I'm going to go over. I can go back and tighten up some dialog, I suppose, but I still don't think it'll help much. The last phase will likely be fairly short, though there's still some critical dialog that has to happen.

As an aside, I keep running into funny problems when trying to get people to sit down and have a pleasant conversation. I typically figure something out, but the scripting to do so is often rather tricky.

Hopefully today I can finish up the final phase and then begin to carefully spellcheck, proofread, and edit the quest into something vaguely resembling a finished product.

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I'm feeling behind, as usual, though I did ma...

December 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm feeling behind, as usual, though I did manage to put in some work over the weekend. Most of it was dialog related. I found Lord Brighton's initial dialog and threw that in, as well as putting in the first dialog for the Spider. Both are key NPCs and it felt good to make some progress.

I have a bunch of tasks I still need to get to after our meeting. The biggest is getting the voice actors organized and assigned to roles. Most of it is already posted somewhere, but I just need to organize it.

I also want to get back to the writing contest. After my initial fretting, it's pretty obvious that I'll have plenty of room before I hit the 3500 word limit.

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A quick update this morning, as the kids are ...

December 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

A quick update this morning, as the kids are running wild.

We had our team meeting this morning, making some good progress and introducing a few new people. Marque Pierre is our new official art lead. He's getting his master's degree in this sort of thing, so I'm quite happy. Allyndyn managed to find a place connected to the Internet along his travels, so we chatted quite a bit about voice acting. It's time to start rallying the troops and getting new voices recorded.

I also managed to do quite a bit of work on the quest I'm submitting for the writing contest. I'm well under the 3500 word limit and I'm already at the fifth phase. It's second to the last, so I feel pretty good about the progress. I'll likely go back over it a few times, carefully editing and fleshing things out. So far I'm pretty happy with it.

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I finished my somewhat lengthy interview with...

December 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finished my somewhat lengthy interview with the Vault. I'll post a link when it appears on their site.

I sadly didn't get much of a chance to work on the module yesterday. I'm slowly writing the dialog for the second phase, though I opted to go to bed early last night.

I do have a treat for everyone out there. Voxwoman coerced her daughter into recording a voice for the little girl who hangs out at the Black Spot playing the pirate cards game. This clip involves her talking about why she likes certain cards oh so very much. Listen up. It makes me laugh every time.

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Well, I've continued on with my original ques...

December 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I've continued on with my original quest and I think I might actually make it under the 3500 word limit for the contest. I'm at 1820 and just finished the first phase. Fortunately it's the longest and most complicated of all of them. With luck, the rest won't be nearly as tricky.

For comparison, here's some relative word counts:

ModuleWord Count
Shadowlords 110,676
Dreamcatcher 120,278
Demon90,585
Dark Waters 141,597
Dark Waters 224,496

As you can see, my first works started relatively small and grew over time. Demon nearly killed me with the amount of writing. With this new campaign, I appear to be leaning towards "large", with the second module already as big as the first in the Dreamcatcher campaign.

I did run across some silly bugs along the way. The strangest was when I was scripting a particular NPC to leave the holding area, but he refused to do it. I eventually grew frustrated and teleported myself into the area. It turns out he was busy trying to kill another NPC and couldn't be bothered with my silly little scripting commands. I fixed everyone's faction and it started working fine again.

The new voice actors are a treat to listen to. We have one woman in particular who was doing a little girl's voice from the Pirate Cards area. When she talked about "I really like the grog swilling and the wenching that they do," it nearly made me spray my drink out my nose.

I think I'm going to have a new interview over at the Vault. The combined Shadowlords, Dreamcatcher, and Demon compilation appears to be ranked #1, which is a treat. People like epic campaigns, it appears.

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Well, I found the word count

December 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I found the word count. It was pretty obvious once the tiny letters caught my eye. The bad news is that I'm almost positive I'm going to blow through the 3500 word count without even breaking a sweat. Already I'm up to 1339 and I'm not even done with the first phase of the quest.

I'm starting to realize that this particular quest might not be right for the contest. Still, it's not like the time I spent is going to waste. I'll almost certainly use everything I've done in the main campaign.

What it means is that I'll need to find another quest, much simpler, if I'd like to submit something to the writing contest. I think I have one, though there's aspects that are a bit tricky. It's outdoors, which means I've got to carefully make use of the 4x4 space. It also should have a huge crowd instead of just a couple NPC villagers. Still, it might work. I'll have to think it over.

Update: I'm flip-flopping again. I might be able to do this particular quest and not go over too badly, though I'm admittedly going to have to keep things more terse than I would prefer. We'll see how it goes.

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The new subquest is going nicely

December 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The new subquest is going nicely. I've started doing the scripting for the first phase. People are moving about where they're supposed to and saying the expected things. I can tell already that this small 4x4 area is going to be littered with waypoints moving people around.

Since I'm thinking about submitting this to the Bioware writing contest, I'm trying to follow their rules as best I can. Mostly I worry about the 3500 word limit. I have a funny feeling I'm going to go over that, though they do mention that it's not a hard limit. Shucks, I'm not even sure how to do a word count in the toolset.

Anyway, I'll probably continue on this quest of mine today. I've also got to get back to the boards and do some reading and responding. There's a team meeting coming up this weekend and it promises to be a pretty big one.

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Not a lot to report

December 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Not a lot to report. I continue to coordinate with the voice actors, fixing and clarifying issues as they pop up. The quest I'm doing for the Bioware writing contest is feeling increasingly solid. There's these complicated phases where certain things occur. So far, I've written about half of the first phase, taking notes on what scripting will be required.

So far I'm going with a mix of humor and seriousness. Hopefully the humor falls under "witty banter" and doesn't slide too far into silliness. These distinctions can be a slippery slope indeed.

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The weekend has been relatively busy, slowly ...

December 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The weekend has been relatively busy, slowly getting ready for the holiday madness. Friday I worked on one of the main quests. It's relatively complex and involves tangling with Port Brighton's legal system. I'm getting to the point where I need to spruce up the crime and punishment system in order to finish the quest.

The thing I'm most excited about is the quest I'm making for the Bioware writing contest. The last two days I've wracked my brains over how the incredibly twisted plot will work. I think I've settled on something I'm happy with, rehearsing the whole thing as I lay awake in bed this morning. It's hard not to spoil it for anyone, other than saying the structure is very different than anything I've done before.

The scripting requirements are somewhat steep. I realize that's not being evaluated, but it's required to make it work properly. This is really the first "teaser" of a sorts that we're going to publicly release, so I'd like it to be fairly polished. Ideally I can get the voice actors to do their thing as well, showing off their many talents.

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It was amazing how busy yesterday was

December 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was amazing how busy yesterday was. I barely touched the toolset as I spent all my free time on IM and answering e-mails. It looks like the Marque has jumped into the fray and begun working on some of the buildings. A ton of new voice actors just signed up. I did some fiddlings with the dialog for Robert, realizing my errors in trying to convert the .wav files to .mp3 files. Not going to work.

I also got a bit excited with the Bioware writing contest. I think I have a side quest that will work, though there's a tremendous amount of details. It's about as non-linear as it gets, so it's difficult to sketch out. Maybe I can work a bit more on that today.

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Yesterday was quite busy, though in quite une...

December 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was quite busy, though in quite unexpected ways. Most of my free time was spent talking to people on the team or wanting to join the team. One highlight is Marque, who is working on his master's degree in computer game design. I think he's going to start texturing as well, since that's one of our burning needs. I included a small image of some of his work. I also have an inbox full of people wanting to do voice acting work. Rumor has it, there's even a woman in there, which we desperately need (please, no nerd jokes).

It also looks like Bioware is having a writing contest. I'm sorely tempted to design a small subquest from the campaign specifically for it. It would be a teaser of sorts for the main campaign, and hopefully generate a bit of press. The tricky part is finding an appropriate subquest that would work for the contest. Right now I'm leaning towards either a Facade-like story or one involving time travel.

In terms of the campaign itself, a bit of progress was made. I've started in on one of the main quests. It involves a fair bit of intrigue and dark dealings, but I won't spoil too much. There's the opportunity for the player to be quite bad along the way.

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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.