Progress continues

December 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a good boy this morning and started in ...

December 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a good boy this morning and started in with the debugging again. It's nice to see the list of issues getting so small (at least in comparison to the early days). I even found a bug of my own - there was a dialog where the import process from NWN1 had dropped off the "e" from "Touché".

I continue to give the alphabet assault game my love and attention. Yesterday I worked on a second level and this morning I fiddled with some custom content. It's fun.

I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have...

December 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have a touch of a cold and couldn't manage to drag myself to the bug list this morning.

Instead, I decided to inject a little more awesomeness into the Alphabet Assault game. I started a second level of the dungeon (it needs at least three or four, but currently has only one) and added a new feature. There are certain weapons in the dungeon that if you're using it and you spell a word with a key letter, it'll give the weapon a temporary boost. For example, if you have the Axe of B and spell the word "grab", your axe will do massive electrical damage for the next 60 seconds. It's a fun additional feature, guaranteeing that this mini-game will likely be my favorite in the whole module.

I also worked on a timesaver for the sound files. I worked up a new technique that ditches copying and pasting into Excel to create lipsynch animation. Now I copy the wav files into one folder, run a batch file, and the compressed version and fxe file appears in another.

After several days of taking it easy, work ha...

December 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After several days of taking it easy, work has returned like an unwanted itch. I've been very busy the last couple days. I did manage some time to add additional polish to the Sanity Defense game. I'm hopeful I got rid of the most recent bugs, though it likely needs to have the balance adjusted a little more.

Our brave testers have been hard at work and I've been dutifully flagging e-mails to follow up with later. The list of issues continues to shrink, but it would be nice to take care of the remaining ones.

Also in the last few days I put together an improved method for moving files around. Basically I plug in an external drive and run a batch file. I run another batch file to create a full set of installers. It's pretty handy and should hopefully save me time and minimize bugs in the future.

The brains were flying left and right while h...

December 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The brains were flying left and right while hordes of enemies attacked. It's a typical morning in the Miller household, with me slowly finishing up this particular mini-game. It's coming along nicely, with a proper sequence of events and all of the enemies and defenses in the game.

I still need to whip up some dialog, fix some bugs, and balance things, but hopefully that won't take too long.

Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Min...

December 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Mindflayers with floating brains. The main guts of my Sanity Defense game are working nicely. The map updates with the position of the player, enemies, and active portals. It's not as smooth as the real map, but it gets the job done. The only thing I might fiddle with is showing off the direction the player is facing, as I found myself getting turned around a few times.

The game itself is fairly fun. I need to add a few more enemies, suitably bizarre, of course. I've already got the dialog planned out, though I've yet to write it.

It's really fun getting back to module building after the long weeks of QA work. I really like the way these D&D versions of popular online games are turning out. I've been eyeing "Elite Beat Agents" lately. With my new GUI skills, I think I can pull it off. Hmm.

Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled...

December 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled at my computer this morning while everyone slept, freezing away in my in-laws' breezeway. Despite my camaraderie with Tiny Tim, I managed to whip up a fairly cool GUI for the little mini-game that goes along with the bizarre area I created yesterday.

Even though there's not an actual game behind it yet, I really like the way it's turning out. The GUI lets you pick a defense (the assorted brain icons) and click on a map of the area to place it. The are 400 invisible buttons above the map, in a 20x20 grid, which translate into x and y coordinates. The appropriate defense is summoned, ready to fight off enemies. You can see one of them on the left, hovering above the meteor-pocked landscape.

I've started making some of the enemies, which I'm trying hard to make look suitably bizarre. Currently I have a fleshy-looking thing with giant eyeballs floating above it. Needless to say, I want more of those things.

I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up t...

December 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up to Portland. At the core, it's Desktop Defense, a flash mini-game that's fairly popular. The theme is "insanity", which makes for some fun placeables and terrain. I also need to whip up a GUI that lets you place your defenses and keep an eye on the various waves of attacks that come after you.

I sketched out the scripts that I'll need to make it work, which don't seem too tricky. The custom content is a bit more challenging, but it's frankly really fun to do. How can you not love floating brains fighting off hordes of mindflayers?

I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought ...

December 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought I'd show off a little of what I did yesterday. The Clockwork Man quest is coming along nicely, though I still have a lot of area building and conversion to do. Some of the automata already have voices, synthesized, of course. If I get time at my in-law's, I'd like to continue and maybe even test it.

In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd pass along an appropriate holiday video, made for our kind of people.

I stayed up a little too late last night, wor...

December 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up a little too late last night, working on getting the end of the module to a workable state. The most challenging bug was amusingly the drinking part, especially getting the steins to appear in the party's hand. Initially they were drinking their weapons, then they'd drink from invisible cups, and finally the requisite stein. There were some other odd issues, such as the game not checking your alliances properly. I think it's finally all sorted out and I'm eager to get the latest build into the testers' hands.

I actually got some time to work on other things yesterday. I started in on the Mechanist quest. It turns out I hadn't entirely finished some of the dialogs. There's also several areas that need to be built out. I'll see if I can do some more work with that today. It's a fun change of pace after all the bug fixing.

I'm packing up my computer tomorrow and we're headed to Portland for holiday festivities. Fortunately my in-laws have a fast Internet connection, so I should be able to stay mostly connected.

I went through the final moments of the game ...

December 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the final moments of the game and it turns out it's pretty messy. Heather teleports away, Daniel starts up a conversation, and then proceeds to drink his sword repeatedly. Amusing, of course, but not exactly what I'd planned.

I just finished recoding the script, adding in the missing items, and putting in some debug scripts in case things fail. I'll test it out tonight and hopefully get things to a state where it's worthy to send to the brave QA crew.

Nothing too exciting today

December 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting today. I've gone through the list of the most critical bugs and am hoping to make new builds for the testers tomorrow. The holiday madness is starting up and I'll be out of town for this upcoming weekend (though I'm bringing my computer along).

I got my external hard drive yesterday, which I'm hoping can minimize some of my "oops, I lost a file" issues I've had in the past. Ideally I'd set up some sort of versioning system. In a pinch, though, I can always just copy files over with a simple batch file.

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things

December 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. I have a new tester who ran through the first module again and came up with all sorts of funny issues. Your soldiers in the Remembrance: War area no longer have Dwarf as their racial type.

The second act is getting attention as well. PJJ pointed out that while all of a person's possessions were supposedly going to be given to the player, the NPC was actually dirt poor. I fixed that, and gave them little treasure chests the player can freely loot. I have some journal entries to fix and other little things to fiddle with today.

Still, the issues I'm taking care of now are much more simpler than the ones I was fixing a few weeks ago. Progress feels good.

Crazy busy today

December 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Crazy busy today. I scribbled down some notes about how I'd technically accomplish "Lute Hero", but otherwise did very little.

My favorite bug report of the day was that the newly added fish make cat noises. While the reality is that I used a cat creature as a base and changed the appearance, I'd love to just decare them "catfish" and leave them in. Maybe not.

Okay, I was a bad boy this morning

December 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I was a bad boy this morning. I didn't look at my list of debug notes once so far.

Instead, I had this crazy dream of doing Lute Hero within Neverwinter Nights. Players would pound on their keyboards as the camera panned around them. Hordes of demonic fans would be cheering the player on as flames flew from their fingertips. In the end, the devil himself would nod begrudgingly, admitting defeat.

Well, it turns out there's a huge number of technical issues trying to implement this. By default, you can't have a custom GUI accept keystrokes. I ended up using a NWN1-style dialog (seen here, partially removed) and modifying the GUI. I think I can throw up my own GUI and let the player press the keystrokes to play chords. The main drawback is that only one key can be pressed at a time and keys can't be held.

I also looked into camera controls, as it's not Lute Hero without a slow circle around the player. It turns out Gestalt's camera system still mostly works for NWN2. With a little fiddling, I think I can make it work.

So, I think the basics are there. We'll see how enthusiastic I get later on.

Periodically, I have to publicly admit the ex...

December 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, I have to publicly admit the extent of my lameness. This would be one of those times. Months ago, Rob and Eshinee sent me Heather's dialog, along with a bunch of songs for the tavern. I was knee-deep in debugging mode at the time, focusing on getting the game to a playable state. I didn't really listen to the songs, but stuck them in a folder to deal with later.

I finally had a chance to listen to them yesterday and have to say that the songs they put together are simply awesome. Eshinee has a beautiful singing voice, the lyrics tie directly to the story, and the tunes got stuck in my head as soon as I heard them.

I created a jukebox system for the Black Spot. Each time you enter, you'll hear a different song. If you wait around, the songs will cycle through. You can also talk to the singer and have her switch to the next one if you like.

I have bugs to fix as well, but I'm so glad I had a chance to put these in the game.

I went through the last of the bugs yesterday...

December 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the last of the bugs yesterday, fixing a little here and polishing a little there. I have a bunch of new builds I need to upload and pass along to the QA folks. Just one more step on the way to a public beta.

The big fix was that an entire side quest is now playable. It has an underwater area, which I had previously done by covering it with deep water. Unfortunately there are a ton of bugs when doing that, the biggest being that you can't actually see your character or any placeables. I got rid of that and put in a wavy blurring effect that when coupled with fog looks somewhat realistic.

Things still seemed somewhat sparse, so I added some cute little fishies. To make them more interesting, they also have some fish-like behavior. They'll move away from the player, follow nearby fish, and wander around on occasion. Silly, I know, but ambiance matters.

Update: I just got a note from PJJ that Dark Waters 2 can actually be completed. That's a first and a pretty big milestone on our way to release. There's still bugs to work though, but we're pretty close. It's also nice to hear that he thinks DW2 is better than DW1. Hopefully everyone else will too.

I did some odds and ends work yesterday

December 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did some odds and ends work yesterday. I had fixed some issues with flintlocks the other day (monk melee feats gave them a bonus and bolt properties were applied to flintlocks). I straightened out the 2da file, but was left with flintlocks shooting a rather large rock out the end. It took awhile, but I tracked down which model it used and replaced it with a small version of the cannonball I used in the first module. It looks much better if you freeze the action (especially if you dramatically move the camera). The only downside is that bullets always bounce off after impact, which looks a little odd.

I also improved the look of the Turtle Rock ruins. I fixed a recurring issue with feats turning invisible. Now they're fine, but the psionic feats aren't showing up. I guess I'm okay with that, as players basically use the feat item for the effect anyway. Just a little odd.

I have a new batch of debug things to work on tonight, thanks to PJJ. I've fixed a few and some are new. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a new build to everyone for the weekend. Slowly getting there.

I finally got Daniel's romance working properly

December 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got Daniel's romance working properly. It's fairly smooth now, with a gentle reminder from Daniel and the option to jump right to the relevant NPC and back again. I also discovered that the voice clips my sister recorded hadn't been hooked up to the dialog, so hopefully that's in place now too.

The sheer number of other bugs I fixed is pretty lengthy. The biggest was probably the Turtle Rock side quest, which you should actually be able to complete now. It turns out a light above the door was actually blocking it, so you couldn't go in. I'd like to spend some time working on populating the area with placeables as well, as it looks a little sparse in some areas.

I'm also hopeful I have the flintlock bugs fixed. The Shores of Haldun PW integrated them recently and reported some odd behavior. After fiddling with the 2da file, it should be working better. I had to test it out by making some brimstone ball and powder and set things on fire. Worked like a charm. I do notice that there's a large rock showing up when I attack things. I think I can replace it with something more ball-looking.

I also made a "DW2Lite" installer. It looks like the no-music, sound, and transition screen version clocks in at 78 MB in size, while the full version is around 180 MB. That probably reflects the overall size of this module. There's a ton of new areas and content, probably my biggest release yet.

Oh, and I typed up some dialog for what I'm calling the Alphabet Assault area. It's fairly tongue-in-cheek, but hopefully I'm walking that fine line between amusing adventure and outright parody.

I set sail for Woodhaven this morning

December 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I set sail for Woodhaven this morning. Daniel's possible romance with one of the elves isn't working properly. I think I knew it had a problem, but I was pretending otherwise. In the NWN prototype, it was pretty easy to move people around areas and start up conversations, as everyone was in the same area already. With NWN2, I have multiple modules, so when you show up on the Woodhaven docks, I need to start up Daniel's "Can I visit X?" dialog, then transition, then switch control to Daniel, hide the PCs, and start up the NPC conversation. When it's done, I need to move everyone back to the previous module in the right place. Much trickier.

Still, I think I have it nearly done. Everything works except when the NPC dialog fires, it almost immediately ends and jumps back to the High Seas module. I'm pretty sure it's the typical "you can't really talk to an NPC unless they're in the same area" problem I know and love. Hopefully it's not too hard to fix.

I have a long list of more bugs to fix today. Should keep me busy.

Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet A...

December 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet Assault game. It's very simple, but elegant. The coding took only a few days to put together. At this point, the basic mechanism feels pretty solid and all that's left is to flesh out the dungeon and add some quest-related dialog.

I made some general changes. You get letters when damaging your opponent, not just killing them. Depending on the damage you deal or hit dice of the killed creature, you might get bronze, silver, or gold letters. These give increasing bonuses to the word's power. If I have a power of 5 and the word has the letter N, it'll give a negative level to nearby foes. If the word also had the letter Z, a ray will zap your opponents for 10 points of damage. If the power of the word were increased to 25, the word would drain 5 levels and do 50 points of damage.

It all sounds complicated, but during testing I started to forget about the mechanics and started just spelling long words. Depending on the situation, I might want to save certain letters for later, or play my gold U to get a massive undead right away. Pretty soon pretty spell effects are flashing everywhere and melee combat is relegated to refilling my supply of letters.

I'm whipping up some dialog for the area, making it hopefully more than a dungeon crawl and spelling bee combination. So far I'm quite happy with the result.

The testing from the weekend has started pouring in. I'm still struggling to find a good file hosting site for me to upload files to regularly. Filefront, my favorite, strangely stopped working for me. Hopefully I can get that resolved soon.

I've been really busy fixing bugs last night ...

December 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been really busy fixing bugs last night and this morning. The first module got some extra polish, fixing up some odd camera motion in some of the cutscenes. Robert gets his old head back, which I'm hoping my previous appearances.2da fiddling fixed. I had some missing lipsynch animation which should be fixed now. For the second module, I recorded some new speech as testers kept wanting a certain action at the end of the first module to be noticed (which I completely understand).

I have a workaround for the summoning bug in place, which hopefully will do the trick. Scenes where companions were invisible should now have them visible again. The biggest problem was my own fault, which let old 2da files slip into a hak pack and cause issues. That should be fixed as well.

I feel pretty good about sending along a new build to everyone tomorrow. Maybe I can find some time today to work on my spelling area. I'm starting to get some silly ideas about how I want it to turn out. Should be fun.

As a total aside, my sister ran into a couple people who were fans of my games. It always strikes me as funny when that happens. For some reason I think that only imaginary people on the Internet play my games. Certainly no one in the real world.

I've been working on debugging this morning

December 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on debugging this morning. I think I have a workaround for the summoning bug that showed up in the last NWN2 patch. Basically Daniel will unsummon his animal companion, and then be fully rested to summon it again after the transition. This is a bit of an extra advantage he has over the other party members, as he regains spells and hit points, so I might take it out once the bug gets fixed in a patch.

I've also been going back and fixing issues from the first module. Heather and Daniel were supposed to drop hints about a locked door in the maintenance level. Now they do. I've also fixed a couple cutscenes and improved the camera. I'm going to see if I can do that for another one some time today.

I've also reverted Robert back to his old head, hoping that my changes to the hak pack fixed the "Frankenstein Robert" bug that happens with MotB players. There's some other head-related bugs I've fixed. I'm tempted to make Heather's head go back to the way it was, as I like it more, but there do seem to be some hat issues that can only be fixed by using a "normal" human head.

No pretty picture today

December 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty picture today. Just imagine I'm posting about an old school text adventure or something.

I debugged the alphabet game yesterday, which continues to amuse me. Little pop-up text over the letters say things like "A is for Armor" and "B is for Blindness". When you spell a word with those letters, that effect happens. I've only got a quarter of the way through the alphabet, so things like Z don't do anything exciting yet. You can also spell words such as "Sword" that in addition to the letter-based effects, also make the party do maximum damage with melee weapons for the duration. I'd like to add more of these to reward the thoughtful wordsmith.

I also did basic area building, making the level actually look like a real place. It's amazing how much time it takes to create a single level, placing lights, placeables, and so on. I'm going for a straight dungeon-crawl feel, which is actually pretty different from most of the areas I have in the game. Today I'd like to work on getting creatures to "drop" new letters, with more powerful creatures giving out bronze, silver, or gold letters which give a more dramatic effect.

I had problems uploading the latest build to FileFront yesterday, so I couldn't pass things out to the testers. I'm going to try again today, and switch over to several other file sharing servers if it fails.

Update: I just noticed that there was a new developer post on Obsidian's blog today. Looking at their plans for the 1.12 patch, it appears their #1 item is:
Eliminate the errors caused by transitioning with familiars summoned.

So, it looks like it's not my fault. In my next build, I'll see if I can unsummon Daniel's companion before each area transition. It's a bit silly, but should work.

Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for th...

December 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for the next module. On the left is a "Letter Fountain" where you can fill up on letters. They show up on a GUI to the right where you can click on them to spell words.

The plan is that every letter causes a certain type of effect. For example, maybe "A" is for armor, which increases your party's AC. Perhaps "B" is for Blindness, which temporarily blinds your foes. Some of the more challenging to use letters, such as Z, would have more powerful effects (e.g. "Z" is for zap, a lighting bolt against your foes). Coupled with this, longer words produce more powerful effects, so you want to spell words using as many letters as possible.

You can gain more letters at fountains like this, or when killing opponents in the dungeon. I'd like tougher foes to drop letters with a certain bonus, say bronze letters that are worth twice normal letters, silver for three times, and gold for five times. It might also be fun to have traps or opponents that steal your letters.

I also have this concept where you can spell certain words for even more effect. For example, spelling "rest" or "sleep" would cause the whole party to rest and heal (the dungeon is otherwise no rest). Spelling "big" causes the player to get enlarged. Should be fun.

There's lots of polish to add, such as showing when you've clicked a letter (and can't reuse it), and actually making the effects happen. I did get to impliment a binary search against my dictionary 2da file. I can usually tell if a word is in the dictionary with only a dozen or so reads to the file, so it's quite fast. I was pretty proud of myself, as I don't usually do that sort of programming any more.

I think we're finally figuring out what's been causing the crashes. The panther in MotB uses the same 2da lines as in Dark Waters. I found a way to get rid of my appearances.2da file from my hak. It turns out I was only using it to reskin a creature, which can be done via a special effect. I'm going to get a new build to testers today in hopes that fixes the issue entirely.

Debugging continues

December 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues. I fixed my GUI problems I ran into yesterday. It was also pointed out that the infamous Soul Gem was missing from Doctor Fenril's. It's my favorite evil item, allowing players to be rewarded not in gold or goodness, but in the NPC's immortal soul. Anyway, it turns out the base item type was wrong, which was easy to fix.

I'm also partial just hanging out at Doctor Fenril's place. Though it takes a fair bit of time to set up, he's one of the NPCs that walks around their shop actually doing things. He'll mix up his cauldron, cast spells, and check on the customer, all the time holding a massive spoon. I can respect that sort of devotion to his craft.

The only worrisome thing is that I have several testers reporting serious crash bugs. I'm going to pass along the most recent build, in hopes that fixes the problem. I've also asked a couple folks to pass along some of the nitty-gritty debug files. With luck, the problem will magically vanish with the new build or the problem will be obvious. I spent some time this morning going between ports and couldn't recreate the problem. Isn't that just typical of those pesky bugs?

Update: One of our brave testers seems to have uncovered the issue. Crashes only happen when Daniel has a panther out. Since panthers are specific to Mask of the Betrayer, it never happened to me. My guess is that I need to update my appearances.2da file so that the panther shows up properly. Hopefully we can sort this out soon.

I put together another GUI yesterday, which i...

December 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I put together another GUI yesterday, which is mostly working. You can see your current psionic skills and use up skill gems to increase them. The only thing that's not working is the hover text that says how many gems it costs to increase the skill. I need to fiddle a bit more and see what I'm missing, as I do this exact same thing somewhere else.

I might actually have a day to explore options for the next module. I've been hesitant to do much as I've been so focused on finishing up the current module. I ran across an odd little game called Bookworm Adventures that was strangely inspiring. There's quite a few technical challenges getting something like this working for NWN2. Most interesting is dealing with the dictionary and coming up with an intelligent search and/or indexing system. I'm not sure how fast NWN2 would be reading through 60,000 words to see if they're valid. Anyway, we'll see what wacky things I can come up with.

Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chrono...

December 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chronomancer quest again. This time it was a campaign script that I had deleted from one of my computers, but not another, and when I copied things around, it arose like the dead to feed upon my brains. It was very easy to fix once I figured it out, though figuring it out took awhile.

The Cat's Paw problems were very easy to fix as well, a typo and some missing journal entries. There were a few more minor fixes if I recall correctly.

I'd like to put together another tab on the stats and achievements GUI screen that displays all the psionic powers you can get and their skill level. Currently it's buried a bit by using a skill gem and assigning powers, which isn't very intuitive.

As for today, I'm busy uploading a new build for the testers and I'll send it out shortly.

It's amazing how much polish there was to do ...

December 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's amazing how much polish there was to do in the Woodhaven area. After making all the fights more challenging yesterday, I toned down the arena difficulty more today. I ended up losing constantly even after I had all the forms and bursts and knew what I was doing. There's also a couple ways you can cheat for players who poke around a bit more.

There were small fixes, such as making a more impressive visual effect when using your totem or knife. Bigger things involved getting the combat balanced better and dealing with some GUI problems.

Hopefully today I can get to the Catspaw bugs, which so far don't look too bad.

I made some good progress yesterday and this ...

December 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made some good progress yesterday and this morning, returning to Woodhaven to clean up some issues that our crack team of testers discovered. I increased the difficulty, as it was just too darn easy to make it through each battle. There were also problems with creatures not spawning properly, which should now be fixed.

Finally, it looks like a couple of my named opponents got lost in the shuffle, so I recreated them. Losing things seems to be a recurring theme, so I'm tempted to buy myself a portable hard drive and stick Visual Source Safe on it. There's more overhead, checking things in and out, but I think it's worth it.

I have another quest to debug sometime today, but hopefully I can get that finished and whip up a new build.