While it would be silly of me to hope that to...

February 29, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

While it would be silly of me to hope that today's release will be completely bug-free, I'm hopeful it's the closest I've ever been. I fixed over 80 different issues in this most recent build. A few were highly annoying, such as your cargo miraculously duplicating under certain circumstances. Most were milder, including typos and the like. Many were fixes to issues with DW1, and I'm happy that the first module is getting polished up as well. I feel I rushed the release the first time around, and some things weren't as stable as I would have liked.

I still have people reporting crashes when entering some areas in the game. The good news (for me, anyway) is that if the player switches to another computer, the crash issues seem to go away. Evidently there's something about certain computers that is causing the problem. I'm pinning my hopes on the NWN2 1.12 patch fixing things, as I'm not sure what else I can do.

Here are the links to the latest beta patches:
Dark Waters 1 (full)
Dark Waters 2 (full)
Like before, if it seems relatively bug free come Monday, I'll start the ball rolling on getting things posted to the Vault.

I did a podcast with the NWN2 podcast folks (I don't think it's posted quite yet). I mostly rambled on for a half an hour, though they did manage to make me do my Death voice for a short bit. They also asked me about lipsynching and installers, so I ended up posting my lipsynch/wav conversion utility and sample installer files over on the downloads page. For those rare few of you who fiddle with such things, hopefully you'll find it useful.

I might do a bit of work with the next act today. I still want to get Lute Hero a bit more polished. I think I was dreaming about it last night, so it's evidently haunting my psyche. Better nip that one in the bud.

Well, I don't think we'll move from beta to f...

February 28, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I don't think we'll move from beta to final this month, as there's only another day to go. Still, I'm hopeful I can declare this thing polished and ready to go next month, maybe even in a week or two. The only show-stopping bug I've seen lately is the "crash on area load" one that randomly shows up for a small number of people. I'm putting my hopes in the upcoming NWN2 1.12 patch, as I keep hearing that these crashes happen in the official campaign as well.

I finished cleaning up the last of the DW1 bugs, including some fairly obscure ones. Now I'm into DW2 again. Most of the bugs aren't too serious (other than one person getting the infamous crash), but they're certainly annoying enough to fix. In one case, a magic item with a unique power did nothing. In another, the descriptions for NPCs were showing up with quotes instead of apostrophes. It turns out that copying from Word inserted a slanted quote, which NWN2 turned into a double quote. Swell.

I'm going to spend today fixing as many of the DW2 bugs as possible. If all goes well, I'll get a new build ready for the weekend.

I'm also doing a podcast tonight. Hopefully I won't embarrass myself too badly.

I've been grinding through the list of bugs

February 27, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I've been grinding through the list of bugs. It's amazing to think that there are still hidden ones buried away after all these years. Jessica dug up some rare ones, such as dialog for Heather and Daniel that could never fire and was only visible in the toolset.

This morning I had a couple reports that you couldn't gain friendship with Heather. It turns out you actually could, but the opportunities were so rare that most people didn't see anything. I'm going through the dialog this morning and adding in more places to make friends and influence people, or at least Heather.

Yesterday I got Chris' Mad Hatter lines chopped up and in the game. They're an order of magnitude better than my work, surprisingly funny in a twitchy sort of way. Plus I got to edit out soda belches from the raw source file, which is always a treat.

Michele asked me to do a podcast, and we're ironing out the details at the moment. People will get to hear my normal voice instead of the bizarre ones I do for the NPCs. Maybe I'll do the whole interview as Death, just for fun.

It appears my hubris in thinking I was nearly...

February 26, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

It appears my hubris in thinking I was nearly done has angered the gods in the deities.2da file. The heavens opened up and a host of bug reports drifted down. Unfortunately I had yet another person report a crash bug, this time when trying to get to Port Brighton from the High Seas area. Once the problem gets "stuck" in a save file, it seems to happen consistently. Very frustrating.

On the plus side, PJJ said he could play through without problems. Holger sent me some voice files for one of the unvoiced NPCs, which I hooked up. Chris sent me some MadHatter lines which I'll chop up and attach today.

The other silver lining is that the 1.12 patch will hopefully come out before Dark Water's release. If I'm really lucky, it'll magically fix the mysterious crash issues and all will be well in the world. And maybe I'll get a pony too.

I had two luxurious days of not working too h...

February 25, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I had two luxurious days of not working too hard on Dark Waters. I played around with a new idea for a game called WordPlay, which is a bit like Apples-to-Apples. The tricky part is the AI, which relies on huge array that lists the best choice given different card combinations. If I have 100 adjectives and 300 nouns, that's 30,000 possible combinations. To add to the fun, I'd like to have different styles of players, such as the Paladin who looks for the literal connections (e.g. "Vile" and "Undead" go together nicely for him). For the Trickster player, he might pick "My Spleen" when faced with the adjective "Tasty".

The only way I could possibly create those connections is by turning it over to the masses to do it for me. It's still a lot of work, but perhaps some of the folks out in Internet-land would be willing to spend a few minutes each day deciding that the best match for "Buxom" is "My Animal Companion". Anyway, we'll see how that wacky idea pans out.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Lute Hero game I'm working on. I have to do some really crazy timing things in order to get the song to synchronize with the note display. I had an epiphany that I could just set the time so that the seconds and milliseconds were zero at the start of the song, which made it vastly easier to keep track of things. The wacky game now seems to work, which means I suppose I have to build an actual module around it.

This finally gets me to the state of Dark Waters and whether or not I'll be officially releasing it before the sun burns out and humanity retreats to underground caverns.

It looks like the people who were having crashing problems continue to have issues. The number is small (maybe less than 5%), but it's super annoying and I'm to the point where I'm hoping the next NWN2 patch takes care of it. The only crazy workaround I've heard might work is opening the module in the toolset and running it from there. Why that would help, I have no idea. The only other vaguely good news is that entering those crash-prone areas isn't absolutely necessary for completing the game.

I got a couple presents in my in box this morning, some more voices for a couple characters. I had a few bug reports, which I'd like to investigate, but they may belong to the "happens every once in awhile" category of bugs. I also got some reports of minor plot inconsistencies, which I'm almost happy about. It's nice things have gotten to that point for a change.

So, I'm thinking that I can put together at least one more build, but unless there's something really serious after that, I'd like to go live. After six months debugging and polishing, it feels pretty darn' ready.

I hopefully squished my last bug this morning...

February 22, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I hopefully squished my last bug this morning (well, I doubt it, but I'm ever hopeful). There were some issues with Daniel's romance that I needed to fix. After writing a bit of code, I activated the QA item, and picked the dialog choice to turn on the romance.

I was greeted by a scream and realized that activating the quest involved killing off one of the NPCs. Daniel and Heather appeared nonplussed, but I bent down to pay my last respects to the poor guy.

Soon enough, I was romancing away. As planned, I had to leave Woodhaven and hop on a ship before the romance would be active again. The first time around, I didn't get my variables all right and ended up stuck behind the house in a holding area with some pigs. Damn pigs.

I fiddled yet some more, this time getting everything working apparently smoothly. I had gotten reports of crash issues, which I finally experienced myself. My guess is that if Daniel wasn't fully loaded before I took control of him and moved the player around, that might cause problems. I added a short delay before the excitement began and that seemed to do the trick. Daniel was well on the way to true love and I'm able to finally get this module out the door. Well, hopefully. We'll see what bug reports I get this weekend.

I'll be posting the latest build momentarily as it takes awhile to upload everything.

Update:
Okay - here are the latest files. With luck, everything will go well this weekend and I can finally declare this thing done. Can't wait!
Dark Waters 1 (full)
Dark Waters 2 (full)

Last night it was back to DW1 to test out som...

February 21, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Last night it was back to DW1 to test out some new fixes and make sure they didn't break anything. I'd forgotten how big a contrast there was with DW2, which feels far more open in comparison. Everything feels oppressive and tense, wandering through those abandoned halls.

I posted new builds over on the downloads section, and here's the latest bug notes. The problem was serious, but not happening frequently. I added some "just in case" scripts that hopefully prevent a cutscene from endlessly repeating.

PJJ reported another weird bug with DW2. Running over a trigger accidentally can cause problems with Daniel's romance (along with a crash). I think I know what I can do to prevent it, so I'm going to try and fix it today and get a new build out tomorrow. If the weekend goes well and no serious bugs come in, I may declare it done and set things up with Maximus at the Vault to get it finally posted.

I worked on some countdown graphics for Lute ...

February 20, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on some countdown graphics for Lute Hero today, a short warning for players before the song begins. The Lute Hero system is actually working pretty good these days. Last night I was actually able to play through a song and the notes only seemed off by a second or so. I think I can fix that last issue, add a bit more polish, and actually have a working system.

I did get a report of a fairly significant issue that can happen in DW1, so I added some fixes and need to test it again tonight. Hopefully it'll go quick and I can get a new build to everyone tomorrow.

I'm itching to get working on the next act in the campaign. Some of the new systems are pretty fun to play with, though they're not glued together very well yet.

After the whirlwind of the weekend and yester...

February 19, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

After the whirlwind of the weekend and yesterday, today was very quiet. I tinkered a bit more with Lute Hero, realizing that my "note display" code needs a bit of work. I pondered more about the rest of the campaign, lose ends I need to tie up, gameplay I'd like to have, and how I'd like the game to come to a conclusion (or which of several conclusions the player could guide the story towards).

I haven't heard anything about the most recent build yet. If nothing particularly dramatic is reported, I'll likely begin the process of getting this thing released into the wild.

I spent many hours last weekend, fixing bugs ...

February 18, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I spent many hours last weekend, fixing bugs and polishing things up. It's amazing how many odd little issues still remain after so many months of testing. The most hair-pulling was the Pirate Card issue, which should be working as designed now. I also snuck in some possible fixes to the crashing issue, though it's likely superstitious optimism on my part. Here are the latest builds for the day:
Dark Waters 1 (full)
Dark Waters 2 (full)
Here's a list of the latest bug fixes. Dark Waters 1 has some slight changes this time around, so it's best to grab both if you want the full experience.

I've got at least another build in the works, but I feel pretty good about the state of the game. I've never spent so many months polishing a single module and I think it shows. PJJ played the game for fun and claims to have enjoyed himself. It's usually hard for me to get much more than a sense of satisfaction when something works right, though I admittedly like going back to the Pirate Card game and soundly beating that little girl.

I try hard to look towards the future and the next act of the campaign. I think I've figured out why the frets in Lute Hero don't match up quite right to the song. It should be easy to fix with a little fiddling. I also enjoyed watching Heather play her flintlock pistol like a flute. Now that's a talented woman!

Periodically NWN2 drives me to the brink of i...

February 17, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically NWN2 drives me to the brink of insanity and then gives me a little shove.

I had gotten reports of the left-most card in the Pirate Card game vanishing at the beginning of every new turn. Sure enough, if that card hadn't been played, it would disappear as if it wasn't in your hand. I spent hours pouring through the logic of the code and couldn't make any sense of it. I made an odd discovery this morning where if I stand to the left of my cards, it works fine, otherwise it doesn't.

Pulling my hair out, I rewrote the code that finds the cards in your hand. I changed the GetNearestObject function to a GetFirstObjectInArea function. It works fine now, other than the order of the cards not being the same between draws. The only thing I can imagine is that some NWN2 patch introduced a subtle bug with GetNearestObject, as previous versions of the PirateCard game seem to work fine. Very frustrating.

I might see if there's a more elegant solution that retains the card order. There's also some visual effects that should probably be cleaned up. I'm also hoping that a hunch I had yesterday fixes some of our crash issues. I turned off the Environmental Audio Effects for all the areas in Port Brighton. It's a complete hunch, based on EAX not being the most stable thing on every system. We'll see how it turns out.

Even after all these months, people are still...

February 16, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Even after all these months, people are still finding the odd little bug here and there. I'm running across some of my own as well, typically bugs I thought I'd fixed previously, but I didn't quite do it.

I tested the High Seas system quite a bit this morning. It turns out the trading tips weren't displaying properly, which was easy to fix once I figured out what was going on. I had previously made a change (I thought) so that if the enemy captain dies, the rest of the ship surrenders. It turns out I had a typo which prevented it from happening, but I think it's fixed now.

Boarding actions in High Seas are generally pretty nail-biting. I ended up getting involved in some pretty crazy mêlées, but coming out the winner in the end. There's something quite satisfying about sailing across the ocean, a pirate ship meekly in tow.

I have a handful of other bugs to look at and some weird DW1 issues to investigate. I'm also going to incorporate the sound changes that might possibly fix the crash issues into the next build. They shouldn't really impact the play experience, so I think I'll give it a try.

I got another batch of bug reports, though th...

February 15, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I got another batch of bug reports, though they're getting increasingly minor. Hopefully this release is one of my most polished, which is great as it's also the most complicated of any I've done. Chris is working on some new voices, I'll probably do some more debugging and tweaks this weekend, and the 1.12 patch hopefully will emerge soon. A handful of people are still experiencing crashes and I continue to be befuddled. One odd suggestion that seemed to at least temporarily help someone was to open Port Brighton in the toolset, increase the music delay, and decrease the volume of ambient sounds. Dunno. It's always hard to say what change is related to what fix, especially if the problem is intermittent.

Just for fun, I played a little more with Lute Hero this morning. I go back and forth trying to decide if this is worth doing. The "Alphabet Assault" game was a thing of beauty - the main coding came together in a few days and I could see how cool it was within a week. Lute Hero is taking a lot more time to work the kinks out, but I'm hopeful it'll be fun. This morning I fixed the problem so you can actually play the notes again. I still get periodic issues with the display getting messed up and the notes and song aren't quite synchronized. Hopefully those issues are all fixable, but it's one of the trickier things I've tried to do. Hopefully it'll be worth it.

I spent this morning testing the changes to t...

February 14, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I spent this morning testing the changes to the deity selection scripts. You now have to select one of the "approved" deities, though you should have a variety of opportunities to change them as you discover certain items in the game. As it was, you could pick whoever you wanted when you leveled up, which sort of defeated the point.

In any case, I spent a lot of time playing with my Lathander-blessed shield, leveling up, and choosing different deities.

We're still working on getting the crash issues resolved today, if at all possible. At the moment we're looking into possible issues with the Port Brighton area, which is one of the largest and densely populated in the game. It seems to be one of those problems that hits some people fairly consistently, but not others. For some, reinstalling the module or their game seems to help. Very mysterious.

Update: Another day, another build:
Dark Waters 1 (full)
Dark Waters 2 (full)

The fixes are fairly minor - you can see them all here. I continue to flail around trying to figure out crash bugs. There doesn't seem to be a lot of sense around what it takes to prevent it, but I continue to fiddle.

Chris, who voices Daniel, has graciously volunteered to re-voice the Mad Hatter and another dialog, so that'll be less of my annoying voice you'll all be forced to hear. As the days move on, it feels increasingly close to done, other than that one remaining crash issue.

Yet another update:
I'm getting even more people saying that they've fixed the GUI bug by uninstalling Dark Waters 1 and reinstalling the latest version of DW1 and DW2. I'm thinking about including it in my installation instructions.

I think things are getting really close

February 13, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I think things are getting really close. It turns out the last build of mine introduced two issues, which I'm fixing in the next build. If you tried to do Daniel's romance in Woodhaven without getting on a ship in-between, the game would get to an unplayable state. I also managed to mess up the walkmesh in one part of an area after fixing it somewhere else.

I put together a series of test modules in hopes of tracking down the crash problem we've been having. I'm still mystified as to the cause, but perhaps there's something I can actually fix. I had another person e-mail me and let me know that a reinstall of the module fixed the crashing problem.

I'd like to test some of the changes I recently made, and I'll likely do a new build tomorrow.

I made some really good progress squishing bu...

February 12, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I made some really good progress squishing bugs last night. Without further adieu, here's a link to the most recent file:

Dark Waters 2 (full install)

You can also head over to the downloads section to the right to find the Lite versions as well as DW1. Here are the bug notes for the curious.

The biggest fix was a nasty loop in the "party keeps drinking" animation script that caused everything to slow down. I think there's a moral about drinking and coding in there somewhere, but it escapes me.

I also voiced the Mad Hatter. It's not exactly my best work, technically or acting-wise, but silence bugs me more than yet another NPC that sounds like me.

I was also completely unable to recreate the "I enter area X and the game crashes" bug after going through the Mad Hatter area. I really wanted this to be something I could fix, but sadly it may be part of the bug fixes for the upcoming NWN2 1.12 patch. Rumor has it that won't be out until the end of the month, which puts me in a weird position of either waiting or releasing, knowing that some people will have problems and blame my module.

For those of you who are manually patching to fix the GUI-related issues, you can find the patches here.

It's really weird being on the edge of releasing a module I've been working on for nearly a year (over a year if you include time spent on the prototype). With the first module, I pushed it out the door prematurely. With this one, I find myself having a hard time letting it go. Perhaps I'll see what the next round of bug testing brings and then start the final PR and release push if all looks good.

I'd also like to extend my thanks to everyone who downloaded the module to test it out. It looks like over a hundred people gave it a try. I really appreciate it.

Update: I'm getting reports of people fixing GUI problems and crashing problems not by reinstalling NWN2, but by installing the most recent version of DW1 (which you can find in the downloads section on the left). It's possible that there's still some junk left over from DW1, so the safest approach is to uninstall your old DW1, install the new DW1, and then install DW2. Hopefully that's the least painful option.

I finally figured out the format of the MIDI ...

February 11, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I finally figured out the format of the MIDI files that go along with the Frets on Fire songs. That means that the notes for Lute Hero should display as expected, as opposed to my previously nonsensical pattern of notes.

In terms of the rest of the game, I've had some successes and failures. The zombies in the audience now do a vague dance of sorts, where before they stood around unimpressed by my wicked lute playing. Unfortunately the notes aren't always displaying right and it doesn't recognize me correctly playing notes. More work is required.

In terms of this Dark Waters beta I'm supposedly working on, I had a new batch of e-mails come in over the weekend. There's a critical bug that needs to be fixed (at the very end, of course). There's also an assortment of other issues I need to look at, though I'm reserving my deepest frustration for the "can't buy a ship" problem and the "game crashes when entering area X" problem.

It looks like the game crashing error may be fixed in an upcoming patch (1.12). In terms of the GUI issue, I'm still baffled. Some people are saying that none of the troubleshooting steps I suggested work. Another seems to have fixed the issue by patching and restarting. It is indeed a mystery.

In any case, I hope to work on fixing things today. I might need to add in some GUI work-arounds, just in case. I wish I understood the problem better. Is the GUI problem a symptom of a larger problem? Does a reinstall fix things? (I've had a lot of problems in the past with people modifying their NWN1 setup, especially with things in the override folder) Does the issue have to do with the operating system? Does the expansion or patch level matter? Inquiring minds want to know.

Update:
I just got an emailfrom Easthaven, who managed to fix the GUI bug by doing the following:

1. Reinstall nwn2
2. Reinstall motb
3. Manually patch with "nwn2_pcx1_english_from1101115_to1101116"
4. Manually patch with "nwn2_pcx1_english_from1101116_to1111152"
5. Manually patch with "nwn2_pc_english_from1111152_to1111153"
6. Restart the module from the beginning of chapter 2.

After all my debugging, testing, and slaving ...

February 10, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

After all my debugging, testing, and slaving away, I decided to do something fun yesterday. I turned to the frustratingly broken Lute Hero and decided to see if I could resurrect it from the ashes.

Sure enough, it now is actually kind of playable. Notes stream down and you can click on the number keys to play them. If you miss, it plays a "missed note" sound and turns down the volume the guitar sound object. If you get it right, the volume of the guitar sound object goes to max. It's complicated, but the general idea is that it mimics the way Guitar Hero works.

There are still weird issues. If I simply don't play a note, the guitar track still plays. My undead horde continues to dance around even when the song is over. I need the ability to switch between easy and hard modes. The program that generates the note track needs some work. I need to be able to switch between practice and battle mode. Practice mode needs camera movements and effects. The fret icons need to have better colors.

Still, I think I'm convinced it's a viable mini-game. Hopefully I can tell soon enough that it's fun as well. We'll see.

Well, I was up at the crack of dawn again, am...

February 09, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I was up at the crack of dawn again, amassing a fleet, talking to parrots, and generally doing odd things in the hopes of getting things finalized.

I did run into a problem this morning, a realization that I screwed up and overwrote some fixes I made earlier in the week. The only good thing about it was that it was easy to redo, but I still felt pretty stupid about it.

Most of the minor issues should be fixed at this point. The serious ones, such as periodic crashes, no ship polymorph, and dysfunctional GUIs are far more mysterious. I don't have the problem, nor did most of the testers. I've been reading how some crashes with MotB are fixed with a reinstall, but that seems a rather drastic and annoying solution. I've added a troubleshooting section in the readme that hopefully helps with some of the problems people have been experiencing.

I still haven't read through every single e-mail I've received regarding the beta (there were a ton), so I'd still like to do that before release. I suspect there's a lot of cases of the same issues being reported, but it's still good to check. For those interested in all the bugs fixed with this build, here's the patch notes.

I'm busy slowly uploading all the latest files to the FileFront site and deleting all the old ones. For now, here's the latest versions (only DW2 should have any changes):
Dark Waters 1 (full build)
Dark Waters 2 (full build)

I'll upload the rest as the day goes on.

Update: Okay - all the files should be uploaded and I deleted all the old ones.

I'm slowly getting a handle on some of the mo...

February 08, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting a handle on some of the more mysterious problems that have plagued the beta release. For those of you having problems, here's a quick troubleshooting guide:

• Make sure you're running the latest NWN2 patch (1.11). If you aren't, you'll need to repatch and restart the module.
• Try restarting the game (e.g. export your character, start DW1, and choose "Jump to next module"). If you turn on debug mode before you talk to the dock master, I think you can buy a ship immediately (if not, leave the docks and come back). This can at least tell you if the ship buy problem was fixed.
• Check your override folders and make sure there's nothing in there.
• If you're running VISTA, make sure you run NWN2 as an administrator (right-click and choose Run as Administrator). If you don't, it seems that NWN2 can't create files in the temporary folder needed for a campaign to work. You can end up never getting permission to buy ships and other weird issues.
• Turn on debug mode using the Game Options and try whatever's breaking. Sometimes useful tidbits show up in the chat window.

I was up at four o'clock this morning, testin...

February 07, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I was up at four o'clock this morning, testing, fixing, and preparing for the real launch of the game. I'm hoping that the "can't buy a ship" and other issues may be related to people playing with a slightly older NWN2 patch. It turns out that all sorts of things will break, forcing you to patch and restart the module before you can play again. Unlike NWN1, it appears NWN2 doesn't block players from playing modules created with a toolset with a higher patch.

I also spent some time putting together some high resolution screenshots. I haven't fiddled with my quality settings for a long time and was vaguely surprised I couldn't have shadows and 4x anti-aliasing. It also turns out my video card could handle a lot of the high-end features turned on, so I went ahead and did so.

PJJ, one of my longtime testers, reported a few issues with the build from last week, but is otherwise hopeful we're close to release. I still haven't gone through all the bug reports yet, but hopefully I can do that soon, put together a final build, and go gold (or the non-CD equivalent) after getting the final okay from the testers.

I'm making updates to the Dark Waters 2 beta ...

February 06, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I'm making updates to the Dark Waters 2 beta test installer faster than I normally would, in hopes of fixing the mysterious "can't buy a ship" problem:
Dark Waters 2 - full install

It also incorporates a few of the other fixes I'm tinkering with. Theoretically the duel with Jack should be more robust (sometimes it would cancel out in the middle). The psionic feats now have thier correct descriptions.

I'm still way behind in checking e-mail and making lists of problems. I really need to get cracking on gathering up the latest batch of bugs and start working on fixing them. It's a funny mix - some are really minor and some are horrible, with very few in between. What drives me nuts are the ones I can't reproduce, such as crashes to the desktop or when saving. It doesn't make any sense at all.

I continue to work away at the infamous "Can'...

February 05, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to work away at the infamous "Can't buy a ship" problem. I think I actually made things worse with my last build and made it hard to buy anything besides a Fishing Boat (they can buy it, but the button is invisible). I did some more work and came up with a different way of displaying things, but I'm still not convinced it fixes the problem.

I'm getting reports that it's not just the ship GUIs, but the sacrifice button in the Pirate Card game too. It would be really weird if there was some global "custom GUIs don't work on some PCs" problem. Hopefully I can get some more information that might shed light on what's going on. The most bizarre thing is that during alpha testing, the issue never came up.

All this makes me glad I've taken my time with lots of testing this time around. It's crazy to think that the entire Shadowlords campaign was coded and released in nine months, which is about how long the second act of Dark Waters is going to take.

Mondays are notoriously busy for me, so it's ...

February 04, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are notoriously busy for me, so it's unlikely I won't be able to do much actual fixing today. Skimming through the 10+ e-mails that came in for the beta test, it looks like a fair number of people are running into weird problems. I'm thinking that at least some of them may be due to weird stuff in the override directory. Others, such as crashes when going into certain areas, are harder to diagnose. Maybe it's general NWN2 instability, maybe it's unique to the player's system, or maybe there's something especially idiotic I'm doing that makes it periodically break.

Lute Hero continues to make me nervous. This morning I added in the ability to click a number on the keyboard and it plays a note. The main issue I kept running into is that periodically the scripts would slow down and things would pause. Why it happens, I'm not sure, as it's not consistent. I may have to optimize the code, switch to a different approach, or give up entirely if what I'm trying just isn't feasible. We'll see.

It's been a bit of a rough weekend

February 04, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

It's been a bit of a rough weekend. My wife was in Portland, I was watching the kids, and Emma was pretty sick the whole time. Though I didn't do much debugging, I managed to work on Lute Hero a bit more.

The more I fiddle with it, the more I realize how close to the edge of what's possible with the NWN2 engine it is. I'm hoping I'm inspired-crazy instead of stupid-crazy, but I probably won't be able to tell until I get a little further more with testing. I worry about things like processor speed, as I'm updating the GUI roughly once every hundredth of a second. Occasionally if things start going on, the display pauses, making it impossible to actually play.

Hopefully soon I can get the guitar playing aspect down. The notes are being read from the 2da file. I have an easy and hard section, though they currently do nothing. I have the song playing and the guitar sound object ready, but the volume is currently zero. The theory is that if the player hits the right notes, the guitar will play at the maximum volume. If the note is played wrong, I'll play a missed note wav file and the guitar object volume goes to zero. We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow will likely bring more testing and bug reports. Supposedly the annoying "can't buy a ship" problem continues for some. Sigh.

I spent way too much time yesterday and the d...

February 01, 2008 by Adam in NWN2

I spent way too much time yesterday and the day before gathering up reported bugs, fixing them, and trying to do tests to make sure the fix works. There's still a few mysterious and seemingly random game-crashing bugs, but most of the others were cosmetic and fixed without too much trouble. I feel pretty good about this latest build and should be posting the latest version shortly, along with notes about all the things that were fixed.

For the curious, this screenshot was taken from the end of Dark Waters 1. Previously, Heather and Daniel were invisible due to an issue with having companions join right before teleporting them to another area. When Dark Waters 2 gets released, there's a ton of bug fixes for the first module as well.

Update:
Okay - the latest build has been uploaded now. I have a somewhat organized list of fixes. Here's a direct link to the files in case they're not on the Downloads page yet:
Dark Waters 1 (full install)
Dark Waters 2 (full install)

Second Update:
One of the more mysterious show-stopping bugs is that some people can't buy a ship. They get permission, but when they click on the button to buy the ship, nothing happens. It works fine for me and many other testers, of course. Very frustrating.