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I'm knee-deep in bug fixing these days
June 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I'm knee-deep in bug fixing these days. Last night and this morning was spent trying to address a range of issues. The most annoying/humorous was the inability for bigger races to fit through one of the doors in the city. I typically use a skinny half-elf woman for testing, who is evidently thin enough so the problem didn't pop up. Ah, the joys of custom content.
For those of you who enjoy the henchmen, I'm also adding some more dialog for each of them. One of the issues with Demon is that it drops players into a big, open world without a lot of direction. The new conversation should point people towards the next steps of the plot more directly in hopes players won't get overwhelmed too badly.
Anyway, it feels like I'm making some pretty good progress. The testers are helping immensely. I've been lucky to get one who is recovering at home from a bike accident and the only CD in his computer was Neverwinter Nights. Hopefully he won't find out I arranged the whole thing. :)
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I should be careful what I ask for
June 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I should be careful what I ask for. The testers are going crazy, reporting bugs left and right. Of course, it's impossible to keep up with all of them. Last night and this morning I tried to fix a single cutscene issue. I think it's better, though I had to make some compromises along the way. There's some custom content issues that have been reported, along with a variety of weird scripting issues.
Hopefully today I can continue to go through the problems that have been reported and try to get some remedies in place. I think I was a little overly risky with Demon, with some pretty wacky content and scripting things. Now they've returned to haunt me, working sporadically at times.
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Occasionally my mind wanders as I try to fini...
June 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
Occasionally my mind wanders as I try to finish up Demon. I've decided that squad-based tactics such as those done during the big HotU battle are probably more reasonable. I've been looking at the AI scripts from that scene and they seem like a good balance between performance and believability.
Other than my tinkerings, I've signed up some new testers for Demon. Hopefully the final testing push is not far ahead.
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Most of my crazy ideas don't really work out
June 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 Most of my crazy ideas don't really work out. I wondered if it was possible to handle a large number of creatures on the screen if I changed their 3D models to 2D models, then redid their AI to keep it really simple.
While I found it possible to put 400 or so units on the screen at once, it simply didn't look good enough to pursue that course of action. The 3D models look much better, even when zoomed out considerably. The pathfinding for such a huge number of units breaks down pretty fast, causing all sorts of weird looking formation movements.
I might end up making a single NWN creature that looks like it's a group of units. That might let me cheat a bit more. I may not give up quite yet.
Demon testing continues. I've signed up some more testers, trying to get this thing finished. Danmar reported some new bugs, one of which is somewhat annoying. Hopefully it won't be too much longer.
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I'm mentally preparing for a final testing pu...
June 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I'm mentally preparing for a final testing push to finish Demon, gathering up lists and checking them twice. Managing big groups of testers is always a bit of a hassle - getting files to people, making lists, and so on. Before everyone and their dog e-mails me asking to join up, the current plan is to use a small list of people who have tested my modules previously.
I read that Rick Burton of Twilight/Midnight fame was being dissuaded by bogus voting over on the Vault. I had a hard time getting started on his modules, but there was some extremely good work in there too. Over the last couple years I've had my moments of frustration dealing with negative comments and wierd behavior. It's a shame that the community might lose someone so well appreciated by so many.
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I tweaked the Tainted animation a bit more, a...
June 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I tweaked the Tainted animation a bit more, adding in some casting animations that turned out fairly well. Having the jaw open and close does make it look much nicer, in my opinion. I went ahead and updated my little test file as well, for those who are curious.
I'm trying to get things organized for release so that I'll be ready after testing finishes. Hopefully it won't be too much longer.
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I went through Dennis' list of bugs, which we...
June 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I went through Dennis' list of bugs, which weren't too painfully hard. Most of my time was spent "prettying up" a Gate Diving area. It was very sparse looking, so I ended up adding some content and tweaking the area settings. There's a "startling some birds" event that ended up working quite well.
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My life has been freakishly busy as of late, ...
June 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
My life has been freakishly busy as of late, so I haven't been able to touch Demon as much as I'd like. An observant tester noticed that the spell animations might need a little work, so I'm going to see if I can find the time for that today.
Danmar also dropped in more bugs to the issue tracking system yesterday, so I'll have some more fixing in that regard as well.
There's also been some movement around my post-Demon project. It sounds like I'll be switching things around a bit, though I can reuse a number of my existing ideas. Hmm.
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Well, the first pass of the animations is done
June 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 Well, the first pass of the animations is done. It's not perfect, but I think it might be good enough for the moment. Most of the issues are with the longer two-handed weapons such as the quarterstaff. It used to be that the pole was held on the opposite side of the hand. Now it's on the right side, but a little bit out of the hand. It looks a little weird, but it's not terrible.
I had fun adding the "open jaw" animations, which seem to make the model look more feral. It's the small things that count.
If you're interested in taking a look and testing it out, I've put the file here. Feel free to send me any comments you might have.
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I've decided to hunker down and redo all of t...
June 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I've decided to hunker down and redo all of the Tainted's two-handed combat animations. It's a fairly big job, but as a plus I can move his jaw about (humans don't have moveable jaws). It looks fairly nifty so far. I'll post some pictures when I get closer to done.
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I put in some solid debugging time yesterday,...
June 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I put in some solid debugging time yesterday, fixing a wide range of scripting and other issues that had been reported. It felt really good to track down some of the weirder issues that had been reported. With luck, I'll down some coffee and motivate myself to cleaning up the Tainted animation issues. There's a few different approaches I can try and I haven't decided which one is the laziest.
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I spent far too much time cleaning up some mi...
June 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I spent far too much time cleaning up some minor issues on a few placeables. The smoothing groups were adjusted, giving them nice crisp edges. Somehow gmax lost their walkmeshes, so I ended up doing them by hand in Notepad. I just got them working in game.
Hopefully today I can start fiddling with the Tainted model. I've been procrastinating for awhile on that one.
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I've been far too busy the last couple days, ...
June 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I've been far too busy the last couple days, so I haven't been able to work on NWN projects as much as I'd like. I managed some more bug fixes, mostly cosmetic ones. There's some custom content work that I need to turn to next.
POV-Ray, my favorite free 3D renderer, just came out with a new version. I found a site that has very realistic waves and another that creates seamless tiles for textures. I did a little experiment with animated textures that looks promising. Fun stuff.
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It's nice getting through some of the really ...
June 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 It's nice getting through some of the really nasty bugs and instead focusing on the more cosmetic ones. I fixed some journal entry and dialog issues and added in a new Sigil tile that I hadn't used previously. Some map notes were added and some area transitions redrawn. I think I finally nailed down a really annoying henchmen death issue.
There's still a good list of things to work on next, such as the Tainted model animations, some cosmetic tile issues, and a few scripting issues related to the Mechanus puzzles. Slowly getting done.
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Bug fixing continues
June 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
Bug fixing continues. Danmar keeps sending them in, faster than I can fix. The good news is that there seems to be a shift away from the critical bugs to more cosmetic ones. There's a tile that casts shadows strangely, for example. He's doing a great job and I feel honored that he's taking his precious time to test my little project. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I can actually put it out before the rest of the world.
I did some hak pack shrinking the other day. It's currently down to 27 MB from 30 MB. That's not a huge difference, but hopefully it'll save a bit of download time, especially for those dial-up users.
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Yesterday was quite productive
June 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 Yesterday was quite productive. A bunch of people helped out getting the Tainted model crash bug fixed. I still have some two-handed animations to fix, along with a steady stream of bugs that Danmar keeps sending me.
This morning I worked on cleaning up some minor card game issues. I'll probably continue on in the same vein until my family wakes up.
I ran across a forum where people are trying to get a persistent Demon Cards game running. It's always interesting to see what people end up doing with my various little projects.
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I spent a bunch of time yesterday getting the...
June 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I spent a bunch of time yesterday getting the Royal Palace terrain into the Sigil exterior tileset. It was mostly a retexture, though I had to raise the height of everything and tweak a couple other things. For the most part I think it turned out fairly well. I'm quite happy that I won't have to wait for the tileset to be finished and that CODI's given me the go-ahead to release before they finish Foundations.
I seem to get an offer every couple days to beta test the module. Well, I have a little something for those of you, a test file that has the Tainted model. Danmar is reporting crash bugs, which I'd like to fix. There's also some animation problems that I discovered this morning (polearms have an odd animation where it's not held properly). Still I thought I'd put this version in front of people who'd like to poke at it for awhile.
Feel free to report any bugs you find. If it's a crash bug, include anything that might be relevant - what expansions you have and so on. I'll hopefully be able to fix the polearm/quarterstaff animations today and update the version I have.
I also got the new tileset into the game, along with some other miscellaneous things. With luck I'll be able to work on some Sigil tileset bugs today, along with the new module (I have endless dialog to write). I've also got to strip out the Stem and Mortuary tiles from the tileset, which has a side benefit of shrinking down the size of the hak pack.
Update: I think I fixed the crash bug with the test Demon file. There's still some issues with the two-handed weapon animations that'll I'll be tweaking later. Thanks to all who helped out today.
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The good news of the day is that it sounds li...
June 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
The good news of the day is that it sounds like I can release Demon with CODI's blessing, even if they haven't finished with Foundations quite yet. There will be a couple of pieces of content that I won't be including - their "big set" pieces such as the Stem and Mortuary.
It does mean that I need a replacement for the royal palace, which I was considering using the Mortuary for. I'm currently reskinning the GoodCastle terrain using the Sigil textures. So far, so good. Hopefully I can get a screenshot for you tomorrow.
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One of the testers is reporting problems with...
June 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 One of the testers is reporting problems with the Tainted model, so I decided to try and rebuild it. Unfortunately I ran into some odd problems along the way and did some quick rework this morning. It's always embarrassing to dismember a creature I'm working on.
I worked on yet more bugs yesterday, but mostly spent my time working on a key system for my next game. There's an area where you control a creature in a very complicated way. After I fixed a few bugs, it actually started moving around. True, it was backwards and somewhat jerky, but it was nice to see something happen after hours of coding.
I've been neglecting CODI tileset issues as of late. It's probably time for me to do a little more with that today if I get the chance.
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I've been doing mostly boring bugfixing the l...
June 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I've been doing mostly boring bugfixing the last couple days. Mostly litte annoying things, but there's one or two biggies that I still can't figure out. I'll probably continue today as well as working on my next project when I get a chance. I finally figured out how to get custom subradial feats in the game. It took me a fair number of hours over the weekend, so I'm feeling good about that.
I also came up with a new mini-game idea that I really like, though I might not get around to actually making it for a long while. It involves collectable tiles, a playing board, and hordes of summoned monsters battling it out for supremacy.
I also stumbled across a mini-review of Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher that I hadn't seen before. It's always interesting to hear what people think of my various projects.
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I've been getting reports of some pretty seri...
June 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I've been getting reports of some pretty serious problems with the Tainted model, but having problems replicating it myself. I may end up redoing it completely in hopes that the issue will get cleared up.
I fiddled a little more with my new tile the other day, finding out it had more issues that I thought.
Some days, it seems like there's more movement backwards than forwards, but I'll continue to plod along.
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I made up a tile for the new game yesterday
June 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I made up a tile for the new game yesterday. It's still a bit rough, but should let me continue to work on the module. There's a fair bit of running around in the beginning of the game that requires some new places.
I spent some time cleaning up CODI stuff, fixing some sparkle issues on a new tile and making a minimap for it. I also uploaded my minaret fixes.
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I made some good progress on the modules yest...
June 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
 I made some good progress on the modules yesterday. I cleaned up the shadows in the manor tiles, which were looking pretty bad previously. The issue list is shrinking, though the remaining items are fairly nasty, including a crash bug I haven't been able to replicate.
I worked more on the new module, testing a little last night. I have another custom content piece to make today, but it should go quickly as it's just a single tile.
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I keep trudging along
June 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
I keep trudging along. I think I got the texture issue with the minaret ground fixed. I'm also working on a shadow problem with the Manor tileset. The custom content parts are sometimes the hardest to fix, though I'm also doing other miscellaneous things along the way. One area, for example, was described as being too sparse, so I spent some time adding more placeables and flavor text to spruce it up.
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The debugging process is slogging along, espe...
June 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
The debugging process is slogging along, especially some of the custom content pieces. It's probably a very good thing I don't have dozens of testers as there's no way I could keep up.
I also worked a bit more on the new project, getting more dialog and scripting in the game.
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Some of Danmar's bugs are doozies, promising ...
June 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1
Some of Danmar's bugs are doozies, promising to keep me busy today. The hardest ones are those related to custom content, though there's quite a few typos and related issues.
I worked a bit more on the new module, mostly writing but a little scripting as well. I'm starting to see just how much custom content I'll need to pull together to make certain things work properly. No rest for the weary.
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About Me
I've won multiple awards for my Neverwinter Nights modules, which I've been working on since the year 2000.
In the real world, I'm a web developer for a healthcare organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
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