Well, I recovered from yesterday's fun error ...

August 31, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I recovered from yesterday's fun error and pushed ahead. This morning I mostly debugged, getting the initial scenes functional, fixing some dialog, and putting in some camera movement. It's slowly coming together, though of course I'd like to do more.

I'm seriously thinking of some major changes to the main character's model and how I handle the shape changing aspect. I'm thinking about basing the player's Demonform model on the human model. The main advantage is that all the standard animations would work (such as sit, rest, and equipping any variety of weapons). It would look and move quite differently, so I'll need to think about it some more and do some demos.

The other change is that I'm pretty sure I want to wait for the HoU expansion and use SetAppearance to change shape. I also want other things such as OnHit and OnEquip, as well as the ability to change item properties on the fly. Since I'm already planning this module to take a long time, I think I'm okay time-wise. I still have huge amounts of things to work on. So, I think I'm going for the later but better approach.

The screenshot of the day is that little pipe I put together.

On a odd little note, I installed Google's toolbar this morning. This page shows up with a page raking of 4 (out of 10), which is the same as the Neverwinter Vault. Some other popular NWN sites and their ranking:

Velmar's Resources 3/10
Lands of Kray 3/10
City of Doors 4/10
Dragonlance Adventures 5/10
Bioware 7/10

Ah, the joys of popularity contests in the modern age.

I fired up NWN to test some of my changes yes...

August 30, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I fired up NWN to test some of my changes yesterday and got this lovely message. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to pin down the issue. I made some very minor changes to the hak pack yesterday, though I'm not sure that's the issue. I can attach them to a "clean" module and it works just fine. I do have backups, but they're from earlier this week. I'd prefer not to redo things even though it would go fairly quickly.

Update: I think I found it. I had added an OnEnter script to the sewers, which seems to have been the culprit. One of those things that compiles just fine but there's an error in the logic that crashes things.

I put in a bunch of work yesterday, adding more dialog and working on getting the henchmen in the game the way I like it. Progress continues.

I put in some more work into the introduction...

August 29, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I put in some more work into the introduction yesterday, along with whipping up a couple more placeables. Here's a golden rat statue, looking quite at home in the sewers.

I also made a new pipe placeable, as I needed something of the right size and orientation for someone to crawl through. I created dialog for it as well, making it possible for the player to get from point A to B.

I worked so hard yesterday that my brain is numb

August 28, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I worked so hard yesterday that my brain is numb. I went through all my custom tilesets and created minimaps. It's tedious work and it's not quite right yet. For some of the larger groups, I didn't match up the graphics quite right, so I've got some fixing to do today.

Most importantly, I integrated the Stem tileset in to the module. It looks great, which is no surprise. I must have opened and closed the main door a dozen times just because it looked neat. From there, I started mapping out a bunch of areas, from the Arena to the Gate Divers. The next major tileset is the Sigil exterior one, which I don't have a version of yet. In the meantime, I'm using the standard city exterior for testing purposes.

Hopefully today I can start scripting and writing dialog for these areas. There's lots to do still. This particular screenshot is for the warehouse area, which has some quests for the Radiant Way and the Order of the Flame.

I worked in the DLA Sewers yesterday

August 27, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I worked in the DLA Sewers yesterday. Though I was holding out for the 1.1 version, the plot is getting to the point where it's pretty important to have. This bumped the hak pack size up to 10 MB in size, though this is the "large" version with pretty load screens and the like. My goal is still to have a smallish version as well as a bigger one.

I also begged Papermonk from CODI for the latest version of the Stem tileset. It's a sight to see and I am continually impressed by Bat in the Hat's work. I integrated my portal and arena and hope to get the hak into the module today. For now it's going to be a separate hak (as the size is 20+ MB), but the plan is to integrate it all down the road.

Finally, I tested and debugged some of my guard/commoner scripts. You can attack and harrass the commoners and the guards come after you. What's supposed to happen is that the guards cause all combat to cease and begin a conversation. At times, though, everyone just seems to wail on you. Police brutality, I suppose. When you come back to life, you can pay your fines like a good citizen.

I hit a small milestone yesterday, moving fro...

August 26, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I hit a small milestone yesterday, moving from the main Gate to one of the planes, getting some loot then collecting my reward upon my return. A bit chunk of the exploration in the game revolves around Gate Diving, so it was nice to finally get that in place. Of course, only the Troll Cave is the complete plane, though quite a few have been started already.

Hopefully today I can work on some more dialog, of which there is endless amounts.

Strangely, I did very little over the weekend

August 25, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Strangely, I did very little over the weekend. It was a time for yardwork and family. I did have some odd ideas that may work themselves into the game. My notebook seems always at hand, full of scribbles that may never find turn themselves into reality.

Oh, and someone wrote a little blurb about their experience playing Shadowlords. It's about halfway down the page. Pretty neat.

I got my little troll game all scripted yesterday

August 23, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I got my little troll game all scripted yesterday. After some bug testing this morning, it seems to be working quite nicely. The game is suitably challenging, mentally and psychologically, and I'll just leave things at that.

I worked more on dialog yesterday, doing a brief introduction to the Planes for the player. Since Gate Diving involves visiting a variety of places across the multiverse, I figured I should at least warn the player first.

I'm working hard on getting all the Gate Diving scripting and dialog in place. Pretty soon I should be able to test an entire visit to a plane, picking up an interesting tidbit, then returning to collect some gold and experience. Very slowly, an actual module is forming.

Yesterday I worked more on the player's spiri...

August 22, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Yesterday I worked more on the player's spirit gem, putting in the dialog and scripting so that new rooms can be "added on". In reality, there's always there, but you can't access them until you've paid the price. In this case, you have to have enough items that generate spirit coin in your gem in order to add them on. I have a hard time describing the mechanism without sounding too Feng Shui, but that's the general idea.

I also whipped up a couple more placeables for use in my Mechanus puzzles. The hammer and the shield are really tokens for giving instructions to your monodrone, with the overall goal of getting the poor little creature safely to its destination.

If I get time today, I have another game-within-the-game that I'm working on. I'm hoping this one is really simple, a familiar puzzle with a twist at the end.

I managed to sneak in a little bit of scripti...

August 21, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I managed to sneak in a little bit of scripting yesterday, working more on the extremely complicated initial cutscene. The player now moves from their home, to another place, back home, and finally back to the second place again (along with dialog and action). Pretty soon I'll need to incorporate the DLA sewer tileset and start in on that piece.

I worked a bit on the Queen's face today, trying to get something that didn't look quite so ghostly. It looks okay unless you disable the camera and zoom way in. Then it looks a bit stretched out, which was only sort of my intention.

Slowly getting there.

I didn't get much time yesterday, though I sn...

August 20, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I didn't get much time yesterday, though I snuck in a few moments yesterday morning to tweak the spirit gem's heart a bit. I decided I didn't like the pedestal (plus I was having problems getting the use nodes to work).

Though I still have quite a few pieces of custom content to go, I'd like to make the switch to scripting and other "module building" activities. Plus debugging. I have lots to debug.

I got a fair amount of things done while I wa...

August 19, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I got a fair amount of things done while I was away, including a couple small tilesets. I worked up what I'm calling an "abyssal swamp". I spent a lot of time working on the water effect so that it doesn't look crystal clear, then created a bunch of variations including a couple mini "islands". It's not really intended to compete with the other swamp tilesets out there, but rather serve a small niche purpose.

I also came up with a Savannah tileset. For a long while, I couldn't figure out why the grass wasn't appearing. I finally discovered that I had turned it off in the game settings and it wasn't a problem with the .SET file or some other crazy thing.

I also whipped up a White Queen creature using CODI's skinmesh illithid. Skinmesh looks so nice I had to fiddle with it a bit. I also did a bit of coding, such as getting the garden to finally grow.

I periodically worry myself about the scope of this one. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm probably crazy for taking on something so huge, especially with my time as limited as it is these days. Hopefully I can finish up by Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath.

I put some work into the Gem Heart this morni...

August 15, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I put some work into the Gem Heart this morning, trying to make it more interesting than the current pillar. I think I want to fiddle with it some more, but this is the general idea.

I put in a ton of work yesterday. The alignment issues for the ice caves is taken care of at this point. I added portals to a couple existing tilesets. More dialog was written. I created a bunch of creatures for one of the planes you'll visit while Gate diving. It felt good to take care of so much.

I'm going to be unplugged for the next few days, off on a coast trip. With luck, they'll be additional babysitters and I'll have more time than usual to work on things. We'll see how it goes.

Here's a screenshot of the larger ice caves

August 14, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Here's a screenshot of the larger ice caves. The only problem I'm running into is that there's some texture issues - the seams between the tiles are a bit obvious.

I worked on the keep a bit more, getting the last of the servants into the game. I'm trying to make them a bit more lively, so when you enter the room, they'll putter around talking to themselves.

I also started in on the gate overseer's dialog. He's a somewhat important character, helping you along in your career as a gate diver. I think he'll also be giving some brief overview of the cosmology, describing the Inner and Outer Planes and so on.

The screenshot is for the Funny Bug of the Day

August 13, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

The screenshot is for the Funny Bug of the Day. I was testing out the code I use to populate the area with commoners. I mislabeled a variable and every six seconds, six more commoners would spawn in. Pretty soon, the screen was filled with these things, all shouting "Help, I'm being attacked!" The two guards would reply "Where is the scoundrel?" and try to find the invisible attacker.

I've fixed the spawning issue and I'm trying to track down the false attack bug as well. Of course, in the case of a real attack, it's not working either. They all just mob me endlessly. Sigh.

I worked more on the ice caves, putting in all the tunnels as well as some larger rooms. There's some texture alignment issues I may try to address, though it looks like it would require touching a lot of tiles.

No pretty pictures today, though I got a bunc...

August 12, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

No pretty pictures today, though I got a bunch of work done yesterday. I created the dialog for the last two servants in your keep, the gardener and the lab assistant. I'm trying to make them useful in their own right. The assistant can distill weaker potions to make stronger ones. It seems like a decent way to "upgrade" items you wouldn't necessarily use. I'm still working on the gardener. I'm thinking about being able to ask her to focus on a single type of plant and that will grow more rapidly.

I redid my heartbeat script and included the garden growing code. I'm sure I'll have to tweak it so that the production seems balanced.

As for what today holds, I have a long list. I'd like to work more on the ice caves, putting in more variation (I currently only have a couple tiles in it). There's endless dialog to work on. I also have more of the initial cutscene to do. I may also start working on a test city area, even though I won't have the final city tileset for quite some time. Slowly getting there.

Switching gears, I worked a bit on the ice ca...

August 11, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Switching gears, I worked a bit on the ice caves that will be part of the Elemental Plane of Ice. I'm using the same textures as the above ground, so it should be quite shiny.

I've been going through my mental list of things to do and I need to finish up a few more rooms in the keep. If I remember right, I haven't created an assistant for the laboratory or a gardener for the garden. Plus I need to actually script the garden, making sure it grows properly.

After hours of coding yesterday and this morn...

August 10, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

After hours of coding yesterday and this morning, I finally got my little Monodrone safe to the end point of the first puzzle level. There were all sorts of coding mistakes I had to fix, from rounding errors to accidental integer math (when it should be float). Finally I got it all sorted out and made it through. I think I'm going to take a break from scripting for a bit and switch to some more custom content this morning.

Here's a Plane of Fire image, complete with Fire Bat and spouting lava. If I remember, I'll add some fireballs coming down from the sky and the look should be complete.

One of the nice things about programming for ...

August 09, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

One of the nice things about programming for a game compared to my usual work programming is that if things go wrong, I can call down my holy wrath upon that which offends me.

I've been working on the Mechanus puzzle this morning, running into all sorts of problems getting the control of the Monodrone down. At this point, he'll move on command, but he doesn't always go to the proper place according to his direction and arrows. I have endless lines of debug code in there, spewing out angles and coordinates. Messy stuff.

I worked more on other things yesterday, such as Teira's dialog and some scripting. Slowly getting there.

Here's the Ice Paraelemental I was working on...

August 08, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

Here's the Ice Paraelemental I was working on the other day. The textures match the huge ice crystals in the tileset, so I thought it was rather spiffy. I'm also working more on the Plane of Fire. I modified Gestalt's Lava Caves tileset to include a couple of the lava emitters from the evil dungeon tileset. I also whipped up a Fire Bat as a minor annoyance for travelers.

I spent a ton of time yesterday working on my Mechanus puzzle scripts. You can now drop items such as the directional arrow, and it'll spawn a placeable that can be rotated about. I'm having problems getting the Monodrone to move properly, however. I'm having a hard time simplifying his movement so that the puzzle works properly.

What I want him to do is to move forward to the next floating grate ahead of him. I'm finding I have to dig up all sorts of unused algebra in order to calculate the center of the current grate he's on and what grate he should move to next based on what direction he's facing. Tricky stuff.

I also did some experimental stuff yesterday where I did a ton of search and replace on tileset files. I ended up with a completely white castle interior tileset, which I may end up integrating into the module. At this point, I'm coming up with ideas left and right, but very few of them are actually completed in the module. At some point, I'll need to tightened the reins and force myself to focus.

I worked on more dialog yesterday

August 07, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I worked on more dialog yesterday. Part of the challenge is that I'm incorporating a fair amount of planar cant, so I'm giving the player a lot of opportunities to clarify words. "Berk? What's that?"

I whipped up a pit tile yesterday, complete with nasty spikes at the bottom. I think it will make it into a jumping contest of sorts. I think it would also be fun to make a version with a walkmesh over it, combine it with my new jumping/falling technique, and do terrible things to unwitting players.

I also whipped up an ice paraelemental this morning. Pictures to follow.

I switched gears a bit yesterday

August 06, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I switched gears a bit yesterday. After seemingly endless custom content, I stopped for awhile to work on dialog and scripting. The first series of cutscenes is proving to be extremely complex, though hopefully it's worth it.

Last night and this morning I mostly spent debugging the initial cutscene sequence. It's very rough, but you can get further through it. I created another custom placeable "prop" yesterday just so that I'd have things to talk to.

Writing dialog is painfully slow at times, while other times it seems to flow smoothly. Yesterday I had a solid half-hour of easy writing, though I'm not sure where the ideas come from.

I whipped up a portal for my Ice set, which i...

August 05, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I whipped up a portal for my Ice set, which is about all the time I had yesterday. Also, it appears my Internet connectivity is completely hosed at the moment. I'm forced to use the "http://localhost" trick just to get to this web site. Sigh.

I'm hoping to create a sheltered cave for the Ice tileset. I should have some time this morning to work on it, especially as I can't do my typical surfing the net and eating cereal routine.

Update: Ah, much better. The electrical storm outside must have caused problems over at my ISP. I finished up the cave. Time to get ready for work.

More news from the Dreamcatcher testing crew

August 04, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

More news from the Dreamcatcher testing crew. It appears that there's a bug with the function that equips melee weapons, which ends up breaking Dreamcatcher 3. Frustrating. Hopefully it'll get fixed with the next patch. Otherwise, it looks pretty good.

I created some walls for my Plane of Ice yesterday. It's fairly basic, but it breaks up the monotany a bit. Today I'd like to start making map icons for all the tilesets I've cranked out. At the moment, I think they're all broken except for the Mechanus one.

Probably most importantly, I did a major revision of the plot yesterday. The entire campaign story came together for me as well and I have a good feel for how the entire campaign arc will go. I decided on a three-module campaign for Demon, with each module being fairly large. After all, I wouldn't want to break Planescape's Rule of Three.

I've been working on a Plane of Ice mini tileset

August 03, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I've been working on a Plane of Ice mini tileset. It's basically just a snow-swept empty plane. I'll probably need to add some "wall" crossers, as well as some features (at least a portal to get there). I think I've got the desolate feel down to where I'm pretty happy with it.

I worked more on the Plane of Air, adjusting some rock heights to where I wanted them. I also created an animation for the jumping so that it looks better. I do have one annoying problem where the delayed JumpToObject command isn't always working right. Unless the player moves again, they'll stay in the same place some times.

I did a goofy workaround that makes it work better, by issuing an ActionMoveToLocation command afterwards, mimicking the player doing a move. Very weird.

I think my Plane of Air is basically finished...

August 02, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I think my Plane of Air is basically finished up at this point. I added a portal yesterday, as well as fixing some annoying shadow issues. It's looking relatively good and is at the "acceptable" level for my purposes.

The other thing I finally got working is the jump system. I had been dreading it a bit, as it involves modifying some .2da files I haven't touched before, as well as some things that looked good on paper but I'd never tested. It's rather complex, but basically works this way:

• Player clicks on a jump point.
• Player becomes cutscene invisible.
• Spell is cast from jump start to jump destination, using the tainted model (the only reason this thing works is that players can only leap when in Tainted form, which is a single model).
• The player is moved and reappears at the destination.

I've been taking the Plane of Air concept and...

August 01, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

I've been taking the Plane of Air concept and running with it. I have a ton of tiles done, including a variety of floating debris tiles to fill the gaps. This morning I finished up one with a tile. I have another with a portal that I need to do and I think I'll call it done.

The next thing I've been wanting to work on for some time now is a new "jumping" concept, similar to what was done with kobolds in SoU. There's a fair amount of fiddling that I need to do, such as messing with 2da files and the like, but I'm itching to try it out now that I have this tileset nearly done.