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I went back to the mines, adding in an extra ...
August 29, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I went back to the mines, adding in an extra goodie for evil characters. It's always fun to hold out temptation to good characters and see if people give in, if only to see what happens.
I also put some effort into Death, which had a few issues, such as sticking around after raising you from the dead. I also worked on my goal to give him something interesting and relevant to say when raising people on different maps. So far I only have two, but my goal is to go through and give him funny things to say in most places in the game.
Finally, I fixed a couple minor issues with the mines. My dwarven fighters weren't spawning in to provide fun background combat. The beasties should now look like they're doing something other than standing around waiting for some action.
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I think I'm finally done with the mines
August 28, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I think I'm finally done with the mines. I spent yesterday and this morning debugging, tracking down all sorts of weird issues. The mine cart path is defined by a series of sequential waypoints (over a hundred). It turns out I skipped a couple, which caused it to get confused and come to a stop. I chuckled a bit when I accidentally killed off the mine cart. I also had creatures attacking the camera, which I solved with the good ol' EffectSanctuary trick.
Yesterday I managed to spend some time with the Valsharoon side quest. He's one of those minor villians that pops up over the course of the adventure and you can go after him on the high seas if you'd like. So far I've made his undead crew, but now I need a ship and some fun treasures to go along with it.
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It feels like I've been working in the mines ...
August 27, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 It feels like I've been working in the mines for years now. The good news is that things continue to work better every day. The lighting is greatly improved. I added foes and treasures, conversations and journal entries. The sound effects are coming along nicely, from mine car noises to the whoosh of splashing into water.
I spent a bunch of time testing this morning and did run across assorted issues. The hardest to fix was getting my camera object smoothly following the mine cart. A simple ActionMoveToObject failed miserably, presumably because the narrow walkable area made it impossible for the camera to get there. I ended up picking a location behind the cart and telling it to go there, which generally worked okay.
I also tested a couple of the fights, which ended up being extremely challenging. I toned it down, but have yet to test the big, massive fight. I also worry about a couple track-jumps, which I haven't tested lately.
Busy, busy.
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I fixed the multiple slope cart issue, but ha...
August 25, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I fixed the multiple slope cart issue, but have since discovered others. The current frustrating item is that the cart won't jump over the lava properly. It gives up and decides not to risk life and limb. I think the issue is walkmesh related, but we'll see.
The track is laid and the landscaping is done. Of course, I still need to add in some actual adventure beyond the amusement park ride appeal.
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Well, I've been making progress with the mine...
August 23, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 Well, I've been making progress with the mine area, though the usual amusing bugs are popping up. In this case, the multiple "tilted" versions of the cart are getting all stuck together. While it looks pretty odd, I'm working to clean that up now. There are also issues with the camera and getting in and out of the cart, but I'm slowly getting there.
I still need to do a ton of landscaping, but the track is all laid at this point. Hopefully it won't be much longer.
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I finished up my Halloween module and sent it...
August 22, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I finished up my Halloween module and sent it off to the Bouncy Rock folks. It's short, funny, and puzzle-oriented. Last night I finished debugging and added voices to the two main characters (myself as an NPC and Grunto, my faithful lab assistant). I'm especially fond of Grunto, who lives to clean up after his master's messes. There are a few in-jokes scattered around, and an odd little treat at the end.
The plan for today is to sink a bunch of time into the Iron Mountain area. Hopefully I can finish up laying tracks today, which is fairly time consuming.
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The folks at Bouncy Rock are putting together...
August 21, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 The folks at Bouncy Rock are putting together a Halloween themed mod, and asked that I make something for them. If you look closely at the picture, you can get a sense for the theme of my entry.
I'm going to try to keep it short so that I can get back to Dark Waters. I did manage more work on the mines yesterday. I'd like to keep that short too, so that I can get things to the point where I can wrap up the majority of the work and start moving into the testing phase. Testing usually takes months, so I'm trying to plan accordingly.
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I continue to slave away in the mines, making...
August 20, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I continue to slave away in the mines, making a huge amount of progress yesterday. At this point the cart nicely moves about on the tracks. I want to speed it up a bit and make the turns more smoothly. It also looks weird going up and down slopes, but I think I have a fix for that too, using visual effects of different models applied to an invisible human. Sneaky.
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I did a bunch of debugging and tweaking yeste...
August 19, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I did a bunch of debugging and tweaking yesterday with the Serpent Isle area, though I still need to hunker down and do another testing pass.
Last night I worked more on the mine carts, doing a quick demo to prove to myself that it generally works. I didn't quite plan on sticking the PC visibly out of the mine car, along with the rest of my party in tow. It makes for an amusing sight, but I don't think it's quite what I'm shooting for.
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It's been a few days, interrupted by a mosqui...
August 18, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
It's been a few days, interrupted by a mosquito-filled camping trip, but I'm back into the saddle again. I have a list of bugs and tweaks to work on for the Serpent Isle quest. Hopefully it won't be too hard to finalize.
I've been helping my son work on his "pirates versus ninjas" area. On the long drive to go camping, we worked up a backstory and some motivation. Mostly he's been doing area creation, and only occasionally getting frustrated. I may assist with some of the final terrain texturing, but generally it looks pretty good.
I'd love to work on my mine cart roller-coaster concept, but I'm not sure how much time I'll get today.
Finally, it looks like Bioware has confirmed a toolset for Dragon Age. I don't have any Dragon Age plans at the moment, but it's nice to know there might be options down the road.
Update: I had forgotten, but AME posted a new interview with me from awhile back.
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I spent a lot of time testing and coding last...
August 15, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I spent a lot of time testing and coding last night, and again this morning, though I mostly just made a new list of issues. It's coming together really well now. My favorite part is telling Heather and Daniel to go off and do assorted useful things while you fight the undead. Heather sets up traps (which the villagers annoyingly set off at the moment) and Daniel helps round up the villagers and get them to the safety of the animal pen.
I still have a few more bug passes to go before things look good. There's also certain sections that are untested that I need to get to. Still, it's coming together nicely.
While I finalize that area, I switched over to Iron Mountain. I'm going with a roller-coaster theme, with mine carts rolling around the map. So far I just have a few sloped mine track placeables I've created and some proof-of-concept areas. We'll see how it turns out.
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I finally got some time to test this morning
August 14, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I finally got some time to test this morning. Sure enough, things failed horribly, but I think I'm getting closer. The first issue was that I simply forgot to attach my scripts to the right places in the dialog. That was easy to fix, and I was off testing again.
The second problem is that the zombies can walk through tiny gaps in the wall. I think I get to make big sections unwalkable to prevent it, which shouldn't be too hard.
The final issue is that some of my key NPCs run off and fight zombies instead of doing their assigned tasks. I added a bunch of debug code and hopefully can figure out what's going on during my next testing run.
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I sunk a tremendous amount of time into codin...
August 12, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I sunk a tremendous amount of time into coding yesterday, getting most of the work theoretically done. Unfortunately when I went to test this morning, it comically failed spectacularly and I wasn't able to test much.
A trigger started the first conversation just fine, and I was clicking through dialog options. Soon enough, I noticed something moving in the tall grass and sure enough, a zombie emerged. After that, it was like something out of a bad horror movie and I started laughing and yelling out "Look behind you!".
My companions lept into action, fighting off the zombies I had forgotten to delete from previous testing. The conversation kept going on, everyone oblivious to the battle around us. When the dialog branch appeared when Daniel was supposed to speak, he couldn't and the rest of the dialog became broken. Fortunately this one was easy to fix with a quickie zombie deletion.
I still have more code to write, though it's getting pretty close to finished. I'd like to create another weapon with a custom OnHit ability, as those are fun to do and I need a suitable treasure.
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Well, we moved the hospital yesterday, and ev...
August 11, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 Well, we moved the hospital yesterday, and everything went amazingly well. I'm mostly caught up with sleep and the concept of free time is starting to appear as well.
I decided to refocus on my current side quest, in hopes of finishing that up. I did a quick test and was able to talk and battle my way to the goodies at the end. There's still a bunch of cleanup I need to do, and the exterior area needs a ton of scripting. Still, things are coming along nicely. I was even able to get an achievement, which was a good sign.
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I've been making small, but steady progress w...
August 08, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
I've been making small, but steady progress with the latest quest. There's lots of little details that need to be added, such as having the Blade of Ending give a special attack when fighting these huge creatures, or updating the achievements when you actually manage to kill them.
I'm working way too much this weekend and next week, so we'll see how much time I can really manage.
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My work is getting crazy busy lately
August 06, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 My work is getting crazy busy lately. We're in the process of moving to a new hospital, and I'm smack-dab in the middle of the move insanity. I'm still able to sneak a little development time here and there, but it's getting increasingly more difficult.
I worked on my undead legions and put together the initial parts of the scripting. There's still a ton to do before it's ready for testing, but it's nice to start making progress.
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I'm back from my trip and indeed managed a bi...
August 04, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I'm back from my trip and indeed managed a bit of writing along the way. I realized I needed another area, but it should be pretty small. I'm nearly done with the deep caverns area, other than a little decoration perhaps.
Mostly I have tons of scripting ahead of me. Some of it is fairly complicated, but it should help make the fights somewhat unique and interesting. Eventually I'll need to make sure the big battles aren't impossibly difficult as well.
Fun, fun.
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I finished most of my dialogs for this rather...
August 01, 2008 by Adam in NWN2
 I finished most of my dialogs for this rather lengthy side-quest. I've decided I'm basically incapable of creating a simple "kill the monsters and get the reward" quest. That's probably good from a player pespective, but it means that making even a minor side quest can get rather complicated.
The last dialog involves Daniel's romance storyline, which hopefully won't be too wordy. After that, I have a ton of scripting to do to make the actual quest come together. That's usually the fun part for me, especially watching it all come together for the first time.
I'll be out of town for a couple days, but the good news (for you) is that I'll be stuck in a car for much of it, with little to do but write dialog.
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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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