No pretty pictures today

March 19, 2003 by Adam in NWN1

No pretty pictures today. I worked more on dialog yesterday, as well as frantically scribbling out how I wanted to do the AI for the elven troops. It's fairly complex, but should be manageable. The trick is trying to emulate "interesting" behavior while not bogging down the CPU or making things to hard on myself. I have plans for them to be able to scout out an area, attack enemy positions, rally around the PC, forage for supplies, and a few other things. I've got the basics for a "morale" concept. I also have a method to control troops all at once or individually.

Most of this is still on paper, though I did a mini-test yesterday. I had a couple NPCs following me around, essentially linking one to the other as henchmen. It's a little complicated, as you have to break and reform the chain of henchmen as you pull one out. Amazingly, it works. I think I prefer the "assault the enemy position" approach to moving troops, but this method should work in a pinch.

Sam and I played more "Forge of Fury" last night. We had a great time, exploring and seeing all the custom creatures added to the module. There were a few odd quirks and some minor gripes. We had some issues with the bleeding rules. At one point, Sam's orc fell in battle, I healed him, but he still got the Respawn screen. 10 minutes later, he had walked all the way back to where I was. Another time, both Sam and I lost consciousness and the creature that was attacking us lost interest and wandered off (after saying he was going to eat us). We lept to our feet, healed ourselves quickly, then dispatched the monster. My only other issue was that the areas were very large and didn't have much in them. I suspect this was in part due to translating PnP maps to the game, but it did lead to lots of walking around. I think what this all means is that between realism and fun, I prefer to err on the side of fun.

Minor gripes aside, we really have been having fun playing the module. I've really enjoyed some of the creative uses of scripting, new monsters I haven't seen elsewhere, and some interesting areas to explore. In fact, my biggest problem has nothing at all to do with the game, but rather the short attention span of a 4-year-old.