The Portland trip was surprisingly good, from...

May 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The Portland trip was surprisingly good, from a module building perspective. Long drives with no book and a blank notebook really help.

I think the second module is at a rough state of completion. All the extra dialog I wanted to fit in is done and in the game. Your two main companions feel like real people now. I'd like to schedule a full run through before I turn it over to QA, but I'm feeling fairly good about things. I did some more tweaking as a result of the patch, this time working in some palm trees on one of the tropical islands. There's some housekeeping to do, but that's about it.

I also laid down the framework of a fairly elaborate end battle in the first module. Hopefully today I can start in on the scripting, which is pretty complex. I think I'm going for five or so different AI scripts for different types of attackers. We'll see if I can pull it off.

Finally, I spec'ed out the first main quest in the third module. By now, the quests are becoming increasingly combat oriented. The player should be fifth level and able to handle some fairly major encounters. I'm trying hard to make them all varied and interesting and not just an endless parade of creatures to destroy.

If I was going to guess at this point, I'm hoping I can prototype the first three modules fairly well. Based on NWN2's release date, that should give me four months to QA what I've got in addition to finishing the third module. I'm not introducing any major systems such as high seas, so it should just be traditional quest building for me.