Dragon Age

NWN 2

NWN 1

Well, it looks like the mirror puzzle is work...

December 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it looks like the mirror puzzle is working properly. Light bounces around in a realistic fashion and I can hit my desired target without too much difficulty. There's a number of things I could polish up, but it is just a prototype after all. I'm mentally prepared to rewrite big chunks of the code for Dragon Age. Sometimes it seems like an awful lot of work for a little puzzle, but I suppose it's that sort of variety that makes the module stand out.

I worked on more dialog issues yesterday, putting things I'd written down into HTML form. I also finished up a few dialogs that I hadn't quite completed. Pretty soon it'll be time to do some mapping and area planning. I have some things penciled out that need to have lots of detail filled in. I enjoyed writing the PnP style room descriptions that would pop up as the PC entered, so I'll probably do the same for this campaign.

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I'm up to 38 dialogs having just copied over ...

December 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I'm up to 38 dialogs having just copied over my writings from last weekend. Most of the new ones are pretty short, but the number still strikes me as big. I still have plenty more to do too, so getting to 100 dialogs for the first module wouldn't surprise me.

Though I haven't tested it, I'm fairly sure the mirror puzzle isn't done yet. My current method for finding where the light goes next only takes mirrors into account and I need to make it more generic. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

I also ordered Rome: Total War and Pirates! for, er, educational purposes. I'm still mulling over different ways to handle the ship movement and combat, and I'd like to see some examples of large scale battles. The plan is for both of them to make appearances in the module. Hopefully I'm not being overly ambitious.

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I've returned from my holiday journey north w...

December 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I've returned from my holiday journey north where I managed to put in some quality writing time. Most of the time was spent on a single scene which expanded into a fairly large chunk of the game. It's the first of the combat heavy sections, yet it still has a fair amount of dialog.

I'm also working hard on the background of a particularly tricky character. I hesitate to call him a villian, as I'm trying to make his actions both understandable and horrible at the same time. There's always risk when shooting for the more complex opponents and the easy path is to go with the evil megalomaniac. I'm trying for someone who starts out meaning well but is deeply flawed. Well, we'll see how it goes.

I think I finally got my mirror puzzle working properly. It'll need some more testing but I was able to push the mirrors around and get the light beam to move around in some complex ways. The next step will be to see if I can "solve" the puzzle and get the light shining where I want it to be.

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I think I finally tracked down the issue with...

December 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I think I finally tracked down the issue with my mirror problem. It turns out the GetFirstObjectInShape function is buggy and simply won't work for what I'm trying to do. So, it looks like I'll have to make my own method for determining which object lies in the path of the light beam. It's nice to know that I'm not completely crazy.

I finished putting in the last of the dialog into NWN. Of course, now I have yet more dialog to write. I'm hopeful that the next few days will give me some quiet time with my notebook, which I've been wanting to do for awhile.

There's a fairly large section of the game that involves a lot of talking to people. I'm trying to balance it so that it could be rather short if you wanted as well as providing some interesting insight into the characters. We'll see how it pans out.

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I've copied 20 dialogs into NWN

December 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I've copied 20 dialogs into NWN. It's a tedious process but I'm nearly done. Over the weekend I also managed to write out a new dialog in my notebook. It turned out to be surprisingly funny as well as providing some insight into one of the characters. So far this first module seems a little dialog heavy, mostly because I've got a lot to do to introduce the characters.

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The work to HTMLize everything continues

December 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

The work to HTMLize everything continues. Already it seems easier to find what I'm looking for. Copying and pasting dialog into the toolset is a little tedious, but I don't have much more to do. It also gives me a chance to reread and edit things as needed. Hopefully I can finish the conversion up today and start in on the endless dialog this game seems to require.

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Life got pretty busy for a few days, though I...

December 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Life got pretty busy for a few days, though I did manage to turn my hand to the great DA project for a bit. I've expanded my project to take NWN dialogs and make them readable on the web so that they include comments, speakers, and script entries. I'll probably expand as needed over time. I've also been putting my word processor dialogs into NWN, which is slow going.

It's been a treat to reread some of the earlier dialogs, which nicely convey the relationship between the PC and his friends. There's some funny lines that strike a chord with me, something I'd like to continue in the module. Next week I'll be traveling for the holidays a bit and I'm hoping to spend some quality time with my notebook. There's endless dialog to write yet, especially the village area with lots of NPCs.

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I've been working away at converting things t...

December 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working away at converting things to HTML as I'm able. I've also been filling in holes as I discover them, such as some ideas for loadscreen text, assuming we have loadscreens and a place to put custom text. I'm ever hopeful.

I also had a couple ideas for some scenes with a particular visual impact. It would take some modeling work on my part, but should work out nicely (again assuming it can be done with the new graphics engine).

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Well, I finally had a scripting project of mi...

December 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I finally had a scripting project of mine succeed, hopefully breaking the curse of the last few weeks. I threw together something that takes the xml output of the Mod Packer utility and converts it into a nicely formatted HTML page. You can take a look at a sample here.

What that means is that I'll probably start copying dialog into the NWN toolset and exporting it out periodically. Then I can create a master page for different parts of the module and link to the various dialogs.

Hopefully all this organization will pan out over time. I never did a formal postmortem on my NWN modules but I'm still trying to apply my lessons learned to make this next project go more smoothly.

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To save my sanity, I put away the mirror puzz...

December 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

To save my sanity, I put away the mirror puzzle for the moment and instead focused on writing. I cranked out a rather lengthy dialog with lots of different options due to the game state - those always take awhile.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that a single massive file that contains everything is simply unwieldy. I'm going to start breaking out maps, dialog, journal entries, and so on into different HTML files. Ideally I'd put the dialog into NWN then export out and convert it to HTML. We'll see if I can understand the file formats well enough to pull it off.

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I thought I figured out the issue yesterday

December 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I thought I figured out the issue yesterday. It looked like I had mixed up some variable names and all I needed to do was unmix them up. Sadly, when I actually went to test it the light was again headed off in a weird direction. I took some good notes, though, and can hopefully figure out what went horribly wrong.

I'm starting to get the urge to do some writing today, especially after doing all this technical scripting for the last week. I really appreciate being able to switch between the different aspects of making a game. When I get bored and frustrated with one thing, I can switch over to another.

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You'd think that having a master's degree in ...

December 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

You'd think that having a master's degree in science would let me intuitively understand the mathematics behind reflective surfaces. Sadly, I still haven't gotten the thing working properly. Part of it isn't entirely my fault - the facing value of the mirror was 180 degrees from what I expected. Even when I flipped it around it reflected the light in a completely unexpected direction. I'll have to break out the pencil and paper again to try to figure out what I did wrong.

I've also been toying with an idea that I'm not sure will pan out. Ideally I'd like to get the dialog in a form where it can be easily translated, spoken by voice actors, edited, and so on. There's a handy GFF to XML translator that can take dialog put into NWN and export it out. From there I should be able to display it on a web page for others to see. Even more ideal, I could export it into a Dragon Age compatible format, saving me loads of typing. Well, we'll see. It may not be worth the fiddling for the moment.

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Well, I managed to get my mirror test somewha...

December 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I managed to get my mirror test somewhat working today. I'm now displaying the path of the light leaving the mirror and it quickly became obvious that my reflection calculation was lacking, though I don't think it's going to be too hard to fix. After all of this, I'll have a generic mirror and light reflection system. I suppose I should keep throwing mirror puzzles at the player to make up for all the time I've spent on this, but I do understand they're only interesting once or twice.

My ship movement prototype isn't going as well. The first time I tried it the game locked up. I've fiddled a bit more, though still somehow keep locking up the game. Some dedicated testing time is clearly in order.

Finally, I managed to write a few more dialogs and type them up. I'm still trying to decide the best way to store all of them. Right now I typically edit in Word, though I'm debating converting them to HTML. I'd like to better support online editing and prepare things for voice acting. If I was really hardcore, I might consider making a web-based application to store all this stuff. Hmm.

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Friday I continued working on scripting, hope...

December 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Friday I continued working on scripting, hopefully getting my ship movement scripts working properly. Unfortunately I ended up getting Vampire: Bloodlines, which is sucking up all of my gaming time (pun intended). I haven't tested the ship script or the fixes to my mirror puzzle. I also did a bit more mapping and wrote some dialog yesterday. Hopefully I can get some more done today. I can usually find the time to scribble a sentence or two while watching the kids play.

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I've been on a scripting kick lately so I dec...

December 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I've been on a scripting kick lately so I decided to dig into my ship-to-ship combat system. I've already done some prework long ago. It used a weird control system - the PC would be invisible on an ocean map and the PC's ship would try to move towards the PC's location. Unfortunately it didn't work very well and I shelved it for many months.

Now I'm switching to a dialog-based control approach. We'll see if it works any better.

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I actually broke out the game and toolset las...

December 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I actually broke out the game and toolset last night and did a little testing and debugging. I think after the lengthy debug process with Demon, I was feeling like I'd rather have electric shocks applied to my eyeballs than do more debugging. Fortunately that sense of dread seems to have worn off and I was able to get things done.

Mostly I worked on a prototype for a mirror puzzle. I got things mostly working - the mirrors moved around okay, though reflections didn't work quite properly. Hopefully I can add some more debug code today and see if I can get it working. Ideally I'll be able to prototype the more complicated parts of the game in NWN so that it's easier to implement when Dragon Age really comes out.

The other thing I'm working on, something I've fiddled with for months, is a ship-to-ship combat system. I've waffled back and forth between turn based and real time, debating how complex I really want it to be. Yesterday I tried to break the problem down into much smaller steps, starting with simply getting a ship to move around an ocean properly. Just that is likely to take a week or two to get working properly. Lots of hard problems.

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I did some more behind the scenes work today,...

December 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I did some more behind the scenes work today, putting together my build notes in a more organized fashion. I also dusted off my mirror puzzle, making my custom mirror a bit bigger (before it was knee sized) and starting in on the scripting. I think I've picked a preferred method for getting light to reflect properly. Hopefully some of the functions I've picked will show up again in Dragon Age. Ah, the joys of prototyping.

I've already gotten some e-mails from people who would like to volunteer. It's still a bit premature, probably by a year or so. Hopefully I can leverage my so-called fame to amass a horde of evil minions to help with things such as music composition, voice acting, editing, 3D modeling, translating to other languages, and of course the endless testing that's usually required with such things.

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I just finished uploading a revised map with ...

November 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I just finished uploading a revised map with some annotations as to what all the different buildings are. Yesterday I made a huge number of changes, fleshing out the various detail pages. Of course, all of this web work has kept me away from working on the module itself, so the site changes will likely slow down shortly.

I've also be reworking some of the interior maps. After redrawing one three times, I think I'm finally happy with how the layout and plot interact. I'm really shooting for a high density of plot per square foot. There should be interesting things to do in every area and very minimal wandering around. We'll see if I can pull it off.

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I put yet more work into my Dragon Age site, ...

November 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I put yet more work into my Dragon Age site, fleshing out the informational pages that I'd originally left blank, as well as finishing up a map. My next step is to put together some links between the two sites and then I'll do most of my posting on the Dragon Age site unless I have some specific NWN news. Slowly making progress . . .

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I've made more progress and done some houseke...

November 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

I've made more progress and done some housekeeping over the last couple days. I finished writing my sermon mentioned yesterday and typed it up from my scribbled notes. I've also set things up so I can more easily maintain this site. I hope to fill out the two side links today with some actual text and eventually some maps and such.

It's nice to know that I've got a couple years before the game is released as I have lots to plan yet. I'm still mulling over major plot developments later in the campaign. I've also been listening to the Pirates of the Carribean soundtrack for piratey inspiration.

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Well, it's not really ready for prime time, b...

November 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, it's not really ready for prime time, but I posted my first news item on my new Dragon Age site. Feel free to take a peek.

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Well, I've decided to start moving things ove...

November 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I've decided to start moving things over to this new area which is dedicated to my Dragon Age modules. There's a couple linked documents to the left that are empty - one of those poor web practice things that I tell my work customers to avoid. Oops.

I spent an hour or so this morning working on a nice looking map of Highcastle, the main village in the first module. I've already got a pencil sketch of the area, so this one's mostly for vanity's sake. I'll polish it up and add it to the Highcastle page with some descriptive text.

I've also been writing a sermon of all things. Religion is playing a part in this campaign it seems. While it's not core to the gameplay or anything, it does serve as a motivation behind certain NPC's actions. The sermon is there for the people who are interested in furthering their understanding of key people in the module.

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I've been doing housekeeping the last few day...

November 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been doing housekeeping the last few days, trying to throw together a new site for my Dragon Age modules. It was fun seeing the hit counter read Visitors: 1, Hits: 1 this morning. There's no content at the moment but hopefully I can remedy this shortly.

I've been continuing to make my little fishing village, trying to decide what critical services it should have (e.g. fishing shacks, docks, a mill, baker, weaver, etc.). I like the idea of having the village be as realistic as possible, but I might remove buildings that don't tie into the plot. It's a refreshing change from mapping all those interiors.

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I think I've broken through my mapping block ...

November 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I've broken through my mapping block that I was having last week. I try to visualize certain scenes that I'd like to have occur for the player and when I'm lucky the mapping just pops out of that. I'm also trying to give myself enough flexibility so that I can add things in as new ideas come along. Hopefully I can finish up with this Act's worth of mapping and do some planning for the outdoor areas. Since it's set in a village, there's likely to be lots and lots of dialog to write.

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Mapping is hard

November 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Mapping is hard. I've gone through several drafts so far and have yet to come up with a firm layout for what I want to do. Part of it is that the map has to support the plot, which is reliant in part on the map, so I end up going back and forth with the design. I'm slowly getting there, but it's taking awhile.

I just got a note from someone asking if my modules could be translated into Russian. I'm always happy to expand my world domination plans and hopefully I can set things up with my Dragon Age campaign to be easier for translators. If I'm really ambitious, I can get translators working before the module is released, though it's sometimes hard to round people up.

On a personal note, the notebook I use to scribble down my ideas is nearly filled up. It was one that my stepfather used for his work as a chemistry professor. When he passed away a couple years ago, there was something special it and I haven't been looking forward to switching to some boring store bought notebook. My mom was going through things and found an identical blank one. Nice how these things work out.

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I'm over 11,000 words in my campaign document...

November 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm over 11,000 words in my campaign document, most of it dialog. I do worry sometimes that the beginning of the campaign will be a bit dialog-heavy, though it seems necessary in order to set the stage for the various characters. I'm trying hard to interject some excitement and exploration in there so people don't doze off too badly. It's a tough balance.

I actually played a little bit of Neverwinter Nights the other day. This is a rare thing for me, as it's almost painful for me to touch the game after so many months of grueling development for Demon.

The first module I played with my son, who's five years old. I was looking for something combat heavy and came across the highly rated The Lord of Terror. It's basically a recreation of the first Diablo, complete with images, music, and voice over ripped straight from the game. I'm amazed that the lawyers at Blizzard haven't demanded it be pulled down yet. Still, it's fairly fun, though fairly straightforward. The gameplay quickly came to Sam's fighter clearing the room of critters, then spending the next 30 seconds or so picking things off of bodies and opening all the barrels. I imagine it'll be something we play as co-op from time to time.

I also ended up playing Shadowguard, one of Bioware's new premium modules. I'm only about 45 minutes into it, but so far so good. There's nothing that stands out in particular, but the scripting, dialog, and story are consistently good. My only complaint so far is that many of the themes seem familiar, but perhaps that's just the nature of fantasy roleplaying games.

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I actually cracked open gmax and whipped up a...

November 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I actually cracked open gmax and whipped up a little placeable over the weekend. It's not much to look at, but it's mostly for prototyping one of the Dragon Age puzzles anyway. Hopefully I'll have a little time today to fiddle with it a bit.

Other than that, I've been continuing my mapping efforts. There's this vague creative process where puzzles, areas, and plot and come together and hopefully emerge as a coherent whole. I've got one level feeling well mapped out and another slowly getting there. It's a good thing I've got a couple years to go.

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Just a short update for today

November 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Just a short update for today. I've transferred a number of my notebook scribbles into electronic form. Right now I'm sticking everything in an RTF file and using Word to edit. It may grow prohibitively large at some point, but I like the ability to move a single file around. Eventually I might move it to HTML documents like I did with the Shadowlord build documents. Pretty soon I'll have to scan in some maps and start writing room descriptions.

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One of the nice things about being away from ...

October 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

One of the nice things about being away from home and my computer for a few days is that it gives me the opportunity to spend quality time with my notebook. I've filled several pages with tiny scrawls for my Dragon Age campaign. My main push now is mapping out the main "dungeon" in the module. So far I feel pretty good about it, offering up a variety of puzzles, backstory, and roleplaying opportunities. I'm trying hard to provide a rich experience, with each room having interesting things to do and see. I'd much rather have players rewarded for investigating areas carefully than simply rush them through a series of room and combats.

Yesterday I finished up the main entrance level, though I'll have lots of dialog and detailed notes to put in. I may even prototype one of the puzzles in NWN as the scripting is somewhat complex. One of the nice things about having a couple of years before a module can be put into a game is that it gives me lots of time to write. For the avid readers out there, I'm hoping for plenty of backstory in journals, signs, and notes scattered about.

Hopefully today I can work on the second main level, at least getting the mapping done. So far I've been making lists of rooms I need to arrange as well as the major plot events. I'm having fun with splitting up the party and letting the various NPCs and PC interact in their smaller groups. Should be fun.

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Some of my better ideas happen right when I w...

October 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Some of my better ideas happen right when I wake up, then I work hard to remember it until I can write it down. Funny how creativity works.

I'm most of the way writing the dialog for the first act of the first module. The next big project is mapping everything, putting in interesting locations that help the story unfold as well as presenting fun challenges for the player.

I've also begun to sketch and model some of the custom content I'll need for the game. It's still very preliminary, but I'd like to get some normal mapped low polygon models ready for the release of Dragon Age.

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I cleaned up a bit around here

October 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I cleaned up a bit around here. The Demon introduction page actually says that it's released now. The title of this main page includes the Demon campaign. I'm still mulling over when it makes sense to open up a Dragon Age section of the web. Pretty soon, I suppose, as that's what I mostly work on these days.

Not much to report on the DA front. I've been steadily working on dialog and planning. Much of the first module will be a dungeon crawl of sorts, which requires considerable amount of interior planning. Hopefully I won't leave anything important out, like a place for the original inhabitants to go to the bathroom.

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It's been awhile since I posted, so I thought...

October 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It's been awhile since I posted, so I thought I'd throw a tidbit to the people visiting the site. Work on my Dragon Age project is my focus these days. I continue to write dialog, plan the story, and try to learn how to do 3d modeling using normal maps.

Without spoiling too much, the tentative title for the new module is "Dark Waters" and centers around three friends living on an island many years after a devastating war. We'll see how it goes.

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I managed to fix the weird bug the one player had

October 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I managed to fix the weird bug the one player had. It turns out that he'd downloaded a PRC pack which ended up corrupting his character. I ended up creating a mini module that gave his first level character the xp and items he lost. Being a nice guy can be time consuming on occasion.

I continue to chug away on my Dragon Age writing. Just for fun, I fiddled with my little soccer game in NWN so the opposing player would periodically kick the ball. It was in a semi-random direction, so it's somewhat useless at the moment. Maybe I'll fiddle with the AI a bit more if I get a chance.

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It looks like the 1

October 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It looks like the 1.64 update for NWN is out there now. I'm bracing myself for bug notices relating to the update. I might try to sneak in some of the new skies, or perhaps the new troglodytes as well. We'll see if I really have the time this weekend. Someone's given me a weird Dreamcatcher 3 bug to track down that looks like it could take some time.

I've been making some good progress on my Dragon Age project. Dialog takes forever to write and I'm slowly working my way through it. It took me a couple years to write and plan the Shadowlords module, so it looks like I'm starting at just the right time.

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Every once in awhile I get a weird idea and h...

October 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Every once in awhile I get a weird idea and have to test it out. I wanted to simulate a soccer-like game using a creature for a ball. After about 15 minutes of scripting, I had it generally working. Now I'm trying to recall my high school trigonometry, thinking about how to write AI to get shots into goals. In a sense it's a prototype of a small minigame I'd like to do for my Dragon Age campaign, though we'll see if it really works out.

I also noticed that Demon only has around 16,000 downloads (Dreamcatcher 1 has over 115,000). Part of it is probably due to Dreamcatcher being out for so long, allowing people to download it multiple times with each new version. It may also be that the NWN community is slowing down a bit, with the people playing it now being the most hardcore.

In general, I think there's a big value in getting modules out soon after a game is released, which encourages me to get everything ready for a Dragon Age campaign. I think once people finish the game, they look around for other things to do. If there's nothing of interest, it often gets uninstalled after six months or so and forgotten.

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It seems like it took forever, but I finally ...

October 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It seems like it took forever, but I finally tracked down the issue with Shifters and updated the hak pack to fix it. Basically I'd padded the portrait.2da and appearance.2da files with bogus entries, causing assorted weirdness when polymorphing as a shifter. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up. What was a twenty minute job took four hours as I kept being interrupted by kids and family.

I've written about five pages of dialog for my Dragon Age project. I've been thinking about it for a couple months now and the story is starting to write itself. I'm trying hard to lay the groundwork for the characters at the beginning of the game so that the player gets a good sense of the world and their place in it. One of these days I'll get around to opening up a "Dragon Age" section of this site, though I'm not quite there yet.

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Well, no module playing for fun, but I've bee...

September 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, no module playing for fun, but I've been breaking ground with my Dragon Age module. It won't be ready for a few more years, but I've already started in on the dialog.

Hopefully I can work up the motivation to fix some of the new Demon bugs that have come in. The scope of the problems is diminishing - the latest big one is an issue with Shifters showing the wrong creature shapes. I suspect that appearances.2da is a bit out of wack - hopefully it won't be hard to fix.

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I haven't received any e-mails that the 1

September 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I haven't received any e-mails that the 1.8 patch broke things horribly, but the week is still young. I got an e-mail from the German Gamestar magazine asking if Demon can be included in an upcoming 5 CD edition. I agreed, of course, though I suspect everyone reading this site has already downloaded Demon.

Now that I actually have a little free time, I'm wondering if I have time to actually play some of the Hall of Fame modules. It's been many months since I've actually played with NWN for fun. It's always nice to see what other module builders are up to. Twilight and Midnight have been on the top of my list for a long time, though I'm tempted to wait until Dawn is completed. It would also be fun to play a cooperative adventure with my son, though the dialog would have to be light.

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I'm back from a few days at the coast with my...

September 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm back from a few days at the coast with my family. It was fairly productive and I should have a new version of the module to release today. There's a variety of small bugs it fixes, though none of them are really major.

I also put some more planning time into my next project. I'm trying really hard to lay out all the groundwork before I touch the toolset.

Update: Okay, I just uploaded version 1.8 of Demon. get it while it's hot.

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It's been a few days since I last posted, tho...

September 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It's been a few days since I last posted, though I haven't exactly been relaxing. I've fixed some other bugs in Demon and made some additional tweaks. I'm hoping that I'll have some time to test this weekend if things go smoothly, then get the new version posted on the Vault.

There's some other non-Demon NWN things going on that I can't talk about yet. It's exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. With luck, I'll be able to talk more about it, but for the moment I guess I'm stuck being a tease.

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After a week of taking it relatively easy, I'...

September 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

After a week of taking it relatively easy, I've turned my attention back to bug fixes and planning for future projects. There was a wacky bug where Dwarves could get stuck in Tainted mode that I fixed in the latest build I'm working on. I've got a stack of other miscellaneous bugs I'd like to work on next.

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It's a good feeling to be finally "done"

September 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It's a good feeling to be finally "done". Of course, I'm not sure if I'll ever truly be done. I'm still answering e-mails from people going through Shadowlords for the first time. My list of miscellaneous bugs has grown to the point where it's about time to do a bug pass on the entire series. I'm tempted to create some sort of uber-download that includes all the movies, music, haks, and modules in a single gargantuan file.

Then there's all my future projects. Before everyone starts asking if I'll help turn their stories into modules, I have a few of my own tales to fiddle with. My sights are set on Dragon Age, and possible some more NWN fiddlings depending on how things go.

I might become a little quieter on this site, but don't expect me to vanish forever. There's plenty of tales to tell.

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I think I'm really, really close

September 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I'm really, really close. In fact, I might just release today. I spent some time this morning dealing with some minor issues, but they're so minor that I think I might have reached the point where I might as well just put it out there for the rest of the world to beat on.

Like I said before, epic battles are a big pain, especially if I try to do anything fancy. The cutscenes seem to work reasonably well, as do my special rules, spawning in of creatures, and so on. So, I'll see if anything major comes in from the testers and perhaps post away.

Update: I've thrown caution to the wind and posted the latest version of Demon. Get it while it's hot.

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I usually play on the normal difficulty setti...

August 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I usually play on the normal difficulty setting, though last night I was playing on Difficult and ended up with one of my henchman being charmed. After our little family squabble, everything went much more smoothly.

I think I'm getting pretty close to done. My cutscene problems seem to have been fixed. There was also a really weird bug where all the sound levels were set to zero. It turns out that doing an Auto Save and then jumping to a new area causes it. Very strange.

I'm going to pass the latest to the testers and hopefully release it after they give me the green light.

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I didn't have a chance to touch the toolset y...

August 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I didn't have a chance to touch the toolset yesterday, as I was swamped with kids and the normal routine of the weekend. Hopefully today I can do some bug fixing and the like.

In the background, I'm continuing to work on my Dragon Age campaign. It's a fun creative process to continue to flesh out the main story, party dynamics, and motivations for characters. There's still a couple years to go, though that doesn't seem very long to me to plan and write for a lengthy campaign.

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Still slaving away at getting this bonus endi...

August 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Still slaving away at getting this bonus ending released. There's some annoying bugs not in the ending that I can't seem to replicate. One of the testers is having problems, but it's really hard to fix what I can't see broken.

I made a little extra goodie for people who finish the game as very good. It requires a hak pack change, but it's so minor that I wouldn't ask anyone to download a new version just to see it.

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I'm hopeful that today's build will be the ma...

August 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm hopeful that today's build will be the magic one to release. I played through the troublesome sections and the weird issues people were reporting seem to be fixed. There was an annoying one when you could damage the troops that were on your side if you played in Hardcore D&D mode, which made future events somewhat difficult. I had to add in a piece so that factions kept resetting themselves. Tricky.

As an aside, I just got my DSL upgraded this morning. Hopefully that means this web site is quite a bit snappier.

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Another day, another test build

August 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Another day, another test build. This latest one includes some bug fixes in places other than the ending, as well as some changes to the ending itself. I'll pass this along to testers today and see if it ends up being acceptable to post on the Vault.

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I've been in bug squashing mode as of late, t...

August 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been in bug squashing mode as of late, trying to get the last of the issues taken care of before I release my mini-expansion. Some are a challenge, mostly because a certain issue won't appear for me. It's quite mysterious and very hard to fix.

I've also been mulling over my next grand adventure, trying to get the proper balance between dialog, puzzles, combat, and character development. It feels good to do something a little different for a change.

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I've got the first of my testers reporting is...

August 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've got the first of my testers reporting issues, so I'll try to address some of those things today. Otherwise it's been fairly peaceful for a change. Sure, I'm getting a fair number of e-mails from people getting stuck or running into troubles, but it's often with modules other than Demon.

Shucks, I'm even getting some time to work on my next big project. It's nice to scribble and dream for a change.

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I was sick yesterday, but somehow managed to ...

August 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I was sick yesterday, but somehow managed to get in more testing time than I had in a long while. Virtually all of the bugs and the weirdnesses have been taken care of. Some of the fights are tough, but not impossible (especially at the level the player will be at the end of the module).

For anyone interested in testing, feel free to drop me an e-mail. It'll take me awhile to wade through my morning e-mails (especially since I've been gone for a few days). I'm going to try to distribute the module over e-mail, so make sure you can take a 5 MB attachment. If that doesn't work for some reason, I'll fall back on getting it on my website, though it's much slower.

Hopefully testing will go quickly, as this expansion isn't all that long.

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I managed to play through the absolute final ...

August 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I managed to play through the absolute final ending, though it was a fairly buggy experience. There's still some weird AI issues, along with some other issues. I'm going to see if I can find the time to work on that today and hopefully put out a call for testers tomorrow. I suspect it'll be at least a week or two of testing before I feel comfortable posting it to the Vault. Still, it shouldn't be much longer for those who have waited patiently.

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Well, it's getting closer

August 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, it's getting closer. I finished up the majority of the content yesterday, adding all the scripts and dialog I'd need. Now it's just a lot of testing. There's some pretty rough spots but I think I'm getting close to having the final battle actually playable. Still, lots of testing work to do yet. Hopefully I'll be able to get something to testers soon.

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I'm slowly wading through the final battle, t...

August 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm slowly wading through the final battle, though it's a monstrous thing. There's a bit of tricky scripting towards the end that I'm having problems nailing down just right. This morning I ended up creating a near-infinite number of emitting objects that ended up bringing the computer to it's knees.

After today, I've got some more dialog to write and a few scripts to polish. Then it's pretty much testing until it all works. After I'm happy with it, I'll put out a call for others to help out, possibly as early as next week. Not much further.

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Ah, the joy of AI woes

August 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Ah, the joy of AI woes. I've been slowly improving this epic battle of mine, though it still suffers from a fair number of issues. I also need to write a fair bit of dialog that has been sitting in my head for a few days now. The good news is that the amount of stuff left to do continues to shrink. The main phases of the battle are in place, though I may fiddle with it a bit more. Hopefully I can find some time today to get the rest of the main work done, which should hopefully give me some testing time later this week. If all goes well, I'll send out a call for testers after that.

Slowly getting there.

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Epic battles are a big pain

August 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Epic battles are a big pain. Mine is working better than before, slowly getting all the troop movement around. I've opted out of making them henchmen. Though you get some familiar ways of controlling them around, it also comes with some odd behaviors. Here's a shot of my test PC dying and returning to the spirit gem with everyone in tow. Fortunately I've got all the troop scripts from the Struggle area, which work reasonably well.

Still, progress moves forward and I feel pretty good about the decisions I've made. It should be doable with a bit of work. I have more dialog to write, another cutscene or two, and a bunch more scripting. Then it's test, test, test until the bugs go away.

It seems I have a new deadline for finishing this up. The folks who are reading latest PC Gamer are starting to send me e-mails with questions. I'm not sure about its readership, but it's likely to get busy for awhile.

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Cutscenes seem to take forever to put together

August 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Cutscenes seem to take forever to put together. That didn't stop me from doing that over the weekend. I have everything up until the grand finale feeling pretty solid. The end still needs plenty of scripting and dialog. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out why my "resurrection" script is crashing the game. As usual, I'm probably trying to do too many fancy things all at the same time.

I thought long and hard about the way the end of this little mini-expansion is going to go. Though it'll be up to the community to decide, this feels much more satisfying than the previous one. There's something satisfying about killing a bunch of stuff for some reason.

Update: I've discovered that the new PC Gamer has Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher listed under the "Must-Play Mods" in their NWN article. It's not long:

Together, these two campaigns make up an epic storyline that begins with first-level characters in Shadowlords, taking them across the land of Faerun and beyond. Dreamcatcher picks up at around level eight, where you start out in Waterdeep with the rest of your party. (You don't have to play Shadowlords before playing Dreamcatcher, although the story will make more sense if you do. A Dungeon Master will appear at the beginning of the Dreamcatcher campaign to raise the level of your character if he doesn't meet the requirements.)

Already I've started getting e-mails from people. I haven't checked for a long while, but it seems that there have been 109,000 downloads for Dreamcatcher 1. Whew.

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I made some good progress yesterday

August 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I made some good progress yesterday. The really tricky scripting part I've been working on feels pretty solid to me. I spent a couple hours staring at a zombie trying to make it do my bidding first. One more big area to script and then the bonus ending should be finished.

I also added some more dialog between the player's spouse and child. Bring them along for sure, as the interactions between the three of them are fairly interesting.

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The bonus ending is coming along, though ther...

August 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The bonus ending is coming along, though there's some really nasty bugs that I've run into. I hate the ones where your henchmen suddenly become unresponsive for no apparent reason. There's a particular cutscene I'm dealing with now where afterwards they act very strangely. More testing required. The final scene has lots and lots of scripting, more of which I hope to add today. This weekend is likely going to be non-stop testing, as much as I'm able.

I added some more dialog between the player's spouse and child. I like the concept of an "adventuring family" and I'm having fun adding in some odd comments here and there. If I have time today, I'll add even more.

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I continue to track down bugs - I finally fig...

August 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I continue to track down bugs - I finally figured out one where your henchman gets dumb after visiting the Plane of Air. Everyone was reporting that it had to do with rejoining, but it turns out the problem was with the cutscene. So, I took it out, though I may fiddle with a different version without the problem later.

I'm also getting the bonus ending polished up. Since it's likely you'll be taking your son or daughter along, I'm making sure they're the proper level and have useful dialog options. There's lots of testing required still, especially with some of the more complex areas.

I did manage to set up a system by which it detects your spirit gem, then takes you to a place to prepare you for the ending. It's not perfect, as not all variables are saved from a previous game, but it should get the job done.

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I coded till my brain was fuzzy yesterday, wi...

August 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I coded till my brain was fuzzy yesterday, with more to go today. It's always strange coding for long hours at a stretch without actually testing what I'm doing. Odds are it will break in various spectacular ways, but hopefully I'll get a chance to do a little testing and fixing before the weekend.

I ran across a thread on the Obsidian boards where people were talking about some of the better modules for NWN. For some reason I'm always surprised when people mention me in particular. Maybe after I'm completely done with Demon I'll actually play some of them. Island Adventures is one that recently came to my attention that perhaps my son and I can play through.

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Well, something's wrong with the DLA sewers, ...

August 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, something's wrong with the DLA sewers, or at least the version I have in my hak pack. For some reason, whenever I create a new area using it, the game won't load. Frustrating. So, I've resigned myself to doing without, which is a shame.

Progress on the bonus ending goes well. I finished scripting a rather complex area, though I think it'll still need more testing. I've got all the areas mapped, but still have to do the scripting, dialog, and so on for two more. The final one is the most complicated and I'll probably need to write everything out carefully. Slowly getting there.

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I spent yesterday writing at every possible m...

August 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent yesterday writing at every possible moment, carrying around a notebook wherever I went. The good news is that this resulted in twelve new dialogs, three for each of the four henchmen. One of the complaints about Demon was that people wanted more henchman interaction, so I figure I'll give people what they're craving. With luck, they'll appear in a patch within the next day or two.

I also progressed more on the new endgame. I'm liking the way things are turning out so far. A few parts are getting a little scripting-heavy, something I tried to avoid earlier. Still, it lets me do some unique things to the areas that I hope people enjoy.

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It's interesting doing post-release work

August 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It's interesting doing post-release work. I always wonder if people will actually replay the thing, or if I'm making things for an ever-shrinking group of people who haven't played it. No matter - it feels good to polish up the little things based on people's feedback.

Yesterday I released the 1.4 patch that replaces the DLA sewers. It was sad seeing it go, though I'll probably sneak it into the new "bonus ending" I'm working on. So far the new ending seems quite appropriate, wrapping up some dangling threads and giving the players a sense of satisfaction. There's a fair number of combat elements as well, for the people who want to play with their items or unleash higher-level spells.

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Yesterday went much more smoothly after I mad...

August 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Yesterday went much more smoothly after I made a conscious effort to mellow out a bit. I think the upcoming patch fixes the dreaded library spirit gem issue, as well as putting in more "just in case" scripts for spirit gem problems and ritual of form problems. The latest version also has a completely new sewers area without the walkmesh issues. I'm running it by a tester, making sure the new patch doesn't break anything major.

The bonus ending is coming along nicely as well. It tends to be more traditional - linear and combat heavy, but that's what I'm hearing people are wanting, at least for the end. I'm also giving people some more peeks at places around the Planes, which is fun.

Even more importantly, my wife thought I was being much less grumpy.

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I'm feeling stuck in a vicious cycle these days

August 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm feeling stuck in a vicious cycle these days. Bug reports pour in via e-mail and the boards and it takes a long time to respond to everyone. This, of course, doesn't give me much time to actually fix the bugs.

Last night I worked on ripping out the sewers area and putting in the standard Bioware one. It's a bit sad, as I did like the look of the DLA version, but the walkmesh issues turned out to be too frustrating for players.

I also started laying the groundwork for a "bonus" ending, addressing some of the concerns that have popped up. Sadly, my module got corrupted twice last night, so most of my work was lost. Even more frustrating.

Finally, my wife informed me that I was being a pain to be around, so I'm going to make a conscious effort to be more mellow about the game. The bugs will get fixed and the new ending will eventually be written, though perhaps not in less than a week.

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I posted another update yesterday, bringing t...

August 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I posted another update yesterday, bringing the module to version 1.2. I haven't checked the boards this morning, but hopefully that's going well. It fixes a bunch of things and adds in an additional henchman dialog (those things take forever to write).

I also decided to do something I swore I wouldn't do, which is to change the ending of the module. Well, not so much change it as add on. I'm hoping it addresses some of the feelings that have come up in the game - we'll see how it goes.

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I ran across an article on Slashdot about hob...

August 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I ran across an article on Slashdot about hobbist game developers. I realize that Demon essentially makes one of those "forbidden games" they recommend against. At its heart, Demon is an exploration game where the player explores interesting worlds and places. The main plot takes a back burner to this at times, which admittedly makes me nervous. Still, I think I'm relatively happy with the end result.

I posted a patch to the Vault yesterday which hopefully fixes the worst of the bugs. The reports are still coming in, as well as a few "good job" e-mails which are nice. I'll probably still work on bugs today, continuing to clean up as best I'm able.

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As suspected, the first day of release was a ...

August 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

As suspected, the first day of release was a madhouse. Lots of weird bugs, questions, and the like. I stopped checking the boards and e-mail around 4 pm yesterday. Peeking this morning, it looks like dozens of new messages have come in.

I had this nagging fear that perhaps there's something causing random bugs in the game - triggers don't fire and scripts don't run. Something in the custom content perhaps? Anyway, I suspect it's going to be another long day today, trying to get issues sorted out. Yippie.

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Demon has been posted to the Vault

August 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Demon has been posted to the Vault.

I've already got my first bizarre bug report. I suspect it's going to be a long week ahead.

Update: I'm already working on a new version. One of the things that I can recommend is to save periodically throughout the game - sometimes bizarre and unexpected things seem to happen. Already a thousand downloads too . . . whew!

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I just finished uploading the files the Vault

July 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I just finished uploading the files the Vault. While I don't think that doesn't mean they'll be waiting for you to download later this afternoon, it does mean that you'll get your hands on it very soon.

The remaining bugs seemed fairly minor or irreproduceable, so I feel relatively good about the state of the game. I'm sure things will pop up and I'll be on my toes for the next few weeks, but hopefully I can take a bit of a break.

Thanks to everyone for their interest in this rather lengthy development process. Hopefully I'll be able to talk about future plans some day. For the moment, I'm very much looking forward to drinking a big cup of coffee, eating a hearty breakfast, and playing with my kids this morning.

Update: After checking in the Vault folks, it sounds like everything will be posted tonight. I'm sure I'll be kept busy with bug reports and weirdness for the first couple weeks. Let the games begin!

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I opted against plucking my eyes out, though ...

July 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I opted against plucking my eyes out, though it is tempting at times. One of the testers was having multiplayer bugs, nasty ones that prevented him to progress in the game. The particular scene worked fine for me, of course. I added a failsafe so that if a particular trigger didn't fire, they could still get through the area.

This is pretty much the last thing standing in the way before I release. There's a number of minor issues, but I've decided to ignore them as the bugs are so rare or inconsequential that I don't want to slow things down.

With luck, I'll hear word today on whether my fix worked or not. If so, I'll start the final release process. I'm not sure if Maximus works weeekends to put together a release thing on the Vault. If not, it'll hopefully be Monday.

Ah, the joys of game development.

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To continue my attempt to raise up everyone's...

July 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

To continue my attempt to raise up everyone's hopes, only to dash them to bits when testers find more bugs, I'm hopeful that Demon may be on the brink of release.

One of my more diligent testers managed to dig up some bugs that were missed initially. He's also hoping to do a full multiplayer run, which I don't think has been done yet. If that goes well, I'm seriously considering releasing it tomorrow. Of course, any major bug could push that back again.

Testing has been going on for a month and a half now, which is longer than some of my earlier modules took to develop in the first place. It's been admittedly fairly grueling and hopefully release will come within the next few days. I have the Doom 3 release to think about after all.

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I stayed up late doing bug fixing last night,...

July 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I stayed up late doing bug fixing last night, so I'm a little bleary-eyed this morning. It occasionally gets overwhelming as the weeks of testing continue. Knowing that the game becomes even more polished helps keep me going. So far 234 bugs have been reported, with most fixed or explained away. Perhaps this final build will be the last one?

I added minimaps to a couple areas yesterday after I messed up uploading the latest version. They weren't a big deal in my opinion, but people kept mentioning it. I'll be keeping an eye on the issue tracking system today, seeing if the bugs pour in again.

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I think I'm starting to understand why softwa...

July 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I'm starting to understand why software companies use the "When it's done" expression when people ask about release dates. I fixed a slew of annoying bugs last night, one that kept multiplayer from working properly, radial menu issues, NPC dialog, and many more. The multiplayer one was tricky to test, as I often had my hands on two different mice clicking away in unison.

I'd really like to be able to release this week, but I'm afraid "when it's done" is the best promise I can make at the moment. Hopefully not much further.

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I'm frantically trying to get the last of the...

July 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm frantically trying to get the last of the bugs fixed. Most are minor, but there are a few that are still annoying. The worst are the ones I've never seen myself, but one or two people are reporting. Those tend to be extremely hard to fix too.

I've got to get some dialog added today, a few branches that mysteriously vanished somewhere during development. I've also tweaked the Inventory radial menu for HotU owners. Hopefully it'll work now.

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The bug reports keep trickling in, slowly but...

July 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The bug reports keep trickling in, slowly but surely. There's a couple really nasty bugs that so far only one person is reporting. I haven't been able to replicate it myself and no one else has mentioned it. Ah, the joys of bug fixing.

I'm still shooting for release next week, though it certainly depends on what's reported. Hopefully we can get the rough edges polished a bit more. Shouldn't be much longer.

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The last 24 hours have been very productive

July 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The last 24 hours have been very productive. First off, I made some changes to the card game that made it much more challenging. Instead of a semi-random deck that each NPC would have, I hand-picked each card for their deck. It made a huge difference and I won about half the games using a standard starting deck (before I'd win most of them).

I also fixed the endlessly painful issue with Anera's AI. The fix was quite simple, if bizarre. I changed one of her cleric domains from Good to Death and it worked just fine again (since she's a cleric of Kelemvor, this actually makes sense). I'll have to see if the same fix is needed for Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher Anera. Very weird bug.

Finally, I spent several hours yesterday making even more magic items to be sold in one of the main armories. Everyone wanted more Demonic weapons, which can be improved with training, so I added longswords, shortswords, and daggers. I also added some bows for archers, and some magical armor for players with a little cash to spend.

There's a handful of bugs left, most of which are pretty minor. I'm going to throw out the latest build and see how it goes. Not much longer now!

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Testing continues

July 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Testing continues. There's one potentially big issue involving henchmen AI that I'm struggling with. I'm trying to nail down specifics and see what the scope of the issue really is. It may be that things are working the way they're "supposed to", even though it seems a bit weird to some players.

It's been good to have a large number of testers help out as they're uncovering a good list of bugs, not to mention ones that I'd introduced earlier after some of my "fixes". I'm still shooting for next week, depending on how the henchman bug issues turn out.

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The final batch of testing continues

July 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The final batch of testing continues. So far, so good. Most of the issues reported are minor typos or some balance issues, though there's a few troublesome ones to look into.

I'd like to give the testers a chance to finish up the game and report any major issues, then I'll probably do my quick fixes and release the game. While I could tweak forever, there comes a point when you've just got to call it done.

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I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply n...

July 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply not going to be able to test it through myself in any reasonable timeframe.

So, all you faithful readers, your time has come. I've decided to open up testing semi-publicly. The first 10 or so people to e-mail me today will get a chance to test out the game.

Please make sure you have enough time to dedicate the next few days to complete the game (somewhere around 8 hours). Broadband Internet access is also a plus (otherwise you'll spend half the time just downloading files). If you don't meet the criteria, don't worry - the game will be on the Vault soon enough.

Update: Sorry folks, I just got the 10th person signed up. You'll have to be patient a few more days, but it shouldn't be much longer. Thanks to everyone for their help and interest!

Another update: Robbert - You're apparently not getting the e-mails I'm sending, though I'm not sure why. I'm not getting any non-deliverable responses back either. Perhaps you could try e-mailing again, or we could try to connect via IRC on the neverwinterconnections.com server? I promise I'm not ignoring you.

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The e-mails have started coming in - people w...

July 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The e-mails have started coming in - people wondering when I'm going to release it. "When it's done" is the easy answer, but since I'm more casual about such things, I'll explain my thinking a bit more. The current build is pretty good, with most of the major bugs fixed, many of the balance issues taken care of, and a fair number of extra goodies added where people felt there was something missing.

There's some bugs still coming in from the testers that I'd like to fix. I'd also like to do a final run through to make sure there's no game-stopping bugs. So, it's a matter of doing those things and polishing it up to the point where I feel pretty good about it.

That may be this week, or it may be next. Soon, though.

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I spent two hours last night making the water...

July 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent two hours last night making the water levels in a certain sewer area work properly. It was extremely frustrating as my animated water placeable simply would not work. It would sporadically appear or disappear with the texture usually showing up as black. Quite ugly.

The new solution uses a TileMagic approach, applying vfx's to invisible objects. There's some problems with it, mostly having to do with them not being perfectly in synch, but it looks relatively okay so I'll stick with it for now.

Not a peep from the testers over the weekend, I think because they've all played through at least once. I added a bunch of content in response to their comments, fixing issues as I go. I'm torn between polishing it up a bit more and trying to go for another round of testing. Either way, I'd like to release at the end of the week. I'll probably do some cleanup today, get organized, and take it from there. I just want to make sure there's no game-stopping bugs before I release it all, hopefully later this week.

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I'm back from the beach where I managed to pu...

July 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm back from the beach where I managed to put in a fair number of hours in the game. I didn't get to do a walkthrough, but fixed a bunch of issues that were reported just before I left. There's one really annoying custom content issue involving rising water. I'm going to switch to a completely different method as my animated water simply isn't working for some odd reason.

Not sure if this will be the magic week for release. Still have to iron out the last few bugs.

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One of the things that I liked about the Shad...

July 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

One of the things that I liked about the Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher campaigns is all the goodies you can pick up along the way. I'm trying to make it so that you can use most of them in Demon as well, though there are endless issues ranging from balance to custom content. Some of the most powerful items you won't see until the end. The lower end trinkets show up early on. I've also added a little introductory module (Demon0) that lets you buy things that you might have missed along the way.

The list of bugs grew a fair bit yesterday as one of my testers had a burst of energy and added a bunch to the issue tracking system. I'm away at the coast for the next few days, so I'll see if I can put in some more fixing then. If I'm lucky, I'll do a walkthrough of the game myself just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

In case you're curious about the screenshot, I'm using the Blade of Apologies, which I tested this morning.

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I'm getting down to the bottom of the list fo...

July 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm getting down to the bottom of the list for bug testing. Most of the last issues on the list are either fixed or done. This morning I spent tweaking the Demon Card game a bit. A broken card now works and another card isn't quite so overwhelmingly powerful. I've also hidden away a few decks around the game so that observant players can pick up a few of the more powerful cards without having to win them in battle.

I also did a little test unrelated to Demon. It involved a custom polymorph to a custom creature with custom spells. Amazingly enough, it all worked on the first try. Depending on how bug fixing goes, I may putter with that a bit today.

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Back down to 13 items on my bug list

July 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Back down to 13 items on my bug list. I also shipped off Build 18 to the testers who will hopefully get a chance to pound on it some time soon.

This weekend I'm going to try to find some dedicated time to do a final test myself. If things go really well, you may actually get a chance to play soon after that.

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I'm back up to 29 bugs in the issue tracking ...

July 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm back up to 29 bugs in the issue tracking system, though I think most of them will be easy to fix. Today I hope to deal with as much of them as possible, then get the new build out to everyone before the weekend. I'll be off at the coast for a few days, though I'm hoping to take my computer and do at least one full run through the game to make sure there's no major flaws. If everything goes smoothly, I might shoot for release after that.

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My daughter has been waking up extra early th...

July 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

My daughter has been waking up extra early this weekend, cutting into development time. I spent an hour this morning working on an issue with containers and removing the player's inventory when they first start the game. I wasn't super happy with the solution. Basically if there's low-level items you want to get earlier in the game, don't put them in containers before you start the game.

I had another tester start after some computer-related delays. The bugs are pouring in yet again.

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I'm scampering around trying to get the last ...

July 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm scampering around trying to get the last things organized. I took some screenshots and need to check in with the CODI folks today. I did some more fixing and testing as usual. One of the things I tried to fix yesterday but gave up on was a fancy advance/retreat function for the Struggle areas. The complexity quickly spiraled out of control and I reverted to a simple "Advance to point 1" and increment each time.

There's a few miscellaneous things on my "to do" list for today. I want to tweak the lighting/fog settings of the city areas. I have some more henchmen dialog to write. Not much more to do.

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I spent way too long this morning trying to g...

July 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent way too long this morning trying to get the door glow from the sewer ladder to stop flashing. It turns out that I had to put my alpha key in all the other animations in addition to the one that I was dealing with. Sigh. All I can say is that people better appreciate the non-flashing ladder.

I spent some time trying to get the blue transition glow to appear for the Sigil doors, but to no avail. I may take some more time to fiddle with it, but it's not that big a deal.

I also spent some time rewriting the advance/retreat code for the Struggle area. It's another thing that I'm not sure people will use all that much, but it currently works in a non-intuitive way. Hopefully the new system is better, though I've yet to test it.

Of the 132 bugs that have been reported, I have 17 still on my "to do" list, though some I'll probably not worry about and a few more I just need to make sure my fix works.

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Will it ever end? I managed to introduce an ...

July 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Will it ever end? I managed to introduce an annoying bug in build 16, so I sent out a fixed build 17 late last night. It was one of those things where your henchman kept talking over and over again, and you weren't able to stop the conversation. I also fixed some miscellaneous issues, such as certain people in the Struggle looking like beholders. Slowly getting there.

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More bug fixing

July 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More bug fixing. It seems endless at times, but with every one squashed I feel a little better about the module. Who knows, the thing might actually be fun for people to play. Most are pretty straightforward, but a few defy reproduction, making it really hard to fix. I might also try recreating the Tainted model from scratch, depending on how my time goes. So much to do.

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Not much to report other than I continue to s...

July 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Not much to report other than I continue to slave away at fixing bugs. Some are quite odd, such as a certain custom creature floating around when they move. Others are small things, such as certain items having the description of something else (too much copying and pasting).

There were a few moments where I was actually enjoying myself doing my bug fixing. I stayed up late making custom arrows for a store. Another time it was making some new flavor text. Now that I think about it, I suspect I miss making new things and not so much fixing broken things.

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The testers are going through the game like, ...

July 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The testers are going through the game like, well, demons. My issue tracking list is so long again that I have to scroll through it. Many of the issues are fairly minor, but there's a few biggies in there. I spent some time this morning trying to fix a few of them.

The semi-amusing bug of the day was with the Guiding Light spell. The balls of light were set to follow at the same distance as the henchmen, causing them to bunch up in a weird necklace of glowing light. They now demurely follow your henchman by a half meter.

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More testing

July 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More testing. I just posted "build 15" to the testers this morning. This one includes a new dialog for the henchmen, adjusting some difficulties for a few encounters, and fixing more bugs.

I have assorted preparations to try to get together today. I need to take some screenshots and write up a blurb for the Vault. It's a slow process, but I'll eventually get there.

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Not much to report other than endless bugfixing

July 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Not much to report other than endless bugfixing. My list of things to take care of slowly grows smaller, which brings a warm feeling to my heart. Day by day, the module is brought to a state where it can be released.

I finished up the henchmen dialog and now just need to get it into the module. I also need to write up a blurb talking about Demon, CODI, and the numerous people who have helped out on the module. I'm hoping for a feature by Maximus, which I suspect he'll happily do. Shucks, the CODI content alone will be quite welcome in the community.

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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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It was another productive day yesterday, most...

May 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was another productive day yesterday, mostly writing dialog and fleshing out some of the wackier ideas I've been playing with. Things seem to be coming together quite nicely, though development is still quite early.

I also figured out how to get something in the game that I've been wanting for quite some time - swimming. The method I'm using isn't perfect, but it should work for cutscenes at the least, and perhaps some special areas as well.

Danmar also dropped in a few dozen issues in the issue tracking database. I can't decide if it's time for a pot of coffee or a stiff drink before I work my way through the list.

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I cranked out another mini tileset for the ne...

May 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I cranked out another mini tileset for the new game, getting it in game. I'd like to make some placeables for it to get the full effect, but it may be awhile. I'm having a hard time working with skinmesh and may instead switch to an animesh placeable, which seems simpler.

I'm also working on dialog, trying to provide many different branches. I'm leaning for depth over breadth for this latest game. Though I liked the many different henchmen for Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher, it was hard to get the depth I wanted with so many. This time around I'm trying to keep the focus tighter, yet still provide an interesting cast of characters.

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There's a satisfying feeling starting a new m...

May 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

There's a satisfying feeling starting a new module. It opens quickly, saves fast, and there's not dozens of scripts to sort through when looking for things. Though I'm not ready to talk about it in detail, I've started in on my post-Demon module. I whipped up a quick tileset to go along with it, building custom content as I go. It needs shadows tweaked, but it should work well enough. I did some debugging as well, making sure some of my weirder scripts are actually working.

I also had some more good ideas this morning. Creative inspiration is something that I've never been able to turn on at will, so I'm always surprised when an idea pops into in my brain.

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I signed up my second tester

May 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I signed up my second tester. One of the nice things about being reasonably well known is that I can ask some really capable people for help.

I fixed a few more bugs last night. All were minor, except for one involving your henchman not respawning when they died. That falls in the "super bad" category, so I'm keeping an eye on it. I rearranged some code, but couldn't see anything otherwise wrong with it.

My post-Demon plans may be firming up again, though still more vague than I'd like.

Yesterday was also my daughter's birthday. I'm only saying that because a year ago I finished Dreamcatcher 4 and started working on Demon. Hard to believe that I've been developing the same module for so long.

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My work schedule's been crazy the last couple...

May 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

My work schedule's been crazy the last couple days, filled with offsite all-day meetings. I'm trying to scribble down ideas on paper when I come up with them. I'm finding it's pretty easy to come up with elements I like (e.g. an NPC, puzzle, or side quest), but I haven't settled on an overarching story I like. Ah, the joys of writing.

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Jay's made it to the end of the module which ...

May 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Jay's made it to the end of the module which is a very good sign. He also didn't use any harsh language in his latest e-mail, which probably indicates that the end didn't suck too badly. I'm still nervous about the overall story as after working on it so long I can't tell if it's good or not.

I need to hunker down and help finish what aspects of the Sigil tileset as I can. There's a few tiles to cleanup and one to make from scratch. I'm also hoping that Batinthehat manages to finish the Mortuary relatively soon. From what I've seen, it looks amazing.

I continue to get excited about Dragon Age and seem to be writing on the forum daily. I'm tentatively coming up with a plan to prepare for a Dragon Age module. One of the things that worked really well with Shadowlords is the two years of writing and planning I made before the release of NWN. Because of that, I was able to crank out five modules in a few months. I'm thinking I might try the same with Dragon Age.

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Testing continues

May 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Testing continues. I just finished taking care of the last of the bugs that were reported during this latest round. Jay's still making his way through the game. There have been some particularly nasty bugs, but I think it'll be possible for him to finish the game.

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A couple nights ago my tester went into high ...

May 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

A couple nights ago my tester went into high gear and put in a huge number of issues into the issue tracking system. I spent most of yesterday going through each one and fixing what I could, then testing my fixes last night.

Some were very easy to fix, such as screwing up the links in an area transition. Others are much trickier and may force me to make some compromises I'd rather avoid. In particular, there seem to be some henchman AI issues. I think it's due to my fiddling with the AI code and I may just rip out most of my changes.

Though bug fixing is a grueling process, it's good to see the game get one step closer to completion.

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I did a little more cleanup work on the Spiri...

May 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I did a little more cleanup work on the Spirit Gem areas of Demon. The bugs are getting dealt with as they're reported, which feels pretty good.

I also spent some time yesterday working on the Sigil tileset. There were some bugs that were found - some gaps and misaligned textures mostly. Dealing with shadow problems is always fun too. There's a tile that needs to be done from scratch and I might try my hand at that today.

Batinthehat was showing off some pictures of the mortuary and they look simply stunning. Slowly getting there.

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I think the issues with the armsman are fixed...

May 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think the issues with the armsman are fixed now, though there were some weird bugs involved. The issue was with the sparring code. I had to make sure you could damage but not kill him, as well as not having the player's associates go hostile and attack him as well.

There were also some spirit gem door issues that I'm working on a bit today. Tedious, but not hard.

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Testing continues

May 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Testing continues. Some odd bugs involving the armsman from your spirit gem popped up, but I think I'm narrowing down the problem. The player's spirit gem has always been a very tricky place from a scripting and custom content perspective. Because of that, there's lots of opportunities for bugs as well. With luck, testing will get them all.

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Demon testing has begun in ernest

May 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Demon testing has begun in ernest. I made a bunch of fixes to the Chen Village area, some of which were highly annoying. My little issue tracking system I put together had some issues with it ironically enough. I fixed those as well. It feels great to get testing underway, closer to the day where I can actually release the thing.

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I made some good progress on the beach tilese...

May 15, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I made some good progress on the beach tileset, fixing many of the rule issues with the SET file. I can make a standard beach scene with a grassy area that leads down to a beach, which was my main goal. I unfortunately have to make the raised grassy area in a weird way, which I'm still trying to fix. There's also lots of variation tiles needed as well as some texture mapping cleanup.

The really good news is that I've been given the green light to start testing Demon. It's not widespread testing, so no e-mails begging to test please. Just one or two folks at the moment. I spent last night and this morning polishing up my little testing center, making sure everything was secure and working properly. If things go according to plan, the next few weeks will be quite busy.

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I integrated the beach tiles with the Rural t...

May 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I integrated the beach tiles with the Rural tileset, but I'm still having quite a few problems with getting things to work properly. The SET file is a tricky thing and things aren't doing what they're supposed to. There's also a bunch of height transition tiles remaining to be done.

The Vault put up their E3 coverage of Dragon Age. It sounds pretty amazing, though it's probably going to be two or three years from being released. I think I started planning for Shadowlords a couple years before NWN was released. Hmm . . .

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More beach madness

May 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More beach madness. I've been working on integrating it with the grass tileset in preparation to get all the tiles in a rural tileset. Though it's possible to have the beach transition directly to grassy tiles, I'm going to spend most of my time with the height transition tiles. Most of the beaches around here have a flat smooth beach, then you climb up a bit to get to ground level, so I'm shooting for something similar.

Also, the reviews for Dragon age are starting to come out. I'm already starting to get excited.

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I added in the deep water tiles yesterday, th...

May 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I added in the deep water tiles yesterday, though I think I want to tweak them some more. They're not obviously deep to the player, so it's not always clear why you can't move to certain areas. There's a whole bunch of more things I'm considering tweaking and changing about the tileset, but I think the basics are there. It really needs some integration with the grass tilesets from the rural terrain, so I may have to do some fiddling with heights and such. Should keep me busy.

On the Demon front, a couple developments. Magnus is going to allow other module builders to use the music from Demon, of which there's quite a lot. I think I also have a technique to strip out all the CODI content from the module and still leave it playable. That should allow me to start up testing which has been delayed for quite some time. We'll see how it goes.

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Well, it might be a bit late, but last Friday...

May 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, it might be a bit late, but last Friday I managed to finish off all the "Shallows" tiles. They probably need some more tweaking, but look relatively good. The last set is the deep tiles which aren't walkable, then it's cleanup and adding new features to finish it up.

I'm really hoping that the Sigil tileset gets finished up soon and testing can begin for Demon. Unfortunately I'm at a point where I think I've done everything I can, so I'm just waiting. I'm considering chopping up the module into pieces so that parts can be tested without showing off CODI's tilesets. We'll see how it goes.

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Well, I'm waffling again

May 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I'm waffling again. I'm leaning towards using animesh rather than a flat plane with shiny water. If I do it right, I think it'll turn out looking quite good, though I need to get the white surf looking reasonably good. I have a tentative plan for that as well.

There's just something inherently cool about having water move up and down around you. The screenshot shows a couple frames of the animation to give you a feel for the movement. So far I've only done the one tile, though I'm actually looking forward to doing the other ones today as well. Fiddling with vertexes is actually kind of fun.

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I fiddled about with the beach tileset some m...

May 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I fiddled about with the beach tileset some more, getting the shallows in the game. The part I'm struggling with the most is how to do the water so it looks best. I decided to see if I could get it looking good without animesh, as the problem is that shiny water stops working if I use it. I think once I get the waves working properly, it should improve. I've been looking into how Knights of the Old Republic did their beaches and I think I can make a reasonable approximation.

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Well, I redid the beach textures and they're ...

May 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I redid the beach textures and they're better, though not quite perfect. The line between the all wet and the transition tile is gone, though there still seems to be one with the dry sand. I'll keep fiddling with it, I suppose. I'd also like to fiddle with some of the extra beach textures, as some of the shells and such seem overly large.

The most exciting thing I did yesterday was play with Animesh for the first time. Just for an experiment, I tried creating some waves for the default water tile. Sure enough they started rolling away, looking quite cool. There seem to be some limits and issues with animesh. Shiny water wouldn't work at all, which was too bad. I may be able to fake it using another approach, though we'll see how easy it is to do.

With that test under my belt, I think I'll actually start working on the water part of the beach tileset today.

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I just finished uploading my desparkled tiles

May 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I just finished uploading my desparkled tiles. I also fiddled with the edge tiles some more as I noticed there were some missing areas in the corners.

I worked more on the beach set. My most important find was the discovery that I hadn't properly set the ambient and diffuse colors properly, causing everything to look overly drab. My latest vexing problem is that the reflectivity of my wet sand isn't looking quite right. There's an obvious border between tiles. I'll see if I can redo the texture today and get the effect looking a bit nicer.

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All the height transition tiles have been des...

May 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

All the height transition tiles have been desparkled. It's fairly mindless vertex-pushing work, but needs to be done. I think there's some more shadow fixing to do, but the list of work is slowly shrinking. There's a few big items that batinthehat is working on, most notably the mortuary retexture. I can't wait to set my eyes on that one.

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Not too much to report

May 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Not too much to report. I got the minaret up on the CVS I share with the other people working on the tile. I confirmed that my little minaret addition works in the main Demon game itself. I have some desparkling work ahead of me, though I'm not sure I'll be able to get to it today. Things are slowly coming together.

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It was one of those really productive days ye...

May 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was one of those really productive days yesterday, most likely due to all the coffee I drank in the morning. I added a missing edge tile to the Sigil tileset. More excitingly, I took Ghost's cool minaret that he worked on and got it into the current Sigil tileset. It was a bit exciting, requiring a retexture, some sparkle cleanup, and completely redoing the walkmesh. After putting on the finishing touches like the mini-map icon, I'm calling it done.

It seemed a shame to not have such cool architecture not in Demon, so I snuck it in and created a character and dialog to go with it. There's a pretty amazing view from so far up. It really helps show off the incredible architecture of the city below.

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Well, I have the skeleton of a beach tileset ...

April 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I have the skeleton of a beach tileset functioning. I have the wet and try sand terrains in place. There's a lot of issues, however, from texture problems to lighting weirdness. I haven't even started with the water yet. It's not bad for a couple days' work, but there's much that can be improved on.

In terms of the Sigil tileset, I conceded defeat with my one tile, turning off shadows on the offending mesh. Even creating a dummy shadow caster ended up making weird banding shadows across the other geometry. Blah. As for today, I'll probably do more shadow checking as well as creating some edge tiles. Work goes on.

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I wish I had some pretty pictures to show eve...

April 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I wish I had some pretty pictures to show everyone, but they're sadly lacking at the moment. I spent a huge amount of time on a single Sigil tile yesterday, trying to track down a weird shadow issue. I think I've mostly figured it out, but it's taking far too long.

I also did a little work on my beach tileset, getting all the textures down to go from dry sand to wet sand. I created the tiles themselves and the SET file, but I'm doing something wrong as it's not painting in the toolset correctly. I'm probably getting overly detailed, but if it turns out the way I'd like, it should be one of the more realistic beach tilesets. I also stumbled across a way to do waves better than I was planning. We'll see how it goes.

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I don't have a lot to report yet

April 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I don't have a lot to report yet. I did some housekeeping with the Sigil tileset, uploading some .max files to the versioning system we use. I worked more on the fancy beach textures. Hopefully today I can make some quick terrain to see how it really turns out.

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I had every intention of being a good modeler...

April 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I had every intention of being a good modeler and working on the Sigil tileset while I was at the beach this long weekend. Unfortunately the call of the sand and surf was too strong and I ended up taking a ton of pictures tentatively to be used in a beach tileset. I'm not sure if I'll have the time to be able to do more than a very simple one, but it was fun making the textures and doing a test tile to see if my ideas pan out.

I've figured out how to get the wet sand look the way I want, but the water is a different matter. I may do some more experiments trying to simulate the waves as best I can.

Though this is a bit of a side project, I'm still working on finishing up Demon and the Sigil tileset. Hopefully it won't be too much longer.

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I have the two custom doors I was working on ...

April 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I have the two custom doors I was working on the other day in the game. I think I've got some more desparkling on the buildings to go, though the biggest issues are dealt with. I also want to strategize with the other CODI modelers about shadow issues. Could be tricky.

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Tile development continues

April 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Tile development continues. It's hard to pull anything particularly exciting out of it. "I moved a bunch of vertexes around" is pretty much the truth of the matter. I cleaned and desparkled a few more tilesets. I created a couple custom doors for some tiles. Progress plods along.

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It was a bit of a madhouse yesterday as every...

April 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was a bit of a madhouse yesterday as everyone discovered that there was a problem with the Dreamcatcher4 hak pack I'd uploaded last week. There was an issue with the appearances.2da file that caused an important creature to become invisible and crash the game. All bad. Fortunately it was easy to fix, so everyone can replace the hak pack and continue on their merry way.

I've been living and breathing modeling tools for the last couple weeks. The Sigil tileset is slowly getting finished up. I have the "c02_*" tiles at the moment, the straight line of building tiles. There are thirteen of them and I have desparkled, filled gaps, created some new geometry, tweaked vertexes, and cleaned up a few texture errors. It's not particularly glamorous work, but the end result looks quite nice.

Most of the other tiles have been picked up by CODI modelers, so the tileset should go quickly. Batinthehat is retexturing the mortuary, the last of the big projects. There's a tower that Ghost made that we want to put in. After that, there's some more cleanup, a few minimap icons to make, verifying shadows are working properly, and then we can call it done.

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It was another quiet day yesterday, mostly sp...

April 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was another quiet day yesterday, mostly spent watching kids. I scribbled down some notes and dialog for my next project, but hardly touched Demon or the Sigil tileset at all. I did note some more cleanup needed for the tiles, so I'm sure to do that today.

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Not a whole lot to report

April 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Not a whole lot to report. I fiddled with the final cutscene a bit more, using Gestalt's camera system to good effect. I also did more decorating, putting in some placeables so certain areas didn't look quite so bare.

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I've been making good progress these days

April 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been making good progress these days. The tiles I assigned to myself are shaping up quite nicely. I've been desparkling, tweaking walkmesh, and adding geometry as needed. Soon the Sigil exterior tileset will be in a formal beta state. I'm also excited to see bat slaving away at retexturing the Mortuary, which is a huge 8x8 monstrosity. It's stunning to wander around in and it will certainly make an appearance in Demon.

I continue to tweak the cutscenes for Demon. This morning I put in a nice little "camera follow" script that works fairly well. Timing is everything in cutscenes, making it especially tricky when things happen at variable times.

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I've been doing a mix of things as of late

April 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been doing a mix of things as of late. I got the camera movement into the Mechanus puzzle levels the way I want. It now goes out of the cutscene properly when certain events occur (e.g. the monodrone dies or stops moving). I'm pretty happy with the result, especially considering it's taken so long to get there.

I continue to assist the CODI folks with the Sigil tileset. I'm starting in on the buildings, trying to get them ship-shape. Mostly I'm cleaning up sparkles and gaps, and tweaking the walkmesh as needed. So far, I'm feeling good about progress. To get a really good view of Sigil and all the buildings, you can take a look at the movie they released. It even has the newest building at the end, never shown before.

I'm also trying to poke my head into the various IRC sessions happening around NWCon II. I'm pretty busy, but you might see a PIPBoy3000 floating about.

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Like a moth to a flame, I find myself yet aga...

April 15, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Like a moth to a flame, I find myself yet again fiddling with the Mechanus puzzle levels. I rediscovered Gestalt's camera system, getting deeper into the latest version and all the new features. For Mechanus, the player's camera now follows the travelling monodrone around the track, which makes it much easier to understand what's going on.

I also started adding in the new cutscene functionality a few other places. There's a great shot when entering Omelas for the first time. The camera spirals upward to view the city all around the player in an initial moment of awe. I'd like to do more of the same today. There's some other cutscenes I'm doing using the standard Bioware controls and I think I'd like to replace them with Gestalt's as they work much more cleanly.

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I think I've finished with my first grand des...

April 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I've finished with my first grand desparkle pass on the road, ground, and ground feature tiles. There's still the rare glimpse of a sparkle, but it's much improved.

Bat's been working on a new group for the tileset that looks quite good. You should see it in a movie for the upcoming NWCon II event. I'm thinking of using it for the Gate Diver's exterior.

I'll be checking the assignments file for who's working on which Sigil tiles and grabbing another batch to clean up.

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The other day, someone e-mailed me asking to ...

April 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The other day, someone e-mailed me asking to give a general status update, so here goes.

I'm in the final stages of finishing up a new module titled Demon, sequel to the Dreamcatcher and Shadowlords campaigns. The majority of development on Demon is finished and I've run through the entire game to confirm it's possible to actually win (it took me several days of sporadic playing).

At this point, I'm helping the City of Doors Initiative, affectionately called CODI. Their goal is to bring Planescape to NWN, and they're creating quite a few pieces of content that I'm using in Demon. The biggest pieces are an interior tileset, which is essentially finished, and the city of Sigil's exterior tileset.

These days I'm working on the Sigil tileset along with a number of other modelers at CODI. I'm "desparkling" tilesets, removing the tiny gaps between tiles to avoid the background fog from seeping through and showing up as tiny sparkles. Yesterday I worked on roads and they are much improved, but not quite perfect. The geometry of the ground is fairly complex and I find myself moving vertexes about and seeing if it cleans up the issues.

I'm very much looking forward to the other modelers jumping onboard. I was chatting with Papermonk, the project coodinator at CODI, and it sounds like a whole bunch of very talented modelers will be helping with the tileset shortly.

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I have sworn vengeance against sparkles

April 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I have sworn vengeance against sparkles. There's a very common issue with tiles that seems to show up in virtually every custom tileset. Tiny gaps between the tiles can occur during the production process, causing "sparkles" when you look into the fog that surrounds the tileset in the game.

There are several desparkle utilities that have been released to battle this phenomena, yet it seems that this doesn't fully take care of the issue. After much fiddling about, my best results seem to come when I go in to the ground texture entry in the mdl file and move everything at 5.0 and -5.0 to 5.004 and -5.004. It's tedious work, but produces a lovely sparkle-free set of tiles.

Oh, and here's the improved mini-map icons. Much less grid effect.

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Well, I wasn't happy with the way the minimap...

April 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I wasn't happy with the way the minimap icons turned out yesterday, so I completely redid them with the lights positioned far higher than before. It resulted in something that looked much less grid-like and has better lighting.

I also finished up a batch of tiles, fixing animation, transparency, sparkles, and walkmesh issues. Whew. It's uploaded to the CVS and I'm ready for the next batch. Still plenty more to go.

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I started in on minimap icons this morning

April 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I started in on minimap icons this morning. Not everything is textured completely, so I'm jumping the gun a bit, but it's a start.

I also spent a fair bit of time on walkmeshes for a handful of the tiles. They're not quite ready to go yet, as there's some other issues to deal with (shadows and animation loops). Still, I'm starting to feel like I'm contributing to the effort of getting it out of beta status.

The issues with the Vault were resolved yesterday and everyone should be able to download the Dreamcatcher hak packs once again. It turns out that there was indeed a problem with the Vault's upload scripts. It was chopping off the last bit of the file which made life tense for a couple days. It's amazing how many people are still playing Dreamcatcher after these many months.

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It was a hectic day yesterday

April 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was a hectic day yesterday. I'm running into all sorts of problems with the new Dreamcatcher hak packs. When I upload them, the last few bytes of the file get chopped off. I've tried several different times on different networks, finally deciding the issue was on the Vault's end of things. I sent off an e-mail to Maximus, who will hopefully be able to sort things out.

I stayed up late last night, finishing up edge tiles and load screens. Minimap icons were next, but I ran into some problems along the way. If I have time today, I'll hopefully get a chance to work on tiles themselves. It's about time to lay down some walkmeshes and tweak vertexes.

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I think I have my work cut out for me, even t...

April 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I have my work cut out for me, even though I made a bunch of progress yesterday. Since the new focus is on finishing up the Sigil exterior tileset, I've been trying to find ways to help with this. I decided to pick edge tiles and load screens to begin, so that's what I did yesterday. I've got a few more load screens to whip out, but it's not too much of a challenge. There's a lot of tile work to do as well, but I'm always nervous working with other people's stuff. I'll probably jump in soon enough.

I actually worked on the module itself a bit, adding in some more commands for the henchmen. You can now toggle stealth and searching on and off. I also added a stealth toggle for the various troops in the Struggle areas.

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Yesterday was suprisingly busy

April 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Yesterday was suprisingly busy. It does indeed look like the focus of CODI's testing is shifting to the Sigil exterior tileset. Though I admit to some trepidation, I think I'm okay with that. It's critical to getting Demon out the door and it does give me a little extra polish time. I worked on getting the transition meshes on the Sigil doors turning a nice shade of blue when you move your mouse over it. It's the little things that people notice.

I also combined my sigil.hak and Demon1.hak files into a single big hak. Hopefully that'll minimize confusion and errors during testing, as well as getting things closer to a final state. Bat's been updating the Sigil tiles like a maniac, so I moved over his latest work into the hak pack as well.

I also did some webmonkey work behind the scenes, setting up an IRC proxy so that I can talk to the CODI folks more frequently. It was technically difficult setting everything up - installing cygwin, apache, and cgiirc. Bonus nerd points for me.

Finally, I've been sitting on some hak pack updates to the Dreamcatcher series for too long. They allow Shifters to work properly and I just need to find some time today to update things. Hopefully I'll manage.

Update: Well, the Dreamcatcher hak packs are finally updated. All you Shifters out there - feel free to grab them. Nice to get that one off my to do list.

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Well, testing isn't going as well as I had hoped

April 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, testing isn't going as well as I had hoped. There were some problems on my part, last minute changes that caused things to break. Then there was another issue, more mysterious as I wasn't able to duplicate it on my testing machines.

There's also a request to delay QA on Demon until after the Sigil tileset is signed off as final. It was a bit of a surprise to me and my worry is that it will delay release of the module. I suppose I can always do testing myself while the tileset is worked on, or assist in tileset development myself.

Hopefully we'll straighten things out.

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Quiet day so far

April 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Quiet day so far. I'm gearing up to coordinate testing and help with the Sigil tileset. Getting the files off my hard drive was a relief. Now I'm just chatting with the CODI folks, trying to work out details.

Slowly making progress.

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Well, I think today's the day

April 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I think today's the day. The last of the big bugs involved issues with the Spirit Gem not working properly, so I tweaked some things and then tried dying and killing off my henchman a bunch of times. I think it's working properly now.

I also fixed a bunch of other minor issues, such as moving the shield node for the PC Tainted model down a bit. I also polished up the readme file and turned it into a Word and PDF document. A couple areas got some new placeables for ambiance's sake. Somewhere in there I also managed to make up a lengthy document for the testers, letting them know particular things to pay attention to.

There's a final fiddling I'd like to do with the music, replacing an older battle theme with one of Magnus' newer ones. That's about all I can think of before I FTP up all the hak packs, music, movies, and the module itself to the CODI site. It's actually quite a relief. If I'm hit by a bus, at least someone will be able to post the thing to the Vault.

I also took some time yesterday to fix the last of the .2da issues with Shifters in Dreamcatcher. I'll post them if I get some time today, otherwise it may be this weekend. After all the exitement for today is over, I need to find a way to help finish the Sigil exterior tileset.

Update: I just finished uploading all the files up to CODI's FTP server for testing. It turns out that all the files are a whopping 60 MB in size. For those of you on modems, you can skip the intro movie and music to bring it back down to a bit over 30 MB. Whew.

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The bug fixing continues

April 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The bug fixing continues. I'm doing a bunch of cleanup, trying to make sure the doors all connect, the dialog is a bit less rough, and player's inventory is moved about appropriately when they first enter the game. I feel like I'm making pretty good progress, though I'm having an urge to "pretty up" a few areas with more placeables. I'll probably do that today as well as try to take care of the remaining issues on my list.

It's a strange feeling getting the game towards some degree of completion. I've been working on this module for over ten months now, as long as my daughter has been alive. Hopefully I'll be able to post it on the Vault well before she turns one.

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I've been knee-deep in bug fixing as of late

March 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been knee-deep in bug fixing as of late. I think I have Anera's AI problem figured out, a consequence of my earlier "improving" the scripts. I'm not positive it's resolved, but I can say that she did a great job at cleaning the clocks of all the end battle bad guys while I twiddled my thumbs and admired the view.

I also fixed an issue with associates not moving where I told them to go. Another silly problem with me incrementing a variable by two each time instead of just one. Oops.

My bug list is still reasonably sized, including a couple odd ones. I'll continue to work on it today and then hopefully start in on the beta testing later this week. There's a bunch of things that I'd like to do still, but there comes a time when it's best to just get something out the door.

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Well, I finally did it

March 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I finally did it. I walked through the entire module, scribbling down problems as I went. Unfortunately there were quite a few of them, some of them very annoying. I hardly had a chance to breathe yesterday, but hopefully today it'll be less crazy and I can actually get some things done. My lengthy bug list is the first thing I need to tackle. After that, I'll probably spend the next few weeks fixing bugs that the testers report as well as helping finish up the Sigil exterior tileset.

I've been getting a few questions these days that I thought I'd answer for everyone.

Is this the last module in the Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon epic?
At the moment, I'm leaning towards yes. The module wraps up fairly nicely, though I've left a few plot threads dangling so that I might pick them up later. At the moment I'm thinking of doing something quite different in the world of NWN, though things are still a bit early for me to comment.

Can I help test Demon?
Not right now. While it does look like I'll be starting a formal beta process, it'll be a closed beta. The main reason for this is that I'm using quite a few unreleased tilesets from the CODI team. They're not quite finished, so CODI's preference is to keep them in-house at the moment. If luck is with me, the tileset will finish up at the same time testing does too.

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More testing

March 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More testing. It's a good thing I'm doing it too, as I found my first plot-stopping bug. It was a silly problem too - a doorway that didn't lead where it was supposed to. Just so I didn't lose all my work, I cheated and jumped to the destination. I think I'm getting to the halfway point on for the plot. Hopefully I can finish it up tonight.

I'll spend today fixing the issues I just found, of course. Most are pretty easy, though I've got to be careful about a couple of them. Slowly getting there.

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Testing, testing, and more testing

March 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Testing, testing, and more testing. That's pretty much all I've been working on this morning. Sure enough, there are some bugs, though no plot breaking ones so far. Anera's AI seems wacky for some reason. There's spirit gem issues. Lots of details seem odd or broken. I admit to cheating a bit, loading up on equipment, experience, and supplies, as I mostly wanted to test the plot areas first.

With luck, I'll get things working enough to give to testers this week, though we'll see how it goes.

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It was an incredibly productive day yesterday

March 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was an incredibly productive day yesterday. I whipped up several new interior doors for use in the full-sized door tilesets. That way the interior doors match the exteriors a bit better. I also finished getting in all the city areas in place, matching up all the doors with all the interior areas. Omelas is a big place.

I also had a little energy and made a small questing area with a tiny puzzle, a couple interesting encounters, and some loot. I'm a big fan of exploring novel areas and I'm trying to thrown in lots of rewards for the people who like to poke around in every nook and cranny.

I've also been working with the CODI folks a bit more, trying to get testing details ironed out. I'm thinking that after I do a full-game run-through, I'll be able to actually start some testing. Some of the tileset issues need to be resolved, but it's otherwise looking pretty good.

Oh, and I upgraded the web server last night. Hopefully it'll help keep up with future load.

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I rolled up my sleeves yesterday and started ...

March 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I rolled up my sleeves yesterday and started making some significant changes to the hak pack for Demon. The interiors are now completely redone, with the addition of corridors, minimap icons, and new loadscreens. It took awhile to integrate my custom tiles as well as remapping the interiors when the SET entries became out of order. Still, I'm happy with the results. I'll have to sneak in an interior or two with the new cooridors just to try them out.

I also continue to slave away on mapping out the main city. I have three of the four main areas mapped out and hope to finish the rest today. I have a bunch of "just for fun" interior areas that I'd like to plug in today as well. I'll probably make a few more before I formally end development as well.

Speaking of ending development, that day may be coming soon. I really need to find the time to do a full run-through of the entire game myself before I send it to testers. I also need to coordinate with RedR on the CODI team to get things organized for the testing process.

Somewhere in the madhouse that is my life I managed to configure the new web server. I'll probably have some downtime tonight where I swap around hardware and plug in the new server.

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For not feeling like I got much done, it was ...

March 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

For not feeling like I got much done, it was a busy day yesterday. I finally got the latest version of the Demon Card game published. I spent a lot of time working on the main Demon hak pack, trying to integrate the update to the Stem Interior. I'm leaning towards an approach that will end up forcing me to recreate all the interiors, so I'm hoping it's worth it. Hopefully I can make some progress with that today.

I also got set up with the CODI folks in hopes that I'll be able to more easily help with the Sigil tileset. They're using a CVS package that I set up overnight. Zillions of CODI files are now sitting on my hard drive to fiddle with. Ah, the power.

Finally, a new computer arrived yesterday that will replace this current web server. There's some occasional slowness with the site when traffic gets heavy so it's about time to upgrade. No ETA on the downtime yet - I've still got to configure the thing.

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I'm up to twelve doors

March 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm up to twelve doors. I may just call it enough and let it be at this point. I think all but a couple special-sized doors are finished, which is enough to start linking in areas. Last night I migrated all my interiors from the test Omelas interior to the new one. It goes pretty quickly, so I may end up doing the other ones today. Also on my agenda is trying to decide if I want to switch the old Stem interiors with the latest one that came out. I'd have to redo about five areas, but it may not be too painful.

As for today, I'd like to migrate more of the exteriors over to the new style. There's some .2da file issues I want to try to fix to allow Shifters in Dreamcatcher. Finally, the 2.0 release of Demon Cards might not be too far away. I haven't heard anything from testers in a long while, so either the bugs are minor or obscure enough not to be found easily.

Update: I decided to throw caution to the wind and upload the latest build of the Demon Cards game. You can grab it here if you're interested.

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Well, Sigil isn't called the City of Doors fo...

March 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, Sigil isn't called the City of Doors for nothing. I've been slaving away trying to create suitable doors for all the variations in height, width, and style. So far I have nine, with more to follow. I discovered a couple extra-wide doorways that weren't quite wide enough for the standard doors, but left huge gaps with the style I'd been working with. So, now I have three styles of doors. Once I get the basic framework down, making new ones isn't too hard. I'll probably be able to add a few more variations, then get some final doors in there. With luck, I'll have a functional city by the end of the week.

There's still a fair bit of tilework to go, though perhaps that can be done concurrently with testing for Demon. Hopefully I can get testing organized today as well.

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I think I'm going to have to have a little ta...

March 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I think I'm going to have to have a little talking to with the carpenters' union of Sigil. So far I've discovered doorways with three different heights, though admittedly one type seems the most common. In a crazy way, I really like it. Sigil has an eclectic style of architecture and variable height doors add a nice flair. It does make the job of creating doors a bit more challenging.

I mostly spent yesterday creating doors, sneaking in moments in my busy day. I think I like this one the best so far.

I also spent a good chunk of time researching Celtic mythology for my next project. For my previous campaigns, it was nice having the Forgotten Realms to draw on. I'm hoping to be able to tie into some of the rich myths of Ireland, England, Wales, and Scottland. Great fun.

I haven't heard any new bugs from the Demon Cards testers, so it may be time for a big release. I've also got a Shifter hak pack update in the works for Dreamcatcher. Lots of things going on.

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Though it's not much to look at, I've added m...

March 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Though it's not much to look at, I've added my first Sigil door. Batinthehat gave me the okay to create some generic ones that should fit the majority of the Sigil doorways. The trick was to make sure the first one worked properly, then I can go crazy with variations. A half dozen or so should suit my needs well enough and then I can get really serious with replacing my test areas with the real ones.

I put in my "auto populate" scripts that fills the area with guards and commoners and decided it needs some more tweaking. They tend to clump around certain areas so I'll probabably fiddle with more RandomWalk code.

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I unfortunately didn't get as much time to fi...

March 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I unfortunately didn't get as much time to fiddle around as I'd like, but I did manage a few new things. There's a neat fountain in the tileset, so I made it a bit more interactive. If you're hard on cash, you can try digging around in the mucky waters to see what comes up. Lots of fun.

This morning I also got the latest build of the Demon Card game into the main module. Testing has gone fairly well so far, so I was feeling lucky. I also wanted to test the scoring and trophy award system. It all seems to work nicely, though I admittedly didn't play all the games required to actually win (somewhere around 20 at the highest difficulty).

If I have some time today, I'd like to try livening up the main town a bit more, adding in the commoner/guard system the current test area has.

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I'm a lucky, lucky boy

March 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm a lucky, lucky boy.

I feel for all the other folks out there who are wanting to play with the tileset while I'm secretly leaping about making giggly noises. I spent most of yesterday poking about, enjoying the little touches like the very large woman's bloomers hanging on a clothesline. There's lots of things like that. Batinthehat did an amazing job.

Papermonk let me know that I could start posting screenshots, so you have today's for your viewing pleasure. I got it into the game this morning, doing a quick test area just to make sure things are working properly. I'll do some more in the days to come.

As Bat and Papermonk have said, the tileset is at an alpha stage. It's not finished yet and there's plenty of work to be done. A few tiles are missing, there's some textures that aren't done yet, and none of the doors are yet in place. Still, what's there is quite solid. I've yet to run into walkmesh issues and there are only a small number of texture misalignments or gaps in the geometry. The variation in the number of building tiles is simply phenominal, with a huge range in styles of architecture. Yet again I commend Bat, Jupp, and the other CODI folks who worked on the tileset. It's lots of fun to finally play with.

My biggest sticking point at the moment is that the doors aren't in place. I don't really mind untextured geometry or minor visual tweaks. That's easy to work around. What's hard is not being able to put in the endless doors needed to connect all the areas in the city. I ended up fiddling with doors a bit yesterday, coming up with a thin door that works in the Sigil doorways (which tend to be more narrow than the usual sort). I've volunteered to help finish the doors, though I think Bat and Jupp already have plans in that direction.

In the meantime, I'll be mapping out the city in general, putting down some in-area placeables, events, and characters, and possibly adding some more interiors to flesh out the city as much as possible. It's simply too cool looking to ignore.

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I spent a good chunk of yesterday running a s...

March 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent a good chunk of yesterday running a spellchecker against the module. It was pretty embarrassing how many different words I managed to spell wrong consistently.

Rumor has it that the Sigil exterior tileset has indeed been uploaded to the CODI FTP servers by now. Should that turn out to be true, I'll have quite the busy day integrating it.

It's also getting to the point where I should probably install the 1.62 patch. I usually give myself a couple weeks to make sure things are stable. There's a couple new goodies I'd like to get in Demon too, so that may be on the plan for today.

Update: The Sigil exterior tileset is mine . . . all mine!
After the giddiness passed, I began to poke around more seriously. There are some issues - missing textures, some GPF-producing tiles, and other problems. Still, it's amazingly cool. After years of wandering around in the same damn town, being able to travel through a completely new style of architecture is such a breath of fresh air. Bat let me know that screenshots were okay (within limits), so expect some pictures in the days to come. As another bonus, the hak pack so far is well under 10 MB with dss textures.

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Debugging AI is a slow process

March 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Debugging AI is a slow process. It took me a good half hour just to figure out where to put my debug code. Jazael has done a pretty amazing job thinking of all sorts of contingencies, so the AI acts relatively smart, though the code is complex. I finally got it so it wasn't casting Dispel Magic and Elixir of Life quite so freely. Warp Reality was a tricky one as well, which I'm hoping it will no longer play when there's a single rat on the field. Boomerang shouldn't destroy everyone's cards any more, one of the more amusing bugs.

I've got one or two other pending issues from testers, but I think I got the big ones so far. I'll give them a few more days to play with it. If it all looks good, I'll post it to the Vault and integrate it back into Demon as the "final" version of the game.

I also managed to get more of that written dialog into the game. If I find the time today, I'd like to do a serious spellcheck run on Demon, hopefully picking up the worst of it before I turn the dialog over to an editor.

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I've managed to scrounge up a hard drive for ...

March 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've managed to scrounge up a hard drive for Jazael, now I'm just waiting for him to get back online to send me his address. In the meantime, I'm spending my evenings trying to troubleshoot the Demon Card game. I've fixed one problem, narrowed another down, and I'm mystified about another. Progress, I suppose.

I did indeed manage to get some of the dialog into the game that I wrote over the weekend. Not sure how much time I'll have today to continue, though.

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Jazael got in touch with me today and let me ...

March 15, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Jazael got in touch with me today and let me know that his hard drive has indeed failed. It looks like I'm on my own with the Demon Cards module, at least in the short term. I'm about ready to send a note to the testers so that they can give the version I worked on yesterday a try. There's a few big issues that I need to clear up before integrating it into Demon.

The CODI folks have been quiet as well. They're doing a major website revamp shortly. I'm still hoping to get my grubby hands on the Sigil exterior soon, though it's hard to tell how progress is coming along as their discussion boards are down.

More coordination for me today, as well as trying to get some of the dialog I wrote over the weekend into the game.

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I'm spent

March 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm spent.

I used the morning yesterday debugging Demon, covering all sorts of things from the main plot to some of the subsystems. I even got the "crime" system working reasonably well - if you commit a crime the guards will come after you and demand payment. It's still not perfect, but it's probably good enough. It's a slight deterrent to slaughtering townsfolk wholesale.

In the afternoon, I worked on dialog for my next project. Over the last couple days I've probably spent five hours on it. I'm still amazed at the amount of writing required for a game. That and scripting are where I spend the vast majority of my time.

Last night and this morning was spend debugging the latest build of the Demon Cards game. There's still some weird AI issues and a few broken cards. Boomerang, for example, destroys your entire deck instead of just returning a creature or generator to your hand. I've gotten some of the other major bugs fixed.

Time for me to hang my hat up for the moment and spend some time with my baby daughter who woke up far too early and is crawling around at my feet.

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More testing

March 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More testing. Endless testing. I've been testing in chunks, cheating my way past the beginning of the game which I've tested dozens of times. The part I tested this morning went well enough, with only a couple visual bugs. I'm still hoping to get through the entire game from the beginning, though it's a massive undertaking.

Still no word from Jazael about the demon card game. I fear the worst as he was reporting hard drive problems last week. I may have to roll up my sleeves and do the bug fixing myself.

Lots of dialog writing for my next project yesterday. I'm trying to alternate several very different styles of writing, which is sometimes rewarding and sometimes frustrating.

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More testing and bug fixing

March 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More testing and bug fixing. I'm trying hard to get ready to run through the entire game soon, though I'm still waiting for the card game and Sigil exterior tileset.

I also finished up the readme file, all 6,800 words. It ended up being quite huge and I still didn't detail everything out precisely. Still, it should walkthrough the main plot as well as the side quests and game systems.

I also found out why the demon card testers were quiet. Evidently I had forgotten to send it to them. After that, I discovered that I had forgotten to do a full build on the module so the scripts were acting wacky. Hopefully I'll get responses back soon.

Today is probably a writing day as I'm stuck in boring meetings at work. We'll see how it goes.

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I hunkered down and did some testing last nig...

March 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I hunkered down and did some testing last night, coming to a couple conclusions. I need to do a lot more testing before I release it to the testers in general. I was able to stumble my way through the first part of the game, but the plot became unworkable when I found that I'd spawned a secret door backwards. Sadly there was no way to open it, so I stopped for the night.

I also realized that this game is big. Really big. I went through only a small fraction of the game, zipping through dialog, and it still took an hour. I suspect that the length will be at least five hours and possibly more. I'm not sure exactly as I've yet to play through the entire game at once.

I also worked more on my secret project yesterday, doing some animation work and poetry, of all things. I felt a little better about it compared to yesterday, though I do feel quite rusty with my poetic prose writing. Today I'll probably look at fixing the bugs I discovered yesterday, though many of them were easy enough to fix while playing.

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I did some testing of the Demon Cards game th...

March 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I did some testing of the Demon Cards game this morning. The most noticeable change is the addition of a dialog that gives a status update of the game and allows for sacrificing creatures from here. I didn't like it at first, but found myself glancing over to check on things. There's a fair number of bugs I'm digging up as well. Hopefully we can get those issues fixed and then roll it into the main Demon module.

I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on NWN the last couple days. I did scratch out some poetic dialog for my next project. It's been a long time since I've written poetry, so hopefully it's not too juvenile. We'll see if I like it enough to show up in the game.

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Well, the testers for the latest Demon Card u...

March 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, the testers for the latest Demon Card update have been strangely quiet. I was hoping to get some feedback to Jazael fairly soon, though he deserves a break away from scripting for a bit.

Admittedly, I didn't touch Demon at all yesterday. Instead, I spent most of the time working on a tech demo for my next project. It's coming along nicely, though I'm still not to the point where I can show anything off.

Still looking forward to the Sigil exterior release later this week. My life will get quite exciting again, I suspect. Lots of door work, linking things together and making sure it works. After that, I'll be testing like a maniac.

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Now the lastest is that the alpha version of ...

March 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Now the lastest is that the alpha version of the tileset will be ready in a few more days. I spent more time on interiors. They tend to be fairly "no frills", but at least there will be a fair number of places to skulk about for the rogues.

Jazael also got the latest version of the card game to me yesterday, so it's off to the testers shortly.

As for today, I'd like to take another look at some of the camera movement scripts and possibly do some more dialog and interiors. We'll see how far I get.

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I fixed yesterday's head issue and added another

March 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I fixed yesterday's head issue and added another. I like the variety it adds as previously I only had two Tainted heads. The variation in color helps, but it only hides the fact of two base models a little.

I added several new city interior areas as I'd prefer to let players open doors in the city should they wish to. I probably can't flesh out every possible building and make it interesting, but hopefully there'll be some variety.

I chatted with the CODI folks yesterday and the latest rumor is that the Sigil exterior tileset should be coming out this weekend. I'll be frantically scrambling to replace my current city exterior once that gets in place. There may also be some testing complexities and coordination issues, so I'll be working to resolve those in the upcoming week. If Jazael's finished up his AI update, I'll be sending that to testers next week.

All-in-all, it looks like things are wrapping up nicely and gearing up for the testing phase.

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One of the nice things about getting the crit...

March 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

One of the nice things about getting the critical things done with Demon and waiting for something outside my control is that I'm able to work on more "polishing" aspects. I've been wanting to add a new head for the Tainted models, so I got one almost done. Unfortunately, it seems I have a little problem with the scaling. Something to work on in a bit.

I also started in on the lengthy readme/hint file. It's turning into a bit of a tome.

I'd like to continue to polish, adding extra dialog and areas to flesh out the main city. Some townsfolk with personality is something I've been wanting to do as well. We'll see just how much time I really get.

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I'm starting to get everything ready for test...

March 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm starting to get everything ready for testing to begin. I build a little issue tracking application for the site. I'm hoping it keeps the testing insanity to a minimum and encourages testers to help each other out. I'm still not quite to the testing phase, though, so nobody get excited.

I also spent a fair amount of time working on the module itself, polishing up things and adding some new content. Long ago, I put in place a system where you can earn a little money by delivering packages for commoners who wander around the city center. I had planned for an option of simply opening the package, but it wasn't until yesterday that I actually finished it up. Let's just say that there's some odd things delivered around town.

I also got the scripting for the Demon Cards tournament ready. Jazael put in all the hooks in his latest update and it was a simple matter of just calling them to see if the player is winning or losing. Speaking of the Demon Cards game, the last AI update had some problems so Jazael is switching gears and taking another approach. Hopefully it'll be ready soon as it's a huge update with lots of nice features. People should appreciate it.

I've also been working on getting some other building interiors in the game, mostly for rogues or unsavory players to loot. I have fond memories of wandering around Baldur's Gate and poking around in other people's houses, and I'm hoping to get a similar feel to the place.

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It was a fairly quiet day yesterday

March 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was a fairly quiet day yesterday. Not a lot of new work on Demon. I did put some time in whipping up some new placeables for an expansion to the Demon Cards game. It a bit premature as Jazael's still doing a big AI update at the moment. The plan is to get that and the new tournament code wrapped up, then start thinking about some big changes down the line.

I also cleaned up the intro movie with some help from Magnus. Today I might do a little more dialog work. I'm also thinking of whipping up a quick and dirty tracking application for the testing phase. We'll see how far I get.

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Another productive day yesterday

March 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Another productive day yesterday. I have the Demon Card game integrated back into the module with the latest work from Jazael. It's looking very good and I'm excited to see all the hard work on this mini-game finally circle back into the module itself. Jazael's working on an AI update and then he's promised a scoring system that will be used for the tournament quest in Demon.

I also put some more work into the second Struggle area, making sure the leader wanders about appropriately. I had some fun with the disguise kit this morning, leading my enemies against each other. Hopefully that whole area turns out to be fun.

Other than that, I did some more polishing. I added another placeable to brighten up people's spirit gems. I added a few more commoners for the main town. It's nice to finally have the module starting to feel finished. The two big things I'm waiting on is the Sigil exterior tileset and the Demon Card update. My general feel for the timing is a couple weeks, though it's hard to tell for sure. After that, I'll start up testing seriously.

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It was an incredibly productive day yesterday

March 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was an incredibly productive day yesterday. Lots of hak pack work, fixing issues and adding new content. I wanted more special placeables to power up your spirit gem, so I whipped up a couple. My goal is to get enough so that players can build all the rooms, plus a few extra so that there's not a frustrating hunt for any that people might have missed. I'm still having some issues getting the proper crystal and glass look. I spent a good hour last night fiddling with things and might want to spend some more time. We'll see.

I also layed down the groundwork for getting the updated Demon Cards game in Demon. It took awhile, but I've updated the hak pack and added the scripts. I'm currently coordinating all the scripting issues with Jazael, trying to get a tournament of sorts in the game.

All that coupled with the Shadowlords update yesterday made me feel like I'm actually moving forward again, after a few slow days.

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Yet more Spirit Gem fixes

March 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Yet more Spirit Gem fixes. It's coming along quite nicely now. I've got to tweak the number of "special items" you can collect for your spirit gem and weigh that against how many you need to create new rooms. I'll probably spend some time today adding new placeables for that purpose.

I also did some hak pack updating. It turns out I got overzealous with the conversion of .tga to .dss files and converted a few that I shouldn't have.

I have yet another update to the Demon Card game that needs a bit of packaging before sending off to testers. Yesterday was a bit nutty and I couldn't even manage that.

Update: I finally finished updating the Shadowlords modules. Many thanks to all the testers who lent a hand. If you're running into problems with Anera's AI or Jered following you, download the latest and restart the module you're currently on. Now I've just got to finish testing the Shifter issues with Dreamcatcher as well as the latest Demon Card game . . .

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I spent big chunks of last night and this mor...

February 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent big chunks of last night and this morning trying to get multiplayer working, especially the spirit gem which has been causing me problems. It turns out that my biggest problem was that I had some debug code that automatically set the owner of all the spirit gems to the first player. Once I figured that out, it was some tedious but straightforward work to get things set right again.

I've been doing more polishing and fixing. You could still choose to rebuild a room in your spirit gem after you've already built it. That's been fixed. I still have a couple more gem-related bugs to track down. There's also some neutral Struggle additions I'd like to make to the second Struggle area. Slowly making progress.

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From the screenshot, you can probably tell th...

February 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

From the screenshot, you can probably tell that I've been doing multiplayer testing. I have a troubleshooting mode for some of the triggers. If a henchman hasn't been selected, it defaults to Anera. Though I shouldn't have been surprised, I had to giggle when two Aneras appeared during the testing for the first part of the game. Ah, the possibilities.

Multiplayer is coming along reasonably well. The show-stopping bug from last time was fixed. Now I just need to figure out why my spirit gem code is sticking people into the same spirit gem. Each player should get their own.

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Quiet day on the NWN front yesterday, though ...

February 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Quiet day on the NWN front yesterday, though life and work was crazy. Jazael has been going nuts adding new features to the Demon Card game and I should get a new and improved version out to testers today. He's planning an overhaul to the AI as well, though he's not quite ready.

I'm not sure what I'll get a chance to work on today. More dialog is still nice, though we'll see if I really have that much time.

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Development slowly moves ahead

February 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Development slowly moves ahead. I continued more multiplayer testing, hopefully fixing some of the major sticking points. I still need to find the time to cycle through again from beginning. There's some spirit gem issues that are unresolved, I think, though hopefully it won't be too hard to fix.

There's lots of action on the Demon Card front. Jazael is putting in even more improvements to card management and buying/selling cards. There have been some problems discovered with the new cards. I've dutifully sent off the reports to him to take a look at the issues.

We'll see how today goes. It would be nice to get more dialog in the game. I may also upgrade to the 1.62 patch after I make sure everyone else has as well.

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I've been working on multiplayer aspects late...

February 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been working on multiplayer aspects lately, seeing if I can get two players all the way through the complex first part of the module. So far, I haven't been able to, but it's mostly dumb little issues that have been stopping me. Teira, in particular, had some bugs in her conversation and tags on a cutscene version that made me go through again from the beginning. Still, I have hope that I should be able to do it shortly. I'm juggling some ideas that would allow multiple players to have different demon incarnations. It's a bit of work, so I'm not sure I'll get to it.

Testing for the new version of the Demon Cards module goes well. No errors reported yet. Jazael has been having problems getting on the Internet so I've been trying to use his time wisely.

For those of you who can't get enough of me on the net, I have a little blurb on the FiringSquad site. The editor wanted a few sentences on why I thought Neverwinter Nights was great. There's also a review of Dreamcatcher 1 up on the Vault.

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do today. I've taken the day off work to help out at our co-op preschool, so I'll be wrangling 5-year-olds. I've also got to jump on e-mail for awhile and make sure all the assorted testing is on track.

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I came to the realization yesterday that ever...

February 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I came to the realization yesterday that every module I've made is undergoing some sort of testing. A bunch of people are testing Shadowlord fixes. Someone else is testing the .2da changes to allow Shifters to go through Dreamcatcher. Demon Cards seems to be in constant testing, with the 2.0 version going to testers today. For me, it means a lot of coordination through e-mail. Keeps me on my toes.

I tested the multiplayer aspect of Demon and got further along than I thought I would. The "house switching" code worked perfectly, moving each player to the appropriate abode. I've got to add some debug code next as the place it failed was an odd one. Still, all the multiplayer aspects after that one should be relatively simple.

I also manged to get some more dialog in the game yesterday. One of my favorite things about the player's companion is that they speak up at appropriate times. They get to pull out emotions from the player and drop subtle hints of what to do next.

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Off and on, throughout the day, I got all of ...

February 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Off and on, throughout the day, I got all of the 22 new cards into the game. It took quite a bit of time, creating the new placeable models, getting the cards in the game, then creating the creatures for the new creature cards. As it kept getting later and later, I finally managed to test some things out and fix a few bugs. There are so many new cards that I've only played with a few of them.

The picture of the day is of some of the new Mythic cards. When summoned, only one of these creatures can be in play at any time. There's also lots more enchantments and spells, such as the annoying Counterspell and the temporarily boosting Potion of Heroism.

I'm hoping I can get this to testers today. It may be awhile before I get the big bugs worked out, however, as there's lots of new changes. Jazael did a great job cleaning things up and getting the new cards in place.

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I worked more on the Struggle yesterday, veri...

February 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I worked more on the Struggle yesterday, verifying that the good, evil, and neutral paths are all doable. I've been continuing to do some polishing, adding some dialog and scripting as appropriate. It feels good to finally wrap up this part of the game.

As my "to do" list is gradually shrinking for Demon, the Demon Cards game is keeping me quite busy. It turns out that his Internet connection died and he's been offline for awhile. The good news is that he did a huge amount of work and layed the groundwork for 22 new cards. It's still rough, however, so I'm hoping to release the 1.9 version tomorrow (the one with the dragon). It'll hopefully give people something to play with until the big 2.0 release. After that's stable, I need to reintegrate it back into the Demon game.

I'm still waiting for the Sigil exterior tileset, which I'm hoping will be alpha soon. Once that's together, I need to finish integrating all the hak packs into a single piece. Slowly getting there . . .

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I had every intention of working on Demon yes...

February 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I had every intention of working on Demon yesterday, but it just didn't happen. I ended up fixing some more Shadowlords bugs, then sending off another version to testers. I'm hoping to hear from Jazael about the Demon Cards game by Monday. If not, I did some minor bug fixing of what I've got and I'll release what I've got then.

I also did some post-Demon writing and planning, though things are still quite fluid. For some reason, a plot never sounds as good when I write it down compared to having it floating around in my brain.

The editor from FiringSquad asked me for a quick blurb about NeverwinterNights. I think it's for a top-5 RPG poll, but I wasn't able to find it on their site.

This morning I got Magnus' latest volume-adjusted pieces in the game. He bought an expensive little piece of software for his studio and wanted to process all the music with it. It sounds fine to me.

I also tested out the second Struggle quest (the good version) from the beginning to the end. Though there were a few glitches along the way, it works pretty well now. I'd still like to add a few more things but I think it's slowly getting finished.

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Yesterday was mostly Shadowlords day, as I co...

February 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Yesterday was mostly Shadowlords day, as I continued to work on fixes and tweaks. Months of e-mails about typos or weird issues were sorted through and dealt with. It was a nice feeling to finally get through it all.

I also did some work on the Demon hak pack, something I'd been wanting to do in awhile. I turned all the TGA textures I could into DDS textures, getting a huge reduction in space in the process. The hak pack for Demon will still be very large, but at least it's about half as overwhelmingly large as it used to be. The only catch is that about 1% of video cards don't support DSS textures, so I'll probably end up having to post the big version for those few people who have problems.

To give you a feel for the size of the hak pack, the main Demon hak pack and the Stem interior were reduced down to 20 MB compressed from around 40 MB or so. I still have to add in the Sigil exteriors, but hopefully that's not going to be too crazy. Optionally add in 20 MB of music, an 11 MB intro movie, and the 2 MB module itself. I'd guess somewhere between a 35 MB minimum to a 70 MB maximum depending on if you install the optional goodies.

As for today, I'm hoping Jazael gets in touch about the card game, as he currently has the latest version of the module. I gave him directions to make even more cards, so he may be going a bit crazy with it. I'd also like to work more on dialog for Demon. Hopefully a cafe mocha will inspire me as it usually does.

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I was a very good boy yesterday, finishing up...

February 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I was a very good boy yesterday, finishing up the coding and dialog for the second Struggle area. I also put the multiplayer code necessary for the first part of the module. Neither is tested, but it was nice to get it in there.

I treated myself last night not by working more on Demon or the Demon Cards game, but rather by going back and fixing a host of annoying bugs that have plagued the Shadowlords modules as of late. I still get a steady stream of e-mails from first time players. The problem that's been bothering me the most is that Anera's AI went completely wonky after the 1.61 patch. I ended up recreating her character in all the modules that had the issue. I also cleaned up some henchman/following issues with Jered and the orc in Shadowlords 3. That being said, if there are any brave testers out there, please drop me an e-mail if you'd like to test out the improvements before I post it to the Vault.

It was interesting going back to look at the Shadowlords modules. They each seemed tiny in comparison to Demon, yet each of the henchmen had a ton of dialog. I'm at a point where I'm in a bit of a holding pattern with Demon - the Sigil exterior tileset isn't ready yet and the Demon Card game isn't quite stable enough to integrate with the game. There's still some hak pack cleanup I'd like to do, as well as more interiors in town. Still, with the time I have left, I'd like to put in some more effort into henchmen dialogs, which I've always felt were a mainstay of the campaign. We'll see how my time goes today.

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I sunk several hours working on the Demon Car...

February 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I sunk several hours working on the Demon Cards game yesterday, fixing bugs and adding a bunch of new cards. The Dragon is sure to be a favorite, though it dominates the playing field. It may end up being a bit too big, but I've hedged my bets by having it eat a bunch of the player's creatures when its summoned. Should keep the playing field tidy.

The good news is that Jazael offered to take up maintenance of the application, so I'm trying to step back from development and switch over to Demon. Gotta finish up that Struggle area.

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It seemed like yesterday was incredibly busy,...

February 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It seemed like yesterday was incredibly busy, but I think most of it was spent responding to e-mail and posts. I think I have a fix for the Shifter issue for Dreamcatcher, for real this time. I uploaded a new version of Demon Cards game. I worked more on the second Struggle area, to the point where the good side seems to be finished. I spent a huge amount of time tracking down odd bugs, such as all my troops panicking after I've killed the enemy's leaders. It was funny once, but not the fifth time.

I'd like to spend a little time today working on some more cards for the Demon Card game. An extra ten shouldn't be too hard for me to make and it's vaguely soothing compared to finishing up the Struggle area code. I still need to put the neutral path in, though I've made it much simpler this time around.

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The demon card bug fixing and tweaking contin...

February 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The demon card bug fixing and tweaking continues, as that's what I mostly did last night. The list of changes for the upcoming 1.8 patch is really long, including everything from battle music to targeting changes, as well as your lengthy list of spelling fixes.

This morning I managed to do some more scripting and testing for the second Struggle area, though I mostly found how many things were broken. It's going to need some more fiddling and testing for sure.

Also, rumor has it that I'll get my hands on the Sigil exterior tileset later this week. I saw some more new screenshots yesterday and it's looking fabulous.

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I couldn't help myself

February 15, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I couldn't help myself. I started checking e-mail and reading posts and pretty soon I was working on the card game again. Since my son wandered down already, it looks like Demon will get to wait until later today, though I have a bunch of issues in the card game fixed. It seems that people are loving it and clamoring for new cards, though I want to get it stable and polished first.

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The card game tweaks and fixes continue, thou...

February 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The card game tweaks and fixes continue, though I'm making myself take a break this morning and focusing in on the second Struggle area in Demon. I've made some good progress, getting in journal entries and lots of battle scripting. I did have a slight issue with getting the wrong type of troops spawning in, giving myself a huge number of troops to slaughter the poor enemy leaders. With luck I can finish up this Struggle area this weekend, depending on my time and energy levels.

Once I get this finished, I'll be working on multiplayer, getting the card game integrated back into the main module, and finally getting the Sigil tileset integrated back into the module once it hits an alpha stage. I've still got a lot of cleanup work, such as trying to compress the textures in the hak packs, but it's nice to be able to count my main "to do" items on one hand.

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I've been knee deep in the card game for the ...

February 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've been knee deep in the card game for the last few days. Most of the major bug fixes are taken care of at this point, so it's down to polishing for the most part. I've got a new patch to release today that does all sorts of nice things, such as adding descriptions to the creatures, changing the colors, and lots of small fixes and changes. I'm getting some great volunteer help from the community, which really helps.

I've tried to not completely ignore Demon throughout this process. I worked a bit more on dialog yesterday and a couple NPCs with unique weapons this morning. I'm trying hard to make the second Struggle area interesting, more than just leading troops into a huge melee. I've got some ideas, but we'll see how they pan out.

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Very busy, as usual

February 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Very busy, as usual. There's a new interview with me on the Neverwinter Vault. I updated the Demon Cards game with a patch and have another one on the way. Amazingly, I also found some time last night to add some more dialog to Demon.

The Demon Cards game is generating a fair amount of feedback, which is a good thing. People are finding all sorts of odd bugs, but I think most of them are solvable. I figure things will settle down in a few more days and then I can focus on getting Demon finished up.

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I'm still debugging the Demon Cards game

February 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm still debugging the Demon Cards game. There's a particularly nasty one that involves the deck bag getting a random tag and causing all craziness. I think I'm close to figuring it out, though.

I also have an interview up on the Vault, so feel free to take a gander.

Still not much work on Demon, though I expected a bit of that after releasing the card game.

Update: I've got some testers working on a patch. Should be ready soon.

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Okay, the Demon Card game is finally posted t...

February 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Okay, the Demon Card game is finally posted to the Vault. There's also a player's guide and a new screenshot of the Sigil tileset. Whew.

I'm probably going to spend today collecting bug reports and fixing problems. It seems like that's how I spent most of yesterday as well. The Shifter issue with Dreamcatcher was a little more complicated, as without updates to the portraits.2da file the player showed up as a penguin or some odd thing. I finally updated my old flower hak to be HotU compliant. I helped coulisfu troubleshoot his Oriental tileset.

In terms of Demon, I barely wrote out a couple lines of dialog.

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It looks like Maximus put up some teaser imag...

February 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It looks like Maximus put up some teaser images of the card game and the Sigil exterior tileset over on the Vault last night. The full-sized version of the Sigil exterior is simply amazing, giving you a feel for why I can't wait to get my hands on it. Today is the day when the Demon Card game is released, which I look forward to with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

I worked a bit more on the troop scripts for the second Struggle area. They'll actually follow me, advance around, and generally obey my command. There's still lots of work to do, but it's nice to get the basics ready.

I also had someone report issues with Shifters in the Dreamcatcher campaign. Sure enough, I had forgotten the extra columns in the polymorph.2da file so I'll be busy getting the hak packs updated today.

It's going to be an exciting week. I can tell already.

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It seems like I'm spending a lot of time on s...

February 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It seems like I'm spending a lot of time on support issues and less on the module itself. An observant person noticed a problem with the Shifter class in Dreamcatcher. I've tracked down the problem to the polymorph.2da files and a fix should be forthcoming soon.

Maximus wasn't able to recreate the problem he had yesterday, so it looks like we're back on track for releasing all the goodies. It could be tomorrow or as soon as today. I'm expecting a tidal wave of comments, complaints, and suggestions soon afterwards, which will probably keep me busy.

I hope people's expectations aren't too high of this little game. There's no actual story surrounding the place, just the ability to jump in and start the game. I suspect most people will fiddle about for awhile, then set it aside. A few might play with friends for awhile, as playing against human opponents is a bit more fun. I'm secretly hoping that a persistent world picks it up and integrates it into their server, possibly creating special quests and such to get the most powerful cards. We'll see how it goes.

I did only the barest of work on Demon itself yesterday, working a bit more on the second Struggle area. Hopefully I can do a bit more dialog and scripting before the kids wake up.

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It was really busy yesterday, scampering abou...

February 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was really busy yesterday, scampering about trying to get the Demon Cards game ready. Papermonk did a great job with the promotional graphics (like the small image here), I put together some more rules and text, then I had some coordination with Maximus on the Vault to try to get everything ready.

As luck would have it, Maximus ran into some problems with playing and I've been doing some intense testing and tweaking at the last minute. A few things were easy, such as adding a helper sign with dialog in the manage deck area, but there's a bug he reported that I can't seem to reproduce.

Once we get these issues nailed down, expect a release of the Demon Cards module, a file spotlight with rules and some descriptions of the cards, and finally the interview with some new screenshots from the Sigil tileset exterior. My stuff aside, the Sigil tileset looks fantastic and bat's furiously trying to get things to an alpha stage.

Magnus, always the perfectionist, has been tweaking the movie soundtrack a little more. I don't usually see a lot of direct benefit from having popular modules, but being able to attract extremely talented people is one of them. I think people will be quite pleased with all the custom music in the game.

As for Demon, I worked more on dialog yesterday, almost finishing the final henchman dialogs. Time permitting, I'd like to put even more in there. There are quite a few opportunities for tension with your companion and I'd love to be able to explore that a bit. Then again, I do need to ship this game one of these years.

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Composing music is sort of like magic to me

February 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Composing music is sort of like magic to me. Other than a summer as a teenager taking piano lessons and singing silly songs to my kids, I've basically steered away from anything that vaguely resembles making music. That's probably why I'm so impressed that Magnus turned out a great little piece of music that goes along with the introductory movie. It makes all the difference and I'm quite happy with it.

I put in some time yesterday doing some more henchmen dialog. It's one of those things that most people will feel I can't get enough of and I suspect they're right. This one is at the very end of the game, optionally switching to a final end camera sequence if the player chooses to. I also give them the choice of puttering around in town if they missed anything, though by then the main quest is over. As for the dialogs themselves, I have two down and two to go, though they're actually pretty fun to write.

I also worked more on the second struggle area, having my martial arts students do a little practicing. It's fun to see them show off their new animations on the practice mats as well as providing a bit of ambiance to the place. Once I finish the henchmen conversation, I'll want to switch to the conversations in this area.

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Emma's sick, so I spent my pre-work developme...

February 05, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Emma's sick, so I spent my pre-work development time rocking her to sleep. Still, I managed to get some work done last night, adding in the Oriental doors and fixing a missing texture on one of the castles. I started in on a sparring scene, but the students evidently didn't like to quit and instead kept wacking at each other until one died. Oops.

Yesterday was lots of coordinatin, writing an interview and gearing up for the Demon Cards release. Magnus and I went back and forth on some tweaks to the movie. It's slowly coming together.

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Well, the video for the movie is complete

February 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, the video for the movie is complete. I did all the post-rendering work yesterday, tweaking frames in Photoshop then assembling it all together. It's a bit odd without any sound, though I think it will turn out quite nice once Magnus works his magic.

Papermonk got in touch with me about the Demon Card game. I'm embarrassed to say that I deleted his first e-mail when cleaning up my usual 100+ e-mails for penis enlargement, cheap drugs, viruses, and get rich quick schemes. He did some spiffy graphic work putting an intro together and I passed him some text on the rules. Hopefully it won't be much longer (though you're probably getting tired of me saying that).

I think the Module of the Year award is starting to have an impact. I'm getting a surprising amount of e-mail from people with questions, problems, and comments about the game. Some days I feel like I'm tech support to the world.

I worked a bit more on the module yesterday, adding in the dialog I wrote yesterday and starting the groundwork for the new Struggle area. Mostly I got the NPCs into the game, though there's a few to do yet. Hopefully I can pull off an epic battle of sorts, though large scale engagements are always a bit tricky.

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It was a crazy busy day yesterday, so I didn'...

February 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was a crazy busy day yesterday, so I didn't get as much done as I'd like. I managed to scribble some dialog in the margin of my notebook during the boring parts of a meeting. Hopefully I can get it into the module today.

I finally finished my grand movie rendering project. The last of the frames finished up this morning. Watching the sunset piece was a bit anticlimactic. I think I was expecting something a hundred times better simply because it took that much longer to make. It's great, a lovely setting sun casting long shadows across the landscape, but it didn't move me to tears or anything. With luck, I can get the video assembled today and shipped off to Magnus.

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Well, it's official

February 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, it's official. It looks like Dreamcatcher won Module of the Year. I suppose I have to admit to being flattered, especially when there were so many great modules up there. One of these days I need to hunker down and finish playing them.

I spent much of yesterday testing and fixing the Chen Village area yet some more. I won't certify it Bug-Free, but it's definately Bug-Lite. No more naked villagers except when you end up ruining their armor after a clumsy repair attempt. There may be a tiny bit of tweaking I'd like to do, but it's feeling pretty close to done.

The movie renders are finishing up faster than I thought. I think I'm down to about 10-15% of the movie remaining, though they're the most computationally expensive frames. I think the issue is the shadows, which get very quick to draw once the sun drops down a certain point. Hopefully it'll finish up in a day or two.

The one remaining area is the second Struggle, which I'd like to get started today. After that, it's adding the card game, multiplayer support, a bit more flavor dialog, and eventually integrating the Sigil tileset once it's released. Slowly getting there.

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To borrow a quote from Twain, "There's lies, ...

February 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

To borrow a quote from Twain, "There's lies, damn lies, and release dates." I remember long ago when I had a hope that I could get this monstrosity finished by the holidays. It just seemed to get out of hand and I'm only now trying to wrap things up. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that my finish date is a month or two out, though it depends on how testing goes.

Speaking of testing, it seems I spent most of this morning hanging out with naked villagers. Yesterday I discovered that there were some very significant problems with the good and evil paths of the Chen Village area. They wouldn't level up during training, their weapons and armor didn't improve and if they did, they wouldn't equip it. I think I have all those things straightened out at this point. Now I've just got to fine tune some of their responses to spoken text, then it's on to fixing the bandits.

The movie rendering is coming along nicely. I'm over halfway done at this point so hopefully I can finish up with the video part of the movie this week. I overclocked my main computer up to around 2.2 Ghz (it's an AMD chipset), and it seems to be handling it nicely. Render times are still bouncing around, but I managed to finish one frame in two and a half hours last night.

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The new heads look great in the game, adding ...

January 31, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The new heads look great in the game, adding considerable flavor to the Struggle areas.

I've been doing a number of miscellaneous things recently, adding in the demonic weapons that you can train with, adding in some shop keepers, and fixing some bugs. I finally got that pesky Spirit Gem bug fixed. It turns out I wasn't being careful about resurrecting the player before I teleported them. Dead people can't have any actions performed on them.

I think I have the last chunk of the movie finished, with a suitable flaming title. The sunset renders seem to be going faster for some odd reason, though it's still a few days out before that finishes up. I'll size it, add the titles, then turn it over to Magnus to add the music. Great fun.

If I have any time today, I'd like to work on getting the new version of the Demon Card game integrated into the module. It still has my old version, which is a bit buggy and has fairly different rules.

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More testing and cleanup yesterday, fixing a ...

January 30, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

More testing and cleanup yesterday, fixing a number of little dialog bugs that I didn't notice in some plot-critical conversations. I also added a number of flavor people, having fun with Coulisfu's oriental heads. I worked a bit more on the second Struggle area, getting in the last of the areas. Soon it will be time to put down the npcs and start scripting them, not to mention all their dialog.

I've also worked more on the movie, getting the post-processing done on the first six-second chunk. I'm also working on the title, trying to get the flames just right. The animated version is far cooler, though it's taking awhile to get perfect. The only movie piece I'm waiting on now is the six-second sunset, which takes 4-6 hours per frame to render. At 90 frames, that's a lot of processing time. I think I'm a third of the way there.

Finally, I got a chance to see some screenshots of the Sigil tileset in the game. Batinthehat has done a great job as usual and he's slowly gearing up for an alpha release so I can start getting it in the game.

For those of you wondering what the scoop is with the card game, I'm in the same boat as you. I was working with Papermonk over at CODI to do a production of sorts around it. Unfortunately he hurt his back and hasn't been in touch. One of my "to do"'s for the day is to try to get that organized as it's been sitting around far too long.

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Yesterday was a day of lots of little things

January 29, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Yesterday was a day of lots of little things. I did the post-production work on the second six-second movie scene, sizing it to 800X600, putting in the text, and adding fades. I worked more on the characters in the second Struggle area, creating dialog, equipment, and getting them in the toolset. I spent more time on the first fifteen minutes of the module, tweaking the camera and adding in some more flavor. There was also a ton of new items to create for the new store I added, which is often time consuming if the descriptions get elaborate.

I noticed that coulisfu added some Oriental heads, which may find their way into the module.

I still have an annoying issue with the spirit gem not working properly. It seems to work great once or twice, then stops. This screenshot is from my testing this morning. I must have died twenty times, simply reappearing where I fell instead of in my spirit gem. I'm probably not copying variables properly somewhere along the way. In a way, it's nice to move more towards the testing phase, though it's often more frustrating than the development. Lots of head scratching and putting in debug code.

The first chunk of the movie should be done rendering and ready for post-production work today. I'd also like to continue work on the second Struggle area, putting in yet more scripting and such.

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I'm working on the final six second sequence,...

January 28, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm working on the final six second sequence, though I've discovered that the render times are four hours per frame on my fastest computer. It complicates things a bit, and I may end up accepting volunteers for rendering time. I'm also going to be upset if it turns out there's any "flicker" issue like in the first six seconds.

I worked on getting a couple new models in the game. They're monk-looking with the new combat animations. I also snuck in an old friend that people should be happy with.

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I ran across Ragnarok's custom combat animati...

January 27, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I ran across Ragnarok's custom combat animations the other day and knew I had to have them for my second Struggle area. The NPCs there are martial arts experts, so the new animations look great. I tried cutting out all but the necessary animations so that the creature's .mdl file didn't get too huge. I think it'll work well enough.

The rendering slow continues, cranking out a frame every hour and a half or so. The first twelve seconds should be done in a day or two, though I've yet to set up the animations for the rest of the introduction. Thanks to all who offered up their computers for my mini-rendering farm, but I think I'll get it done in plenty of time.

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I had a moment of frustration yesterday when ...

January 26, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I had a moment of frustration yesterday when after converting part of the rendered introduction movie I discovered an annoying flickering on an area of the screen. It may be that I'm only noticing because I've been staring at the same few seconds of footage over and over. The render of the first part should be finished today, so I'll do some more fiddling before I start again if I must.

More testing yesterday. I discovered some problems in the sewer area that I'm considering how to fix. My once shiny water is now dark black and I'm not sure why. It used to work, so it may have something to do with the 1.61 patch and the change to placeable environment maps. We'll see.

My "to do" list grew longer after I realistically sat down and tried to figure out what I need to finish up. The second struggle area is an obvious one, as well as integrating the new card game and putting in more multiplayer support. Whew.

Rumor has it that I'll get my hands on an alpha of the Sigil tileset this week. It's one of those key things that's required before I can release the module so it's nice to see development slowly finishing up.

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I'm almost done with the first six seconds of...

January 25, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm almost done with the first six seconds of rendering. One of my computers finished up early so I gave it the task of working on the next six seconds. It's fun to see how it's turning out.

I was a testing maniac yesterday, something that I've been wanting to do for a long while. I spent a couple hours with the neutral path for the Chen Village area. I sure hope someone appreciates it. It's also important to wear the proper disguise as you go from place to place, otherwise the locals get a bit grumpy.

The list of bugs is still long, but a little less daunting than yesterday. It seems to ebb and flow as I test for awhile then switch back to fixing. I'm also discovering how big this module is going to be as going through areas takes awhile even if I know exactly what to do.

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I've got my little "render farm" cranking awa...

January 24, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I've got my little "render farm" cranking away at the movie. I broke it down into smaller chunks that three computers should be able to do over the weekend. It's just the first of three landscape shots, so this could become a fairly regular weekend activity for my computers.

I put a little more testing last night, fixing the dreaded "player shows up naked" bug. Those are always fun. There's still a long list of bugs, many critical, so I've got a ways to go yet. Hopefully today I can get more testing time in.

I'm planning something a little special for the second Struggle area involving custom animations. I worked on post-climax dialog for some of the commoners. Since everything changes I didn't want them to talk to you in the same way. Slowly getting there.

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I decided to take a break from scripting and ...

January 23, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I decided to take a break from scripting and such yesterday, instead turning to getting a good intro movie put together for the module. I have a nice 3d scene that I'd like to pan across, but I'm finding that the render times are fairly high. At the resolution and quality I want, it'll take about an hour per frame. I'm also struggling a bit with povray, trying to get it to render subsets of a large animation on different computers. I think I finally figured it out.

I also played some of Stefan's excrucio eternum last night. It's always nice going through a well-polished module, especially one with a very different feel. The writing is quite well done, from the dialog to the journal entries to the various books found about the place. I also really liked the instant-transportation system which really helps minimize the frustration of going from place to place. Not finished yet, though probably this weekend.

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Endless bug fixes yesterday

January 22, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Endless bug fixes yesterday. I spent a surprising amount of time with the climax of the game, trying to get it working the way I want. It'll be a challenge for sure, though the really hard part is avoidable for those who choose another path. I'm finding that some of the end areas are still a bit bare. I need some more "flavor" NPCs to liven the place up. Perhaps I can work on that today.

I fixed some major AI problems. I had neglected to update the henchmen AI with the new 1.61 version. I had to touch some of the major AI code in order to get the custom spell casting script working (e.g. "cast fireball on wizard"). It's much better now.

There are still a fair number of pending bugs. The most major is that of respawning and the spirit gem. The way it works is complicated and I need to sit down and carefully go over each step to see what's wrong.

I also put in some of the dialog for the second Struggle area. I'd like to start in on scripting next, though we'll see how that goes. I may also need some custom creatures, though it's of a sort that should be easy to whip up.

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I spent a bunch of time playtesting last night

January 21, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent a bunch of time playtesting last night. It's somewhat daunting how many things are broken. I ended up ripping out most of the henchmen death scripts and I think I have things fixed. The spirit gem isn't working more than once, which probably involves issues copying variables. There's a bunch of other small things like that, and some major ones. I was having serious AI problems with the henchmen, though I'm hoping that's something to be fixed in a patch.

Still, there were a number of encounters and minor scripting things that I think I've fixed now. That part feels good.

I finished up the weapon skill scripting, though there's one minor bug to resolve. It's pretty neat when your skill goes up and all the properties on your weapon change. Hopefully today I can fix some more bugs as well as put more work on the second Struggle area. Should be fun.

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Well, it turns out I wasn't quite as finished...

January 20, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, it turns out I wasn't quite as finished as I thought. I had forgotten about the demon weapon system I had envisioned, which involves being able to wield certain weapons in demon form for greater effectiveness. Fortunately it wasn't too hard to put together and I got the tricky part done yesterday and this morning.

Normally, it's a fairly clumsy weapon. If you switch to demon form, the penalty goes away and you can improve your skill with it over time. Eventually, it becomes quite powerful, possibly even better than other magic weapons you'll find in the game. It was my first time playing with item properties, which turns out to be a fairly powerful set of functions. The weapon's abilities change if you equip it, unequip it, or change form. I'm also setting the "no drop" flag when you're wielding it so you can't just turn around and sell it for large amounts of money.

I also got the new version of the Oriental tileset in the game, hoping to start fleshing out the second Struggle area shortly. I also did some general cleanup, running a full build on the game and getting rid of any garbage that showed up.

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I spent some time yesterday bug fixing and fi...

January 19, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I spent some time yesterday bug fixing and fiddling with cameras. Some of the bugs are huge ones, so it'll take awhile for me to get through the game. I'm also hoping that I can get the Sigil exterior to play with soon, as Omelas just doesn't have the proper impact with the traditional city exterior. I added some henchmen comments for each time they die. Unfortunately I can't test it properly as resurrection only works once. More things to fix.

I think I've settled on having a second Struggle area using the Oriental tilesets. I need to work the newest version and the interiors into the hak pack and do some general planning. I think that'll be the last new area in the game, with the possible exception of duplicates to support multiplayer. Slowly getting there.

Finally, Magnus updated his site with a download for the new asian theme. Give it a listen to if you're interested.

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I continued playing with the camera a bit yes...

January 18, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I continued playing with the camera a bit yesterday, trying to get the hang of things. I think I'll look through Gestalt's scripts as well to compare the two. There's a few things that Gestalt's seems better at. I also added some dialog for a familiar face. Demon has sort of turned into a "This is Your Life" module, bringing back a fair number of people from Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher.

All the module of the year voting has made me want to actually play some of the top rated modules. I tried Twilight again from the beginning, but ran into some problems with the Time Trial. I don't think I'm doing the cheat quite right, so I'm going to make my nephew do them again for me. When I left off, I really started to get into it, so I'd like to start up again. Some of the henchmen control inspired me to fiddle with similar systems in Demon.

I instead downloaded elegia eternum and played through it. I've been wanting to see some of Stefan's work and it was a nice little introduction. Very story-focused and moody, there were some nice elements in it. I really liked the voice acting, which adds an extra flavor to things. My son got a little creeped out, though, so I'll probably have to play the sequel solo.

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I came to a very odd place in the development...

January 17, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I came to a very odd place in the development yesterday. I ran out of important things to do. That's not entirely true, but I think I have most of the big things done. I worked on Chen Village yesterday, getting the disguise kit scripting in there. I even started in on things like flavor text and henchmen comments. Before anyone gets too excited, most of the stuff I've written hasn't been tested, not even once. I need to do some serious bug testing, which can often take several times as long as writing the code. No need for external testers yet, either. I just need to hunker down and run through some areas.

I spent a little time with custom content this morning, cleaning up some "sparklies" that were plaguing the Plane of Air tileset. When there are small gaps between meshes, you can see through to the fog below. This ends up creating sparkling lines. Should be fixed now, which was bugging me for a long while.

This morning I started playing with the new camera controls. All of the existing camera movement controls use Gestalt's scripts, which are flexible but have some problems. I'm seriously thinking of switching over, though I've got some learning to do.

Finally, it's looking that Dreamcatcher is going to win Module of the Year. It reminds me once again that the modules are what they are due to folks like Danmar, CODI, Gestalt, Lisa, Eligio, and countless others in the community. Thanks all.

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Amazingly, I did get some time to work on the...

January 16, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Amazingly, I did get some time to work on the Struggle area. The Neutral path is quite complex scripting-wise. I still haven't worked in the disguise functionality yet, though I think I have most of the dialog in place now. With luck, I can finish that up today and perhaps work on more henchmen dialog and flavor text that's not plot-critical but makes the story so much nicer.

I figured a workaround for a shadow issue that's been bugging me. I made some Interior tiles for the Omelas area, but there were gaps in the shadow next to the walls. It turns out that if I simply made the area bigger, the nearby tiles would cast a lovely shadow and it looked normal again.

I also worked a bit with Papermonk over at CODI to get the Demon Card game rolling. We're going to try to put together a little "marketing" thing, getting the anticipation up while final testing is done. I'm thinking a Card of the Day or some such thing. Shouldn't be long now.

As an aside, it looks like Dreamcatcher is up for Module of the Year and doing quite well so far. I have funny feelings about these sorts of contents. They tend to make me jittery as if I now have to work extra hard to earn everyone's feelings about me. I just need to remind myself that I'm doing it because it's fun.

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Slowly getting there

January 15, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Slowly getting there. I worked more on some plot-critical dialog and scripting, just a snooty doorman, but something that had to be done. I also managed to get some testing for the climax last night. I worry that the dialog is going to be a bit on the vastly huge side. With any dialog that big, I did find a few problems that I've hopefully fixed. More testing will be needed down the road.

With luck, I may even get to start in on the Struggle area today. I've been wanting to finish up the Neutral path for the area. It's extremely diplomatic and requires lots of dialog, as well as some disguise parts. I'm thinking that if I do a second Struggle area (and I'm sorely tempted to), it's going to have a much shorter Neutral path.

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It was a day of many little things yesterday

January 14, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It was a day of many little things yesterday. I finished up three more dialog pieces. I also started the ball rolling on getting the Demon Cards game out the door.

Magnus has been quite busy, sending me yet more themes. The latest is truly great, an ambiance piece for the asian-themed Struggle area. I also put together a mini-module that lets him test the music volume in relation to various other sounds in the game. Hopefully I can get that to him today.

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I'm to the point where I want to call the car...

January 13, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I'm to the point where I want to call the card game done and get it out there. I've got a last round of testing to do and a little coordination, but I'm feeling that it's fairly feature complete at the moment. The multiple deck code seems to be working okay. I ended up assigning random tags to each deck, then doing a check before each game to ensure it's complete. Hopefully it'll work.

I spend a good chunk of time yesterday working on a mystery person's dialog. It comes basically at the end of the game and I could have just kept it brief, but it seemed to cheat the player if I did. So, it's fairly lengthy. I've got a few more like that, which I'm hoping I can start on today.

It feels nice to get these plot issues out of the way. I'm not quite there yet, but it's getting closer. After that, there's the Struggle areas and finally testing.

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Well, I worked hard on the latest version of ...

January 12, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Well, I worked hard on the latest version of the card game. I got things up and running again, but found that there was a fairly significant bug. It turns out that the multiple deck support is broken. I'm mulling over a couple different approaches to fix it. One is easy, involving different tags for different styles of decks. This is limiting, however, and introduces some risk if someone's carrying around two decks with the same name. The other is much more elaborate and involves creating dialog for choosing decks at the beginning of every game. Hmm. Decisions.

Actually, there may be a third option that involves setting unique tags for each deck.

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The kids woke up way too early this morning, ...

January 11, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The kids woke up way too early this morning, so I didn't manage to get much done. The major changes to the Demon Card game appears to have broken things, so I'm busy bug testing. The change involves setting the card variables on the item rather than the PC. This lets the cards be transferred via a player's inventory. If they go from server to server or game to game, the deck should work properly. Of course, that's the theory. We've got to get it working first.

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I slaved away on the different henchmen yeste...

January 10, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I slaved away on the different henchmen yesterday, working again this morning to test things out and make sure they really work in the game. There's a tremendous amount of dialog associated with each one and there are four main sets to do (Anera, Teira, and good/evil Nooble), so it takes quite a bit of time to flesh it all out. Still, it's always been my opinion that the henchmen are critical parts of the story, so it's nice to get that taken care of.

There are still a few bugs to work out, such as some odd camera movements, but it generally has worked out quite well. I did have some comical moments this morning when Nooble started spouting Anera's lines, but I think I got all that sorted out.

I also received another update to the scripting parts of the Demon Card game. I want to get them in there and do some testing this weekend. I think we're getting ever closer to actually releasing this thing. It's almost become comical how I keep saying "two more weeks", which evidently translates to never. Okay, I'll say it again. I'm hoping to release the thing in two more weeks.

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I was very productive yesterday, working hard...

January 09, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I was very productive yesterday, working hard at getting the henchmen dialog in the game. I actually had quite a bit of fun with it, being reminded yet again how much fun it is to write for the evil Nooble. I'm hoping that today I can work more on their dialog, or perhaps start in on the dialog for some unmentionable, interesting characters.

One of the things I'm trying in this module is the ability to shape your henchmen's future. They'll start out as the class that you're familiar with, but you'll have the option at the beginning to choose another option when they level up. Anera can become either a cleric or a paladin, for example. In the case where the PC is a spellcaster, having her as more of a tank may be prefereable. We'll see how it goes.

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I find that as I start finishing up my tenth ...

January 08, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I find that as I start finishing up my tenth module, I'm having a hard time coming up with a final scene that is neither anticlimactic nor typical. Sure, it has surprises and some unique scripting, but I'm never sure if I'm completely happy with it. Well, more testing required, I suppose.

I snuck in another vow option yesterday, this time a big one, as well as assorted scripting. If I'm up to it, I'd like to start working on dialog, especially that of the other henchmen.

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The hot water is back, after a half hour with...

January 07, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

The hot water is back, after a half hour with a blow dryer melting the ice in the pipes to the gas heater. Ah, luxurious showers once again.

I spent a little time working on the climax to the module yesterday, though I'm not sure I'm happy with it so far. I'm trying to work in something a bit more lengthy and unique. Hmm.

I also worked more on the Demon Cards game, which continues to be polished. The holidays disrupted the testing schedule a bit, but I think we're back on track again. There may be some changes to the way multiple decks are handled, but otherwise I think it's generally working.

I have a bunch of things I'd like to work on today, though I'm not sure I'll get the chance.

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It's been a bit slow the last couple days

January 06, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

It's been a bit slow the last couple days. I continue to spend a lot of time providing support for the modules over e-mail. I'm thinking it's the winter break and a lot of people are getting back into the game after HotU. I've also been dealing with weather related issues. No hot water this morning. Sigh.

When I get unmotivated or only have little snippets of time to work on things, I often turn to working on items. I like the variety, trying to come up with a back story in the description that ties nicely with a title and abilities. Bards in particular should be happy with some of the musical instruments that show up in the game.

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I finally updated the Dreamcatcher hak packs ...

January 04, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I finally updated the Dreamcatcher hak packs for HotU. Get 'em while they're hot.

Other than that, I didn't do many module things. I did a bunch of computer stuff, mostly having my dad help me move two computers into another room and set up a wall-mounted control panel, complete with LCD monitor, switches, bright blue LEDs, and fancy dials. The nerd cave is complete.

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I was a very good boy yesterday

January 03, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I was a very good boy yesterday. All the plot critical dialog for the spirit gem is finished. In fact, all of the plot critical dialog is done, though only for Anera at the moment. The other henchmen have some of their dialog in place, though it's still not quite complete yet. I even managed to test and tweak this morning, mostly because I woke up with a headache and couldn't get back to bed.

That doesn't mean the module is done by any stretch of the imagination. I still haven't gotten the final climax scripted as well as the dialog for a number of important characters. The Struggle areas are, well, struggling. The neutral path is quite dialog heavy and complex, so I've put it on hold for the moment. I also want to add lots and lots of finishing touches, from flavor text to camera movement. Still, it's nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh, and I'll try to get cracking on posting the HotU-compliant hak packs today.

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I did virtually nothing with the module yesterday

January 02, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

I did virtually nothing with the module yesterday. I spent an hour answering NWN related e-mail this morning, which is a bit more than usual. My guess is that lots of people got HotU for Christmas and were looking for other things to play over the break.

It's also looking like the latest batch of hak packs are going to do the trick, so I'd like to get those updated today. Hopefully then I can get cracking on finishing up Demon.

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Happy New Year! It's snowing here in our nor...

January 01, 2004 by Adam in NWN1

Happy New Year! It's snowing here in our normally warm valley, so I'm going to take the boy down to the local part for some sledding fun.

I got a fair amount done yesterday, mostly dialog and a little scripting. I'm working on the climax for the module, which is a bit on the chatty side. My to do list is still formidable, but hopefully I can get through it over the next month, giving me plenty of time to fix all the bugs that I'm sure lurk in the game.

My testers earned their keep yesterday. A key creature in Dreamcatcher 4 was messed up in the hak pack, so I've gone ahead and fixed it. Hopefully I can get them released soon for all your HotU people. Eventually I'd like to go back and do a big bug fix pass for Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher, though it's a bit of a major undertaking.

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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.