The other day a coworker asked how I found th...

December 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The other day a coworker asked how I found the time to work on this little project. Well, I woke up at 4:30 this morning and have been plugging away ever since. I entered in more Woodhaven dialog, but have primarily been finishing up the Chronomancer quest, getting it ready for the Bioware writing contest.

There's some scripting and a tiny bit of dialog left, not to mention testing and editing and such. Still, I'll almost certainly be done in time. I'm not quite satisfied with the way it turned out. Some elements are very different and unique, but there's not as much branching as I would like. Branching dialog gives the player the feel they have more options and control over their lives, but it raises the word count considerably. I may end up working on a second quest, which is much more focused, and either submitting that one or submitting both. We'll see.

Since it's the last day of the year, it's traditional to look back and reflect on how things have gone. A year ago I was working on the mirror puzzle on the first level of the first module and hadn't had a single team member join. Now I'm knee-deep through the second module and have a seemingly huge team of people helping out.

Some things have gone really well. I like how the story has come together and I enjoy writing the interactions between the main NPCs. The first module, while seemingly a simple dungeon crawl, has a lot of fun and unique combats, systems, and amusing banter. The second module is starting to show off the piratey feel, with interesting places and characters really popping up.

Running a team has been harder than I thought it would be. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time needed to manage everyone, tasks aren't always coordinated well, and I always feel like I'm not able to give the personal touch I need. Turnover has been fairly high, with people vanishing for an assortment of reasons, not all easy to fix. One writer was called up to active duty, for example.

On the other hand, they've also produced some amazing things. The music department continues to make magic with their tunes. The QA folks stoically go through my most horrible spelling and scripting bugs. Sunjammer's scripting systems bring added flair to the module. Razvan's models are prolific and beautiful to behold. The voice actors are ramping up and producing some amazing stuff.

As for the year ahead, it may be even more exciting than this last one. NWN2 should be released, so I'll be busy converting the prototypes into the final modules. While I'd like to say that I'll have the entire campaign prototyped, the reality may be that I'm only finished with the first two modules. Keeping the later modules shorter and more focused may be a necessity if I'm going to ship in a reasonable time frame. I miss the Shadowlords days when I put out five modules in nine months.

So, here's hoping for a good new year. Hopefully we can ship something soon after NWN2's release that's both bug free and fun.

As usual these days, I'm feeling terribly beh...

December 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

As usual these days, I'm feeling terribly behind on all my various responsibilities. I've been spending a lot of time with my family these days, so work on the module has been slower than I would like.

This morning I typed in some of the massive amounts of dialog I've been writing, as well as creating the Woodhaven area. For some crazy reason, I ended up making a rather complex NPC that you "win" as the result of a competition. It's fun toying with the player's expectations and giving them a "prize" they don't necessarily expect.

There's still much to do. Hopefully I can get to my backlog of e-mails in the next few days. My apologies to everyone who's trying to reach me.

Not a lot to report

December 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Not a lot to report. I've been writing, writing, and writing. Between all the various family events, it's hard to find time to actually touch the toolset.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous...

December 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous post-solstace to everyone. Strangely enough, I was a writing maniac yesterday, doing some of my best work in the middle of the Christmas party. I think it was all those chocolate-covered espresso beans I downed, giving me the writing power of ten mortal men.

So far, I've written nearly all the dialog for the Dominator quest, planned the combat, and done some rough mapping. I wrote the dialog for three of the characters in Woodhaven, nicely wrapping the arena combat into a real story line. Woodhaven may turn into a more interesting place than I'd planned, with possible political and romantic entanglements. We'll see how ambitious my writing gets.

If I can manage to get the kids to behave, I may have a couple hours of writing time in the car this morning as well. Today might be fairly productive despite the whole "celebrating with family" thing.

Well, I finally got around to checking the bu...

December 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I finally got around to checking the bulletin board this morning, now that I'm in Portland and have fewer responsibilities. It helped that I woke up at 4:30 in the morning too. I think Razvan is actually an elf in disguise, treating me to new Christmas models because I've been a good little boy. This latest image is one of the two new ships he's working on, bringing the ship total to some incredibly vast number. Now that Obsidian has confirmed that static models should be importable without any problems, I feel much better about our ambitious plans.

I brought my computer along with me on my trip, but discovered that I left an important cable behind. It looks like I'll be doing writing without access to the module, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the way up, I wrote and planned. I penciled out some possible ways to work in some XCom-style gameplay, minus the aliens and ray guns, of course. Before anyone panics, the things that I want to steal are: base building, research, developing an elite team of soldiers, and slowly unraveling mysteries.

I ran into an amusing bug yesterday that I on...

December 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I ran into an amusing bug yesterday that I only just resolved. In the middle of a fight, the arena master would suddenly start attacking the psionic projections, leading to his untimely death. I fiddled with the factions a bit and everything worked out nicely.

It's now to the point where fights actually work out fairly well. The player has the advantage in that they can change form at will, while the computer can only do it every six seconds. The computer's pretty good at choosing the optimal form to fight the player. I need to do some more testing and polishing, but it's coming along nicely.

As an aside, both the first and second Neverwinter Vault interviews are up. There's some pretty big pieces of information, some good, some bad. I like the description of area painting and the new scripting functions. Not releasing a model exporter is the biggest blow, which may cause a variety of problems for our project. I'm hoping the community can address the problem like they did before, but it may push things out a ways.

I'm traveling today. Hopefully those two hours in the car will translate into writing time. I'll probably bring my computer along with me so that work might continue. Who knows, I might even check e-mail and message boards, which I'm sure have been piling up these last few days.

Update: It looks like I can breathe a sigh of relief on the model exporter. Static models are no problem, only animated ones. Things like flintlocks and ships should hopefully be just fine.

Thanks to my daughter who can only nap in the...

December 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Thanks to my daughter who can only nap in the car, I put in an hour or so of quality writing time yesterday. I focused on the Bioware writing contest, putting myself further over the 3500 word limit. I'd like to consider myself beyond mere numbers at this point, though it still irks me how bad my estimation skills are.

I woke up this morning and turned my peak creative brain towards why the foes in the psionic combat were showing up invisible. Soon enough, my brain had the answer - they were doing it because they had no other choice. Soon enough, I realized the error of my ways and gave the NPCs the skill to change into other forms. I picked a third rank opponent and soon enough I was facing a red dragon and things were going poorly.

It still needs a lot of work. The PC can't change into all available forms due to a menu problem. The balance doesn't feel quite right. The AI needs tweaking in order to make it more intelligent. I need a lot more mental bursts (sort of like spells) to liven things up. I need to build up the island itself that hosts these initial combats. Still, progress is being made and it's turning out approximately how I envisioned.

I'm on the road tomorrow, travelling to Portland. That may mean more writing time or more interruptions to my project time. We'll see how it goes.

I made a bit of progress

December 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made a bit of progress. Yesterday was our family's Christmas, the first of three, so it was full of people and toys and such. Early this morning I managed to code in some more Forms and put in better informational messages so the player gets a sense of what's going on. I think I broke something along the way, as my opponent's creature is invisible at the moment. Ah, well, time to write more debug code. I'm used to it by now.

I also came to the realization yesterday that I have three unfinished quests that I'm working on. I don't mind too much, as it can be more fun to move from project to project, but at some point I need to hunker down and finish things.

It sometimes pays to be obsessive

December 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It sometimes pays to be obsessive.

Last night, among all my various games and such, I opted instead to continue working on the psionic combat system. At this point, most of the significant bugs are worked out. I added in a few new creatures as well, though I can see that I want to add even more to keep the game interesting. I'm currently doing a bit of balancing. Before, games went on a bit too long. Now, the Red Dragon form only takes a handful of combat rounds to defeat a rat. This latest image shows the dragon's foot and a bit of rat sticking between the toes.

The next step will be to create a quick ranking system that allows the player to progress through this little quest. I'm shooting for something relatively simple, so I may just auto-create some opponents via script, rather than trying to hand create each one with custom dialog. Keeping things simple is my latest mantra, otherwise things will never get done.

I'm having a hard time working on the project...

December 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm having a hard time working on the project as the days seem filled with family things. I did manage some debug time, fixing the menu that lets a player switch between the various forms. Of course, the AI player just keeps the default incredibly weak form. The next step will be to get the AI doing somewhat intelligent things. The code's there, taking all sorts of factors into account, such as the relative strengths and weaknesses of each form, the current hit points, the foe's hit points, and so on. I just need to make it work.

I made a ton of progress on the psionic comba...

December 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made a ton of progress on the psionic combat system yesterday. The core of the scripts are finished being written and everything compiles. Of course, just because it can compile doesn't mean much. I started up the game for the first time this morning and a whole bunch of things didn't work properly. So, debugging is the next thing I get to work on.

I also need to come up with a good way to do a tournament-style progression. I have a tentative plan at this poing, letting the player work their way up through the ranks until they can achieve their goal. I'm hoping for something that's not too fancy.

I started my vacation today, so I'm officially off of work until the beginning of next year. I'm not sure what that means in terms of project time. It may mean more for some aspects and less for others. There's a ton of family events happening, but I usually get in some good writing time while driving from place to place.

I took a break from writing to put into pract...

December 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from writing to put into practice some of the scripting ideas I've been having lately. Most of what I've done so far is groundwork, defining data structures, variables, and other boring stuff. I decided to at least test a tiny bit of functionality by making the "spirit gathering" part of the system work properly.

As of ten minutes ago, it works just great. I can use the knife or totem on myself and it highlights all the creatures in the area with spirits I can steal. I can use the knife on dead creatures. Presumably, I can use the totem on peaceful ones, though I haven't tested that out yet.

Once a player has gathered up a few spirits, they're now accessable to them when doing psionic combat. They can change forms, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. They can apply "bursts", healing their creature, giving them extra attacks, and so on.

I think the system will be moderately complex. It's not at the same level as the Pirate Cards game, nor do I want it to be. In a sense, it's more of a very complicated game of rock, scissors, and paper.

I haven't peeked at the word count lately, bu...

December 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I haven't peeked at the word count lately, but I know it's pushing towards the 4,000 word limit. I even forgot a whole new final phase, which I'm only now getting to. Fortunately the Bioware FAQ does state "That being said, this is not a hard word count; it should be the writer's target." I suspect I'll be in the "writer's target" word count when I'm done. Hopefully I can tighten things up a bit. I have another quest that I'm thinking of that might make for a much less chatty submission. We'll see how it goes.

I managed to spend some time penciling out the psionic combat system, complete with constants, variable names, functions, and basic pseudo code. It all needs to be polished up, but hopefully should make for a fun little system.

It's similar to the arena combat in Demon, in that you have a proxy creature fighting for you. Instead of just watching, however, you can change your creature's form as well as applying short-lived bursts. The different forms have different upkeep costs, which drains from the same pool as your other psionic skills. If you run out of "focus", your creature reverts to a rather weak form and there's a good chance that you'll lose.

I still need to actually write some code for this whole thing, but I'm hopeful it's entertaining enough to be worthwhile.

Well, I'm at 3,600 words at the moment and ju...

December 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm at 3,600 words at the moment and just got into the final phase of the quest for the Bioware writing contest. I have about 1,000 words in one particular dialog that I could probably trim without losing much. I'll do some aggressive editing after I finish this final section. I also have a few words used up by a test dialog, though not too many. It's nice to slowly making progress.

I've been in all-day meetings at work and doing family stuff each night, so my various game "responsibilities" are sliding a bit. I did manage to scribble out some coffee-induced ideas for psionic combat. It has the potential for being fun, though I better put it in a lot if I'm going to spend the time making an elaborate system. I keep reminding myself to keep things simple wherever I can. There's already enough complex things in the game.

It's getting almost comical how badly my esti...

December 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's getting almost comical how badly my estimates of the word count are going. I'm at 3300 at the moment, and I'm not quite finished with the fourth phase. So, yes, it's fairly certain that I'm going to go over. I can go back and tighten up some dialog, I suppose, but I still don't think it'll help much. The last phase will likely be fairly short, though there's still some critical dialog that has to happen.

As an aside, I keep running into funny problems when trying to get people to sit down and have a pleasant conversation. I typically figure something out, but the scripting to do so is often rather tricky.

Hopefully today I can finish up the final phase and then begin to carefully spellcheck, proofread, and edit the quest into something vaguely resembling a finished product.

I'm feeling behind, as usual, though I did ma...

December 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm feeling behind, as usual, though I did manage to put in some work over the weekend. Most of it was dialog related. I found Lord Brighton's initial dialog and threw that in, as well as putting in the first dialog for the Spider. Both are key NPCs and it felt good to make some progress.

I have a bunch of tasks I still need to get to after our meeting. The biggest is getting the voice actors organized and assigned to roles. Most of it is already posted somewhere, but I just need to organize it.

I also want to get back to the writing contest. After my initial fretting, it's pretty obvious that I'll have plenty of room before I hit the 3500 word limit.

A quick update this morning, as the kids are ...

December 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

A quick update this morning, as the kids are running wild.

We had our team meeting this morning, making some good progress and introducing a few new people. Marque Pierre is our new official art lead. He's getting his master's degree in this sort of thing, so I'm quite happy. Allyndyn managed to find a place connected to the Internet along his travels, so we chatted quite a bit about voice acting. It's time to start rallying the troops and getting new voices recorded.

I also managed to do quite a bit of work on the quest I'm submitting for the writing contest. I'm well under the 3500 word limit and I'm already at the fifth phase. It's second to the last, so I feel pretty good about the progress. I'll likely go back over it a few times, carefully editing and fleshing things out. So far I'm pretty happy with it.

I finished my somewhat lengthy interview with...

December 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finished my somewhat lengthy interview with the Vault. I'll post a link when it appears on their site.

I sadly didn't get much of a chance to work on the module yesterday. I'm slowly writing the dialog for the second phase, though I opted to go to bed early last night.

I do have a treat for everyone out there. Voxwoman coerced her daughter into recording a voice for the little girl who hangs out at the Black Spot playing the pirate cards game. This clip involves her talking about why she likes certain cards oh so very much. Listen up. It makes me laugh every time.

Well, I've continued on with my original ques...

December 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I've continued on with my original quest and I think I might actually make it under the 3500 word limit for the contest. I'm at 1820 and just finished the first phase. Fortunately it's the longest and most complicated of all of them. With luck, the rest won't be nearly as tricky.

For comparison, here's some relative word counts:

Well, I found the word count

December 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I found the word count. It was pretty obvious once the tiny letters caught my eye. The bad news is that I'm almost positive I'm going to blow through the 3500 word count without even breaking a sweat. Already I'm up to 1339 and I'm not even done with the first phase of the quest.

I'm starting to realize that this particular quest might not be right for the contest. Still, it's not like the time I spent is going to waste. I'll almost certainly use everything I've done in the main campaign.

What it means is that I'll need to find another quest, much simpler, if I'd like to submit something to the writing contest. I think I have one, though there's aspects that are a bit tricky. It's outdoors, which means I've got to carefully make use of the 4x4 space. It also should have a huge crowd instead of just a couple NPC villagers. Still, it might work. I'll have to think it over.

Update: I'm flip-flopping again. I might be able to do this particular quest and not go over too badly, though I'm admittedly going to have to keep things more terse than I would prefer. We'll see how it goes.

The new subquest is going nicely

December 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The new subquest is going nicely. I've started doing the scripting for the first phase. People are moving about where they're supposed to and saying the expected things. I can tell already that this small 4x4 area is going to be littered with waypoints moving people around.

Since I'm thinking about submitting this to the Bioware writing contest, I'm trying to follow their rules as best I can. Mostly I worry about the 3500 word limit. I have a funny feeling I'm going to go over that, though they do mention that it's not a hard limit. Shucks, I'm not even sure how to do a word count in the toolset.

Anyway, I'll probably continue on this quest of mine today. I've also got to get back to the boards and do some reading and responding. There's a team meeting coming up this weekend and it promises to be a pretty big one.

Not a lot to report

December 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Not a lot to report. I continue to coordinate with the voice actors, fixing and clarifying issues as they pop up. The quest I'm doing for the Bioware writing contest is feeling increasingly solid. There's these complicated phases where certain things occur. So far, I've written about half of the first phase, taking notes on what scripting will be required.

So far I'm going with a mix of humor and seriousness. Hopefully the humor falls under "witty banter" and doesn't slide too far into silliness. These distinctions can be a slippery slope indeed.

The weekend has been relatively busy, slowly ...

December 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The weekend has been relatively busy, slowly getting ready for the holiday madness. Friday I worked on one of the main quests. It's relatively complex and involves tangling with Port Brighton's legal system. I'm getting to the point where I need to spruce up the crime and punishment system in order to finish the quest.

The thing I'm most excited about is the quest I'm making for the Bioware writing contest. The last two days I've wracked my brains over how the incredibly twisted plot will work. I think I've settled on something I'm happy with, rehearsing the whole thing as I lay awake in bed this morning. It's hard not to spoil it for anyone, other than saying the structure is very different than anything I've done before.

The scripting requirements are somewhat steep. I realize that's not being evaluated, but it's required to make it work properly. This is really the first "teaser" of a sorts that we're going to publicly release, so I'd like it to be fairly polished. Ideally I can get the voice actors to do their thing as well, showing off their many talents.

It was amazing how busy yesterday was

December 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was amazing how busy yesterday was. I barely touched the toolset as I spent all my free time on IM and answering e-mails. It looks like the Marque has jumped into the fray and begun working on some of the buildings. A ton of new voice actors just signed up. I did some fiddlings with the dialog for Robert, realizing my errors in trying to convert the .wav files to .mp3 files. Not going to work.

I also got a bit excited with the Bioware writing contest. I think I have a side quest that will work, though there's a tremendous amount of details. It's about as non-linear as it gets, so it's difficult to sketch out. Maybe I can work a bit more on that today.

Yesterday was quite busy, though in quite une...

December 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was quite busy, though in quite unexpected ways. Most of my free time was spent talking to people on the team or wanting to join the team. One highlight is Marque, who is working on his master's degree in computer game design. I think he's going to start texturing as well, since that's one of our burning needs. I included a small image of some of his work. I also have an inbox full of people wanting to do voice acting work. Rumor has it, there's even a woman in there, which we desperately need (please, no nerd jokes).

It also looks like Bioware is having a writing contest. I'm sorely tempted to design a small subquest from the campaign specifically for it. It would be a teaser of sorts for the main campaign, and hopefully generate a bit of press. The tricky part is finding an appropriate subquest that would work for the contest. Right now I'm leaning towards either a Facade-like story or one involving time travel.

In terms of the campaign itself, a bit of progress was made. I've started in on one of the main quests. It involves a fair bit of intrigue and dark dealings, but I won't spoil too much. There's the opportunity for the player to be quite bad along the way.

Well, I wrapped up the side quest I was worki...

November 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I wrapped up the side quest I was working on. It's relatively short, but fun, with a bit of treasure, a dash of undead, and a good helping of comedy and revenge. There's also several ways to influence your alignment, which is something I always like to see. Evil characters will probably dig up the whole graveyard, while good ones will dig up the one and sprinkle holy water on it afterwards.

I also snuck in a new set of items. They go by the name Davy Jones, which has strong pirate connotations. I'm always hesitant about putting in something that seems like a named pirate, but after doing a bit of research, I decided it should fit nicely. In theory, having items from the set also lets you breathe underwater for longer periods of time. I modified the underwater script, but have yet to put in any underwater areas in this module. I'm sure that will be fixed soon enough.

We have a new modeler on board, Andrew, who's working on fixing up and retexturing the manor I was working on some time ago. After that's finished up, I'm hoping to get it in-game and start working on more of the main quest. Slowly getting there . . .

I'm having a great time with the new subquest...

November 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm having a great time with the new subquest I'm working on. It's fairly amusing and hits all the proper piratey tones. I think I'm about halfway through getting it ready. Last night I put in assorted grave digging activities, as well as a way for good aligned characters to atone for their actions. Mostly I wanted all players to be able to experience this fun little activity, though good characters have to pay a steep price for their entertainment.

It looks like GingerBeer finished up his recordings of Robert, though I've yet to listen to it. I'm hoping to start getting the other voice actor's work trickling in soon. After that, it's up to someone to start doing all the post-processing work and then getting it into the game.

I did some more work on the first module as well, continuing to work on debugging, adding more polish, and a short dialog. The QA department is rarely mentioned in game interviews, but in my opinion quality QA staff can make or break a game. Think of them as editors for a newspaper, not just finding bugs, but providing feedback on what works and what doesn't.

As for today, I'll likely be doing more detailed bug fixing on the first module and wrapping up my tattoo quest. Part of it involves another island which isn't mapped out yet. I'm also working with Sunjammer on getting the world map integrated. For now I'll probably cheat and bury the treasure next to the NPC that gives the quest.

I'll see if I can dig up another pretty pictu...

November 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'll see if I can dig up another pretty picture for the day. At the moment, I'm in a bit of a rush, getting ready for work.

I created ten or so islands for the High Seas mini-game. That's the part that lets the player sail from island to island, so it's pretty key to the campaign. I also sent off a note to Sunjammer in hopes that we can get things ready to integrate at least the world map into the prototype for the second module. I'm starting to make quests that require traveling about.

I also had a rather inspired quest yesterday. I was stuck in the car while my daughter slept, though I'd carefully fortified myself with tea and a notebook. I wrote for about an hour on Silver Moon's Piercing and Tattoos. The tattoos should be fun to play with, and the quest she can give the player is fairly amusing to boot.

Finally, I dutifully worked on some QA this morning. There's a pesky cutscene that's been giving everyone problems. I fiddled with the script in hopes that it'll help. I also wrote a brief dialog for a moment when the party rejoins. A couple people felt that some "Hey, you did it!" sort of comment from your companions was appropriate.

The only way I've found to juggle work, famil...

November 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The only way I've found to juggle work, family, and this all-encompassing hobby of mine is to multitask whenever possible. I was watching the kids and broke out the watercolors. Soon enough, I was making islands and having a jolly good time. Later that night, I fiddled with the High Seas prototype and put in the new artwork.

I still need to create a placeable for each of the islands, but that shouldn't take too long. I think I like the new look, and it should work well enough for the prototype.

Somehow, among the Thanksgiving madness, I ac...

November 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Somehow, among the Thanksgiving madness, I actually found time to work on the module. The treasure hunting system is in place, complete with a vendor that sells equipment and treasure maps. Well, just one map at the moment, but it's a start.

I was also stuck in the car for an hour as my daughter slept (she can only fall asleep in the car these days). The good news for me is that I brought along my notebook and put in some solid writing time. I put in the graveyard last night and will soon put in some interesting things for you amateur gravediggers to do. I'd also like to start in on the tattoo and piercing shop, which promises to be an interesting place.

It seems to be my week of doing things halfway

November 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It seems to be my week of doing things halfway. The psionics system is nearly done, the crime and punishment system is halfway there, and I just started the beginnings of a treasure hunt system this morning. I suspect I can finish the latter up in less than a couple hours. The shovel and sextant are created, with the sextant reporting the player's location in a rough sort of way. The crime and punishment system is more tricky. Last night I set it up so that it's relatively easy to escape from the jail area, as long as you're using your powers appropriately.

I also continued my debugging of the first module. More of the issues are resolved, though there's plenty to do yet. I probably won't get much done today, as it's Thanksgiving here in the US, plus we're celebrating my son's birthday. Maybe I'll sneak in a few minutes of development tonight after everyone's in bed.

Today's visual treat is another from Razvan, ...

November 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Today's visual treat is another from Razvan, a continuation of his pirate pants from a week or two ago. Our ideal is to get a variety of clothing in the game that would suit a sailor. I'd like to give players reasons to wear something other than full plate when cruising the seas. Maybe I'll have them fall overboard and sink during boarding actions.

I was a very good boy yesterday, working through the long list of bugs we found in the module. I've read everything at this point, fixed a bunch of the easy ones, and now have to go back and do more strenuous testing.

I'm also having urges to revisit Port Brighton again. I keep having ideas on how to deal with the crime and punishment portion of the game. I'd like to give even the most lawful characters the opportunity to experience the judicial system, which ties nicely into one of the main quests.

Fun, fun!

Everyone loves monkeys

November 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Everyone loves monkeys. There's something immensely amusing about even the concept of a monkey, and a pirate game wouldn't be right without them. Now, there's endless questions about how easily NWN2 will let us add in new creatures, but I'd still love to get monkeys in the game somehow. In any case, Raz has done some early monkey experiments. No actual monkeys were harmed during this process.

Though buggy, the psionic system is in the game. I can increase my skills, add new psionic powers, cast them as innate feats, use up and recharge mental focus, and so on. It needs lots of tweaking and balance, but the basics work. I had fun launching wave after wave of pyrotechnic walls for testing. It ties into the burning script too, so that things not only take fire damage, but run the risk of catching on fire. I think my favorite is Telekinesis, which is a great utility power, grabbing things from afar, opening trapped chests, and pushing over old ladies.

I'm continuously reminded of how little time I have these days. I really need to get back to debugging. I'm going to do my best to work on that today so that I can get a new version to the QA folks as soon as possible. No rest for the weary.

As usual, progress has been steady if a bit e...

November 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, progress has been steady if a bit erratic. First off, I'm getting the psionic system nicely shaped up. Using the QA item, you can now give yourself all the psionic powers in the game. I'm working on a system by which you can improve your psionic powers, as well a manna-like system to limit their constant use.

I also got all of my written Lord Brighton dialog into the game, as well as adding a bit more. It's nice seeing the main quest slowly shaping up.

Today will most likely be a debug day for me. I've got a bunch of issues still pending, so I suspect I'll be slaving away at those when I get a chance.

This is a quick update as I'm technically wat...

November 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

This is a quick update as I'm technically watching my daughter at the moment. I added a temporary texture and got the printing press in the game. It obviously needs more work, but I figure it's a prototype so I'm keeping it basic.

Yesterday I wrote for a good hour or so, putting down lots of Lord Brighton's dialog on paper. It felt good to get some of the ideas out of my brain and I like the general direction its going.

This morning I worked on fleshing out the psionic system a bit more. There's the beginnings of a way to store, retrieve, and advance your various psionic skills. It's still quite rough, but I feel good about that as well.

Some technical problems are keeping me from debugging the first module this weekend. I'll hopefully fix those and get working on in come Monday.

This is a late posting, but I've got a couple...

November 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

This is a late posting, but I've got a couple treats for folks today. I made a request for a printing press the other day and popped in this morning to find it finished. It's amazing how fast Razvan works. He also fiddled with the latest ship a bit more, shrinking it down and polishing it up. I think it's one of my favorites of the bunch.

I met with Christian today to go over music in the first module. There's a number of changes, though most of them aren't too difficult. It's nice that he's paying such close attention to this one aspect of the game. I tend to be a bit more lackadaisical about such things.

I'm also knee-deep going through Arachnid's lengthy bug report. It's amazing how many little things I missed along the way. Fortunately there's not too many major ones, or at least I haven't gotten to that point yet. I think there's one really bad cutscene problem that I'll be working on this weekend.

Last night and this morning I worked on the second module. It's a fun and refreshing change to create new things. I snuck in a monkey paw magic item that's somewhat entertaining, as well as another unique item for Father Andrew of Brighton Church. I want to have a lot of interesting things for the player to spend their money on. I also filled up Port Brighton with assorted buildings, though most of them aren't populated yet. Still, it's feeling like more of a real town each day.

The team continues to be very busy

November 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The team continues to be very busy. I'm listening to Christian's latest Port Brighton tune, which has me tapping my foot and thinking of a salty sea breeze. Arachnid has jumped in, making a nice CVS repository for the endless files we're creating. He also managed to find a huge list of bugs for me to take care of, so it looks like I'll be busy today.

Finally, the new texture artist has jumped on board. He's starting in on the lighthouse for Port Brighton, which Raz put together a few months ago. I'm very excited to start seeing these things in the game.

Raz continues to work on his new ship. This images is actually an earlier version. The latest is a bit smaller, more suitable for the players. I may end up swapping out what I currently have in the prototype as there's some things I like about this one a bit better.

Port Brighton continues to grow as a city

November 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Port Brighton continues to grow as a city. I've been working on the spawning and behavior of guards and commoners. It now works pretty much the way I want. Guards appear either at designated stations or along patrol routes. Commoners can do the same. If there are no more stations or patrol routes, they'll appear at certain spawn points or doorways and walk around randomly. Eventually I need some more variety in the commoners, but that's easy enough to do.

There's also some new shops in town, though they're not filled out quite yet. I'm trying to put the key ones right off the docks so that players can sail into port and empty their purses. I have the typical magic shop and armory, but I'd also like to sneak in Silver Moon Tattos and Piercings, which appeals to my inner pirate.

The team continues to be busy. I'll probably post a picture of Razvan's latest ship soon. It continues to look nicer by the hour. Christian and Evil Mulder have created even more great themes. EM has a theme for the magic shop that has inspired me to develop a particular character and feel for the place. Great fun.

It's hard to know where to start about yester...

November 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's hard to know where to start about yesterday, as it seemed so incredibly full. I guess I'll just begin rambling and see where it takes me.

We got some new screenshots yesterday, the first really showing off the toolset. There's confirmation of a host of creatures, including everyone's favorite, bunnies. There's also all sorts of interesting tidbits coming out things work, from tinting buildings and creatures to the possible importing of other things from NWN.

The team itself has been very busy. Razvan was showing off a new ship. Christian is working on a great new Port Brighton theme. Sunjammer is working on the High Seas trade system (currently you can only buy and sell ale, which shows his drinking preferences). It's really amazing stuff.

I had a long chat with some other community members about getting organized for the upcoming custom content issues. Mostly we're going to start collecting all these pieces of information in a more organized fashion.

Finally, I put in some work on my own modules. I did a huge grammar and typo pass on the first module. Ove gave me this several page document reporting all my sins. I also got back into PJJ's QA list, working on a few outstanding issues. With luck, this latest round of fixes means that someone could actually play the entire module through. We also signed up a couple more people to help with testing, for which I'm grateful for.

All-in-all, it was one of the more busy and productive days I've had in awhile.

I struggled for an hour or so, trying to make...

November 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I struggled for an hour or so, trying to make one of the roofs on the manor get to a point I was satisfied with. I was having a hard time turning them into skylights, so I panicked and put in a more traditional roof. I may continue with that approach, though I want to chat with Razvan and pass along some of my bigger pictures (upholding a promise I made during the weekend's meeting).

Scripting-wise, I put in the beginnings of a spawn system that fills a town with generic commoners. It should also tie into the crime and punishment system, especially with the guards going after and recognizing the player (assuming they've been bad). We'll see how it goes.

Update: Before I forget, one of the things brought up in our meeting was the need for more testers. If you'd like to be involved with this project and have the ability to nitpick and criticize for hours on end, this is the job for you! Take a look at our Join Us page and drop Lizabeth an e-mail. If that's not enough motivation, I can make many empty promises of barrels o' grog and countless loose women.

I had a funny bug this morning

November 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had a funny bug this morning. I've been working on the theft scripts some more. Players who take things from other people's crates will have a check to see if nearby people see you. If so, they'll report your actions. The amusing bug of the day was when one of the dummies in the Mad Hatter decided to threaten me. I quickly returned the hat, which shifted my alignment lawful again.

We had our team meeting yesterday, which went quite well. The next big thing is coordinating all the voice actors. It sounds like I've got another round of bug fixes coming around, especially grammar and spelling. I think everyone would like to meet more frequently, which I agree with. The tricky part is finding the time, which is close to nonexistant for me.

I'm having fun bringing Port Brighton to life. The Port Authority is now accessable, the Black Spot has a friendly bartender, and more NPCs are livening up the place.

Slowly getting there . . .

I perfected the printing press forgery system

November 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I perfected the printing press forgery system. It took a long while getting the buyer's side working just right. I also added a little vanity system where players can name the documents they create. Silly, perhaps, but fun as well.

For the last week, my home computer has been experiencing strange crashes. Last night I finally tracked down the issue to bad memory. Unfortunately it also means that I have some module corruption. I have good backups from a week ago. I'm in the process of trying to pull out what I've worked on and merge it with the old copy. Tedious.

There's a team meeting in a couple hours, the first in a long while. I'm looking forward to saying hello to everyone again and kicking off some of the voice acting efforts. Should be fun!

It was all about crime yesterday and this morning

November 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was all about crime yesterday and this morning. The vast majority of my time was spent on forgery, working on a printing press and a variety of ways a player's skills could be used to crank out interesting documents. I also started in on the justice system, initially working on the jail and such. Hopefully there will be some interesting ways to bribe, sneak, and atone your way out of the place.

You can't really be a pirate without doing some crime.

Razvan is a bundle of creative energy

November 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan is a bundle of creative energy. Today he sent me an image of his latest project, pirate pants. I suspect he's going to work on an entire pirate outfit at some point. I can't wait for the puffy shirt.

I spent this morning tracking down some odd bugs in my temporary psionic system that I have in the first module. It's used in the final battle, and I only now realized it didn't work at all. After digging through a bunch of .2da files, I straightened things out. I also came to the realization that it's fun to play with and I'm itching to give the skill to the players to fiddle with more often.

Yesterday I was a typing maniac, getting volumes of written dialog in the game. I'm amazed at how much writing goes into these projects, perhaps around 30% of the total effort.

As for today, we'll see how it goes. I'd like to start putting in the people and places where all this chatting is supposed to occur. I'd also like to get started on the psionics system in more detail. Fun stuff.

I spent last night debugging my little side quest

November 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent last night debugging my little side quest. It's fairly short, but has a wide range of outcomes depending on how you deal with the ethics of the situation. There were quite a few scripting bugs to sort through, such as the Vow option moving you chaotic if you complete it. I think I sorted it all out now.

I moved a few dialogs from paper into the game this morning. Fortunately I'm a fast typist so it wasn't too painful. There's so many people and characters around Port Brighton, which translates to a lot of dialog needs.

We had a texture artist sign up yesterday, something I'm very happy about. I'm hoping he and Razvan can work together to start wrapping up a number of the models that are currently untextured. Woo hoo!

I'm slowly plodding along

November 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly plodding along. Yesterday I started in on the dialog, NPCs, and scripts surrounding my burning building side-quest. I've still got lots more scripts to write today.

I also spec'ed out a rather complicated system involving crime and punishment in Port Brighton. I'm not sure how many of my ideas I'll be able to implement, but I'm hopeful we can make life interesting for the rogues and cutthroats out there.

I'm also gearing up for a team meeting this weekend, the first in a long while. I'm excited to get the voice acting put together for the first module. I've heard some readings of some of the voice actors and it's got me very excited.

I was doing my typical setting things on fire...

November 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was doing my typical setting things on fire trick this morning, getting an area ready for another side quest. It's a treat to put in a wide variety of activities for players. I'm also loving having real people around, as morality in the absence of others is fairly dry. Now it's far easier to lie, cheat, and steal, or vanquish evil and uphold your honor. It makes things more complicated for me to script, but fun as well.

I've started thinking about what sort of systems I'd like for the citizens and guards of Port Brighton. I haven't had good luck yet with a crime and punishment system, though I suspect that won't stop me from trying again. Due to my daughter falling asleep in the car, I had nearly an hour of uninterrupted writing time yesterday. A jail and some thoughts on how it should work were part of my scribblings.

The fireworks are in the game, looking and so...

November 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The fireworks are in the game, looking and sounding quite nice. I have multiple colors, showering the horizion with lots of pretty blossoms. For a prototype, it's a nice touch.

I polished and tested the database transfer between the first and second modules. Key information, like how you treated your companions, comes across fine now. The companions themselves come across with all their equipment and such as well.

That did mean I had to play the final battle from the first module. It's a tough fight, but hopefully the wide range of equipment the player can collect will help immensely. I've also sprinkled some items that should help out the clever player.

I've also spent the last hour debugging the opening sequences of the second module. It's tedious work, tracking down unlinked dialogs, script errors, mistagged NPCs, and other general weirdness. The most amusing bug was when at the end of a long dialog, a massive brawl broke out on ship. None of the key NPCs survived the experience.

Sometimes my obsessive compulsiveness pops up...

November 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes my obsessive compulsiveness pops up for no apparent reason. For awhile now, I've been wanting to do fireworks in NWN, and there's a scene in the story that calls for them. After a fair amount of fiddling, I think I have something that's passable. I still need more variety, and the speed is a little faster than I would like, but it's good enough for a prototype.

I worked on the opening scenes of the second module yesterday. There's one other that I need to do before the PC can get into the main second of the game. Wandering around a salty sea port is fun so far, though I can already tell I'm going to need much more "density" of people, shops, and quests.

Well, it took a good long while, but I'm near...

November 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it took a good long while, but I'm nearly happy with the way the manor is turning out. I've opted for fairly traditional textures, as well as a few windows to brighten up the place. Now the trick will be getting it into the prototype. Since it's nearly 10,000 polygons, it'll crash the browser unless I shrink things down quite a bit.

When I said I was done withe the Mad Hatter quest, I wasn't quite truthful. It turns out I needed some journal entries, more dialog to finish up the quest in several different ways. I want to give opportunities for the PC to lie, be truthful, act generous, or try to squeeze a few extra gold out of an NPC. Little touches like that put the role playing in an RPG, so I don't mind too much.

I spent some time working on the manor yester...

November 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent some time working on the manor yesterday, though I'm not entirely happy with the direction that things are going. I've tried to move away from the traditional stonework for a few areas, but the effect isn't exactly what I was hoping for. I suspect I'll redo the texture yet again, at least for the out buildings. The central part is coming along nicely, though. I finished up texturing all the detail work around the windows, which was quite time consuming.

As an aside, the blue boxes are there to give a feel for the scale of things, not part of the model itself. I think they're 2 meters tall, about as big as a large human.

Yesterday was insanely busy, filled with assorted work crises. I don't think I touched the toolset once.

Obsidian put together a great Halloween theme...

November 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Obsidian put together a great Halloween themed screen, showing off some of the undead in NWN2. I updated the list of creatures at the bottom of my last article. It's looking like we're going to have quite a nice list of beasties to play with.

I worked more on debugging the first module this morning. Most of the big issues are either fixed or have workarounds. I'm always torn about how much to polish something that will only be played by a handful of people. There were some music issues to sort out as well. I'm continuing to make sure I've packed in the great music the team has come up with in all the right places.

The second module continues nicely. I'm working on a rather lengthy dialog in the beginning of the module. It's coming along okay, though taking awhile. The Mad Hatter quest feels fairly finished as well, a little side quest for people who like to poke around in every crevice.

Well, I fixed the issue with the translation ...

November 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I fixed the issue with the translation tool this morning. It was a series of silly issues involving a language not being selected and still letting people try to translate the text.

I'm continuing work on the Mad Hatter subquest. I've tried to make it difficult for the characters at this level, unless they're cautious and use what clues I've given them. I'm also having fun with the host of goodies I can give players, from rare gunpowder to Pirate Cards to set items to focus gems. Hopefully it'll keep the collectors out there happy.

I also ran across Papermonk, someone I worked with on CODI quite a bit. It's funny how a lot of the NWN community is still around. I wonder if we'll be sitting around when we're sixty, complaining about how the VR setup for NWN10 isn't quite up to snuff.

The weekend was amazingly busy for me, though...

October 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The weekend was amazingly busy for me, though I still managed to work on the project a bit. On Friday I worked more on the Mad Hatter sidequest for the second module. On Saturday I began in on Daniel's first romance dialog, which includes some fun twists. Yesterday I began going through all the great work of the musicians and adding them into the proper places in the game. This morning I looked through all the QA notes and started in on bug fixing again.

I also have an all-in-one installer that I put together. The total size of the first module is 38 MB in size, which seems pretty large. I suspect the bulk is the music files and tilesets. Once we get voice acting in there, it'll likely balloon to massive proportions.

As for today, I'm hoping to fix a bug with the translator tool that I've been sitting on for awhile. With luck, I'll get some time with the second module, which is shaping up to be rather fun. Ideally I'll put in the first couple scenes so that players can actually get from the start to Port Brighton proper.

I've been busy, as usual

October 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been busy, as usual. This morning I put together yet another article on the latest round of screenshots. We're really starting to get a good feel for the tilesets and creatures that will ship with the game. It's getting hard to keep up with the new information, so I may start slowing down on writing these things.

As for Dark Waters, I did a little more texture work on the manor yesterday, though I'm not entirely happy with the results. More research is likely required. I also got some more dialog into the second module. Hopefully I can get some scripting in today, though we'll see how it goes.

It was a busy day yesterday

October 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was a busy day yesterday. As you can see, I found some time to continue working on the manor. I switched to a more traditional look after perusing some of the images of real castles and manors on the web. I also spent some time disassembling the geometry and putting in sandstone frames around the windows. I think I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out.

We also had a new batch of screenshots hit the web, so I put together another article and sent it off to NWN2 News. Some of the shots are pretty amazing looking, especially the outdoor areas. I can't wait to play with the toolset.

I also managed some writing, putting some ideas and words down on paper. The Mad Hatter shop has turned into a regular little side quest, something I hadn't originally intended. Should be fun.

I also spent some time with the folks working away on the project. Sunjammer was showing off his shiny new array system in preparation for the trade system. Christian is passing along some more music. We have translators doing their thing, Lizabeth was working on new hires, and we're gearing up to do the first voice recordings. Good times.

Update: I recently started playing some of the games that were rapidly developed at the Experimental Gameplay Project. Some of them are amazing in their feel and simplicity. There was even a Gamasutra article on it. After reading it, it's gotten me very excited to sneak a few of these fun little side games into the campaign. Sure, I've got the Pirate Cards game, but I'm itching to put in a few more. We'll see if I can have a burst of creativity along the way.

I have a pretty picture for everyone today

October 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I have a pretty picture for everyone today. I got started in on texturing the manor. It's slow work and I'm learning some techniques along the way. Danmar passed me some max scripts for help in texturing and I suspect I'll be looking them over sooner rather than later. There's lots of details on that model and it's a pretty tedious process getting everything just right. I'm still waffling over the texture itself. I'm reasonably happy with it, though I may look at some more stone wall textures to try them out.

I spent a fair bit of time just getting in touch with the team yesterday. Christian should be getting the last of the music for the first module to me, and I've given him some requests for some music for the second module. It's a treat when music magically appears for me.

Hopefully today I can get into some scripting for Port Brighton. Already I've created some interesting shops and want to make them come alive.

Another day with no pretty pictures

October 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Another day with no pretty pictures. I'm going to have to fix that soon.

I continue to work away on the bugs for the first module. I'm down to seven, with only a couple of them being very critical. The hardest ones are those where I'm not able to recreate the problem, as it makes it difficult to even know where to start. For those, I've been putting in "just in case" script, such as making sure you can abort a problematic cutscene and jump to where you're supposed to go.

I've grown to hate cutscenes. After this first module, I'm going to keep them to a minimum for the rest of the campaign.

I've been a debugging maniac lately

October 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been a debugging maniac lately. I'm down to 14 reported bugs that I need to fix or investigate. I'm hoping I can get that list shrunk down even more today.

On Friday I put a bunch of the dialog I had written down on paper into the game itself. There's still endless scripting that needs to be attached to each.

We had a team meeting yesterday, the first in a long while. Turnout was fairly light, though I did get to meet a few of the new people. I also wrote up a "Managing Risk" document, partially for myself. Game development is a tricky thing, with lots of unknowns throughout the process. Hopefully it's fun too, somewhere along the way.

It's been hard to find the time to work on th...

October 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's been hard to find the time to work on things these last few days. Yesterday I was busy non-stop from six in the morning until nine at night. I did manage to sneak in some writing during the boring parts of a lecture. One of the dialogs was for a main quest and I like the way it's been turning out. The other is for Brighton Church, which I'm trying to make more than a simple "buy healing stuff" sort of place.

Hopefully this weekend I can hunker down and get the dialog in the game, perhaps do some modeling, or even work on fixing bugs.

As expected, my free time has vanished

October 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

As expected, my free time has vanished. I did manage to scribble down some dialog along the way, though. I'm hoping the scoundrels out there can do a bit of skullduggery without feeling too evil.

Busy day yesterday

October 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Busy day yesterday. I snuck in on a NWN2 roundtable chat (registration required) yesterday. It was fun being able to talk to the developers and they seemed especially chatty since the screenshots were released. I got a couple questions directed towards me, which was fun.

I scribbled down some notes for a little side quest in Port Brighton, along with the dialog. The next couple days will probably involve minimal module work, though I'm hopeful I can spend some quality time with pencil and paper while I'm doing other things.

Razvan continues to outdo himself

October 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan continues to outdo himself. His latest work is Lord Brighton's estate, which is on my list of endless things that need to be textured. I love the variety of the architecture and can't wait to see it in the game. Of course, I can already tell it's going to take awhile to properly texture. If there's any texture artists reading this now, I beg of you to send me an e-mail.

Port Brighton continues to shape up. I have the Black Spot tavern and the Pirate Card game in place. I also snuck in a hook for one of the quests in the game. Currently I'm torn between working on more bug fixes for the first module and doing some writing for the second. Maybe I'll compromise and do both.

I spent some time this morning working on get...

October 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent some time this morning working on getting Danmar's church into the game. I fiddled with the texture a bit more and plopped it in. Needless to say, it quickly became obvious that my scale was off. After a little more adjusting, I managed to make a more modest house of worship. Now I've just got to populate it with something interesting.

The other big push for today will be to start incorporating the Pirate Cards game. I'm trying hard to make Brighton an interesting place to spend time, and I'm hoping the card game helps with that.

One of the things I'm trying to do as the campaign progresses is to keep switching the feel of the game. The initial module is very much a dungeon crawl. The second is more of a city adventure (though several destinations you can sail to are quite different). Towards the end of the campaign, I'm hoping to switch things around again. Hopefully it keeps players entertained and on their toes.

Port Brighton is slowly turning into a real place

October 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Port Brighton is slowly turning into a real place. I made my first merchant, the Mad Hatter, who runs a little hat shop near the wharves.

Of course, this meant that I had to get my hat and earring scripts working properly in the game. There's now several earrings you can choose from, each giving different bonuses. Of course, hats and earrings can't be worn with helmets, so there's some critical fashion decisions to be made by the player. I also noticed today that the hats cast shadows, though only one hat works properly. Shadows in NWN are a pain to get working properly for complex geometry.

I have endless merchants to work into the town, hopefully providing some interesting things for players to spend their money on. Probably my next big thing is the Black Spot, along with the Pirate Card game.

I've been working on lots of miscellaneous th...

October 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on lots of miscellaneous things the last few days. Work on the first dialogs of the second module continues. I integrated the set item system with the first module. I fixed some issues with the new QA item powers, letting the QA staff examine and set internal reputation levels.

This morning I started in on Port Brighton, which I can tell already is going to be a rather large city. Fortunately I've given myself the excuse of "pirate attack" to give myself some room to get creative later down the road. A few shops will be boarded up or being repaired when the players first sail into town.

I'm still hoping to work in a tailor, jeweler, and tattoo parlor. Those seem to be the staples of pirate adventures and I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone.

I also made a couple updates to my screenshot article, though it's hard to keep up with all the new information that's coming out.

The busy days just don't stop

October 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The busy days just don't stop. I worked a bit more on the initial dialog of the game. They're being fairly elaborate, setting the stage for the romances and personal interaction in the campaign. Of course, the black-hearted pirates among you can simply ignore those happy thoughts and simply blow them off.

Sunjammer has been working away on High Seas. To make the prototype more workable, I spent some time working on some custom content. I ended up making a new map tileset, some invisible blockers, and a single island placeable. If the blank map and island placeable approach works, I'll probably end up making a couple dozen drawn islands to throw down on the map. That gives us the flexibility to add and remove islands as the campaign evolves, in addition to making the map any size we'd like.

It was pretty busy yesterday

October 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was pretty busy yesterday. I wrote up an article dissecting the first NWN2 screen shots for NWN2 for NWN2 News. Within hours, my guesses started crumbling. It turns out that there weren't any tiles in any of the screenshots, suggesting a completely different mechanism for making outdoor areas. Ah, well.

I worked a little more on texturing buildings last night, not quite happy with the results. I also scribbled down some dialog for NWN2 and decided to make some more changes to the first module. I'm having to restrain myself from adding endless set items. It's just such a fun concept to play with.

Well, they're out

October 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, they're out. If for some odd reason you haven't seen them yet, run, don't walk, and take a look at them. I'm hoping to do a fairly in-depth analysis of them today, so I'll probably have some more to say about them. In general, I'm very happy with the direction things are going. I'll probably chat with Razvan today and get his impression of relative polycounts. So far, I think we're generally in the right ball-park.

In this very small picture of ships in the distance, you can see the details they've added. I suspect we may have to polish ours up as well, adding ropes and furled sails. I still feel it makes sense for us to add in as much variety as we can.

I did a little modeling myself yesterday, getting the church finished up. I also ran across a site with some nice Thief textures, which I'll probably end up using to some degree. Work on the module continues as well. I ended up adding in some set items to the first module, and adding in a couple more encounters.

I've been quiet the last two days

October 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been quiet the last two days. I had both kids on Sunday and my daughter has been sick, so real life has been keeping me busy. I did manage to texture one of Danmar's models, a church, though I'm not entirely happy with my work so far.

I've also been playing a little Dungeon Siege II (mostly my son plays and I watch). One of the things the packrat inside me loves is the concept of set items. The more items from a set you equip, the better they become.

I decided to create something like that for Dark Waters. There were a few tricky parts, most notably finding a way to only remove effects created by the set, but I finally got it working late last night. It's pretty cool to add and remove equipment and watch the bonus effects pop into existance. I suspect I'll be sprinkling set items in hidden places throughout the module as rewards for people who like to carefully explore.

Also, the PC Gamer with official NWN2 screenshots is out. I haven't seen anything yet, but the reviews are generally positive.

Razvan has also been busy. I'm particularly fond of the windows, which look fun to texture.

One of the central hubs in the game is the Bl...

October 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

One of the central hubs in the game is the Black Spot, a tavern with an entrance made from a shattered ship. The original model was done by Razvan and the texture was done by Danmar. It's beautiful.

I got it in the prototype tonight, after a surprising amount of time spent fiddling around. An earlier attempt is on the left, with the alpha texture that supplies the "dirty" look causing weird holes in the side. The texture mapping also got messed up, creating an odd repeating pattern. Plus, the game would crash when I moved the mouse over it (probably because it was very high polycount).

I carefully re-exported it and made it a static model. That appears to have fixed the problem and I can now start to build Port Brighton around it. I should probably get some sort of blocking walkmesh around it, as it'll save time when the QA folks get to play with it.

I did a little writing today as well. I'm still hoping to put more notes around the first module, giving more history and atmosphere. I think I've succeeded, at least with these few small notes.

I worked on hats yesterday

October 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on hats yesterday. The image on the left shows off an amusing bug I ran into when developing them. Essentially the hats are VFXs like any spell effect, applied to the character's head. There are issues, such as the geometry of the head poking through the hat. I ended up making a small and large version. It turns out that dwarves and half orcs have particularly ginormous noggins.

I've been a modeling maniac lately, converting Danmar and Razvan's models to NWN format. I had much better luck last night, though the lighthouse is still not quite ready for the game. Hopefully I can get the Black Spot tavern in today, which is one of the key locations in Port Brighton.

I'm also continuing to write dialog for the second module, which is highly entertaining. There's a certain joy I get when setting up comedy and hope right before moments of utter despair.

I've been fiddling with modeling things as of...

October 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been fiddling with modeling things as of late, trying to get some of Danmar and Razvan's work into NWN. I've been struggling with my scales and transformations, and often find the NWN model flung about into strange misshapen pieces. With some diligence tonight, I can hopefully sort it out.

Razvan's latest goodies include this smaller domed tower. I've also been helping him through a difficult time. As a Maya user, he's been distraught over the recent acquisition of Alias by Autodesk. Poor guy.

Yesterday was also spent working on dialog for the second module, which continues to be entertaining to write. There's also endless cleanup to do, such as recording when the player is kind or cruel to the various NPCs, and making sure that information gets passed to the next module. Ah, the joys of roleplaying.

It's admittedly difficult to keep up with Razvan

October 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's admittedly difficult to keep up with Razvan. He seems to crank out a new model each day. Of course, they still need to be textured and put into a game, but it's nice to have that library of interesting things to draw from.

I worked on dialog for the second module a bit. The first few scenes are rather interesting, and I'm trying to work in a fair bit of humor. Of course, this isn't a romantic comedy, though I suppose it has those elements, along with horror, action, and high adventure.

The Independent Games Festival is holding a mod competition and I was sorely tempted to submit my work for NWN. The catch is that I'd have to "own" all the content, which is basically impossible to ensure. For every module, I've used outside content of some sort. I couldn't really accept any prize money knowing that dozens of other people deserved a piece of it. Anyway, it's nice to remain part of the community and focus on what I love - making fun games and enjoying myself in the process.

The fashion show continues

October 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The fashion show continues. Razvan whipped up a hat yesterday. I'm hoping we can get a nice variety to add to our intrepid sailors' wardrobes. After all, when it comes to pirate adventures, it really is all about the clothes.

Yesterday was filled with yet more bug fixing. The menu issue was very simple once I figured out what was going on. Henchmen should no longer permanently die. I swapped out two broken tiles that made an area impassable. Typos have been fixed.

Who knows, maybe I'll actually get a chance to work on the second module today?

Sometimes I have these odd urges and I can't ...

October 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes I have these odd urges and I can't keep myself from doing strange things. But enough about my personal life . . .

I decided that a pirate game wasn't complete without large gold earrings. I kept telling myself that this was just a prototype, but I went ahead anyway. It's not directly equippable, as there's no earring slot. I opted for a VFX approach, which has some serious limits. The biggest issue is that I had to make a separate model for each gender and race. I'm hoping that the ear position on the respective heads are relatively similar, otherwise they'll be at odd places.

If NWN2's effects work the way the developers are hinting they do, I can envision a "fitting" process by which you position an earring once and then it remembers where to put it from that point on. That's the hope, anyway.

My debugging continues. Unfortunately I've gotten to the hard ones. I spent a good long while trying to get a "go back" dialog link to work on the dynamic menu system. Little things like that drive me crazy.

I also worked more on some Port Brighton ideas, documenting the critical path and key points of interest on the island. The brainstorming phase of a module can be both fun and frustrating, depending on how fast ideas come and how good they are.

After yesterday's screenshot goodness, NWN sc...

October 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

After yesterday's screenshot goodness, NWN screenshots pale in comparison.

I spent a lot of time yesterday coordinating and sending e-mails it seems. Fortunately I did manage a bit more work on the module itself, fixing bugs and cleaning things up. The walkmesh on the ship was horribly broken. Now it's at a "merely annoying" stage. I had a funny bug where a particular NPC was killed and suddenly stood back up again moments later, ready for action. It was a case of a fix causing another problem. No rest for the weary.

Well, the first real screenshots have started...

September 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the first real screenshots have started to come out. The horrible scans from last week have been replaced by some fairly amazing ones.

Over at NWN2 News you can find a big version of the scanned in advertisement.

Of course, they're still five months old according to the developers, so continued progress has been made. The creatures look amazing and the landscape looks pretty good. It's nice to see more detailed character models as well - I can make out fingertips on one of the players. Exciting stuff indeed!

Well, my pleas for help appear to have been a...

September 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, my pleas for help appear to have been answered. My sister goes to the Portland Art Institute and found someone who's very interested in texture work. Hopefully things will work out quite nicely and we can start getting our endless models ready to put into the game.

Razvan has been working on more towers as of late. His ability to go from initial concept to a working model is truly impressive.

I'm continuing to work on the issue list. I think I have a dozen or so to go, though I haven't been able to resolve all of the one's I've run across. Things like typos are easy. Mysterious intermittent scripting problems drive me to drink.

I might take a short break to start laying out Port Brighton today, or writing a bit of dialog for the first couple scenes in the second module. We'll see what I'm up for.

It seems that without even trying, models are...

September 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It seems that without even trying, models are being cranked out at a rapid rate. I somehow convinced Danmar to texture the Black Spot tavern, which is coming along quite nicely. Razvan similarly seems to be unstoppable. We have several new towers from him today. I'll probably save a few thumbnails in case times get slow. Yet again, if there are any texture artists out there or people who have the time and inclination to learn about it, please let me know. These models won't skin themselves.

I was a good boy and opened up the issue tracker yesterday, starting to go through the various problems we ran into. Most of them were fairly painless, though there's a few troublesome ones that I need to track down. Hopefully over the next few days I can tackle them all. I'd still like to do more with this first module, add in additional text here and there. I may just let some of the new writers stretch their creative sea legs with it, though.

Razvan continues to work on a variety of things

September 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan continues to work on a variety of things. Yesterday he whipped up a stone eagle to adorn the tower, though it may make appearances elsewhere as well.

I'm continuing to work on polishing aspects of the module. There's a fun rivalry the player can start with one of their companions and I cleaned that up a bit more. I'm working on the module transition as well, making sure various variables and companions get moved over correctly. I suspect I may be delaying reading the lengthy issue list, but I'm running out of excuses. Today may be the day.

I had a chance to visit with Allyndyn and his wife yesterday. It turns out they're just as nice in person as they are on the boards. It's admittedly a strange experience going from typed words to phone calls to actually chatting in person. My gaming hobby is pretty isolated from "real life", as the team is scattered around the world and only a handful of people at work are into playing computer games.

I thought I'd show off Razvan's latest work, ...

September 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I thought I'd show off Razvan's latest work, a nice little tower to spruce things up. I remember in the first NWN that there weren't nearly enough towers, and interesting things always seem to happen in towers.

Yesterday I continued to polish the first module. I'm thinking I may actually add a little dialog to resolve a particular rivalry. I've also been going through the existing dialog and making it so that the NPCs remember how you've treated them. Don't plan on romancing anyone if you treat them like dirt.

Oddly enough, Allyndyn and his wife are driving through town and I get to see them in person. The team is scattered all around the world, so it's a treat to actually get to shake hands with people I've been talking to for months.

Well, the first screenshots have been "releas...

September 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the first screenshots have been "released", though I'm mostly including them for comic value. This is a horrible scan of a lousy black and white image from the back of the Dragonshard manual. Needless to say, I'm not really sure what it's a picture of. Hopefully the game will have a "full color" mode and resolutions greater than 50x50.

It's starting to feel like the first module is basically feature complete. I'd break out the champagne, but I know there's still a few weeks of polishing left to do. The music needs to be cleaned up, voice acting has to be done, there's translation, and once NWN2 is released we'll have to redo all the areas, custom content, and much more.

So, today I'll probably get started on looking at the bug list today. I've been carefully ignoring them for some time now, so they've grown quite huge. If I'm a good boy, I might even poke around with the second module, mapping areas or something soothing.

Scripting for the final scene continues

September 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Scripting for the final scene continues. The camera work is currently horrible and there's a few nonsensical events. Still, progress is being made - hopefully I can wrap it up by the end of the day. It actually transitions to the second module in the campaign, though there's nothing really there yet.

Well, I'm feeling like the module is pretty m...

September 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm feeling like the module is pretty much dialog-complete at this point. I finished writing the last scenes and was busy scripting everything as well. I'm still not really going to be "done" - I need to do endless polishing still.

Rumor has it that the first NWN2 screenshots are in the wild. Can't wait until I get to see them.

Unfortunately I've continued to be sick as a ...

September 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Unfortunately I've continued to be sick as a dog for the last couple days, which has made it hard to make much progress with the module. It looks like I have seven days left in the month to "finish" the first module. The good news is that I'm down to the last scene before I get to go back and do more polishing and bug fixing.

I've been listening to some of the voice actors' auditions lately. Some of them are simply amazing to listen to, brining the rather flat text to life in ways I didn't expect. One clip in particular had me laughing hysterically. I can tell already that it's going to be a fun experience.

I was deathly ill yesterday, knocking me out ...

September 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was deathly ill yesterday, knocking me out of commission for awhile. On a positive note, all my sleeping resulted in me waking up at 4:30 am, giving me lots of time to work on the module.

It turns out I'd been lying to myself about how finished the last bits of dialog were. The final scene's dialog is only halfway finished, and will likely require some more work today. The good news is that I finished up my farewells scene and am feeling pretty good about how much progress I've made.

The image of the day is part of a sketch of Port Brighton that I worked on in the car last weekend. It's not high art, but it gives me a pretty good feel for how I'd like to lay out the area. My son was amazed at how I managed to make it look so 3D, so I suppose it's not half-bad.

Danmar's slowly buffing the lighthouse to get...

September 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Danmar's slowly buffing the lighthouse to get that perfect look, covered in rust and slime and broken metal. If you look closely, there's some orcs doing acrobatics just for entertainment. Poor lil' guys.

I think I've mostly written the dialog for the final battle, and it's time to finish up the final scenes of the game. I'm almost certain nothing works properly as I've yet to play through the end sections of the game. There's a good chance you can't even get there, let alone have it be an enjoyable experience. Still, I'm feeling pretty good about getting the skeleton of the prototype done in the next week or two. I think I only have two areas left.

Recruiting continues. We're still going through various applications, adding people to rosters, and so on. If there's any texture artists out there, or if you know a texture artist, please let me know. I'm not above begging or making hollow promises of fame, women, and booze.

Yaaar, maties! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day,...

September 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yaaar, maties! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day, so hoist yer mailsails and get yerself three sheets to the wind.

There's nothing terribly dramatic to report. I worked away at more dialog, as well as trying to actually test out a few of the scripts that I'd written. Needless to say, things didn't go particularly well. I'll probably spend the rest of the morning before work trying to track down a "Too Many Instructions" error. Oopsie.

It's fun watching other people whipping up al...

September 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's fun watching other people whipping up all sorts of cool stuff for the campaign. My favorite part of working in a larger team is being able to "ooh" and "aah" over the things that magically appear on my screen. In this case, this is more of Danmar's work. This is the textured lighthouse, looking very old and battered and wonderful.

As for me, I continue to be writing away. This morning I got up at 5 am and have been typing away for the last two and a half hours. I managed to get back to some dialog for Robert that's been missing. He has a lot of the answers to the backstory of the campaign, so I'm giving the players an opportunity to ask him about things.

Now that I'm not working with an established campaign world like Planescape or the Forgotten Realms, I've got to be very careful to give players a sense of the world they're in. I'm trying hard to release little bits and pieces where I'm able, talking about history and characters and geography. It's a little overwhelming at times, though fun to create something from scratch.

I'm enjoying the fact that my in-laws discove...

September 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm enjoying the fact that my in-laws discovered the joys of high-speed Internet access and that my wife forgives me for hauling my computer everywhere. In any case, I did a sketch of Port Brighton on the drive up. Being stuck in traffic was tortuous in some respects, but gave me some time to focus on the game.

I've also been writing dialog, which I seem to do best at after guzzling down coffee early in the morning. Hopefully I can finish up my scripting and move on to the rest of the game.

Update: I thought I'd show off Razvan's tavern model in a more final state. I probably won't get a chance to texture it this weekend, but it's very high on my "to do" list.

Danmar finished up his ruined lighthouse yest...

September 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Danmar finished up his ruined lighthouse yesterday, adding a touch of comic relief while describing some issues around scaling. Razvan's tower has also turned into a lighthouse, though a much larger more pristine version of one. They should fill in both ends of the spectrum quite nicely, a gigantic one for Port Brighton, and a smaller one for a probable haunted lighthouse quest. Lots of fun.

I've been mostly working on dialog, which does seem to take awhile. I'm still on target for getting a rough draft of the first module by the end of the month. After this dialog, I mostly just need to script a couple epilogue scenes. The dialog for those is completely written, I believe.

I'm also off for this weekend, though hopefully I can find some time to start writing for the next module while in the car today.

Well, the ship's in the game and mostly working

September 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the ship's in the game and mostly working. I've still got some walkmesh issues to clean up before I'll be happy enough with it. Though it is a prototype, I'd like it to minimize the amazingly annoying issues.

I even managed to work on the toolset yesterday. The rough scripting of the battle is in place (though completely untested). As is often the case, I've got some dialog to write before it's finished. Hopefully I can wrap that up today and start finishing up the rest of the areas.

Razvan is an unstoppable modeling fiend

September 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan is an unstoppable modeling fiend. He passed along this nifty new tower that he's been working on. I suspect it'll turn into the lighthouse for Port Brighton in the second module. I also suckered Danmar into turning over the lighthouse he'd been working on for Battlefield 2. He might end up doing some extra work on it just for me.

In the meantime, I've managed to sort out the ship and tileset issues. I'm using an odd combination of a placeable ship and a walkmesh-only tileset. I can put the placeable ship down on any tile, or if it needs to be walkable, put it into the specific tileset.

I'm going to see if I can put my nose to the grindstone today and put some work into scripting the battle. I finished assembling my shiny new computer yesterday and it calls to me, demanding that I install software and make it perfect. Hopefully I can resist that siren call for at least a little while.

I had forgotten how much I hate tileset work

September 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had forgotten how much I hate tileset work. It's grueling, with the slightest error causing crashes or weird graphical strangeness. One of the things I'm looking forward to with NWN2 is the ability to have much of the tileset stuff be placeables.

In any case, after staying up far too late, slaving away for hours, I finally got it so the player's ship was in the game. Needless to say, I didn't especially like the way it had turned out. Planks and masts were floating in odd directions. My "reset transformations" commands were apparently ignored. Using the tile slicer didn't help either.

Eventually I gave up, reminding myself that it was only a prototype. The new plan is to have the tileset be walkmesh only, and then I'll lay down a placeable boat on top of that.

I had a surprisingly hard time scaling the sh...

September 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had a surprisingly hard time scaling the ship properly, but I finally managed to get it into the game and approximately the right size. The obvious trick of taking the model, importing a human to compare it to, and scaling to that, didn't work properly. My first attempt produced a tiny little rowboat. My second one caused it to grow and fill the entire map. Eventually I sorted it out.

Needless to say, I've started in on the final battle. The further I get, the more I realized I've skimmed over some areas. I'd love to go back and do a "found writings" pass, putting down books and notes and other things to create ambiance. I also have a lot of flavor text to put in, text that pops up when you enter a room.

Still, I'm hoping to do some of the scripting and dialog today. I may end up powering through this section and the ending, then going back to add in pretty stuff. At this point, I'm itching to get out on the open sea after so long in these dreary mountain halls.

I managed to sneak in some time here and ther...

September 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I managed to sneak in some time here and there, doing a variety of miscellaneous things. I fixed up the model of a flintlock that somehow got broken apart when importing it to NWN. I also completely redid how flintlocks work. Instead of a complicated, broken scripting with lengthy reloads in between, it now works basically like any other ranged weapon. There's a single ammo type (ball and powder), and you use it normally. The only downside is that it doesn't reflect the long load times actual flintlocks would have had. I've ended up reducing the power somewhat to reflect this. As it stands, flintlocks are more powerful than other ranged weapons, but their ammunition is rare.

I also finished a first pass on the barracks area. More importantly, I worked in a "gimmick" that made it different than the others. Hopefully this one adds a little variety to the place. It could still use some extra attention, but that's true for every level.

It looks like I've got a final battle waiting for me next. With luck, I can start scripting that today. Final battles are notoriously complicated, and I don't plan on making things easy for myself.

No pretty pictures today

September 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty pictures today. I theoretically finished up the Labs area yesterday, though I haven't tested the new scripting or dialog. I've still got a couple areas to go, along with the final battle. I suspect bug fixes will take several weeks, at least. It's always hard to know how much to polish up something that's just a prototype.

Update: Razvan has been working on some new models and it's to hard not to brag. This latest is based on a concept art sketch that Deadman drew, a tavern based around a broken ship. It's fun to look at and can't wait until I get some texture on it. Razvan has also put together a fantasy-style ship that we'll probably hand over to the elves to sail about. It's exciting to head towards the seafaring stage of the campaign, slowly but surely.

Work and life have been extremely busy these ...

September 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Work and life have been extremely busy these last few days. There's not much room for anything else after work, family, and basic hygene. Fortunately I did manage to spend more time with the ship model last night. My goal was to make a version that could be used in NWN for the prototype. After some serious chopping and polycount reduction, I'm feeling pretty good about where things are. Here's a rather large comparison.

Right now the player's ship can be put in the game as a placeable. I'll likely send off a creature version to Sunjammer for the High Seas mini-game. Eventually I'll need to make versions for tilesets, boarding, and so on.

I'm really hoping to get back to the module again today. There's a lot of halfway finished areas and the month is flying by at a rapid pace. Hopefully my goal of finishing the first module by the end of the month (minus testing) is still reasonable.

Well, the texturing isn't completely finished...

September 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the texturing isn't completely finished, but it's nearly there. I have a couple places where I should tweak the textures a bit more, but at least everything has a texture assigned. There's still some major work to be done, most notably creating lower polycount versions. At the moment, it's around 12,000 polygons, which is more than the NWN engine can handle. If I want to throw something in the prototype, I'll need to trim it quite a bit.

NWN2 also supports multiple levels of detail, so I'll probably want to create several versions of varying polycounts. I may hold off on really polishing things up as all I currently need is something to throw into the prototype. Oh, and if you're curious about the blue boxes, they represent the size of a typical human (about two meters tall). It'll help when I've got to scale things in order to get it in the real game.

The texturing of the ship continues, though a...

September 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The texturing of the ship continues, though admittedly somewhat slowly. I was woken up at four this morning by Emma, which pretty much wiped out my expected alone time this morning. Fortunately my daughter is cute, so I forgave her.

It's amazing how difficult texturing really is. The hull in particular is very challenging to get just right. I'm learning far more than I wanted to about texture tearing, aligning textures, and so on. It's amazing how much miscellaneous stuff I've had to pick up over these last few years to pursue my little gaming hobby. Live and learn.

My wife made the mistake of giving me coffee ...

September 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My wife made the mistake of giving me coffee in the afternoon. The positive result for you folks is that I worked far to late into the night on texturing the ship. It's coming along very quickly now.

I'm not completely happy with some of my work. It's tremendously difficult, especially as I'm making up techniques as I go, using the infamous "guess and check" method until I decide it's good enough. I may end up changing some of the textures as well, but in general I like the way it's going. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually finish this thing before the three day weekend is over.

I spent a good chunk of time yesterday puttin...

September 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a good chunk of time yesterday putting together my translation tool. It has my usual bubblegum and duct tape ambiance about it, but it does seem to work. It pulls out every string from the module and puts it into a database. Translators can then go to a web page where they select their language and start translating things.

It even auto-translates, going out to Google's translator service and filling in the text. While it's not perfect, it might save some time and minimize typos.

I still have to figure out exactly what to do with the translated text once I pull it out. Basically I have two options, I can stuff each language back into the relevant dialog or whatever, or I can create a TLK file and have things point to it. The TLK file approach is more efficient and keeps the download sizes down. The "stuff it all in" approach is probably more compatible with NWN2, though of course things are still in the air. I suspect I might take the "stuff it all in" approach initially and then see what my options are when the actual game comes out.

As a complete aside, I also noticed that Stefan Gagne's HeX Coda has only got about 5,000 downloads. Dreamcatcher 1 is at 136,000. Since Stefan is one of the great mod authors as well as a nice guy, I think the issue has nothing to do with popularity. Instead, it's feeling like the NWN community is down to the last few hardcore users. Nearly everyone else has moved on to other things.

To me, that means that making a campaign for NWN2 is the right decision. My hope is to get something to people within six months of release, though I'm still fuzzy as to what exactly that means. Timing is everything.

I've been working on texturing the player ship

September 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on texturing the player ship. I'm not a texture artist by any stretch of the imagination, so it's slow going. Still, I think I'm moving in the right general direction, and it's relaxing in an odd sort of way.

I also have a master plan for dealing with translation for the module. I have a process by which all the text strings are sucked out and put into a database. Today's task is to create a web page where translators can start translating. I think I can even put in an "auto-translate" feature that goes out to the many translator sites and does it automatically. Of course, I'll want a human being to clean things up, as none of them are perfect.

And who knows? Maybe I'll even get a chance to work on the toolset today.

Somehow I managed to find the time to work on...

September 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Somehow I managed to find the time to work on the module yesterday. I've been writing quite a few dialogs, one of which is particularly interesting. I'm slowly finishing up the Labs area still. Hopefully I can finish it up today and move on to the barracks.

I also put in some work on a couple special SAGE items. People have reported that much of the fun with my previous modules was the interesting items they could find, so I'm trying to continue that theme.

Cleanup continues

August 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Cleanup continues. The server is just about back to where it was before, though with some extra protection.

I managed to find some time to work on the module as well, putting in some complicated scripting pieces that should keep things different and entertaining. I have two more rooms in the Labs area that I need to finish up, and then I've got to finish the Barracks, the final battle, and the final scenes in the game. With luck, I'll finish up this first module next month.

I had a catastrophic server failure last nigh...

August 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had a catastrophic server failure last night and have only just started to get things functional again. The team's discussion boards are still hosed and a number of other things are fairly well messed up. For the curious, I went to a cache of a page in Google that evidently had some malicious JavaScript on it. Within seconds, my computer had become completely unusable as trojans downloaded by the dozen. I've since switched to Firefox.

On the plus side, I found some time to do some texture work on Razvan's ships over the weekend. The tiny whale boat is done, and I started in on the dhow. It's amazing how much work remains, but it's fun to work on when I get the chance.

I also did more dialog and scripting. I've figured out what I want to do with the rest of the Labs area, feeling pretty good about how some of the encounters shed light on things. The psychological aspects of psionics can be entertaining.

I'm off to the coast for a few days, hauling ...

August 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm off to the coast for a few days, hauling along my computer and notebook. I usually get in quite a bit of writing and there's a few dialogs that have been calling for attention in the back of my brain. Hopefully I can do some of that, and perhaps some texture work as well.

Well, I backpedaled a bit from yesterday

August 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I backpedaled a bit from yesterday. I started having weird custom content problems with the new Ogre model and decided it was best to just take it out. I have to keep reminding myself that this is all a prototype and I need to keep my life as simple as possible.

I layed the groundwork for the final battle, which I'm hoping doesn't drive me insane. These things tend to take on a life of their own, so I'm hoping to keep things as simple as possible. I still have a number of empty areas on the last level, so I'm hoping to fill those in as well.

It looks like I'll be away from the Internet over the weekend, but hopefully I can spend the time scribbling down ideas and dialog.

Work continues

August 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues. As I predicted yesterday, I did manage to spend a fair amount of time on the patrol system, staying up far too late last night to get things mostly working properly. I also introduced a new creature, though I've been running into some problems. I suspect I've been playing a bit fast and loose with leaving out unnecessary files to keep the hak pack size down. I'll do some more fiddling today.

I've also started in with a very interesting focus gem. What's nice about the socket system is that I can make one cool gem and it works with any weapon the player chooses. Before I'd get complaints when I made a neat weapon but many players didn't specialize in it. Ah, progress.

It was amazingly busy yesterday, though I man...

August 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was amazingly busy yesterday, though I managed to work on the module for a few minutes this morning. The sixth level continues to shape up. I continue to try and add interesting things along the way. I also put in more things for the patrol system, though I've yet to make it more challenging. At the moment, only a single little guy wanders about and is easily dispatched. Hopefully today I can make things a bit more exciting.

I'm starting to feel like the pirate cards ga...

August 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm starting to feel like the pirate cards game is done, at least for now. I put in Allyndyn's two songs into the module, the song about the card game playing when you specifically request it. I think all the descriptions are matching now. At this point I'm going to package it up and give it to QA to go over.

Strangely enough, I did manage to find some time over the weekend to work on the game, though watching two kids by myself was a bit of a challenge. Most importantly I think I know how I want to get the main quest moving along. I've known for a long time the main path I want the player to follow, but I've been trying to find a good motivation to have them do so. Hopefully this new one will be both good and piratey.

Progress on the Pirate Cards game continues

August 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress on the Pirate Cards game continues. All the internal scripting names have been changed, mostly through lots of search and replace and a a good text editor. I've also been making sure that the placeable, item, and creature descriptions all match. I'm about halfway there.

After that, there's still a few more things I'd like to do, such as get Allyndyn's music in there, clean up some portraits, and finally integrate it with the main Dark Waters module.

I doubt I'll get much chance to work on things this weekend, though. I've got both kids to myself and I suspect it's going to be an exciting couple days.

I switched gears yesterday and started in on ...

August 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I switched gears yesterday and started in on the Pirate Cards game that hasn't been touched in a month or so. Most of what's left is fairly straightforward. Basically there's all these internal names in the script that still have the old card names. I'm going through and cleaning things up to minimize any confusion.

As a couple of the writers have been going through the cards and adding quotes for flavor, I'd also like to get those into the game. The catch is that for every card I have to update the card placeable, card item, and creature, so it's a fair bit of work. Still, today's the day I let myself have a mocha, so maybe I'll make some progress with things.

I also spent some time yesterday on organization, putting yet more details about the plot and world into a little Wiki our team has for such things. I also created a five-page HighSeas project plan and handed it off to Sunjammer. It's the system that lets players sail about the world, engaging in trade, combat, and piracy. Should be fun.

Yesterday was another busy day for me

August 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was another busy day for me. I managed to work on documentation for the project, in part for the team and in part for myself. The next three modules have a fairly open structure still and I'd like to nail things down a bit more before I finish up with the first module. As a plus, I think I've named all the modules, a few of which really resonate with me.

Not to forget about the module itself, I managed yet another trap that clever players can use against the enemy. It shouldn't be too much of an obstacle for smart players, though it is a little different than the normal traps. New is good.

Work on the Lab area continues

August 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Work on the Lab area continues. Since the player will be facing a number of odd beasties while wandering around this area, I'm trying to put in opportunities for the smart player to lay traps and generally make their lives easier.

My sister goes to school at the Art Institute in Portland, so I've been trying to get her to recruit her friends for help. My pestering may have paid off. It sounds like the watercolor map I threw together is going to be turned into something a bit more formal. I'm still hoping to use it as my world map, so there's a good chance people will see quite a bit of it.

My work and life has been exceptionally busy ...

August 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My work and life has been exceptionally busy lately. I did manage to work on a nifty new blade with a fun On Hit property. I've also been working on the Labs area of the sixth level, which is the most fun of all of them. The area deserves a fair bit of writing as well, so I've been trying to scribble things down when I get the chance.

Hopefully today I can get a little more time. I'd love to continue to work on some of my more fun little ideas.

I perfected my little surprise

August 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I perfected my little surprise. It has multiple dialogs, fun scripts, and, of course, things catching on fire. For the exceptionally bright player, it can also be turned into an extremely effective trap, though I'll leave that for those folks to discover.

I have two more main areas I need to work on, and of course the epic battle at the end of the module. There's an unspoken rule that every module needs some sort of twist or epic battle at the end. Dunno why.

I think I have this unhealthy fixation with s...

August 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think I have this unhealthy fixation with setting things on fire. In any case, I snuck in a little surprise for people wandering around the armory area. I'll probably continue to tweak things some more.

The armory is now stuffed full of weapons and armor for all occasions. It took awhile to make each and every custom armor and item, but players should now feel suitably well-equipped.

The team continues to put out amazing things. Allyndn the Beggar and his wife recorded some beautiful sea shanties. It's a treat to have such high-quality music in the game.

The patrol code is in and working, which went...

August 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The patrol code is in and working, which went easier than I thought. Now I've just got to put the code in place that keeps track of how many beasties you end up killing along the way. Shouldn't be too hard.

The Storage area is feeling done and I started in on the Armory. That involves creating a ton of new items, so it's more time consuming than complicated.

Finally, I recorded myself this morning singing the "drunken sailor" song. The plan is that the various team members record themselves singing and it's assembled into some sort of horrific chorus. Fortunately sailors aren't known for their singing abilities, so hopefully I'll fit right in.

I typically talk about the work that I've bee...

August 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I typically talk about the work that I've been up to, but the reality is that this continues to be a team project. I integrated Sunjammer's fancy new ball code into a little arena area back on level three. It's "working", although there's no opponents and no reason to play other than the novelty. I may fix that in the future.

EvilMulder wrote another nautically themed song. He has this uncanny ability to get the pirate vibe perfectly. Another voice actor volunteered their services yesterday. Writers continue to do their thing - we're currently brainstorming about the backstory of the main pirate group.

As for me, I finished up the Storage area for the most part. The players that like to loot and find interesting items should be fairly happy. I've still got to get the patrol code going, though I think I'm ready to get there in a day or two.

I'm continuing to work on the overall structu...

August 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm continuing to work on the overall structure of the sixth level. It's really five separate areas, so the whole thing feels pretty big. This morning I made sure the various critical doors worked. I also started decorating, adding placeables and items and such. This entire level is fairly combat heavy, though the encounters should be ones that the player is in charge of. Smart players will set traps for the frequent patrols rather than randomly run across them.

Well, the sixth level is completely mapped at...

August 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the sixth level is completely mapped at this point. Of course, the dusty hallways are empty and there's nothing of interest in the rooms. It's a rather daunting task to fill each of those rooms up with interesting things, though I have a general plan for each area. I've also been scribbling down how I'd like the patrols in each area to work, though some of the scripting aspects may be tricky.

I also brought home a microphone so I can help record "Drunken Sailor". The plan is to get everyone contributing a bit of their voice and then mix it together to sound like a chorus (of drunken sailors anyway).

I couldn't help myself

August 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I couldn't help myself. I've been running the first dialogs of the second module over and over again in my head. Eventually they simply demanded to be typed up, so that's what I spent my time doing yesterday. Some of them are pretty funny, a nice contrast to some of the grim events that follow.

I'm still hoping to get to mapping today, at least at a very rough level. I'd also like to sketch out how I want the patrol behavior to work. There's QA work that's been building up, and endless polishing. Still, I'm starting to get really excited about finishing up the module and moving to the next.

I just finished up a rather complex piece of ...

August 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I just finished up a rather complex piece of dialog. I tend to write and script at the same time, so this short encounter involves a dozen or so scripts that apply effects, move people about, change the camera, and so on. I've also included branches for the people who just want to get on with things, as well as those who love lots of details.

The areas for the last level are in place, though that's about it. I might be able to sneak some time in today to start putting in rooms and placeables, making the place more life-like. The main fun will be around a rather complex AI script that moves guards around, something I've been planning for awhile. We'll see how it goes.

I've been working on dialog, which isn't part...

August 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on dialog, which isn't particularly flashy. I also find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain a lot of what's going on to the player. Sure there are clues I scattered about, but I'd like something in place so the player can say "Oh, I get it." Alternatively, there's the people who don't care so much about plot. For those folks, I need to write a couple paragraphs that point them in the right direction so they can get about the business of killing and exploring. Ah, the joys of trying to appeal to everyone.

Progress continues in a variety of ways

August 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues in a variety of ways. I threw in a few more custom placeables yesterday, trying to get more things wrapped up so that I can start work on the final level. I also threw in a way to avoid some of the Proctor level puzzles for those folks out there who detest any sort of puzzles in their gaming experience. I've tried to make each of the puzzles quick and fun, so hopefully even the puzzle haters out there won't get frustrated. I even cleaned up the astronomy puzzle to make it more straightforward.

My big accomplishment yesterday was working on more of Robert's dialog. I still have quite a bit to do, but he's turning out to be a chatty one. At the moment, he's the character that knows best about what's really going on, so I want to let the players get as much of the truth as they can out of the fellow.

I'm also starting to get excited about the seafaring modules that are coming up. It's hard to stay focusing knowing the fun piratey parts are just around the corner.

The fifth level is nearly done, with only a f...

August 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The fifth level is nearly done, with only a final confrontation left to do. I snuck in a few tricky fights, though they're completely optional. Careful players can breeze right through them, as the psionic powers should make life much easier if used appropriately. I've been playing through to get a feel for the various fights. So far, so good.

After that, there's only one more rather large level left and I'm done with this dungeon for good. It's likely the largest in the entire campaign. After this the player should have much more freedom to sail about and get into trouble.

The psionic powers are fun to play with and I...

July 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The psionic powers are fun to play with and I couldn't resist tweaking them more this morning. I also created some enemies to use them against. Pyrokinetics is going to be one of the more entertaining powers, I suspect.

I have a team chat in a few hours, so I practiced all my IRC skills, making sure I knew at least the basic commands.

I've been testing out the various psionic pow...

July 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been testing out the various psionic powers some more, and they more or less work okay. I'll need to polish them up for the rest of the campaign, but they work well enough for now. The fun part is putting in little puzzles you can get around by using them. Telekinesis is going to be a favorite of mine already. Pyrokinesis is a bit too powerful at the moment as well.

There's a funny bug I ran into where I couldn't properly use a placeable object. I think the problem was really with the tileset as I was able to move the placeable elsewhere and it worked fine. Very strange.

I also did some watercoloring when watching the kids, trying to create a world map. It's a start, anyway, and can serve as a placeholder until one of the artists does a better job.

Well, I started putting useable psionic power...

July 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I started putting useable psionic powers in the game. After painfully wading through some .2da files, I finally got things working the way I wanted. The powers themselves aren't fully implemented, but I've started along the path.

Telekinesis is the first I tried. It's quite a versatile skill, able to be used on creatures to knock them down, doors to open them from afar, levers to pull, and items to pick up. Pyrokinetics is next on my list.

I'm not really implementing the full psionic system, but rather giving players a taste of things to come. There's no difference in skill levels and no way to use up or recover psionic power. It also currently works just for clerics. My plan for today is to get things working for all the base classes.

I managed to squeak in a bit more time last n...

July 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I managed to squeak in a bit more time last night, polishing up my little underwater sequence and thinking about what's beyond it. I'm thinking I may have to start fiddling with .2da files shortly to get the proper effect that I'm going for. Hopefully it won't get me in too much hot water.

I'm still far busier than I'd like to be

July 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm still far busier than I'd like to be. I managed to polish up the underwater scripts. You can now swim around and run out of air, refilling when near a stream of bubbles.

I also got more henchman dialog in the game. There's still more I need to type in, and a handful more that I need to write. Slowly getting there.

Yesterday was incredibly busy, so it was hard...

July 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was incredibly busy, so it was hard to get things done. I still have a couple e-mails from the team I've yet to respond to.

I did manage some time late last night and this morning to further work on my crazy underwater scene. Transforming a dry area to a flooded area is a bit of work, but I'm slowly getting there. I've still got a bunch of scripting and custom content to do, but hopefully it'll be a fun little area.

Well, I started in on my crazy little area

July 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I started in on my crazy little area. I'm not quite sure why I decided to try this one on, but I've been dying to play with certain game elements. You'll notice that the PC is swimming in this screenshot. Right now I'm using a trick that uses the zombie walk special property. There's a more elegant but bulky solution that I might look into as well. As a plus, it would let the henchmen swim along as well. Maybe later.

I also spent some time digging out some of the goodies from the Pirates of the Sword coast hak pack. There's certainly some fun stuff in there.

Up until now, Daniel has been somewhat of a c...

July 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Up until now, Daniel has been somewhat of a comedic sidekick, rarely able to pull his own in anything but combat. I just added a new puzzle where he gets to strut his stuff. It's fairly fun, a fairly simple puzzle among the many.

As always, I hope people enjoy it.

Well, I've finished up the fourth level and s...

July 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I've finished up the fourth level and started in on the next. I had scribbled out a general plan some time ago, but now that I find myself actually doing it, I've been making a few changes. There's one change in particular that I'm being very excited about.

I also whipped up some simple placeables to give the tileset a certain feel. Who knows how they'll do things in NWN2, but it works well enough for the prototype.

I finished up one short Proctor dialog yester...

July 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finished up one short Proctor dialog yesterday and did most of another. Hopefully today I can finish up all the dialog for that character and let the voice actors have at it. I also was a good boy and stripped out all my strings to put in the TLK file for easy translation. It'll also be fun to start mapping a new level, something I haven't done in awhile.

Already I'm starting to think ahead to the second module, which should have a very different feel than this first one.

I finished the Proctor exam for the Art section

July 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finished the Proctor exam for the Art section. It's rather silly, but fairly entertaining. Most of these puzzles would get old if they were any serious length, but they make for a nice thirty second distraction each. I think I have one more that's extremely easy, a final Proctor dialog to write, and then I'm basically done with this level.

I've started to put the optional henchman dialog in the game. These happen when the player chooses to chat with their henchman. In the first module it's mostly to bring them further to life. In later modules they'll be tied to some of the more complex relationship aspects I'm shooting for. As always, we'll see how it goes.

I'm back from the sunny Oregon coast, rested ...

July 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back from the sunny Oregon coast, rested and refreshed. Not only did I have a good time, but I hauled along my computer and did quite a bit of work. The dice game I've been working on is finished up. I also managed quite a bit of writing, including some henchman dialog that should help bring life to the characters. I also had two really good ideas, one of which is fairly daring and has a high coolness potential. I'm not sure I can pull it off for NWN2, but I'll do it for the prototype and see if I can manage in the real game.

I also put in a tremendous amount of time on the pirate cards game. Nearly all the cards should be updated, the creatures changed, several cards completely converted, some new abilities added, and it generally looks much more finished then when I left. There's still lots of polishing to do, much of which is under the hood. The team is also working on getting the look right. Deadman made a great concept sketch that I may show folks eventually. Exciting things all around!

This is going to be my last post for a few da...

July 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

This is going to be my last post for a few days as our family is off to the coast, disconnected from the rest of the world.

I ended up using a dice game called Pig, which is a great way to teach probabilities and risk. It involves rolling a die, accumulating points, and deciding whether to "bank" your points or risk them and try for more. The AI isn't very bright, which is probably a good thing. It's taken me awhile to win.

There's still a few bugs in it, but hopefully I can work them out while I'm away. Hopefully people will appreciate all these little puzzles.

One of the delimmas of the Proctor area is th...

July 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

One of the delimmas of the Proctor area is that it's supposed to be both educational and fun. I've gotten to the Mathematics section and have been wracking my brain as to some sort of fun activity involving math. This morning it hit me - gambling! I spent some time modeling some simple dice. The tricky part was getting the animations working properly. They're pretty close now, good enough for a prototype anyway. Now I just need to script my little puzzle.

I spent some more time yesterday on the new pirate cards game. I cleaned up a scripting issue and fixed the focus gems. They now look quite spiffy spinning around on the board.

Well, I got Juliano's new focus gem in the game

July 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I got Juliano's new focus gem in the game. It's the one that'll be used for the pirate card game and probably the campaign itself. There's some problems still - it's too small and the animations didn't completely come across. I've got some clean up to do today.

I also worked on the main campaign some more, primarily around combat related things. I think I fixed a bug where one of your henchman can permanently die. I did have a funny moment where I spent a minute watching one of them catch on fire, collapse, then return to consciousness still enflamed. I need to add a bucket of water item in the game.

I finished up yet another Proctor puzzle this...

July 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finished up yet another Proctor puzzle this morning. This level is shaping up quite nicely, a zesty blend of combat and thinking. I've got a few more Proctor puzzles to do, some ambiance to add to the rest of the level, and then I'm off to starting in on level 5.

When I work on overall design, I try to leave big areas for myself to add in puzzles and interesting things later. In this case, I have a general outline, but lots of places to add in things. Hopefully I can get my creative juices flowing.

The rest of the team is merrily doing their thing. The musicians keep producing endless music. It has almost become a ritual to see what they've made that day and listen to it as I work. Juliano showed off the focus gem model to be used in the pirate cards game. Fun stuff.

I've been splitting my time between the proto...

July 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been splitting my time between the prototype and the card game. I went through most of the bugs that have been reported, fixing errors when I can find them. This will likely be one of the most polished prototypes in existence.

It's been really fun working on the Pirate Cards game as well. I've been doing some writing for the other players, trying to work in various pirate themes. I've got the hook-handed pirate, a parrot, a practitioner of Voodoo, and assorted other scallywags. Great fun.

I'm knee deep in the Pirate Cards game, comin...

July 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm knee deep in the Pirate Cards game, coming up with new card names, finding art, adding flintlock pistols, and generally making everything more piratey. I've been digging into the Pirates of the Sword Coast hak pack, finding parrots, hook hands, and peg legs for the occasion. It's admittedly a pretty entertaining process.

At this point, I think nearly all the cards have a new name. The art is the tricky part, as our one 2D artist is probably feeling overwhelmed at this point. I'm grabbing placeholder art when I stumble across it, but it still may be awhile.

I've also heard from most of the Londoners on our team. It sounds like they and their families are all okay.

I've been working on miscellaneous things lately

July 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on miscellaneous things lately. I was a good boy and took out all the text strings in my code and put it in the TLK file for easy translating. I worked on the Pirate Cards game some more, coming up with new card names and stumbling across some new art (there's some great early 20th Century fantasy painters out there). Finally, I wrote some dialog and worked on one of the traps on the fourth level.

The funny bug of the day involved one of the henchmen "helping out" and attacking a ballista. Unfortunately, after the fight he kept attacking, so we all sat around watching him pummel in futility against it with his bare fists.

I think my son is officially hooked on the Pi...

July 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think my son is officially hooked on the Pirate Cards game. I might as well get him hooked on booze and cigarettes and get it over with.

I spent much of yesterday doing some writing, trying to come up with new card names and descriptions. I also worked on being able to upload images for our card database so the artists can have their fun too. I also worked on the prototype a little more, adding a new trap that's hopefully interesting for all.

Finally, best wishes to everyone in London this morning. Some of our team hails from there, and I haven't yet heard if they're okay.

I was showing off the Pirate Cards game to my...

July 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was showing off the Pirate Cards game to my son, who got very excited about it. Fortunately the bulk of the gameplay is so simple that even a six-year-old can figure it out. The strategy and deck building are what get complex. The good news is that the game is still fun for me, even after working on it for years. I had to force myself to put it away.

Ove passed me a long list of grammar and spelling issues which I cleaned up yesterday. I also worked more on getting in more magic items. Finally, I spent some time last night polishing some of the combat encounters and adding a new one in. I'm shooting for each to be unique in some way as I've grown tired of the standard spawn and attack of most modules.

Combat changes everything

July 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Combat changes everything. Up until now, there hasn't been much combat in the module. The player goes through dialog, explores, solves puzzles, and generally stays out of trouble. Now I've gotten to the point where the player starts to get a little rough and ready, which causes all sorts of problems to become apparent.

The first was that the custom tileset I'm using let players and enemies see and shoot through walls. After two solid hours of tediously updating the walkmeshes, that problem is no longer there. The second is that when your henchmen die, they're gone for good. I whipped up a placeholder respawn script so that they lived to fight another day.

Prework on the Pirate Cards game continues. I also have lots more work on the module itself. Busy, busy.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday documenting...

July 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a good chunk of yesterday documenting all my thoughts and knowledge on the new Pirate Cards game the team is tackling. Some aspects are fairly ambitious, but I'm hopeful it'll go smoothly. I whipped up a quick web application for people to look at existing cards and suggest new names and such.

I also ran across a highly annoying bug in the custom tileset I'm using for the prototype. Enemies can see and fire ranged weapons through walls. It's due to the way the walkmesh was set up. Unfortunately redoing the entire walkmesh for all the tiles sounds a bit daunting. I may just hit the main ones so that my QA folks don't strangle me.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning with an id...

July 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes I wake up in the morning with an idea stuck in my head. In this case, I really wanted to have some barrels rolling about. A bit of modeling and scripting later, they've become yet another strategic tool in the hands of your enemy.

The team meeting went well yesterday. It sounds like our first project will involve the conversion of the Demon Cards game. There's lots of work that touches on nearly every department, so it'll be a good test case for the new organizational structure.

I also got the gem and socket system in the game and working nicely. Sunjammer made some last minute tweaks to make my life easier. Now it's just a matter of continuing to put things in the game.

The first big team meeting is today, in just ...

July 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The first big team meeting is today, in just a few hours. I've blocked out time with my family, so hopefully I won't be interrupted by little critters wanting attention.

I installed the new web-based SAGE tool on my home and work computers. It helps me create the .2da lines to put into the module. Took a bit longer than I expected.

The last of the Mythology puzzle should be in place, though untested. It was pretty fun to do and hopefully nearly every character can pass it with a little experimentation. I snuck in a fallback way to pass that the tenacious can discover.

I have yet another Proctor puzzle nearly done

July 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I have yet another Proctor puzzle nearly done. This one turned out to be fairly amusing, if dialog heavy, and hopefully touches on nearly every skill a player might have. It needs a little more work today, but hopefully can be wrapped up and I can move on to yet another puzzle.

There's other exciting things going on as well. I have the socket system in the game, though I admittedly need to put some actual working gems in to play with. Sunjammer made another tool that should help with this. Deadman's working on a portrait of Heather, one of the main NPCs. Busy, busy.

I think I finally got the cannons working pro...

June 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think I finally got the cannons working properly. There were some amusing bugs along the way, such as all the enemies suddenly firing multiple shots at once, or sometimes endlessly. My wee lil' cannon didn't stand a chance.

Still, I just finished with some fixes in the last few minutes and it seems pretty close to done. I might add a few sound effects, but that's about it.

I'm going to see if I can find the time to work on the socket system today. I've been saying that every day for awhile now, but this time I really mean it. Really.

I'm working on a third puzzle for the Proctor...

June 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm working on a third puzzle for the Proctor area. This one's kind of fun, involving cute tiny cannons that you fire at your tiny foes. For some reason it makes me want to break into a Scottish accent and start talking about "me wee lil' cannon".

It still needs tweaking - you can't blow anything up and the animation's a bit wonky. Still, I was impressed that I got the math behind the projectile physics right the first time.

Sunjammer's finished with the beta of the infamous gem system which drives most of the magic items. Hopefully today I can find some time to work it into the game.

I had fun putting in the astronomy puzzle

June 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had fun putting in the astronomy puzzle. It's very visual and not particularly difficult. The coding behind it ended up being fairly elegant and entertaining to make. Of course, now I have seven more puzzles for the Proctor, so I think I'll stay busy for awhile.

The team organization push continues. I think we're going to have our first ever realtime chat this weekend. I'm still struggling with the balance between being a developer and a captain/visionary. Fortunately my crew hasn't made me walk the plank quite yet.

I finally wrapped up my problematic cutscene

June 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finally wrapped up my problematic cutscene. I think I have two more left in the module, which makes me quite happy. Now I'm turning my attention to the fourth level, starting in on another of the puzzles. This one is more spatial than most, as well as being a little tricky to set up. The things I do in my attempt to be different . . .

I've also been having fun digging up some old pirate paintings that have fallen into the public domain. Folks like N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle were painting scenes of high adventure long before I was born. Some of them may make their way into the new Pirate Cards game.

I've been taking the first steps to convert t...

June 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been taking the first steps to convert the Demon Cards game into the Pirate Cards game. Some things are simple, such as renaming the module and hak name. Other things are much more difficult, such as renaming some of the spells. For example, I changed Higher Calling to Siren's Call. It involved finding new art, updating the card model, and searching and replacing a dozen references in the script. Still, I think it's something that needs to be done to get the feel I'm shooting for.

Part of the reason I switched over to the card game for a bit was my frustration with yet another cutscene. I didn't expect for there to be quite so many cutscenes in this first module, something that worries me a bit. I don't like taking control away from the player, so I'm trying to make them skippable where I can. The problem is that I've got so much information to present to the player and cutscenes seem the best way. Hopefully I can make them visually appealing and interesting, avoiding players snoozing away at their keyboard.

I was sick as a dog yesterday, spending most ...

June 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was sick as a dog yesterday, spending most of the time in bed or feeling miserable. So, instead of showing off all the things I didn't do, I'll talk about other things.

Pirates of the Sword Coast is out. For those of you who have to get some piratey goodness right away, you might give it a try. I haven't played it yet, so I can't give a recommendation one way or another. Still, Bioware has kindly made the hak pack available to all. There's a slight problem, unfortunately, as it's missing some critical files. The first is here, though you won't be able to see the tilesets just yet. I thought I'd show off a pretty parrot just for fun. I'm sure some of these things will make it into our prototype.

The team continues to work away without me. There's a list of bugs for me to work on, Razvan did a face for the first time, and assorted scripting systems are becoming finalized. Hopefully I'll be up to doing some more work today as well.

I spent way too much time yesterday working o...

June 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent way too much time yesterday working on another flintlock pistol. Like most of the time I do modeling, I started running into an assortment of little issues. It's close, but not quite finished. For some odd reason some of the parts decide to move around when I actually get it into the game.

I finished up one of the Proctor's dialogs and got it into the game. The exam actually works as well, which is a good sign. I've got about seven or eight more like it to do.

Unfortunately today I'm still feeling the effects of cough syrup as I'm getting over a cold. It makes doing anything requiring concentraction a bit of a challenge.

Yesterday was a mishmash of tasks for me

June 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was a mishmash of tasks for me. EvilMulder put together some nice tunes for the piano I had made earlier, so I got those into the game. Before you could only play "Rain, rain, go away" on it. Now a talented Bard can play several rousing tunes.

I resized the flintlock and piano, both of which were a bit too massive. I continued writing and scripting some of the proctor's dialog.

Finally, I'm continuing to put together a useful collection of tools for the team. With the size of the team so large, there's plenty of room for even more of them.

Sunjammer is slowly approaching the end of th...

June 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sunjammer is slowly approaching the end of the socket system. I got to try out a little demo last night and it seemed nearly finished. I have a number of places throughout the game where I've been waiting to put in magic items, so I'll get to do that soon.

I've been doing more team coordination efforts. Yesterday I created a way for people to quickly see updates to bugs, new files, and get to a team roster. The plan is to integrate it with the discussion board today.

I also turned to a bit of writing this morning. I'm working on the Proctor dialogs, which is sometimes challenging. The fun part is letting the player be a smart aleck student, which produces some fairly amusing lines.

I got the first of the flintlocks in the game

June 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I got the first of the flintlocks in the game. I spent a long while getting things just right. Smoke and a burst of flame is ejected from the front while it's firing. I thought about animating the lock mechanism, but that's likely something that most people couldn't properly see.

The next step is to work in the scripting. As it is right now, it's quite powerful and I'd like to have some lengthy reload times in between. I'm thinking I want to have a powder horn item to used during the reload process. Early in the campaign, gunpowder is fairly hard to get and the quality of the shot is poor. Later on, things will improve.

I've also been thinking about the AI aspect of flintlocks. I'm thinking that if an NPC is given a flintlock, I'd like them to reload and equip it as needed, then switch to an appropriate melee weapon. We'll see if I can get that working too.

Well, the flintlock pistol is textured

June 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the flintlock pistol is textured. It took way too long, working last night and this morning, but I'm fairly happy with the result. Matching up the wood grain was a pain, and it could use some more work, but this is good enough for the moment.

Hopefully I can get it in the game and working next. I've been studying the other pistol/firearm hacks out there and think I can make it work reasonably well in the prototype - sounds, muzzle flash, and so on. If I were really brave, I'd redo the animations as well, but that's likely something I'll wait for NWN2.

I've been a bit sick as well, so I haven't been keeping up with the team over the last day. Since it's Father's Day, I'll probably do family things. Don't expect too many fancy things by tomorrow.

I got the piano in game, one of the other set...

June 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I got the piano in game, one of the other set pieces that gives the third level the proper ambiance. Bards can even strut their stuff, using their perform skill to try and play it. For everyone else, well, I made a short sound file of someone mangling the keys. It's vaguely amusing.

It seems that the big war scene somehow broke along the way, so I'm trying to fix that this morning. I also worked on the grand bug tracking application. I think I've got the main issues worked out. The great team organization push continues, with sakita e-mailing everyone and making sure they're still alive and interested.

Razvan continues to work on weapons. Yesterday he made four blunderbusses. I'll probably get the first of the ready-for-texturing pistols today. After a quick texture, I'd like to see if I can get it in game and try it out.

It was another chatty day yesterday, continui...

June 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was another chatty day yesterday, continuing to work on team coherence. I whipped up a little application that should help better track who everyone is. I'm also hoping to update the issue tracking system when I get a chance.

Razvan continues to go crazy with modeling. Yesterday he cranked out four beautifully modeled flintlock pistols. Here's one of my favorites for your viewing pleasure. My hope is to get them in-game for the prototype after some preliminary texturing.

I did a tiny bit of work on the module itself, mostly so I don't get rusty. I'm to a particularly tricky part that requires a fair bit of writing and creativity.

It was a productive day yesterday, though not...

June 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was a productive day yesterday, though not in the usual sense. In terms of the module itself, I did a quick test of a proposed world map system. I think we're leaning towards a 2D map with 3D touches. It's a stylized approach, but hopefully one that people appreciate.

Our new project manager has been going full-tilt, staying up far too late and getting things organized. I've been trying to keep up my end of the bargain. I polished off my issue tracking system and got it ready for the new module. There's bugs apleanty to sort through. Right now they're in fairly confusing discussion threads.

It's bound to be another interesting day today. Hopefully we can QA the QA tool, get yet more project management stuff organized, and who knows, maybe even work on the module some more.

I was very productive yesterday

June 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was very productive yesterday. I added a couple dialogs to fill in a few gaps. I tweaked some models and got another one into the game. Work has started in earnest on the fourth level. Of course, now I'm facing a huge number of dialogs to write, so I'm fortifying myself with strong tea before I begin.

The team itself has been busy. Deadman's sketched another character and has started looking into the issue of flags for our lovely ship models. Our new potential project manager is getting familiar with the scope of the project. Fortunately she hasn't yet jumped ship and started swimming for the nearest island.

The burning scripts become yet more refined

June 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The burning scripts become yet more refined. Candles and torches now have a "set on fire" ability that lets them set fire to things. When barrels and chests are hit by fire damage, there's a chance that they catch on fire. I'd also like to fiddle with the spell hooks to allow for items to catch on fire, though I'm not sure I'll get quite that far.

I'm also doing some technical things to prepare for translators. I took the first steps at creating a TLK file, which contains all those pesky text strings that people see in the game. The theory is that translators can simply update a single file and the game becomes regionalized for a particular language.

Finally, I had a couple new members added to the crew, including an American living in Sweden who made the mistake of volunteering as a project manager. As this motley crew approaches thirty in size, I'm finding it difficult to use my limited time to manage the scurvy dogs. Hopefully this new person can hold the whip for awhile. Wish her luck.

Okay, I admit it, I'm a pyromaniac

June 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I admit it, I'm a pyromaniac. I spent hours last night and this morning perfecting the burning system. It now will set fire to all manner of things, including items. The burn rate seems fairly reasonable, with large fires quickly spreading and small fires taking a little more time. Things can also be marked to explode, causing fires to quickly spread.

The most fun was working with items. You can lay down a line of gunpowder to something explosive, then light the end and stand back to watch. Needless to say, it opens up a number of gameplay options.

I'm going to need some better ways to set things on fire. I'll likely need to create a "Set Fire" spell that lets torches and candles initiate the burning process. I'd also like to tie into the spell system, making fire spells also start things burning out of control.

I mostly spent last night and this morning tw...

June 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I mostly spent last night and this morning tweaking the burning system and trying to find a place where I could use it for non-combat purposes. Right now the fire spreads fairly quickly, but not too quickly (I hope). I kept tweaking the chance of spreading. Sometimes it would spread nearly instantaneously. Sometimes it took a little while.

Actually, in the middle of typing this I had to run off and make another improvement and test some new things. What I really needed was a slight delay before nearby things can catch on fire, otherwise you'd get very rapid spreading which didn't look realistic.

Razvan has also been cranking out models left and right. Last night it was a piano, which I'm excited to get in-game. I also have a wall-mounted gem holder and some excellent Victorian lights. It's nice getting the ambiance just right.

We made some really good progress yesterday

June 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

We made some really good progress yesterday. The modelers were in top form, cranking out models left and right. I managed to get one of them skinned and in the game last night, including whipping up a new texture for it. You can see it peeking out from behind the explosion in the screenshot.

The petrol bomb works as well now. It required fiddling with .2da files and .tlk files, not to mention a fair bit of scripting. The only thing that I haven't tested yet is the constant burning script. In theory it can even spread to other creatures and flammable objects, which could prove entertaining.

I'm halfway through getting the Proctor's gem in the game, so I best get back to work.

I finally got around to making a broken door ...

June 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got around to making a broken door lock, one of those plot critical things that I'd left out before. Modeling is something that you can spend endless hours on, but I finally called it quits and switched to other things.

The main plot can now progress to level four. Lots of work is required for level three, so I'm not abandoning it yet. There's vast empty rooms and the cutscenes are quite clunky. Still, it feels good to make progress.

Today I'm going to show off Razvan's work, a ...

June 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Today I'm going to show off Razvan's work, a couple nice looking lights for me to sprinkle about the levels. He sweated blood to get the polycounts down as Victorian-style furnishings are typically quite elaborate.

I worked more on the prototype. In theory the player can get to the fourth level now. Well, I haven't made it and there's no door leading to it, but the critical path to get there has been scripted, if not tested. Hopefully today I can give them a place to go, along with beginning writing for the mysterious Proctor character.

I was stuck in ten hours of meetings yesterda...

June 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was stuck in ten hours of meetings yesterday, along with lots of kid wrangling in the evening, so I didn't touch the toolset once.

Fortunately, this is a great opportunity to praise all the work the team is doing. We're well over 20 people now, from modelers to scripters to writers and testers. I wouldn't claim that I run the most efficient crew on the high seas, but they seem to do fairly well with the bumbling and distracted captain that I am.

Deadman is our new portrait artist and he did a nice sketch of this rugged lass. She struck me as a kindly seafaring wench, able to change a diaper or load a cannon, whatever the situation called for.

GrogMaker whipped up the geometry for a still, one of the placeables I found a need for. Razvan made a nice wall light, a big improvement over my current odd-looking one.

Sunjammer continues to work on the various scripting systems. The socket system is slowly coming out of beta and will hopefully make it into the prototype shortly. You can also wander over to his web site if you're curious as to what he's up to.

Finally, the writers continue to brainstorm ideas and the testers continue to point out the grevious errors in the prototype. For awhile I accidentally had a "chase the naked man" mini-game, which i promptly fixed. Now they're clamoring for a "chase the naked woman" subquest. It seems pirate crews haven't changed much over the years.

I've been working on a particularly difficult...

June 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on a particularly difficult cutscene/encounter. I think most of the big bugs are worked out, though there's plenty of polishing to do.

I also find I'm running into some technical obstacles. While I'd like to do is to be able to let the player control some of the henchmen for periods of time. While it looks like that's possible in NWN2, it's extremely hard to pull off for the prototype in NWN.

I may end up putting in a cutscene with an eye to replacing it for the real game. If I'm really brave, I might try some of the wacky workarounds that give you pseudo henchman control. If only the approach didn't scare me so much.

I made some good progress yesterday, laying d...

June 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made some good progress yesterday, laying down more scripts and such for the third level. There's a particular confrontation that's halfway scripted, which I can hopefully finish up today. I also added yet more ambiance, which this level seems to not get enough of.

The musicians on the team are also cranking out amazing work, finishing up a bunch of the earlier themes and making some new ones. EvilMulder in particular has a talent for creating songs with a recognizable pirate tune. I'll see if I can delegate collecting, updating, and converting all the music files to one of my motley crew. Yaar.

My weekend has been filled with kid activitie...

June 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My weekend has been filled with kid activities, so work on the game is a bit slow. I did manage to lay down the basics for the second phase of the third level. I figure if I do a little each day, this thing will eventually get done.

More bug fixing and additional ambiance

June 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

More bug fixing and additional ambiance. Basically I've got a big empty level that needs lots of detail. I'm also doing some technical research into seeing if there's good ways to add direct henchmen control in NWN. We have some crazy ideas, but the emphasis is on crazy at this point. Mostly I want something for the prototype that lets us mock up cooperative gameplay before we get "true" henchman control with NWN2.

Sunjammer has indeed gone a bit mad with rega...

June 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sunjammer has indeed gone a bit mad with regards to the ball game. Already it looks far fancier than my original version. I think that for this particular level we're going to keep it fairly simple, though I can almost see the gleam in Sunjammer's eyes when he talks about it. I think there's a reasonable chance it shows up as a PVP arena-style game at some point.

I continue to work on the mood for the third level. Sound effects are everything, so I'm sneaking in a fair number of those. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together. Now to just get the plot progressing to the next level.

I did a little bit of everything last night, ...

June 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I did a little bit of everything last night, staying up later than I should have to add in some extra creepy ambiance. What's a spooky level without a phonograph playing crackling music?

I spent some time working with a phonograph model. I'm not completely happy with the texture, but it's a good rough beginning. I also added a new hak pack to the colleciton, this one for sounds and voice recording. I found some great old songs at the Library of Congress site and spent some time converting it into something I could use in the toolset. Finally, I wrapped it all up with some scripting to make it all work properly.

It was an awful lot of work for something that will probably only be experienced for a few seconds. Still, my hope is that over a hundred thousand people play through, so every little detail counts.

One of the team members pointed out that a sc...

June 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

One of the team members pointed out that a scene where a valley was supposed to fill with fire wasn't particularly impressive. I went a little overboard fixing the issue, putting in all sorts of pyrotechnics. It's always fun to set things on fire.

I did a bunch more bug fixing and general cleanup, primarily in the big battle scene. There was a long standing mysterious bug where dialogs would cut out for no apparent reason. It turns out that the NPCs were listening to every silent shout and trying to restart their dialog. On a crowded battlefield, there are endless silent shouts where the AI calls out "I'm dead" or "I'm wounded" in hopes of getting help from allies.

Finally, I did a little more work on camera angles in general. There were a couple scenes where if you were unlucky the camera could completely block the view of what you were looking at.

It's nice to polish things up. I'm still hoping I can work more on level 3 today. It's been calling to me for attention for awhile.

I stayed up late and put in some serious debu...

May 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up late and put in some serious debugging time last night. Regina, one of our QA staff, earned her keep over the weekend and documented a long list of bugs for me to go over. I think I have most of them resolved and can start in on working on the third level.

One of the things I snuck in was an earlier fiddling of mine. It's a ball game of sorts, though to be honest I'm not quite sure what I'll do with the thing. For some odd reason I just like wacking the ball around. It's broken, of course. It doesn't rebound appropriately. I think I'll pass it along to Sunjammer as he has lots of experience with reflection after his work on the mirror puzzle.

More bug fixing this morning

May 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

More bug fixing this morning. I've been wanting to get a nicer cutscene system in place as I've been currently just using the raw cutscene functions. It's a little clunky and it turns out Sunjammer wrote a cutscene system that incorporates some of the best from Gestalt and Bioware's ones. I installed it this morning and tested it out on a cutscene that QA had reported as broken.

It turns out the problem had nothing to do with the cutscene code and everything to do with me being silly and placing a second cable car with the same tag. Poor Heather was trying to walk off the edge of the world to get there. Still, the new cutscene code worked fine. It's now abortable, which is somewhat convenient, as well as having a slightly different camera angle that I prefer.

I'm finally feeling caught up, having spent a...

May 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm finally feeling caught up, having spent a good chunk of time yesterday to respond to all the threads on the AMPP project. I got to play with a pre-beta of Sunjammer's socket system, which is fun to play with. Hopefully it makes magic items more interesting than the usual fare.

I also received a new sound clip from one of the voice actors, the one I'll probably put in as the Proctor character. Every time I hear one of the voice actors I get terribly excited. Having written words come to life is a fun experience as a writer.

I also worked more on bug fixing and adding in some new cutscenes yesterday. The third level is slowly coming together and turning into an actual playable area.

Well, yesterday was completely packed and I h...

May 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, yesterday was completely packed and I hardly had a chance to touch the toolset, let along jump into the AMPP discussion boards and see what everyone is up to. I did manage to get some of the music into the prototype this morning. It adds considerably to the atmosphere and I can't wait for everyone else on the team to have a listen.

Hopefully today I can start communicating with the team again as well as responding to some e-mails that have been piling up.

Well, I'm back homing, having arrived at midn...

May 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm back homing, having arrived at midnight last night. I'm still groggy and have a ton of stuff to do, but I managed to use the trip's wait time to get things accomplished. I wrote a couple lengthy dialogs several thousand feet above the ground. I also eventually found a plug at the Seattle airport and did some toolset work.

Pretty soon I need to make some decisions about how to manage the party splitting up. In NWN2, it should be very easy as there's full henchman control. With NWN, the options are somewhat limited.

My hotel network connection stopped working (...

May 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My hotel network connection stopped working (I'm using the kiosk in the lobby). Progress continues in between meetings and team dinners. I worked more on what I'm calling the first phase of level three. So far it's pretty easy, though it'll soon get more complicated.

I'd also like to apologize to everyone who hasn't heard from me in a few days. I have a few e-mails piling up that I haven't been able to answer yet. I'm especially apologetic to the AMPP team, as I haven't checked the boards in a couple days now.

I'm on a business trip for a couple days

May 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm on a business trip for a couple days. Strangely enough that's given me more time than usual to work on things, waiting in airports and motel rooms.

I whipped up a new "brass plaque" placeable to put on walls. I also wrote a few conversations and started work on the third level of the main dungeon. The only thing I haven't been able to do is get the game itself running, so I've put off debugging for the moment.

Sunjammer is doing some amazing work with the new scripting systems. I'm really excited to play with his new socket system, which is what's used for enchanted items. Hopefully it gives people more flexibility than what they're used to.

I'm typing this from a hotel room as I'm off ...

May 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm typing this from a hotel room as I'm off on a business trip for a few days. I avoid them like the plague, but I've been shanghaied and had little choice in the matter.

I got some writing done while waiting in airports. It's the start of a dialog for the second module so I can break into sea farin' talk a bit more. It's very fun to write and hopefully the voice actors will get into it as well.

I did some more tileset work

May 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I did some more tileset work. Sometimes the story calls for something that I can't quite do with the existing tileset. In this case it was a broken bridge. I spent about fifteen minutes fiddling around with vertexes and whipped up something that looked nicer.

It feels a little strange making something that will get thrown away for the final version. Still, the giant column at the end of the existing tile was bugging me.

Well, you can now get through the flashback, ...

May 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, you can now get through the flashback, the fan puzzle, and down to the mysterious 3rd level. It's not perfect. Everything still needs multiple passes for quality, but it's playable. The war sequence is still pretty tough and everything isn't working quite the way I wanted. I did some more testing and polishing this morning.

I think it's time to move on to a new area for awhile. It's always refreshing doing something new.

I'm continuing to work on the war scene, tryi...

May 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm continuing to work on the war scene, trying to fix all the odd little bugs. Strangely it was fun to test it last night, but perhaps because I enjoy watching people set on fire. The new targeting system for the flame troops works really well, and it's fun to watch in action.

Sadly there's still some odd issues where the commands I'm issuing aren't being followed. Time to make it more robust.

I'm posting a bit later than usual

May 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm posting a bit later than usual. Progress is going well. I spent some time on a big fight scene. It's endlessly complicated, unfortunately. I improved the targeting of magic using troops, added more specialized troops, and generally made things more robust.

Hopefully tonight I can test the thing.

Well, I think the fan puzzle is finally worki...

May 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I think the fan puzzle is finally working, which makes me quite happy. I have one other cutscene to wrap around it and I should be able to switch to a new level. Oh, and I should fix the placeables.2da file as instead of spawning the proper gems it was putting in other weird objects. I suspect Sunjammer's placeables.2da file and mine didn't quite match. Easy enough to fix.

I also spent some time last night indulging myself. I added some unnecessary touches to a couple areas, some water-filled areas and a gas light that really have no place being in a rough prototype. Still, it looked weird without them so I felt good about the addition.

Finally, I mapped out the third level yesterday and feel pretty good about the way it works. I'm leaving some empty areas for later expansion so hopefully I can think of something creative.

I'm slowly and painfully integrating the fan ...

May 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly and painfully integrating the fan puzzle into the main prototype. My cutscene "glue" seems to be coming apart from time to time. I'm trying to move the party from one point to another and things aren't always working as smoothly as I'd like. Still, I'm making progress however slowly.

You'd think after working on the end of Demon...

May 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

You'd think after working on the end of Demon I'd learn to stay away from big battle scenes. Too many things can go wrong and there's usually unpredictable outcomes that go and ruin everything. In any case, I've been working on a new battle scene. Hopefully it won't drive me mad.

There's some great new music pieces coming out from the team. One of the musicians seems to have captured the essence of pirate music perfectly. Sunjammer's nearly done with the gem system. It's the basis of enchantments in the game and has turned into a rather elegant system.

I'm hoping today I can integrate the fan puzzle. In theory the story has reached that point. Soon enough I'll need to start mapping a new level. It feels good to make progress.

Lots of miscellaneous work yesterday - some m...

May 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Lots of miscellaneous work yesterday - some more tweaking of the mushroom models, chatting with the team, and writing up a lengthy project plan. The prototype got some more attention, mostly just adding some goodies for use by the testers.

I spent a lot of time yesterday doing project...

May 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a lot of time yesterday doing project management work. There seems to be endless details to go over and plan for. One of the things on the top of my to do list is to write up a fairly detailed project plan to share with everyone else. Hopefully it'll let me eventually offload some of the organizational work to others.

I also started getting sound clips from one of the voice actors. It's very inspirational to have my little scribblings turned into something you can hear. I'm also starting to realize that the post-production work with the sound is going to potentially be a big deal. When it comes to removing artifacts and balancing things, I'm a bit over my head. Hopefully that's a task I can pass to someone on the team that's more knowledgeable.

Work on the flashback continue

May 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Work on the flashback continue. I'm also starting to get the first of the voice actor lines coming through. It's terribly exciting hearing people say what I've written.

I've also been debugging endlessly it seems. I managed to break the mirror puzzle the other day, which is hopefully fixed again. I've also got some rather tricky troop movement problems to consider.

I'm also trying hard to offload some of the project management work on some poor sots talented team members. Hopefully that'll free up more of my time for building.

I made a ton of progress yesterday, getting m...

May 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made a ton of progress yesterday, getting most of an elaborate flashback in the game and debugged. Hopefully I can get that fairly finished today and move the players on to the fan puzzle, which Sunjammer has been working on. After that, it's off to a new dungeon level which I've been itching to work on.

As usual, I'm feeling the lack of time to get...

May 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, I'm feeling the lack of time to get to everything I want to. Yesterday I started organizing all the voice actors, sending out a lengthy e-mail talking about next steps. I also managed to pop in some mushrooms into the prototype. It's getting to the point where I'll need them shortly.

I'm going to try hard to steal a couple hours today to make some progress on the prototype. I have a long list of things to do and now I just need to do them.

Yesterday I spent working on dialogs, trying ...

May 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday I spent working on dialogs, trying to finish up the conversations for some of the smaller NPCs. I also fixed a few bugs, such as a door that wouldn't open when using a certain wall switch.

I also just finished sending out an e-mail to the voice actors, hoping to get some of that work started. It's admittedly somewhat early but my plan is to get some experience with the process before we have to do larger amounts of the work.

The team continues to grow. I think we're well over 20 people now. If there's a project manager who wants to volunteer their time to coordinate all of this, I'd certainly love to hear from you.

I slept for ten hours last night, feeling muc...

May 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I slept for ten hours last night, feeling much better this morning. I made some pretty good progress yesterday as well. More conversations, several new scripts, and a new smallish area. When I went to test it out, virtually everything worked great the first time. Pretty neat.

Now I just need to find some time today to send out an e-mail to all the voice actors . . .

I was sick as a dog yesterday

May 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was sick as a dog yesterday. I think I got three or four hours of sleep in between the coughing. The most I managed on the project was cursing the fan, trying to figure out why the blades wouldn't animate properly.

Fortunately the rest of the team has been slaving away without me. Christian has a new battle theme, Razvan has a new texture, and Sunjammer continues work on several scripting systems.

I've also gotten some voice actors to volunteer their time. I really appreciate your help and will e-mail everyone shortly. There's still plenty of NPCs to voice, so feel free join up if you'd like.

Work continues

May 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues. I took Sunjammer's mirror puzzle and integrated it with the main prototype. I've also started work on a fairly complicated sort of interplay between a few different objects. I'm trying hard to picture myself playing the game, making sure I don't make this section too complicated. The challenge of puzzles is to get that fine line between entertaining and frustrating the player. I'm hoping for the best.

More modeling

May 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

More modeling. I worked on the fan last night, one of the plot related pieces I need for the game. I also decided on a whim to make an alternate forest tile, though it's pretty silly for me to put that much detail into something I'm going to eventually throw away.

Periodically I freak out about how much work there is to do. I've got to work on a spec document for the focus gem system to pass along to Sunjammer soon. There's also several puzzles to integrate in there. Busy, busy.

Update: I'm starting to get fairly serious about casting voice actors. If anyone is interested in lending their voice to this little project, please let me know. While the main NPC roles are a fairly big commitment, there are lots of smaller roles that can be done quickly. All you need is a microphone and a willingness to embarrass yourself.

I'm continuing to polish the entrance level, ...

May 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm continuing to polish the entrance level, adding in lots of little details. For the players who like to search every nook and cranny, there should be lots of things for them to find. I'm discovering that the first area is mostly about history, puzzles, and hidden loot, with combat occuring a bit later on. It reminds me somewhat of Dreamcatcher 3, starting the player out with next to nothing, nervous about what lies around the next corner.

More debugging and adding detail

April 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

More debugging and adding detail. This morning I started work on another area, laying the groundwork for the events that happen there. I continued to debug a somewhat tricky cutscene, making sure everyone moves about in an expected way. I'm almost ready to get to add in the mirror puzzle and some of the associated puzzles.

Slowly making progress.

I put in a huge amount of work yesterday

April 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I put in a huge amount of work yesterday. The entrance level feels like an actual place now. For the players that like reading through things to pick up back story and hints, there's plenty of that. I've been creating lots of little custom content things, such as these portraits and documents hanging in a certain room.

I continue to work on testing, finding little bugs that shouldn't be there. I've also started in on a particularly tricky cutscene, adding a new dialog and making note of all the terrible ways it breaks.

I think I'm going to start putting music into the prototype fairly soon. The musicians have created some nice ambient music that I've been dying to hear in the actual game.

I debugged until I couldn't debug any more, l...

April 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I debugged until I couldn't debug any more, last night and early this morning. On the bright side, getting the bugs out early means that the debug sessions when we release the real thing will be much shorter.

I also put some more time extending the module, hiding equipment in various places for the player to find. I'm also starting to realize just how much writing I need to fill in certain areas. No rest for the weary.

Update: I've posted a portrait that one of the artists has been working on. There's a nice range of skills on the team and it's a treat to see so much creative talent bubbling forth.

I sunk in a huge amount of work yesterday

April 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I sunk in a huge amount of work yesterday. The initial level is slowly coming to life with endless little details. I keep changing the tileset and adding placeables, something that may return to haunt me when we have to recreate it for the actual game. Still, I like having a semi-polished prototype. It seems to keep the enthusiasm up to reasonable levels.

The team continues to crank out all sorts of goodies, from scripting systems to 3D models to 2D art. I think we're now over 20 team members as another voice actor volunteered just the other day.

Sunjammer is finishing up a couple of puzzles...

April 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sunjammer is finishing up a couple of puzzles, getting them ready for QA. I've continued working on the prototype, going a little crazy with scripting and the creation of custom content. The cable car is in the game, along with the hand locks I'd worked on previously. They don't look nearly as cool without normal maps, but I keep reminding myself that it's merely a prototype.

There are endless details to work on for the first level of the game: doors that open via complex scripts, special lights that turn on only after power is restored, creatures that turn to statues when they spawn, and so on. Busy, busy.

Sometimes I get a little side tracked

April 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes I get a little side tracked. Yesterday I sunk some time on creating candles, which the story called for. Emitter work is always tricky, but I finally managed to get the candle flame working properly. Of course, at the end I had to remind myself that it's only a prototype and I shouldn't spend that much time polishing up something that won't be used.

I've also admittedly been hiding from the discussion boards in hopes of getting work done. I suspect they've been working away during my self-imposed solitude and I've got some catching up to do today.

Progress continues

April 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. I whipped up a couple more placeables this morning and continued gluing all the parts together. I'm nearly at the point where the player can begin to roam freely about the place. The story calls for them to be holding dim candles, so that's another piece of custom content I'll soon need to put together. Shouldn't be too hard, though.

So far I'm fairly happy with the progress I've been making. It's nice to be able to actually play through something.

I've been quite busy lately

April 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been quite busy lately. Yesterday I layed out one of the main levels, trying to adapt what I'd scribbled on paper to making something with the toolset. I couldn't help myself and made a few minor modifications to the Dwarven Halls tileset, making a couple new tiles and fixing the environment map in the SET file.

I also had to do some polymorph.2da work this morning to support one of the flashbacks. Some early QA work uncovered some dialog in need of editing. I've been cleaning up bugs as I find them.

Well, enough typing. It's back to work fiddling with scripts that glue all of this together . . .

Progress continues

April 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. I think I'm officially through the first act of the first module. It's essentially a long series of dialogs, setting the back stories of the main characters. Hopefully it's a forgiveable indulgence on my part since you're stuck with them for such a long time.

There were a fair number of bugs along the way, but I think it's to the point where I might actually hand it over to QA for their thoughts. There's still plenty of places to break things. I've yet to wrap it all up in a cutscene, for example.

I have one more short cutscene to write at the beginning of the second act, and then I'll start in on the main dungeon and more traditional adventuring.

Yet more progress

April 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yet more progress. I decided to use a slightly reskinned Dwarven Halls tileset for the prototype. It has most of the terrain I need, though I may end up gluing in a few basic room tiles just to get the layout right. I have to keep reminding myself that it's just a prototype and may not be used in the final game.

I cleaned up and added more to the prologue. The party is to the point where they enter the first module's main dungeon, hence my need for the new tileset. I'll likely be able to finish the main scripting for the prologue today. My next step is to do some polishing before I turn it over to QA folks, along with beginning work on the interior areas. Great fun.

I put my nose to the grindstone last night an...

April 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I put my nose to the grindstone last night and the story now progresses to just outside the big door. The various cutscenes are somewhat buggy, such as people not sitting properly when they talk. There's lots of placeholder custom content, such as the pillars outside of the big door. I'd love to add some custom animation as well, though it's a bit premature for that.

Still, it feels good to make progress. Soon enough I'll need to decide how to best model the interior sections. I may go with the Dwarven Halls tileset, which has the main terrain that I want. It doesn't have some of the standard basic rooms that the castle interior has, but then again these are all just prototypes.

I stayed up late last night, working on my QA...

April 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up late last night, working on my QA gizmo. I sunk some time into it, adapting the Demon Card game's menu system so that I could dynamically build a menu of all the various plot points the player can jump to. Right now I have two, but I'm sure I'll have dozens by the end of development. It also lets you restart the module quickly after a change has been made, rather than having to get out to the main menu and reselect the module and character. That alone should speed things up for me.

I also got my hands on some of the new ship models, turning a couple into NWN placeables that could be thrown into the prototype. It's still a bit early. They need to be textured for starters, which is a fair bit of work.

Well, I skipped a day posting and then posted...

April 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I skipped a day posting and then posted today's progress report quite late. Needless to say, life has been quite busy.

The prototype didn't quite get to the point where I hoped, but it's slowly approaching the completion of the prologue. Basically there's lots and lots of dialog and moving NPCs around. It's tedious scripting work, but hopefully people will enjoy it.

Since it's the beginning of a fairly long campaign, I don't feel too bad having all the back story on the characters. Still, I'm going to chicken out and add a "skip prototype" link in the first dialog. I'm also working on a QA item that can be used to bounce around to the different parts of the game. Keeping your QA staff happy is very important.

All sorts of progress is getting made

April 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

All sorts of progress is getting made. I've turned over the fan puzzle to Sunjammer to work his scripting magic. Scripting and custom content creation often go hand-in-hand, so we're making some tweaks to the models to meet his scripting needs. Razvan has whipped up a new gizmo, though I'm torn between using it as a generator and a pump. There's lots of Victorian-style mechanical devices We need to sprinkle around the first module.

The new writer, Rapid.Hazards, continues to engage the team with what's turning into a fun little island filled with dwarves. I had initally planned it as simply a trading post, but it's turning into a fairly elaborate place with things to do in nearly every module.

I'm busy debugging the prologue prototype, fixing typos and such. The most amusing bug of the day is one of the NPCs shows up without clothes. Odds are I dressed him in something with a restriction on its use. Oops.

Yesterday I started in on the journal entries...

April 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday I started in on the journal entries for the main quest. The team is recommending that I keep them funny and interesting, so I'm trying to take the advice to heart.

I also continued work on the main prototype. You can play through most of the first act of the module so far. With luck I can get it wrapped up and off to testers fairly soon.

The team continues to come up with all sorts of great ideas. The latest is sea shanties in the local tavern, dropping clues to aspects of the game. I feel very luck to have such talented people on board.

More progress yesterday

April 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

More progress yesterday. I finished up the fan puzzle dialog, along with a related one. It ended up being much longer than I had planned, mostly so I could have more interaction between the party members. Hopefully the voice actors don't hate me.

The full prototype is sneaking along slowly. I did the coding to move the player 20 meters and fire up another conversation. After that, there's a series of bouncing around with more NPC back stories. More and more I'm leaning towards a "Skip Prologue" option at the very beginnning of the game.

I paid the price for not getting much sleep t...

April 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I paid the price for not getting much sleep the night before, though I did manage a bit more work before I collapsed. The prototype of the first part of the story continues to come along. Mostly I'm tying all the dialog together with scripts and such, trying to get a feel for how it plays out. I'm still nervous that the first fifteen minutes of the game is a lot of reading and setting the background, but hopefully it'll pick up from there.

Writing, writing, writing

April 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Writing, writing, writing. I stayed up far too late last night working on a single dialog. It's a key one, and needed to be put into place. It has a dash of seriousness and a bit of humor. Hopefully people like the mix.

I've also been starting work with the new writers, going back and forth on some of the proposed side quests. It's sort of fun, though I'm always nervous about criticising people's ideas. I suppose that's my job as project lead, trying to keep the overall direction of the story generally the same. The fun part is hearing the proposals, most of which are quite good.

I still have more writing to sneak in today, in particular the ones surrounding the fan puzzle. I also want to start working on the main prototype, as my eventual goal is to have the entire game in playable form with NWN. I find that people might think something's a good idea, but until they can actually play it, it's hard to know for sure.

Okay, I think I'm done with the electrical th...

April 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I think I'm done with the electrical thingie that's used in the fan puzzle. It's good enough to prototype the scripting, anyway. I still need to make the fan itself, but hopefully that's not too much extra work. I also need to write the dialog to do the puzzle, though I suspect Sunjammer is going to do the scripting parts for me.

Some of the writers are starting to do their thing, coming up with the various plot and dialog required for certain parts of the game. The member list for the discussion boards is up to 20 now, though that includes myself and a test account.

I put some more work into the fan puzzle, get...

April 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I put some more work into the fan puzzle, getting the new placeable into NWN for prototyping. I'm still not done with it. Already I have a new version of the gauge texture. I'm also going to fiddle with the location of the emitters. I'm opting for vertical rather than horizontal.

I have endless writing to do. A year doesn't seem quite as long when I think about all the work there is to do.

I've turned my hand to modeling again, though...

April 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've turned my hand to modeling again, though I'm not as happy with the results as I hoped I'd be. I'm working on another puzzle related placeable. This one's fairly complicated, involving switching out items, rotating dials, and so on. There's some assumed requirements as well - the dials must be flat so that I can rotate the dials via scripting.

The upper area with the cylinders needs some extra work, I think. I want them to be filled with beam emitters to get a flashy electrical effect. I find modeling to be both fun and frustrating at the same time.

The team continues to generate all sorts of goodies, some of which surprise me. Sunjammer, our scripter, ended up composing a guitar piece and will likely write some words to it. Another writer/qa person came aboard yesterday, bringing the team total up to 19.

Sunjammer's been putting the finishing touche...

April 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Sunjammer's been putting the finishing touches on the mirror puzzle. No longer can you push mirrors into other objects. Hopefully people will appreciate all the effort sunk into this one puzzle as it's amazing how much work went into it. I do believe that things like this are what will set the module apart from others.

The team keeps growing and growing. Another artist came on board a couple days ago, and a writer/musician/voice actor came aboard today. Great fun.

I managed to get all my written notes typed u...

April 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I managed to get all my written notes typed up and put into the dialog or passed along to the scripters. Sunjammer discovered the wonders of 3D modeling yesterday, though hopefully he won't be sucked away from scripting too much. The siren's call of modeling is hard to resist sometimes.

The team is nearly 20 people these days. Hard to imagine.

It turns out the generator was a bit too fat ...

April 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It turns out the generator was a bit too fat and beams of light would sometimes pass through it's outer areas without the "absorb" test working properly. I made it a bit thinner which hopefully minimizes the issue. I also played around with the beams, even though I know it'll all change with the next generation of games. I think I like the orange light without the lighting a bit better.

I was called to jury duty this morning but fortunately managed to get out of it. It gave me several luxurious hours to write dialog. One was for Daniel's comments and offers of assistance during the mirror puzzle. The other was the absolutely last scene of the module which I've been dying to write for awhile.

With some further fiddling, I got the generat...

April 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

With some further fiddling, I got the generator into the NWN game. I'm never sure how much trouble it's worth to do these sort of things, but I suppose it helps visualize the final product even more.

I'm also continuing work on the prototype for the first part of the game. It's slow but steady work, tying together all the dialogs with fades and jumping characters from place to place. I'm looking forward to being able to put something in front of the team and asking them to play it through, as I think the feedback will be better than simply reading text descriptions of what will happen.

I decided to do some work myself for a change...

April 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I decided to do some work myself for a change, working on a generator for use in the mirror puzzle among other things. It's coming along, though I want to add more details to it. I'm expanding my allowed polygons quite a bit, though I'm still not sure what the official limits will be.

I'm also mulling over how best to handle flintlock pistols. I like the idea of them being powerful but limited, good for a single blast then having to wait until after combat to reload (or being able to have a fair amount of uninterrupted time during combat).

I had some good conversations with the team l...

April 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I had some good conversations with the team last night and it seems like we're finalizing the plot and main characters. I'm really enjoying the complexity of the main NPCs, especially the "villian". I'm trying hard to give the player a number of difficult moral choices, where good and evil aren't always clearly defined. It also looks like there's going to be two very different endings, depending on the choices the player made in previous modules.

The brainstorming for the ship-to-ship combat system continues. Issues such as boarding, multiplayer, and limiting the player's freedom early in the game are all getting discussed. The modelers are also working on texturing some of our new shiny ships.

I've still got some more writing to do, further clarifying the story arc. I also want to start dividing up the work and setting some writing guidelines. Plenty to do.

Yet more ships

March 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yet more ships. I don't think I could stifle the creativity of the team if I tried. We're still brainstorming ideas for the ship-to-ship combat system, though I suspect we may start moving beyond simply moving a ship around the map fairly soon. There's also the psionics system to work on, of which I have a number of ideas.

Another writer came aboard the other day. He's been keeping me to task with the main quest, which is quite welcome. It's still somewhat in flux and I like the way we're going back and forth to solve some of the issues that popped up.

I continue to be amazed at the volume of thin...

March 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to be amazed at the volume of things that the team has been producing. I find myself spending most of my time giving feedback and suggestions, tweaking the web site, and watching in awe as things pour in.

There's a particular music piece that was done recently that has a distinct pirate feel. The composition is great and it may end up being our main theme (or something similar).

Sunjammer finished most of the work on one of the trickier puzzles, the one involving mirrors and light. I've got some modeling stuff to do before it feels like it's truly finished up, but hopefully not much more.

The ship models continue to be cranked out at an amazing pace. I'm feeling very confident that we'll have a range of ships for the player to battle against.

I decided to do a little prototyping yesterday

March 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I decided to do a little prototyping yesterday. The very first scene is completely playable in NWN. My hope is that I can do this for much of the campaign, making it possible to playtest and debug before we have to actually build it in the real thing. I'm not spending too much time on making things look nice, as I know all that will change.

It was fun getting into the toolset again, as it seems like I've been doing a lot of writing lately. After playing a number of recent titles, the graphics of NWN seem to feel increasingly dated. It'll be great to see what some of the shiny new RPGs look like. I'm especially excited to be able to use some of the new techniques, as I found myself getting frustrated with some of NWN's limitations over the years.

It's days like this when I think that all the...

March 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's days like this when I think that all the time I've spent pulling together a project web and writing documentation seems to be paying off. We have yet another ship in the works. A 2D artist signed up today. I listened to some great piratey music the other day. It's really fun seeing all the creative energy bubbling up.

Not to completely miss out on the fun, I spent some time working on dialog. There's an entire level that mixes comedy, puzzles, and combat in a hopefully tasty blend. I do wish I had more hours in the day to work on this stuff, though I keep reminding myself that I've got at least a year to go.

I continue to work away on the project and th...

March 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to work away on the project and the web stuff to support it. I managed to get the bulletin board's e-mail system working. Perhaps this weekend I'll open up the discussion board to more people to poke at.

The project team continues to produce prolific amounts of content. Already several people are working away on music. I just finished listening to an uplifting, mischevious piece that makes me think of a swashbuckling scoundrel sneaking out the back stairs with the mayor's daughter. Great stuff.

I also played with Sunjammer's latest version of the ship-to-ship combat system. The ship does indeed move around appropriately, which is a good sign of things to come. Now we're brainstorming things like ship weapons, combat mechanics, and so on. Plenty to do.

The incredible work continues to flow from th...

March 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The incredible work continues to flow from the team. I'll show off another of the ships today, though there's tons more being worked on. It's amazing to see how hard everyone is working, even without the traditional flogging. Magnus offered up composing some music today as well, sending along a Celtic piece that was very moving. I feel honored to have all these talented people giving their time and talents so freely.

I also signed up some more crew: QA people, voice actors, artists, and writers. There's certainly more opportunities for those of you thinking of joining. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas:
"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."

It's been amazing watching everyone get enthu...

March 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It's been amazing watching everyone get enthusiastic and create so many cool things. Razvan created the basics for not one but two sailing ships. Christian has another song that he's working on. Juliano continues work on his seaside village. Sunjammer's been finding and fixing bugs with some of the prototypes I threw together.

While I'd like to say that I've been sitting back and eating bonbons, the reality is that I've been writing and doing webmaster stuff. The new discussion boards are fairly well polished, with the ability to upload files and have the images turn into thumbnails. I've also written out the overall plot and story arcs, which I'm quite happy with.

So, things are going well, though I never seem to have enough time to get things done. I keep reminding myself that I've got a year to go.

Well, I'm not back home, but I'm connected to...

March 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm not back home, but I'm connected to the world again. We've been driving around and I've taken the opportunity to write like a maniac. Soon enough I'll be throwing lengthy project documents at the rest of the team.

I also have a bit of a present brewing. I recently installed a fairly robust discussion board and will likely open it up for everyone to post in should they like.

The rest of the team continues to slave away, with me doing much of anything. Already we have a dozen models and a few music themes.

I'm off to the coast for the next few days, s...

March 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm off to the coast for the next few days, so you won't be hearing from me in awhile. I've been consumed with the project team over the last couple days, adding and greeting new people and trying to write down all the plans that have so far been sitting in my head. My goal is to take some time over this vacation and create a more formal project plan.

Though project management isn't always my favorite thing to do, it has been admittedly cool to see folks already cranking out nifty looking things. Sunjammer spent some time cleaning up the ship-to-ship combat system. You can now move the boat around the ocean in a predictable fashion. Razvan has been making elegant beds and side tables, which Juliano has volunteered to texture.

Already the crew is threatening mutiny unless I whip up some better web tools, especially the discussion board which is a bit old and creaky.

The very observant among you may have noticed...

March 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The very observant among you may have noticed a "Join Us" link on the left. I've literally been sitting here for the last hour and a half typing up the needs for the project and a short-term project plan for the team. I'm going to be unplugged and away from my computer starting tomorrow, but feel free to look over the list of project needs and see if there's a role that sounds interesting to you.

I suppose this is the beginning of my "call to arms", gathering up a motley crew for my pirate project. I can't promise fame, booty, grog, or wenches, but hopefully it'll be an interesting and fun experience.

No pretty pictures today, unfortunately

March 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty pictures today, unfortunately. I spent last night and this morning working on more organizational tools for the project team. This one is a place to upload files, comment on them, and do some simple searches and versioning on them. Hopefully it'll meet our needs.

I also had a tentative suggestion for a team name - "Adam Miller's Pirate Project". It has the abbreviation of AMPP, which sounds eXXtreme. I can also talk about how well my PP is doing and we can all have a juvenile laugh about it.

I whipped up some normal mapped fish last night

March 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I whipped up some normal mapped fish last night. They're really just a flat texture, to be used for hanging fish on the wall or some such thing. I suppose I could cheat and use them for fish swimming by in a scene, though I'd have to carefully control their position (they'd look silly head-on). I've passed them on to Juliano to see if he could use them dangling from a rafter or some such thing.

The screenshot shows the lighting from two different positions. In theory it should further the illusion of depth as shadows are cast realistically.

I also played around a bit more with my ship-to-ship combat system this morning. It now works closer to what I expect. No longer does your speed go to completely zero if you head upwind. The dialog box reappears if you close it. If you don't issue commands, the ship continues to move forward.

On the down side, the commands to turn seem to have nothing to do with the direction you end up facing. Movement is somewhat jerky, with a noticeable slow-down as you arrive at your destination. Finally, I sailed off the edge of the world and decided to call it quits for the day.

I wanted to start with a model from Juliano, ...

March 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I wanted to start with a model from Juliano, the architect from Brazil who's been helping out. This is his work-in-progress of a poor Caribbean-style home. Right now he's working on some other buildings in a similar style. Modeling is a task that seems to spawn endless details. I instantly want to start hanging nets and fish from the roof, as well as scattering miscellaneous fishing gear about.

The project web is slowly coming along. I've got some of the first people popping into the discussion group. After I get organized I'll probably put out a more formal "call for help". It's admittedly a bit strange shifting from solo module developer to project organizer.

Of course, I still planning on playing a central role in development. Yesterday I managed to type up some more dialog, this time for the second module. One of the nice things about doing a pirate/seafaring campaign is that the dialog is so much fun to produce. The humor almost writes itself.

For months I've been coveting a particular mo...

March 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

For months I've been coveting a particular model at the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository. It's a scan of an actual angel statue. I finally managed to piece together a relatively low-polygon version (500,000 polygons) that my computer could actually work with, as well as software that converts the weird ply format to something useful.

I ended up using PolyChop to generate the in-game model, then projected the high-poly version to that. Unfortunately I'm not completely happy with the result. There's some significant weird bumps and errors that are obvious close up. I want to spend some time and see if I can further improve the result, as I have a place in the module all picked out to put it.

If you're curious, the original is on the right, with the normal mapped version on the left. I think the "low-poly" version is around 3,000 polygons, which is pretty high.

I also spent some time chatting away at the NWN2 roundtable. I was hoping a developer would show, but it seems that the allure of the sunny weather was too much for them. I only managed to make it through about half, as the kids grew restless.

Hopefully today I can start getting team members set up with the new project web. I keep asking myself if I need a team name. All the cool kids seem to have one, though nothing comes to mind.

I sunk some more time on the project web this...

March 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I sunk some more time on the project web this morning, putting together a simple framework to hang content off of. The important thing was the discussion group, as getting people talking to each other is a short term goal of mine.

Fairly soon I'll probably put out the call to a range of people. Bide your time for now, as I'm still trying to gather up my strength and summon my project management mojo.

I did a little writing yesterday as well, introducing a somewhat comical figure. Since NPCs are fairly light in this first module, he gets quite a bit of dialog. Fortunately it should be fun to write for.

I stayed up way too late last night, trying t...

March 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up way too late last night, trying to put together the basics of a project web for the people volunteering their time. So far I have a discussion board with the ability to upload files, along with a simple security mechanism. Hopefully that'll be enough to get everyone started. Eventually I'd like to have a better way to organize and share files, and perhaps a gallery of sorts.

I've been trying hard to use the plethora of free models scattered around the web. I'm thinking of having a stationary steam-powered gun of sorts. I don't think I have the texture quite right, but it does look close to what I'm thinking of.

I did some more mushroom fiddling this mornin...

March 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I did some more mushroom fiddling this morning, adding a normal map to Schazzwozzer's Myconid placeables. They turned out better than some of my previous experiements, which ended up looking a bit silly. This ended up using the tried-and-true Photoshop NVIDIA plug-in method, which is also very fast.

Talking to batinthehat the other day, he mentioned that pretty screenshots draw artists to a project like moths to a flame. I had another 3d modeler volunteer their efforts to this project. It's a treat to work with such a variety of talented folks.

It's getting to the point where I think I need to create a project web for the various team members. I'm currently juggling e-mails with two modelers and a musician. I also got an e-mail from a writer with some voice over experience. Basically we need a discussion board, a place to upload files, and so on. We'll see how much time I get in the upcoming days. Hopefully I can share some screenshots of some of the new artists' work. It's coming along nicely.

Long ago, I'd started work on a ship-to-ship ...

March 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Long ago, I'd started work on a ship-to-ship combat system. It was fairly ambitious and I never got even the most basic functionality working. This morning I dusted it off and fixed things to the point where I can at least start fiddling with it. It doesn't crash immediately, for example, nor does the ship sail backwards. There's still tons of work to do.

The screenshot of the day is a continuation of yesterday. Here's a close-up of the ship deck with nice bumpy surfaces.

I couldn't help myself

March 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I couldn't help myself. I loaded up Some_ux's Carrack hak pack and did some normal mapping stuff with the textures. Odds are, I'll be using this with some modification as it's one of my favorite pieces of custom content that I wasn't able to use for NWN.

I managed to find some time yesterday, rewriting my documentation and getting things better organized. I have it broken down by Act and level. A few things happen before and after the main dungeon area. Most other things work best if broken down by level.

Finally, I fixed some bugs in the Demon Cards game. One NPC didn't play for ante properly. Plus the Potion of Heroism made a creature basically unkillable. It's in testing currently.

I was less than productive yesterday, though ...

March 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was less than productive yesterday, though fortunately some of my team mates were not. Juliano has a new, "dirtier" version of his Carribean fishing hut. He wants to work on the texture a bit more, though perhaps I can convince him to show off a screenshot for everyone. Christian continues to work away on music and ambient sound.

I have an IRC chat scheduled for this weekend, talking about custom content in NWN2. Some CODI folks will be there, along with other familiar faces, so it should be a bit of a treat. It may be that some actual developers show up too.

Hopefully today I can beg, borrow, or steal some time to work on setting up the documentation for the maps. It's really what I need to focus on next.

There's several approaches to making normal m...

March 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

There's several approaches to making normal mapped models. The typical approach used in Doom 3 (and most games, I imagine) is to take a high resolution model and "project" it to a low resolution model. In theory that makes it look about the same but without using so many video-card taxing polygons.

I spent a few hours yesterday playing around with the concept and never got it looking the way I wanted. On the right is a render of the high-resolution model. On the left is the low-resolution with a normal map. If you look closely, it has weird artifacts and bumps not present in the original model. I may still try fiddling with that approach, but I may set it aside for the moment.

Most of my productive work has been creating normal maps for fairly flat surfaces. The Photoshop method is very fast and produces a good result in those cases.

I've finished up the mapping, which makes me ...

March 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've finished up the mapping, which makes me quite happy. Of course, now I need to fill in all the details, but this is a good first step. What worked pretty well when I planned out Shadowlords was to script the entire campaign with minimal detail, and then go back and add more detail in multiple passes. I already have some ideas for the next module, as well as the overall story arc for the campaign.

I've also been working with some of the models at the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository. I managed to take the bunny and turn it into a normal mapped low-poly version. I might throw up some pictures tomorrow, though my fiddlings are still early. The biggest problem at the moment is that the conversion of the 500 MB file causes me to run out of system memory. We'll see how it goes.

I've been slowly mapping the final level

March 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been slowly mapping the final level. It's the biggest by far, five separate areas really. I'm also emphasizing the tactical aspects of the game, though not at the exclusion of puzzles and character development. Hopefully it'll work well.

I also had a wacky idea this morning. Perhaps I can create this first campaign for NWN2, then continue the story with a second campaign for Dragon Age. Hmm.

I have a new version of the control panel tha...

March 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I have a new version of the control panel that I'm happier with, though I don't think it's quite yet done. The panel itself seems off, perhaps too obviously flat. Well, something to work on when I get a chance.

I'm also feeling the need to hunker down and finish my mapping, along with starting in on the room descriptions. Ideally I'd like a heavily marked up map with notes for triggers, waypoints, creature notes, and so on. We'll see how far I get today.

I added some hinges and a door handle, which ...

March 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I added some hinges and a door handle, which was about the limits of my creativity yesterday.

I scribbled down a rough map for the final level and wrote out the plot. I still need to organize everything, but I'm feeling pretty settled on the overall structure of the module.

I'm also playing project manager again, listening to the ambient sounds that Christian put together, passing along some modeling advice from batinthehat to Juliano. Busy, busy.

I made some serious progress with the cable car

March 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made some serious progress with the cable car. The first version was very boxy and quickly scrapped. I'm feeling better about this version, which is has a fairly low polygon count and the two textures I use are quite small. It still needs some prettying up with hinges and handles, but I think I'm getting closer to what I'm shooting for.

A horde of volunteers seems to be helping out as of late. Christian Pacaud offered up his musical services, which I've happily accepted. He's working quite fast, with the first song slowly approaching completion. He also does work with ambient sound, so it'll be interesting to hear what he comes up with.

Juliano, the Brazilian architect, has started in on a new project. I may show off some pictures once it's closer to completion.

All the extra help is certainly motivational.

I've been struggling to create a particular o...

March 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been struggling to create a particular object - a cable car that plays a significant role in the flow of the module. Unfortunately I've been fairly unhappy with my various attempts to model the thing (hence no picture today), though I did make some nice normal mapped rivets. I might give it another try today, depending on how it goes.

I'm also seriously considering releasing the Demon Cards 3.0 version today. The bug reports have slowed to a trickle and I feel pretty good about where things are.

Update: I threw caution to the wind and updated the module on the Vault. It's been awhile since I've released anything, so it was a bit of a thrill.

I think I have all but one level to finish up...

February 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think I have all but one level to finish up before I call my mapping finished for the module. I have lots of mysteriously labeled areas where I'm not quite sure what'll go there, but they give me enough of a hint that I'll likely come up with something interesting.

I used to be a high school science teacher long ago and I've set up a few areas where I might be able to use that ancient knowledge. I'll try not to slap anyone's wrist with a ruler, though apples on the desk are always appreciated.

I was a mapping maniac today, getting about h...

February 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was a mapping maniac today, getting about half of the remaining areas scribbled down. It's a bit of a challenge as the map is where the overall plot and the individual encounters come together. I'm leaving myself room to throw in interesting ideas and puzzles as well, as there's likely going to be some nifty things that I only find out about after the game is released.

Hopefully I can finish up the mapping and then start putting in the details such as the dialog, puzzles, and special encounters.

The Demon Card testers continue to find vario...

February 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The Demon Card testers continue to find various issues with the game, though fortunately they seem to be small and easy to fix. The latest is that the Atlantian card says it will only use up to 5 magic generators when cast, but the reality was that it would use all of them. Since that made it overwhelmingly powerful in some cases, putting in the limit of 5 will hopefully help with balance issues.

Strangely enough, I still enjoy playing the card game, even after all these years and months fiddling with the thing. I don't think there's any NWN thing I've made that I enjoy after playing through it a few hundred times.

Finally, I've decided to hunker down with graph paper and map out the main area in the new module, just like the good ol' pencil and paper days.

I'm starting to work on various placeables fo...

February 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'm starting to work on various placeables for the game. This particular one is for the mirror puzzle I was working on a long while back. You might notice that the picture is rather small, which is because I'm not particularly happy with the way it's turning out. The normal map is extremely rough and I'm not satisified with the diffuse map either. Maybe I'll get some time to fiddle with it more later.

I'm also feeling the need to do some mapping and writing soon. I really need to get some of the game's key moments better organized on paper.

I continue to play with normal mapping

February 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to play with normal mapping. This one involves the photography method I used on the moss. I salvaged some images from my dead digital camera and turned them into a diffuse and normal map. The shadow effect is great, especially as you pan the light source around. The only down side is that I got the lighting a bit off in the original, so it looks overly dark from one side.

I'm tempted to try it again as it simply looks far too cool and doesn't take that much time.

As an aside, I had a musician offer up their talents. It's being fun getting all these offers for help.

Yesterday was singularly unproductive

February 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was singularly unproductive. I did some e-mailing to the Demon Cards testers and scribbled down some ideas for a psionic combat system. Still, I didn't feel like I accomplished much.

Someone in the forums asked for a side-by-side comparison of normal maps, which I thought I'd share with everyone. This first image is a close-up view, while this second one is further back. I'm still hopeful that I can reuse the Dwarven Halls geometry - the normal mapping adds quite a bit to the feel, especially if you have a light source moving around.

It seems my whining to the Demon Card testers...

February 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It seems my whining to the Demon Card testers paid off. I got some good feedback yesterday and incorporated it into the game. I also added a new enchantment, Power Stream, which causes all players to draw an extra card for a fairly low cost. It stacks too, so multiple castings leads to a huge number of cards coming in. Pretty quickly, the play becomes frantic and huge swarms of creatures are battling it out on the playing field.

I also made the cost of the Pit Fiend a bit more steep and toned down his power a bit. He now destroys two magic generators when cast, which makes for a nail-biting experience to see if your enemy will fall before your last magic generator is destroyed.

There were other changes too, hopefully making the game a more fun and interesting experience. The lower-cost cards in particular got some attention. Right now it seems like the best strategy is to hold on until you get some big cards out. With some of the new cards, hopefully the little guys have a chance again.

Well, I worked on my book, but that's about i...

February 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I worked on my book, but that's about it yesterday. I keep waffling on how I want to do mapping. For Shadowlords, I did some elaborate Photoshop work that ended up looking really good. Of course, it was fairly pointless as no one really saw the build notes except me. I suppose I should just start with pencil and paper and go from there.

I haven't heard from the Demon Card testers in a long while. I think I'll try to see if they're done with testing and just post the thing. It feels weird sitting on it for so long.

I worked a little more on the normal maps, mo...

February 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I worked a little more on the normal maps, most of it in Photoshop. I added some Victorian-style scrollwork to the metal which gives it the look I was aiming for. Now I want to do a damaged version of it at some point.

I managed to write down the dialog I'd been thinking of yesterday, though it's not yet electronic. I find myself hauling a journal to scribble things in as I follow the kids around the house. The only way I get anything done these days seems to be when I heavily multitask.

I might take a side jaunt and work on some books and other miscellaneous placeables, just to improve the ambiance a bit. We'll see how much I can really manage.

After retexturing and normal mapping other pe...

February 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

After retexturing and normal mapping other people's work for awhile, I decided to do a little of my own. For some reasons, the organic mushrooms were pretty easy in comparison to the mechanical placeable I worked on today. I started with several techniques and finally settled on one that I was happy with. It still needs some extra work, though I'll probably finish up the normal map details using Photoshop.

I've tried a few times this morning to scribble down some extra dialog, but an annoying headache and children running around keep distracting me. I've also got to work on better documentation of the flow of the adventure. There's lots of map details I've yet to finish up.

I switched over to writing today, cranking ou...

February 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I switched over to writing today, cranking out a couple key dialogs that have been rattling around in my head for awhile. I'm also laying plans to put together an image gallery of sorts. As someone pointed out, pretty pictures seem to attract modelers like a moth to a flame.

My normal mapping experiment continues, with ...

February 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My normal mapping experiment continues, with only a short pause to mourn the loss of my digital camera. Fortunately a new one is one the way which should hopefully read the last pictures it took.

I'm having a nervous conversation with some of the NWN2 developers. Hopefully my plans to reuse some of the NWN tilesets will pan out, as it would save me a lot of work in my goal of making some of the interiors look unique.

I've also got some dialog in my head that I need to write down before I forget. I'm really trying hard to keep the amusement level up as a nice contrast to the tension and mystery.

My digital camera gave the ultimate sacrifice...

February 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My digital camera gave the ultimate sacrifice last night when I was taking pictures for normal maps. I was unscrewing it from the tripod when I heard a loud electrical sounding pop from inside the camera. It never turned on again.

I'm back to making normal maps using other techniques. The simplest is probably Photoshop, which lets me make a normal map from a texture very quickly. It works best for rough surfaces, with a little more time required if I put in some manual tweaks.

I'd really like to do some more writing today. I think I've finalized the plot of the first module for the most part and I'm eager to get it done. There's many more modules in this campaign and I'm eager to get started on them.

My little moss normal map experiment finish...

February 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My normal map experiments continue

February 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My normal map experiments continue. The etchings at the top of the wall are done completely with normal maps - the texture has no detail at all. So far I feel pretty good that I'll be able to breathe some new life into the old NWN tilesets.

Last night I sunk some time into a technique where you can make normal maps with a camera, Photoshop, and a lot of patience. We collected some of the moss that was growing around our house and brought it in for a photo shoot. I'm still working on the final images. So far the hard part seems to be turning it into a seamless texture. It's turning into painstaking work in Photoshop.

I rewrote a few more dialogs, recording them and putting them into NWN to see how it sounds. The final sound was too quiet, but otherwise seemed to work fairly well. I had someone who works in a studio volunteer their help, so I'll probably drop him a note and ask for advise. It's fun to learn all these different aspects of game development. It's also very time consuming.

I spent some time typing up some of my meetin...

February 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent some time typing up some of my meeting's scribbles. My wife was amazed at how small I could write and how many words I could fit on a page.

I also came to the conclusion that if I was going to do voice over for my dialog, some rewriting is required. When reading my own work, it seemed fine. When listening to the spoken words, it sounded unnatural and overly formal. I'm going to go back and hopefully give the dialog a more natural sound. So far, so good. I might even release a dialog or two to give people a feel for the direction I'm going.

The boring meeting continued painfully all da...

February 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The boring meeting continued painfully all day yesterday, fortunately turning into various scribbles on my part. I just need to sit down and type it up.

This morning I was feeling only semi-motivated, so I whipped up a couple new mushrooms, one of which had a new texture. Making organic looking seamless normal maps is almost fun, so I'll probably crank out a bunch and pick the ones I like the best.

The Brazilian architect is back from Carnivale and working on the first modeling project. I'm really excited to see how it turns out, but I'm having problems connecting to my e-mail at work. I may have to wait until Monday before I see anything. Sniff.

Finally, I borrowed a high quality microphone and tried to do some voice over work. After saying the same lines over and over again, I started getting pretty sick of my own voice. I'm also coming to the conclusion that voice over work takes a ton of time.

I haven't decided if I'm brave enough to make everyone hear me speak one of the main roles. It's convenient, in the sense that I don't have to organize anything to re-record dialog. I'm just not convinced I can pull off being an actor in addition to a writer, modeler, and scripter.

I was stuck in boring all day meetings yester...

February 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was stuck in boring all day meetings yesterday and again today. The good news is that it leaves me time to scribble down lengthy bits of dialog, descriptions, and other assorted writings.

Oh, I had an interview with NWN2 news a couple weeks back that I forgot to mention. I believe it requires registering for thier site. At some point I'll probably copy it to this one for posterity, assuming I get organized.

I've been trying really hard to find a way to...

February 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been trying really hard to find a way to reuse some of the great content that's out there for NWN. There's a number of highly rated hak packs that I haven't used in my modules and were created "late in the game" so that most casual players haven't seen it. The hope is that I can turn them into tiles for NWN2 or stick them together in an editor with Dragon Age, saving me a ton of time creating the raw geometry from scratch.

This image is from a test I did yesterday, creating normal maps for some of the existing textures. I had a hard time getting the "bumpiness" quite right. My first attempt was too subtle to the point where I thought something was wrong. I'm settling on this version, which seems a nice balance. I'm retexturing the diffuse maps too (what most people think of as textures), so that it's not quite so dwarven-specific.

No pretty pictures today

February 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty pictures today. I ended up writing a funny piece of dialog this morning that I'm very much looking forward to hear with voice over. I'm starting to feel that that's going to be a big part in my project. Already someone with a studio has offered up his help. My sister also has access to a studio and has offered her voice. She's got a great voice, can even sing, and I don't feel too embarrassed asking her to say some rather odd things.

I finally fixed the latest bugs from the Demon Cards game. I've just got to send out notices to all my testers that it's there. Whew. No rest for the weary.

I was beating my head against the wall for a ...

February 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was beating my head against the wall for a long time this morning, trying to figure out why I couldn't make things transparent in Photoshop. Finally I gave up and did a test render just to see how it might turn out. I think it still needs some more work, though it's slowly going in the direction I want. Sometimes there's so much to do that it seems rather daunting. I've yet to get back to the Demon Card game. Maybe today.

I think I have my first semi-real thing that ...

February 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think I have my first semi-real thing that I want to include in the final game. Ironically, one of the first pieces of custom content I made for Dreamcatcher was also a mushroom. This particular one has the top and stalk normal mapped, so it looks bumpy depending on the light position. It also weighs in at a fairly light 168 polygons.

I ended up creating two seamless textures, one for the top and another for the stalk. I figure it makes it easier to make multiple versions that way (different sizes and shapes). I'll probably create a few variations on the current theme, both different shapes and colors.

I really need to sit down and go over all the Demon Card bug reports today. I don't think it'll take a long time. It's just something that I've been putting off for awhile.

I whipped up another normal map test, just to...

February 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I whipped up another normal map test, just to make sure I wasn't crazy. This time it was a stretchy version of the snakeskin texture, stuck against the wall of a dwarven halls tile. So far I'm pretty happy with the way it's going and might start creating some things that will show up in the final module.

I've also been spending some time writing. I keep fretting that the first part of the module seems more like a book than an adventure. There's just so much background and character development that it's hard not to get wordy. I suspect I'll have to put in more dialog choices like "Blah, blah, blah. I get it already. Now shut up."

I think I've got a technique down for making ...

February 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I think I've got a technique down for making seamless normal mapped textures, one of the things I'll need for my projects. This particular ball is actually completely round, but it seems to have a bumpy surface due to the normal map. The next thing I need to master is figuring out how to take a high polygon object and turn into a low polygon object with a normal map.

Of course my fiddling comes with a cost. I've got some updates to the Demon Cards game that I haven't got to yet. None are huge, but it's work that should be done sometime soon.

I was a writing maniac yesterday, working on a couple different dialogs. One in particular was fairly humorous, which is something I try to fit a lot of into the story. It offsets some of the more suspenseful and serious tones nicely.

I've got a nice long list of things to fix in...

February 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've got a nice long list of things to fix in the latest version of the Demon Card game. Fortunately the issues continue to get more minor.

I've also got the writing bug as of late. I just finished a key dialog that I felt turned out quite well. My only worry is that I get a little overboard with the amount of writing I put into this first module. I'm trying hard to focus on the characters as closely as possible, and this first module introduces everyone for the campaign. Hopefully people will enjoy it.

My normal mapping experiments continue, thoug...

February 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

My normal mapping experiments continue, though I don't have anything too productive to show people yet. I may settle on a range of tools and approaches depending on what I'm doing.

I also had an exciting offer of help from a Brazilian architect. As I continue to plan some areas in the campaign, the art requirements seem occasionally daunting. Having a professional helping out leaves me lots more time for scripting, dialog, and the like.

I'm also hoping to test out a new microphone for possible future voice acting stuff. I haven't decided whether or not to even attempt to do any roles myself. I haven't done any acting since high school, so I'd probably want to limit myself to bit parts at best. I had a real voice actor offer up his services a long time ago, as well as a more recent person who has a studio. This is all a bit new to me, so we'll see how it pans out.

I'm trying hard not to let all the fancy things like voice and modeling distract me too much from the core story. It's what really counts in the end.

I was stuck in all day meetings yesterday and...

February 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was stuck in all day meetings yesterday and half of today. Fortunately, all is not lost as I tend to scribble down ideas when people drone on. I keep refining the plot and mapping, slowly getting increasingly happy with the plan.

I'm hoping to hear back from testers about the lastest version of the Demon Card release. The multiplayer code is a bit challenging to perfect, as complicated things usually are. I did manage to fix a weird ante bug that involved getting huge stacks of cards when you won. Oops.

I'll give everyone another taste of the model...

January 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I'll give everyone another taste of the modeling things I'm trying to learn. Here's a normal mapped fish that's been projected against a flat plane. The plane is flat, an extremely low-polygon model, that has a normal map that gives the illusion of depth. As the light moves around, it behaves as if it's sticking out, casting appropriate shadows. The top fish has the light head-on, while the lower one has it from below.

Normal mapping is already starting to be huge, the reason why Doom 3 can run on old video cards yet the creatures seem so incredibly detailed. Both NWN2 and DA are certain to have it, so I'm trying to figure out how to best use it. From a practical perspective, this particular normal mapped fish would look okay laying there dead. Since it's flat, it would look odd moving around (there's no tail geometry to flap). My next project is seeing if I can take a high polycount fish and change it on a low polycount version, yet use the normal map to make it look good.

I also have a small confession to make. I've been having a really hard time with a certain section of the story, struggling with how to fill it in. I was thinking of having a murder mystery as part of the game, then I realized the entire section doesn't really further the story much at all. I woke up this morning and a bunch of plot pieces fell into place. I immediately grabbed a pencil and scribbled things down, feeling good to be back on track again.

One of the PW folks I'm working with hit a li...

January 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

One of the PW folks I'm working with hit a limit with the NWN compiler. It turns out that if you have too many scripts or scripts that are too big, the toolset can crash when you compile things. In order to possibly help out, I've been removing unnecessary code from the Demon Cards game. It trimmed off about 700 KB from the module size too, which was nice. With luck we can finish up final testing and post this latest version to the Vault.

I was also hoping to get some more pretty normal mapped pictures. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, looking into a piece of software called Melody that helps you create low-poly models and normal maps. There's some tricky parts I'm running into, but it might save me some time.

I've been playing around with normal mapping,...

January 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been playing around with normal mapping, trying to figure out how to get all that new fangled stuff to work properly. I finally managed to take something and normal map it, though the effect is fairly subtle. Mostly if you look at the end of the barrels, you can see where it's indented a bit. I'm not completely happy with it, though I was elated to finally make something that worked after all these months.

The base model is Jupp's flintlock pistol. I'm trying hard to reuse as much NWN content as possible. The texture it uses is a bit small, so I might try to get ahold of him and see if he has a larger one handy.

The folks at Layonara Online had some problems with my latest Demon Cards build. It ran standalone just fine, but crashed the toolset when compiling. Hopefully we can figure it out today. There's also some issues that arise when you have lots of multiplayer users and heavy use, some of which may be hard to straighten out. We'll see.

Finally, I had a modeler volunteer yesterday. It's still very early, but I'd be a fool not to take him up on the offer. I just need to come up with a plan for all the pieces of custom content that I'll need and sketch them out in a little more detail. Progress feels good.

I was really sick last night, writhing on the...

January 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I was really sick last night, writhing on the floor in pain and wishing for death. Fortunately I fell into blissful unconsciousness and slept until three in the morning. I worked on the Demon Card game some more, ate a bowl of cereal, and went back to sleep.

I'm feeling much better today. The wager system is in place, hot off the presses. Basically any player can offer up a wager of either gold, ante, both, or neither. Other players can browse who's requesting a game, then pick the person and a deck they want to play. The first person can either ignore the challenge, or accept it and pick a deck.

I think it's fairly cool, for the folks who play multiplayer anyway. Hopefully the testers won't find too much wrong. I think it's the last of my big development changes for the moment, though I may start prepping a new version for NWN2.

I got the spectator code working last night

January 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I got the spectator code working last night. It took a bit of work, including creating a custom tile that keeps the spectators from interfering with the rest of the board. Players click on a pillar, see a list of the active games, and select one to watch. Messages that are sent to both players are sent to spectators as well, giving them a better feel for the game. Of course, it took about an hour and a half of coding and bug testing, so it wasn't all smooth going.

I've also been fixing and tweaking some of the specific cards as people give suggestions. My next big project is to allow different wagers in PvP games. The concept is that a player will offer up a wager (cards, gold, or both). Other players can get a list of the people and the wagers and pick one. If it's agreeable to the first party, they'll start up the game. It's a bit of work, but it should make a lot of people happy.

It was a really busy day yesterday

January 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It was a really busy day yesterday. Even more Demon Card bug reports came in, giving me a nice juicy list of things to fix. I think I got most of them, even incorporating a number of the fixes that bloodsong did for his version of the game.

The most gruesome error was the ante bug, which ended up acting strangely. I ended up removing the card only from the loser at the end (instead of at the beginning then giving it back). My worry is that the player would find a way to avoid paying the ante, so I tried to take care of any exploit, including taking all your cards out of your deck during play. If it can't find it in your deck, it'll search through your whole inventory.

It turns out the Layonara Online folks tried it out all weekend and have been giving me lots of feedback. We now have an "emergency exit" for example, allowing people to leave the play field should things go horribly wrong after a game ends.

Finally, I've been pretty busy on the NWN2 forums. It's been interesting picking up tidbits from the Obsidian developers, along with voicing my opinion where it makes sense.

I got my first extremely detailed bug report ...

January 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I got my first extremely detailed bug report on the Demon Cards game. It looks like I'll be doing some bug fixing today.

Learning how to do normal mapping is taking longer than I thought. There's lots of complexities to sort through. Finally, I did a little writing over the weekend, nothing too lengthy.

I find myself writing down a few sentences of humorous dialog every couple days. At this rate it'll take me a decade to finish, but it'll be nonstop laughs.

I've been knee-deep in trying to figure out h...

January 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been knee-deep in trying to figure out how to work with displacement maps and normal maps. They're the new fangled graphic technologies that make games like Far Cry and Doom 3 look so good. Both NWN2 and DA will most likely support at least normal mapping. My current test is taking some of the content for NWN2 and "prettying it up" in hopes that it'll work nicely for the next generation of games. So far, so good. I might even have something to show people in a day or two.

I think I'm settling on a control mechanism for a ship-to-ship combat system. I'm leaning towards real time with pause, along with a dialog-based control mechanism. To suppliment that, I was thinking about spoken text that can be turned into macros (e.g. "turn to port" or "fire cannons").

Many people have offered up their help test D...

January 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Many people have offered up their help test Demon Cards, which has been great. I've been working with the folks at Layonara Online, a fairly large persistent world (review). It's nice to see that someone's going to be able to use the changes I've made to the card game.

I've been trying to visualize playing through the Dark Waters module, trying to imagine any parts of the game that wouldn't play very well. I'm also trying to think of what issues I might face if I switched to NWN2. So far the big one is control of the various party members - there's a lot of cooperative play that might be tricky to work around.

I suppose my whining helped

January 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I suppose my whining helped. I've been getting lots of people volunteering to assist over the last couple days. Most everyone is reporting that it's working quite well (with the exception of one person who's getting crash bugs).

Just for fun, I put together a self-extracting package for the game which puts the files in all the appropriate places. You run an executable and the files get extracted to the right places. If anyone has strong feelings against such a system, let me know. I'm tempted to do it this way just to avoid the emails where people put things in the wrong folders.

I've been having fun in the new Neverwinter Nights 2 forums as of late. I also sent in a new interview to the folks at Neverwinter Nights 2 News. I'll post a link to it when it's final. I'm liking the things I'm hearing as of late with NWN2. Decisions, decisions.

Strangely enough, only a couple people popped...

January 18, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Strangely enough, only a couple people popped up to offer to test the new version of the card game. It seems that fame is fleeting and people have moved on. Sigh, I'll miss the penthouse parties, and of course the twins.

But seriously, I did manage to fix my top 10 score listing. There was a couple dumb mistakes I'd made, putting in the wrong variable names. At this point I think the only major bugs are those that already existed in the game itself. With luck I'll hear back from the testers and possibly release the new version shortly.

I managed a little writing yesterday as well, mostly room descriptions. It's a seemingly endless task which hopefully I can return to today.

Well, it looks like my top ten list is screwe...

January 17, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it looks like my top ten list is screwed up again, though I'm not sure why. I may just rip out the thing for causing me too much grief. Alternatively I could just remove the sorting part, which is what I think is causing all the trouble. Ante is working just fine again. The solution was easy after I looked at it more closely.

I think things are to the point where testers are welcome. If there's a few brave souls out there who can take a 2MB file attachment in e-mail, send me a note.

On the non-card front, I briefly found my muse yesterday and scribbled down the contents of a letter players might find while exploring. It's mostly for backstory as well as some possible foreshadowing. Fun stuff.

I did a bunch of testing and fixing yesterday

January 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I did a bunch of testing and fixing yesterday. It was exhausing work at times. It turns out I'd broken the player versus player code, which took a long while to fix. After staring at variables for a long time, it turns out I just needed to add a " - 1" to a particular place.

I was too stubborn to give up on the second bug. I wanted a "top ten players" list that included all the PCs and NPCs in the game room. I got everything working except the final sort by rank. It took about an hour to fix it, mostly because I kept forgetting a series of dumb thing. Finally by the time I got to bed, they both seemed to be working.

There's one final bug I'd like to squash today and one other feature I'd like to add. It seems like every game is played for ante, even if you ask to play for gold. I'm pretty sure that's a new accidental "feature" of my tampering with the guts of the game. I'd also like the ability to add options for PvP games where the first person can set the rules (ante, gold, etc.) and the second person can agree or reject them. The latter could be a bit complex, so it may wait for a day or two.

We'll see how far I get today.

It took a little while, but I fixed the ante ...

January 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

It took a little while, but I fixed the ante problem. It had to do with the timing of all my object creation and destruction functions. When I delayed them out over a few fractions of a second, that evidently gave the engine time enough to do it's job. Strange. Now my only problem is dealing with the shame when the little girl and her goblins keep killing me.

My "to do" list is shrinking for the card game. I started implementing a system by which people's score follows them around using tags on an undroppable card bag. It probably means ripping out most of what's already there since there's only room for one or two variables and not the win/loss record against each category of card player. Hopefully I can get some of that in place today.

Well, I fixed Higher Calling

January 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I fixed Higher Calling. It turns out that I had put in an invalid constant in the data definition script. It couldn't figure out what kind of card it was so it didn't bother casting anything.

Now I've just got that pesky ante issue to figure out. My debug code is providing me with cryptic information that doesn't make sense. Removing cards is done in a really strange fashion that involves creating an invisible object, copying the deck to it, going through the inventory to destroy the offending card, and finally copying the deck back to the player. It's really weird but seems the only way to do if I hope to remove the proper card from the proper deck.

I'm continuing to try to get the functionality of the Dragon Age toolset confirmed by the powers that be. I can always switch to NWN2 for Dark Waters, which will likely involve some benefits and trade-offs. Still, I do like working with Bioware and am hopeful things can be sorted out.

Yesterday was crazy and today wasn't much better

January 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was crazy and today wasn't much better. I did manage to unpack and assemble my computer desk at home, though my daughter didn't escape unscathed. I added some new debug code in hopes of tracking down some issues. Hopefully I can test it out tonight.

There was an interesting thread on the DA boards. I'm trying to stay calm about this, but it suggests that area creation won't be nearly as easy as I'd hoped. Hopefully clarification will be forthcoming. In the meantime, I mulled over NWN2 and the issues with using that game engine instead. It's always good to have options.

Progress continues

January 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. After a lengthy debug session, I think I have the "select a deck from a menu" system working somewhat. It lists the names of the decks you have and how many cards each one has. In theory multiplayer should work the same, though I have yet to test it.

My Higher Calling card isn't working properly and I noticed the Kobold Engineer lays down mines that cause my own creatures to blow up. That can't be good.

I'm hoping I can get some time to write today. I've been scribbling poetry in my notebook, of all things. My goal is to have a variety of things to read scattered about, providing backstory, clues, and entertainment to the player.

I've been doing some more major changes to th...

January 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been doing some more major changes to the card game code. I think I'm getting close to fixing the problem with the ante not properly removing the card. It's a bit of esoteric coding, involving the creation and destruction of objects, copying inventory about, and other mysteries best left unspoken.

Not to let bugs stop progress, I've made changes to how you select a deck when beginning a game. No longer do you have to put decks in and out of a bag (which is technically impossible now that decks are containers). Now you select your deck from a menu, which should hopefully let you choose which one you'd like to play with. I've got to redo the way multiplayer games start. Basically there's a good chance not much works at the moment.

Though it sounds like I've been ignoring the actual campaign, I worked out a pesky plot issue over the weekend. There's certain outcomes that have to happen at the end, but I wanted the player to be able to make some significant choices on how they get there. This middle part of the game is heavy on morality and choice, hopefully a nice contrast to the earlier and later parts of the game.

Progress continues

January 08, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. I dove deep into the guts of the scripting, switching things over to the inventory based way of life. I think I have most of it working properly, with the exception of losing antes. Removing cards from decks is a tricky bit of business and I'm trying to close any exploits that players might envision.

I'm about to switch over the way decks are managed and cards are bought. No longer are the manage deck areas needed as you can simply arrange your inventory. There's a few nice things about them that I'll miss, but I'm shooting hard for simplicity. Purchasing cards is also going to change. I think I'll keep the random starter deck, though increase the price considerably. The store also has a random collection of cards for sale, periodically refilling as cards are purchased.

Long term, my hope is that this approach will better work with Dragon Age. Inventory-based systems tend to be more robust, especially when dealing with a multi-module story like I will be. Short term, I'm hoping this will be picked up by persistent worlds, or players will leave servers running for players to jump in and out of as they see fit.

I made some really good progress today, finis...

January 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I made some really good progress today, finishing up creating the last of the card items. I also put in the first functional steps of switching from a variable-based to an item-based card system. To test it I went up to the game shop owner, asked for a new deck, and watched in amazement as the cards flew in. After looking more closely, however, my heart skipped a beat as I realized that it had only added 35 cards to the deck instead of 40. It turns out the maximum capacity of any container is 35 slots.

Fortunately after my panic passed, I realized that there was a simple fix. I made the cards stackable, which nicely gets around the issue. It actually works more nicely, automatically organizing identical cards together. The only limitation I'd have now is if someone wanted to have over 35 different cards, something nearly impossible if you have any reasonable number of magic generators.

Tomorrow I'll be back to adding additional functions. I'll need to remove cards for ante and selling. I'll need another function that sets the deck variables before talking to the store owner or starting a game. After that, I'd like to switch to a dialog-based method of selecting which deck you want.

The only downside to all these changes is the hak pack size has grown a bit. I think the total size of the .zip file will be less than 2 MB, which is more than before but still pretty small. I think the improved inventory makes up for it. All the differently named decks look different too. I might add a few more since they look so nice.

I'm not completely ignoring my Dragon Age project either. The ideas continue to flow and I scribble them down in a notebook. Most are for the second module, though I need to start solidifying the first one before I get too carried away.

There was yet more work on the Demon Cards ga...

January 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

There was yet more work on the Demon Cards game yesterday. I think I'm halfway through creating an item for each card. I also figured out why the various creatures weren't summoning properly. It turns out I had an extra zero in the blueprint name. Details, details.

I might tweak the stats for the Bulette a bit. After I saw it actually summoned on the playing field, I forgot how huge it was. Of course that means modifying a whole bunch of different places, but I think it's worth it. I'm still debugging the new Higher Calling enchantment. I don't think it's working properly and I'd like to figure out why.

I spent a tremendous amount of time working o...

January 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a tremendous amount of time working on the card game yesterday. It was challenging, but also strangely fun. The most time consuming part was creating an inventory icon for each card. I basically entered a trance and copied and pasted my way to completion. They don't do anything yet and I've yet to create the actual items for each card, but my quick test showed that I was indeed able to take cards and put them in a deck container.

I couldn't help myself and I created four new cards as well. Unfortunately they don't actually work yet, even though I spent a lot of time setting each one up. I forgot all the details that need to be done: creating the card model, the placeable object, the creature, the inventory icon, the data in the script, and finally all the AI evaluation functions for each. It was a good learning experience, though, and I feel much more comfortable with the scripts again.

Today I hope to do some more bug fixing to get the four new cards working. I'm especially fond of an enchantment that's hard on the bigger creatures. They tend to overwhelm the smaller ones, so the new spell should help balance the field a bit. I also want to lay the groundwork for an inventory-based card management system. The current deck management system is ponderous, so I think it will be a nice addition. It should also be more "robust", as the variables on the decks and PC currently vanish at the end of the module.

I've been working away at updating the Demon ...

January 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working away at updating the Demon Card game and preparing it for Dragon Age. My first step was to put in all the fixes I made for Demon into the latest build of the game. Now I'm laying the groundwork for an inventory-based card system. I have a few different looking deck containers along with the beginnings of the cards themselves. It's a lot of Photoshop work, copying and pasting things around, but I'm hoping it's a much more intuitive way to manage one's cards.

I also reviewed the AI scripts yesterday. It looks like I can make it more agressive without too much trouble. I'd also like to go back and balance some of the more powerful creatures or make the cheaper ones a little stronger. Right now it's pretty easy to survive until the big creatures come out.

One of the things that I felt worked really w...

January 03, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

One of the things that I felt worked really well as a mini-game was the Demon Cards game. Even after months of working on it, it was still fun to sit down and play through some games. As such, I'd like to create a similar game for Dragon Age, using the new creatures, effects, and so on, as well as tying in themes from the new campaign (e.g. pirates, seafaring, and psionics). The hard part is that I have no idea what new creatures will be in the game, so most of it would be a guess on my part.

Still, there are a number of things I'd like to work on in order to prototype a new system. I'd like to fiddle with the way cards and decks are stored. Instead of a variable-based system, I'd prefer something inventory based that's more robust. As a side effect, the persistent world people would be better able to adopt it. I'd also like to rework the AI, switching to a weight-based system. There's also a number of cosmetic and balance changes I'd like to make, including making all new cards.

Like everything else I'm working on, we'll see how ambitious I really get. I've still got lots of work on the main plot, which I continue to scribble ideas for.

I've also been playing a little of Rome: Total War. Since one of Dragon Age's features is to participate in large battles, there's a good chance that players can control the massive armies. It's an interesting form of gameplay, one that I could see as being a useful addition to my campaign. I'd never want the game to be based around it, though, as story is still king when it comes to RPGs. Still, it might be fun to lead a charge into an oncoming horde, or command your troops to storm a castle. Good times.

I've been playing Pirates! and there's a lot ...

January 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

I've been playing Pirates! and there's a lot of excellent ideas to steal away. The ship-to-ship combat is great fun and is visually stunning. If I can even approach how the ships look moving around I'll be quite happy.

There's a number of things I probably wouldn't include. Pirates! doesn't have much of a plot while my campaign will be revolve heavily around its plot. I'll also skip the dancing mini-game and boarding actions will almost certainly use whatever DA melee combat allows. Still, there's some other fine ideas that I really like: treasure maps, upgrading ships, trading, and so on.

I'm also starting to take notes for the second module in the campaign. It's more free-form than the first one and will likely have a number of side quests. It's the first module that's solidly in the pirate genre as the first is mostly land based. I've still got to finish up the latter half of the first module, as it's mostly in skeleton form. When the ideas pop into my head, however, they demand that I put them to paper lest they vanish forever.