Success! Well, of a sort, anyway

December 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Success!

Well, of a sort, anyway. There's a few minor polish issues I'd like to sort out, but it's working much better now. I can solve the puzzle, ask Heather to solve it, and the following cutscene works relatively well. I also got a second cutscene working, far better than it had previously, anyway. There's a few more issues like that, places which need better sound, visual effects, or camera placement. They work, in the sense that the story progresses, but aren't quite as polished as I'd like.

Still, the list of critical bugs continues to shrink and I have high hopes that the game can go to QA some time in January.

One of the risks of having other folks help o...

December 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

One of the risks of having other folks help out with coding is that I end up not really understanding what's going on. Sunjammer did a fine job writing the fan control puzzle long ago. Unfortunately as I upgraded to NWN2, some things didn't work right and it wasn't until moments ago that I figured out why. It turns out a part I thought was optional was really critical. So, I need to make eight gem placeables tomorrow, otherwise there's nowhere to store certain important variables.

A lot of the debugging I worked on yesterday got tested today. Some worked, others didn't, and some I didn't get to yet. The good news is that most of it turned out well and I'm pretty excited to work out the last of the bugs for this section of the game. I should still test everything through at least once, but we'll see how far I really get.

I managed some debug time today, going throug...

December 29, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I managed some debug time today, going through my quite lengthy list of issues and trying to resolve them all. I think I have the easy ones taken care of, leaving a few tricky ones left to sort out. Fortunately I'm getting the hang of things like switching control of the PC to an NPC for a time, working with the new flavor of visual effects, and so on.

I'll be away from work next week, staying home with the kids while my wife goes to a wedding in Mexico. I'm not sure what that means for my little hobby, but I'll sneak in what time as I can.

It was war, yesterday

December 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was war, yesterday. I continued to spend some time with the Remembrance: War area, testing it for the first time. NWN2 does outdoor areas fabulously well, and I'm really happy with the look of the place. Since much of the rest of the module is indoors, it's quite refreshing to get out and about.

It's also interesting to have the player control a fairly big party. I switched over to the companion system from the henchmen system, so your soldiers are all individually controllable. In terms of bugs, much of it worked right off the bat. Of course, the very end faltered and things didn't finish like they should have. So, more work for me today.

Busy day today

December 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Busy day today. I stayed up way too late, trying to get the lip synch stuff working. I have some magic fxe files for the Pirate Cards game, but they may be too difficult to create for the Dark Waters campaign. I have some wacky ideas, but we'll see how much trouble it's worth.

I tested one of the big battle scenes this morning, not getting too far, but making some good debug notes. Today I'm hoping to work my lengthy bug list and get things closer to being ready for QA. Busy, busy.

I haven't posted the update yet, as I got dis...

December 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I haven't posted the update yet, as I got distracted by a Eureka moment this morning. It turns out I can add my own lip synching to the game. It uses the existing lip synch animation files, so it ends up looking like a badly-dubbed Kung-Fu movie. Still, there's value in having some facial animation, rather than the NPC standing bolt upright and psychically projecting the words.

The tricky party, of course, will be to somehow automate the generation of these files. Perhaps I can work on that today, along with the incredibly long list of bugs I generated over the last few days.

Update: Okay, the latest version of the Pirate Cards game is available, hopefully fixing a bunch of bugs and adding some nifty new features. My favorite new one is the Card Fanatic NPC. You can give him a deck and he'll play against you, allowing you to try out all sorts of deck combinations when playing singleplayer.

Merry Christmas to the folks who celebrate th...

December 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Merry Christmas to the folks who celebrate that present-laden holiday. Somewhere between the travel, food, and present opening I managed a bit more work on the Pirate Card game. It was like peeling an onion, discovering yet more bugs as the layers came off.

I also managed to add a neat new feature, the addition of a Card Fanatic NPC who you can give decks to play against you. That way you can try out all sorts of strategies. Strangely enough, you can take control of his character during a game and the AI will play both sides. I also fixed various uninstall options, 0 HP bugs, store bugs, and many more.

I'll upload the update tomorrow sometime, as the day is winding down and I'm losing the battle against sleep.

'Twas the night before Christmas and boy have...

December 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

'Twas the night before Christmas and boy have I found a bunch of bugs. I got deeper into the dungeon than I ever had yesterday, working my way from the 1st level to the 5th. There were some pretty massive problems along the way, doors that didn't transition and henchmen that vanished for starters. Still, many of the bugs are pretty easy to fix and some areas worked much better than I'd hoped. In between the various pre-Christmas activities, I'm hoping to sneak away and work on fixing things.

The Pirate Cards game seems to be doing well. I got an e-mail this morning from the German gaming magazines PC Action and PC Games, interested in writing up an article on it. Pretty neat.

Magnus continues to play with his new voice library, so expect some choral music in there from time to time. Derek's latest voice work is hysterically funny, as usual. Things are coming along nicely.

The debugging continues

December 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The debugging continues. There's entire levels that I haven't looked at with any detail, and sure enough there's massive bugs. Here's some sample ones, just to give you a feel for what I've been up to:
- Three doors placed in a single doorway
- Placeable sounds broken
- Journal entries not working
- Rename Armoire to Dumbwaiter
- Door near theater goes to nothing
The list goes on and on.

Fortunately I took care of a bunch of those bugs yesterday and this morning. Our car trip got delayed, so I spent what time I could working on the module. All the bugs above are fixed, though I have some trickier ones still ahead. Maybe in between the Christmas festivities I can sneak in some more debug time.

Theoretically I was going to have a "me day" ...

December 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Theoretically I was going to have a "me day" today, spending a lot of time working on the module. I did get some time, though, in between the pre-Christmas family celebrations. This morning I hung out at a coffee place, writing for the end of the third module. Later in the day I worked on debugging and did my first bit of tileset work.

The Shadow Fortress tileset is the only one with multiple levels, which is needed for the first module. The catch is that I wanted something that looked more like a chasm instead of just a short drop down. I ended up removing the floor and extending the walls a bit. The ceilings went as well, as I wanted It was surprisingly simple to do. I suppose if I needed to in the future, I could whip up a quick little tileset. No need so far.

I'm on the road tomorrow and I got some chocolate-covered espresso beans in my stocking. It's a winning combination for lots of writing time, I hope.

It's finally out

December 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's finally out. You can grab the Pirate Cards game here and read the interview here. It's been awhile since I've released anything, though I think I remember the drill. Already the bug reports have started to pour in.

Today's Pirate Card is the Gnome Chief, the pinnacle of Gnomish honorifics. Bring one of these out and your other gnomes will be significantly boosted. Plus they're cute and funny looking.

As for today, I'd love to get back into working on the first module. I've set it aside for a few days due to Pirate Cards testing and I have a long list of things I want to work on. I'm taking some time off later this week and hopefully I can sink in some serious testing time. I'd love to get things ready for the QA folks early next month.

I have absolutely no time today

December 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I have absolutely no time today.

The good news is that I sent in an interview and the Pirate Cards installers off to the Vault. With luck, it'll all magically appear tonight or tomorrow sometime.

I decided I'd had enough

December 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I decided I'd had enough. I couldn't sit on the Pirate Card game, waiting for the GUI issues to be resolved. I did a quick Google search, found the NSIS installer, taught it to myself, and then made an install/uninstall package that puts everything in their proper places and cleans up afterwards.

I'm also going with two versions - there's a full version that includes high-resolution images for the cards, voice acting, and music. It weighs in at close to 18 MB. The Lite version uses lower resolution images for the cards and is audio free. That version is a mere 3.5 MB, suitable for even dial-up users.

I want to do some more testing to make sure it all works okay. I'll probably get in touch with Maximus and see if I can get a blurb up on the Vault. Still, I have high hopes that this thing will be released sooner rather than later.

Since I have a bit of time this morning, I may continue the debugging of the first module that I started yesterday. Perhaps I'll treat myself and play the official campaign a bit more.

I got slammed with work and family over the l...

December 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I got slammed with work and family over the last couple days. As I get older, I find that it's more challenging to find gaming time. I still haven't continued the official campaign since I left off, instead focusing on my campaign in the few moments I have.

The psionic system feels pretty done at this point, at least for the first module. I like the way it's turned out and I added a few custom visual effects so that it feels interesting and unique.

I've moved on to more general debugging. Things are still pretty broken, with lots of problems just getting from point A to point B. Still, individual sections seem to be working better, though there's still big sections that remain untested. With the holidays coming up, I plan on taking a lot of time off from work. I've even coordinated a full day exempt from kid watching with my wife. Hopefully that time can be well spent on the module.

My psionic experimentation continues

December 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My psionic experimentation continues. I've had fairly good luck so far, but run into some odd targeting issues. I stayed up way too late trying to figure out why the Pyrokinetic feat only targets the person using it, while the item spell can target others. I may end up splitting some of the more unusual options into multiple feats for targeting purposes. Or I may just continue to fiddle into the wee hours of the night.

Last night I was getting pretty bleary-eyed but had some fun Dominating some mindflayers and getting them to turn on each other.

Success! Psionics are working, relatively sp...

December 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Success! Psionics are working, relatively speaking. Right now they're item-activated, which I'd like to turn into a feat instead (you get better animations with feats). The TLK issues are tricky, but I think I can work around them. I may also need to create two separate feats for some powers, depending if you're using it on yourself or a hostile creature.

I also managed a bit of testing, making endless lists of things to tweak, polish, and fix. I also finally caught up with e-mail yesterday and it looks like the voice actors are soon going to be sending a variety of goodies. Fun, fun, fun!

Update: I managed to get feat-based psionics to work too. I may leave both options in (either use the item or the feat), as the only real difference is the animation. Some of the visual effects need some polish, but I'm liking what I see so far. This particular effect is telekinesis, using the Bigby spell effect.

Okay, I admit it

December 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I admit it. I got sucked into the official campaign. I woke up at 4:30 yesterday morning and played every free moment until 10 at night, starting again before 5 am this morning. I'm towards the end of the second act and enjoying myself considerably.

Orlando_X has been at the forefront of experiments with TLK files and has managed to get them working properly. For those of you who don't know what a TLK file is, it's what controls the words that appear for spells and such, and is necessary to get them working right. I duplicated his efforts myself and managed to get an item casting a test spell in the game. Today I'd like to sink some time into getting the psionic system working. I think I'm going to go with an item-based approach, so you'll use an item to use the psionic power. You can add it to your quick cast window or examine it for a description of the powers. We'll see how it goes.

I did something very unusual today

December 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I did something very unusual today. I played the game.

My daughter was sick, and so she spent a lot of time on my lap sleeping away. Fortunately NWN2 plays well with just the mouse and occasional key press. I managed to make it to the end of the first act, finally.

I'm having a good time. There's been a few tactically interesting fights. I've run into a few ideas I'd like to steal along the way. The character interactions started a bit slow, though they've improved. I'm not sure I'll get this same amount of time in a stretch, but I'd like to finish the official campaign before I finish my own.

I managed a few more pieces of custom content...

December 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I managed a few more pieces of custom content, though the madness of my life continues. My apologies to everyone who hasn't heard from me in awhile, as I haven't had a chance to check e-mail for way too long.

Hopefully this weekend I can dig into the module a bit more, especially doing some testing of various areas. There's still a lot that I'm fairly certain is broken and I'd like to weed that out before turning over to QA.

I made a good chunk of progress yesterday

December 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made a good chunk of progress yesterday. The candles now work, after carefully going in with a hex editor and making sure the various meshes were named properly. I also have the mirror puzzle mostly working, though your sidekick Daniel still spouts out nonsense due to tlk issues. I like the new beam effect as well. I'm using the default Holy beam, which I think makes a nice looking effect.

Finally, I got a couple new models into the game. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, and can ususally figure out why the dreaded Cube of Mystery appears. More often than not, it's that meshes aren't named properly or the textures are missing. It even looks like I'll be able to import in a fair amount of NWN content without too much difficulty. Creating a single mesh for the model only seems to be required when doing LODs.

I also realized that it's been nearly a week since I've checked e-mail. Between work being crazy and everyone in my family taking turns being sick, it's been a busier week than most. Hopefully I can get on that today.

Update: For any of you viewers who haven't picked up a copy of NWN2 yet, GoGamer.com is running a $30 special today.

I continued my fiddling with tlks, making the...

December 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continued my fiddling with tlks, making the discovery that if you leave off the ".tlk" extension, the module won't open. I still haven't been able to get the tlk entries to work with 2da files, though they work with dialog and other things, which is a plus.

I managed to get a bit of time with the mirror puzzle, which is working better than before. The light beam is a bit dramatic, but easily changed. Mirrors move around. I haven't been able to solve the puzzle quite yet, though it's on my list of things to look into. I'm hopeful that the custom content issues can be sorted out and I can focus in on fixing bugs again.

Patch day

December 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Patch day.

I spent long hours struggling with it today. One of the risks of doing cutting edge stuff is that odd things seem to happen regularly. After patching this morning, the module wouldn't open. I fiddled for a bit and ended up removing the reference to the tlk on my non-patched computer.

So, we're good for the moment, but there seems to be some issues involving the tlk files. I need it for implementing custom spells, which the psionic system uses. I managed to get a simple tlk file working, but only partially. Obviously more experimentation is needed.

Other than that, I tilted a sewer entrance to make a vent. That's about it.

No huge update today

December 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

No huge update today. I tweaked the script for the blunderbuss a bit, making sure it's appropriately nasty when used up close. I also worked on the fan and whipped up a big pipe to go with it. It's best appreciated when rotating like a fan should.

The only remaining piece of custom content that I'm a little nervous about are the psionic powers. I think I get to wait for the next patch to clean a few things up. Until then, there's endless bugs to fix and various areas to polish.

My sniffles are slowly fading, and I managed ...

December 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My sniffles are slowly fading, and I managed a bit of work somewhere along the way. This morning I had a few hours to myself and obsessively worked on Raz's blunderbuss. It was mostly ready for texturing and after a couple hours of Photoshop work I got it in the game.

While it was nice to have yet another flintlock model, I wanted the blunderbuss to be unique. Currently it's almost an area of effect weapon, damaging nearby targets at the expense of being ineffective at long ranges. I still need to tweak the scripts a bit, but I'm getting fairly happy with the outcome.

The flintlock positioning is challenging, as I'm stuck with the crossbow stance and animation. I ended up moving it about, rotating it, and resizing in order to fit that particular grip. Tricky.

It was strangely satisfying penning up goblins between crates and then blasting away. Poor little critters.

The Heavens parted, a host of angels descende...

December 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The Heavens parted, a host of angels descended, and there were high-fives all around. Flintlocks are in the game.

I'm not sure exactly what my problem was before. I ended up using one of Raz's lower poly pistols and made sure to remove the hook points (which seem to cause problems with the current version of import/export tools). I copied one of the crossbow rows in baseitems.2da and overrode the sling entry. Eventually I added my own weapon sounds as well. The animations are pretty good, using the crossbow stance. While it would be nice to tweak it, I can live with what I've got.

There's a few "gotchas". It looks like I'll have to override the arrow model that flies to the target. It seems that crossbows, bows, and the new flintlocks all share the model, so I'll probably just make it invisible. It's hard to see, anyway, and the arrow trail is good enough. I thought for a moment that I could add in new ranged weapons, but I get "out of ammo" messages which suggests it's hard coded. I had already planned on not having slings in the game, so it's not a big deal.

Other than that, I actually played a bit of the official campaign after being prompted via e-mail the other day. I got past my stuck point (Note to self: open all doors) and am off to the Old Owl Well area. I had to pick up the bard for comic relief. You can't have enough codpiece jokes.

As for today, I'm going to try and integrate all these new pieces of custom content into the real module. It's like buying Christmas presents for myself.

I've been sick as a dog the last couple days,...

November 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been sick as a dog the last couple days, though somehow along with popping Advil like candy and sleeping way too much, I managed a bit of work on the module. There's some key pieces of custom content I need for the first module, many of which I whipped out yesterday and this morning. This screenshot is a bit dim, but it shows off a simple cannon model, a burned-out crystal, and a die. I actually made six versions of the die placeable, one per face. As to why I need all those odd things, I suppose you'll have to play the module.

This morning I also did something I wasn't sure was possible, I created an animated placeable. It's a fan, with slowly rotating blades. I'm limited to using existing animations, and there's a spinning rock that I ended up editing and putting in my own things. I still need to texture it, but that shouldn't take too long.

The voice actors have also been quite busy as of late. Derek has been cranking out voices like nobody's business and I got in touch with GingerBeer to work on more of Robert's voices. One of the things I'd like to have are custom voice sets for the main NPCs, so they don't sound weird in battle and such.

I also have a good chunk of bugs I need to sort out. The mirror puzzle will be the death of me, I'm sure. I now have the light beam working, but the mirrors aren't moving and I can't test to see if the beam reflects.

Today's Pirate Card is Press Gang, a fun litt...

November 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today's Pirate Card is Press Gang, a fun little card that lets you take control of your foe's creatures. It can be a little expensive to cast, as the cost scales with the cost of your opponent's creature. Still, there's nothing so satisfying getting your enemy's dragon to roast its former master.

I sunk some more work into debugging and testing. At this point, you can get from the beginning of the module into the main action, though there's still some major show-stopping bugs after that. I also coded some trap laying workarounds for the final battle, though I need to test it. I have more dialog and cutscenes to polish. Like most things in life, the key is to plod along until it's done. Slowly getting there.

I've been remiss, so here's a quick Pirate Ca...

November 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been remiss, so here's a quick Pirate Card update. Pint o' Grog provides one of your creatures a short-lived but powerful boost. They gain fifty hit points and a serious attack bonus, making them a serious obstacle for even the biggest of foes. It makes for a great early game card, when you can only summon a tiny little creature.

I made excellent progress yesterday and it looks like the entire prologue can be played through. I yet again swore that I'd never string so many heavily scripted semi-cutscenes together. I still need a bit of polish, fiddling with the cameras and animation. The main issue for me is that it takes a minute or two to load up the game and test out my changes, making the "guess and check" method a lousy troubleshooting approach.

As for today, I plan on more bug fixing and polishing of the various conversations. I still need to do serious QA work of all the areas before I can turn it over to the real testers. I'm still not sure how much more there is to do. The final battle requires tweaking and the "school" level probably needs a bit of work. It's been so long since I made the areas, retesting them is almost refreshing.

Another quick update

November 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Another quick update. I spent hours yesterday working on the various introduction cutscenes. I have a much better feel for how to get them to work right. There's a ton you can do, such as having carefully placed cameras and setting animation for a variety of characters. Like the rest of the toolset, it's quite powerful, but requires lots of time and attention to details. Hopefully I can get all the prologue finished today and start in earnest with the main module.

Somewhere between all the Thanksgiving festiv...

November 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Somewhere between all the Thanksgiving festivities and watching my son play with his new Wii, I managed to sneak in some development time. Mostly I've focused on the prologue, getting the various camera angles and character animations working, along with getting the scripting kinks worked out. It's coming along and I think with a bit more work I'll actually be able to get into the main action for the module. It's nice to feel like I'm actually making progress.

The amusing bugs continue

November 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The amusing bugs continue. This morning I discovered one of my NPCs having problems sitting in a chair. It's a fairly common problem, so I'll ponder the available workarounds or perhaps wait for a patch. The good news is that the first section of the prologue actually works, moving me from place to place, possessing NPCs for their conversations, and so on. Of course, then it got stuck, leaving me invisible next to an elf sitting on air.

It's a family weekend for me, celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. I'm not sure how much development time I'll manage over the next few days, but I suspect I can sneak down on occasion.

I continue to have fun with custom content, w...

November 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to have fun with custom content, where "fun" means all sorts of odd bugs. Today's involves the candle model, which I turned into a torch. There's part of the campaign that has the players moving around with dim lights, so it's one of those required items. Unfortunately there seems to be a problem with the hook points where the flame appears. If I don't have a hook point, I can't attach a flame. If I do have a hook point, I get a weird model error. I'm sure I'll work it through, though for the moment I have Bizarro Candle.

I made some good progress yesterday, fixing and finding more bugs. The mirror puzzle is dramatically broken, though I took some steps to take care of it. The switch from 10 meter to 9 meter tiles had me multiplying position values by .9 in my scripts. I still have errors where it can't find targets, so I've got some work to do.

Other bugs include issues with cutscenes breaking horribly, custom content showing up in the toolset but not the game, and all around weird behavior.

There's a fun game in there somewhere. I feel like I'm uncovering the muck and slime to find the gem underneath it all.

I was incredibly productive today

November 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was incredibly productive today. I found and fixed a bunch of bugs. I discovered that the bulk of the sound clips were in the wrong format, so I did a mass conversion and added in the new ones that I've gotten recently. Right now I'm waiting on one major NPC voice and the first module is pretty well done. I still have a long way to go and much to polish and test, but it's not feeling quite so overwhelming.

I spent some time with the final battle last night. It was quite challenging, with my entire party laying dead in short order. Still, the AI generally behaved and acted in interesting ways. If the old NWN commands to create traps don't appear shortly, I think I have a workaround. The goal is to make the final battle epic and requiring great strategy. I also want to make sure that the careful player can take advantage of a number of things to get through without too much trouble.

Since I'm crazy busy, I'll whip out another P...

November 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Since I'm crazy busy, I'll whip out another Pirate Card of the day. Today's is Death Pact, an unusual little card that can turn the tide late in the game. If the playing field is littered with corpses and it's time to tidy up, this card will get rid of them in addition to giving you life for each one cleared. The gotcha, of course, is that there has to be bodies on the field. It makes for a poor early-game card, when you have little manna and there's not a corpse on the screen.

Yesterday I did some more bug testing and fixing, boring but necessary. I also did some experiments with how modules and campaigns work. I was sorely tempted to break the first module down into a series of smaller modules so that each chunk could be quickly tested. Sadly it would be too much rework to be worth it. I'm pretty sure I'll do that for the second module, though.

Derek, one of the new voice actors, is sending along some great stuff. I've encouraged him to improvise a bit and some of the material is comedy gold. Yesterday it was a father, a cat, and a bartender. We'll see what tomorrow holds. I still need to attach it all to dialog, but it's nice to have the material ready to go.

I'm frantically busy today. Hopefully I can find the time to work on fixing a few bugs. Some of the testers are having problems with the Pirate Card game, probably because the install process is so confusing. I'm sure we'll sort it out.

Slowly getting there.

Yesterday was a bit slow, though I managed to...

November 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was a bit slow, though I managed to work on different parts of the campaign. For starters I got the burn scripts working. Mostly it was a matter of getting the right visual effects. While I was there, I added a damage-specific death effect. It's still not perfect, but burning things go up in a puff of smoke, cold makes them freeze, and so on. There's still some odd issues, so I may go back to tweak it later.

I sunk a bunch of time trying to get custom spells to work. One worked great, right out of the box, but nothing else seems to work. I toyed with going to a boring "Activate Item" approach, but it means I can't have custom spell effects. I've opted to put that away until after the next patch.

I'm testing this morning, making yet another huge list of bugs to fix. I fixed a few yesterday. The set items now work properly, giving additional bonuses when you wear more than one. Hopefully I can find some more time to work on it today.

Yet again I'm reminded how I get a little obs...

November 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yet again I'm reminded how I get a little obsessive sometimes. There's only one underwater area in the first module, yet I sunk a bunch of time making it just right. I finished up the shells and got some kelp in, retexturing one of the trees in order to get the color just right. They sway nicely in the "current".

I also got a nice little present from the folks at Atari/Obsidian. They gave me a second copy of NWN2 for services unmentionable in public (get your mind out of the gutter). That let me test the Pirate Cards game in a multiplayer setting. The good news is that it worked like a charm. My first character set up an offer for a game (not playing for gold or ante). The second picked it from the list of standing games and selected a deck. Finally the first character got a pop-up conversation saying who the challenger was and then accepted, picking a deck as well. It's complicated, but neat when it all works.

I hunkered down last night and got serious ab...

November 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I hunkered down last night and got serious about custom content. I'm getting a much better feel for what things to watch for, what's required, and so on. I love being able to have the toolset open, export a new version of the model, and re-select the appearance to see the updated version. When I first put the crab into the module, it was this massive thing that took over the screen. It took a couple tries before making it something tiny and cute.

Most of these are straight NWN ports, which turned out pretty well with normal maps. I haven't bothered with higher resolution version, though I'd like to try that next. There's a bunch of high-res Sigil placeable models I could work on. The hardest part with NWN2 modeling so far is that models are almost always a single mesh and you can only use a single texture per mesh. That means lots of the NWN models will need to be retextured if people want it in the game.

I finally got a flintlock in the game, as a placeable. I'm not sure if the current modeling tools don't handle weapons well yet, or maybe I'm using the tools incorrectly. In either case, Adinos volunteered to lend a hand, which is much appreciated.

My to-do list is miles long, as usual. I have a bunch of voice actors to get back to, music to put into the game, areas to flesh out with these new placeables, and endless QA work. I'm hoping there's a fun game in there somewhere. It's amazing how much work and how many details it takes to get there.

I'm going to do a quick post, in case I don't...

November 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm going to do a quick post, in case I don't get another chance today. I've been very busy, but in a positive way. I worked more on custom content, getting some NWN placeables ready for NWN2. I think I have the critical stuff for undersea areas. I'd still like to get low-poly versions of the Sigil models bundled with the high-poly ones. Sadly the model import/export tools don't seem quite good enough.

The offers from voice actors are pouring in, faster than I can respond. I filled in another NPC's dialog today. It's looking like nearly every character in the first module will have voice acting, which is truly remarkable. Big kudos to all the folks who have offered help.

I'm also plugging away at the module itself, sprucing up the place with the new organic placeables. I have three different types I'm working with - "wall goo", "pods", and "mushrooms". Combining them together makes a very nice effect.

I'm forgoing the daily pirate card image to s...

November 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm forgoing the daily pirate card image to show off a couple new placeables I worked on today. The mushroom is actually a NWN placeable that Schazzwozzer worked on long ago. The NWN2 version has been updated with a normal map, texture map, and specular map. It looks great, in my opinion, especially with proper lighting. I also whipped up a star fish, something I'll need in addition to various shells, kelp, and so on.

Other than my custom content forays, it mostly feels like I'm doing a lot of bug fixing. Yesterday I when through a list and fixed most of them. This morning I sat down to play and found a bunch more. Many of them are show-stopping bugs, and a few of them are really bizarre. Conversations aren't firing or are greatly delayed. Areas that should be walkable seem to be blocked. So, I've got a bit of work to do.

Hopefully I can catch up with some of my e-mails today too. I'm a bad, bad boy.

One of the nice things about having all these...

November 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

One of the nice things about having all these Pirate Cards graphics is that I can whip out a screenshot on a dime. Today's card is Lighting Bolt. It's simple, cheap, and very effective. It does a whopping twenty points of damage to the biggest creature. Even better, if there's no creature on the playing field, it'll hit your opponent's avatar. It's an easy way to get an early edge in the game. Still, you can only have four in your deck and it's often better to have creatures which deal damage turn after turn. One of the nice things about the game is that there's lots of different ways to win.

It's been crazy busy today and I'm completely failing to keep up with my various correspondences again. I did manage a bit of QA time this morning. Lots of things don't work properly, though some things miraculously did. The henchmen can now be controlled and come back to life after combat, just like the official campaign.

If one party member survives a fight, the plan is to have them come back to life. I used to think this made combat too easy, until I was completely wiped out by poor planning on my part. Saving periodically is a good idea.

I'm going to try to hunker down and work on fixing the major bugs, getting things to a point where QA can actually play through a bit. Until then, it's mostly just a collection of pretty areas that don't work right.

Very quick update today

November 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Very quick update today. I managed to get in more of the placeables from NWN1. Custom content is pretty slow compared to other things, and I spent a lot of time yesterday fiddling with MDB, 2DA, and DDS files. Lots of little details have to be just right, and I'm still having problems with a few pieces of content.

Today's picture shows off a couple "ambiance" placeables, trying to go for a Geiger-like organic look. I'm really enjoying NWN2's flexibility in scaling placeables. I haven't added tinting yet, though I'm not sure it's entirely needed.

Just a quick update

November 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Just a quick update. I'm back from Portland, where I managed a little work on the module and a bit of actual playing. The big fun was working with the model import tools. They're still a bit touchy, and some models import file, while others don't at all. My first was from the Sigil placeable set, way back when I created some high-poly versions of the NWN placeables. The privy wasn't entirely for comedic value. I decided a massive underground complex would seem a bit silly without appropriate, er, facilities.

I went on, bringing over some of the models I'd made for the prototype. Sadly the flintlocks aren't coming across, though I don't know why. Hopefully we'll get some better import tools as the weeks go on. Still, after working with the default placeables, getting any new stuff in is loads of fun.

The Blood Master is one of the two fun little...

November 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The Blood Master is one of the two fun little vampires in the Pirate Card game. It has the unique power of becoming greatly strengthened whenever it kills an opponent. It makes for an excellent addition to an undead deck.

I was a modding machine today, waking up at 4:30 in the morning and working until my family woke up. All the areas are "done", meaning I've added sound, placeables, lighting, and tweaked all the creatures. It's a good feeling.

I still have much to do before I can pass the module off to QA. There's lots of scripting changes to NWN2. Chatting with the creator of Infinite Dungeons, he passed along a good workaround for the absence of the create trap scripts. I also want to test out the new companion scripts, especially the parts of the module where you take control of another character. Finally, there's the custom content. So far I haven't added anything new, but at a minimum I have to get the flintlock pistols in the game.

Somewhere in there I want to play the official campaign. Maybe I'll get a little time at grandma's house, though I promised my wife I wouldn't foist the kids on her mom while I play on the computer. At least not for the entire time.

Getting back to the Pirate Card of the day, t...

November 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Getting back to the Pirate Card of the day, today's is the Steel Automata. It's an ideal defensive card, rugged and giving an AC bonus to all nearby creatures. It works well with decks that deal non-creature damage, such as the infamous Hurricane, Pyrotechnic Blast, and Lightning Bolt.

I repeatedly come to the conclusion that I simply don't have enough time for everything. Today I'm behind on e-mail though I've made great progress on the first module. I'm finishing the polish on the last few areas and beginning to tip-toe into converting to the new functions. I swapped in the death system used in the official campaign (all members in the party must die before having to reload). It may get swapped out again if QA proves it to be too easy or difficult. I also put in the new companion system, so that you can directly control the members of your party.

There's still a few difficult choices I need to make, such as working around the lack of a CreateTrap function. There's a few places where I use such a thing, though I might have an acceptable alternative.

I'm off to Portland with the kids this weekend, seeing the Star Wars exhibit at OMSI. Strangely, that might give me more time than usual to work on the module, as the grandparents tend to hog the kids for themselves. Plus they have high-speed Internet access, so I won't drop off the grid. Isn't technology marvellous?

My life is far too busy, as proven by my post...

November 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My life is far too busy, as proven by my posting via laptop next to my kid's bath. Today was actually pretty productive. Every area from the prototype has been transferred over. I actually managed to make a passable shipboard scene, though I may redo it with a bit of custom content.

Most of the areas have had at least preliminary work, though of course they need even more. I even managed a bit of testing, quickly making note of a dozen bugs in a few minutes. The good news is that some of the cooler effects actually worked great, though more tweaking will be needed for sure.

In terms of tomorrow, I have more areas to polish. I'd also like to fiddle with some custom content. There's a utility that tilts placeables that I'd like to try, along with getting flintlock pistols in the game.

It looks like I have a bit more fiddling arou...

November 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It looks like I have a bit more fiddling around before the Pirate Card game is released, so I'll continue my Card of the Day awhile yet. Today's is Pyrokinetic Barrier. It's an "anti Zerg rush" sort of card, for those familiar with the Starcraft reference. It cheaply puts out a barrier that damages attackers, killing weaker ones in a few turns. I ended up toning the spell down considerably as it made it nearly impossible to win with small creatures. Now it just makes it difficult. Against huge creatures with lots of hit points, though, it's not as useful.

I hunkered down and worked on getting Pirate Cards ready to ship. My big issue at the moment is that the install requires players to make changes that could cause problems in the future. I also have files in five different directories, which is rather confusing. Hopefully in a patch or two we'll get better resource management. In the meantime, I may have a few people do some double-checking and make sure there's no game-stopping bugs. I briefly panicked when the GUI seemed to break, but after recompiling, started working again.

I continue to play the official campaign, which is more fun than I'd hoped. There are certainly traditional RPG elements and clichés, but I'm having a good time and learning things along the way.

I managed a bit of time on the conversion over the weekend. At this point, I'm mostly working on adding placeables, lighting and so on. I did have fun with a puzzle/trap area. It's deadly if you're not paying attention, but the player should have plenty of warning.

Work continues on the first module

November 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues on the first module. At this point all but one area has been transferred over. I've learned a lot about bringing things from NWN, including carefully going through the inventory of containers so that they have the right icons and such. I still have lots of areas to add detail to, placeables and lighting and so on. I also need to make sure things work as expected. Some from NWN simply aren't going to be possible in NWN2 due to custom animations. For those, I'm working around as best I can.

I'm still waffling on the Pirate Card game. I feel guilty knowing that any install I do now will break things for folks. Hopefully we can see a new patch that gives better options for custom content.

I'm still forging ahead with the conversion, in between playing the game a bit. There's still so much to do before it's ready for QA to take a look at it. Slowly getting there.

I've been crazy busy as of late

November 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been crazy busy as of late. I managed a bit of time today, adding placeables and such to a bedroom I had forgotten on the third level. I also played around with various resource configurations for the Pirate Cards game, coming to the conclusion that the best solution is a patch that makes things easier. I might still release a beta version before then, but it'll come with big warning messages that not cleaning up properly may cause your game to stop working.

My guilty pleasure continues to be playing the official campaign when I'm at all able. I'm getting some neat ideas from how they did certain things. It's also interesting how they structured the campaign - a lot of little modules strung together with a map and keeping track of variables. I also like some of their creative uses of placeables. The cavern pools look quite nice.

It's finally here

November 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's finally here.

After installing, I quickly loaded up the Pirate Cards module to make sure nothing exploded. Then I thought I'd take a peek at the official campaign, if only for a minute. I went through the character creation steps, admiring the various outfits for each class, and jumped into the tutorial.

Then something funny happened. I started really enjoying myself, doing the various challenges and snickering at the subtle humor. By the time I finished the tutorial, I realized it was past my bedtime and I hadn't done anything with Dark Waters.

This morning I was a bit better, getting the various pieces of custom content working for the Pirate Cards game. It all seems to work, with the only downside being a rather complex installation process. There's five different directories where things need to be put. I may end up throwing together an installer of some sort. The good news is that it's fun. Here's a peek at a larger version of the game, custom GUI and all.

I'm going to see if I can resolve the packaging issues and put together a beta test, hopefully in the next day or two. In the meantime, I'm going to sneak back into the official campaign whenever I get the chance.

Today's card of the day is Voodoo Chant

November 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today's card of the day is Voodoo Chant. It's an interesting "double whammy" card, damaging multiple creatures in play and giving the resulting life to your avatar. If the battlefield has a number of creatures in play, it can make a huge difference in the game, especially if most of the creatures aren't yours. It's also a card that scales with the power you have. Early on, it only affects a few creatures. If you have many generators, you can affect all the creatures in play. Needless to say, deciding when it's best to play the card can be somewhat of a challenge.

Well, people are starting to get NWN2 today, though I suspect I get to wait another day due to overnight delivery. I'm eager to poke around and get all the improvements from the pre-release version.

Yesterday I made a huge amount of progress importing things from the prototype. Most of the 6th level has the key placeables, creatures, and doors ported over. I cleaned up a bunch of items, giving them icons and such. I also created a handful of new items whose descriptions I'd written up during the drive back from the coast last weekend.

Today I hope to get the new items in, continue the transfer from the prototype, and generally continue the grand conversion. Fun, fun, fun.

Today is the day, with NWN2 hitting the shelv...

October 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today is the day, with NWN2 hitting the shelves and two long years of waiting coming to the end. I'll probably get the game tomorrow via overnight delivery, which is fine with me as I have plenty to do with just the toolset. In honor of the day, I'm dressed up like a pirate, though some may think it's Halloween, we all know better.

I've saved one of the best Pirate Card creatures for last, the Dragon. It's one of the best cards in the game, though casting it exacts a heavy price. It "eats" fifty hit points, first from your creatures and then from your avatar. If you have no creatures in play and your avatar is near death, casting a Dragon is a quick way to kill yourself. If you manage to cast it, though, it can quickly end a game, destroying nearly everything in its path. One of my favorite card fights was between a Dragon and Hellspawn, which was truly epic.

I managed a bit of work on the module, getting the final level polished up. I think I like the outdoor look the best, which is mostly textured, though it needs some placeables, sounds, and so on. The big push for today will be to transfer over everything from the prototype. I have five areas worth of stuff, so it might take awhile. After that, it's adding placeables and polish to get the look right.

I'm not quite sure what I'll do once the game appears. I'll probably take a day or two to get the Pirate Card game ready, and then see how testing goes. Hopefully a full release can happen within a week. It might be nice to actually play the official campaign somewhere in there too, though I might have to take time off work or something equally crazy. No rest for the weary.

I'm back from the beach, with lots of work do...

October 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back from the beach, with lots of work done and endless things to catch up on. But first, the Pirate Card of the day. The Pirate King is similar to the other "leader" cards that give a bonus to others of its kind. There's a number of different pirate creatures, so it's quite easy to create a pirate-themed deck. To top it off, he gets to wear a cool hat.

I spent most of the three days I was away working on a single area. It was huge, and outdoors. Any outdoor area requires lots of work shaping, texturing, and adding grass and trees. Texturing in particular is very time consuming, though the results are pretty amazing. After that I imported everything from the prototype and tweaked their appearance. As it is, it's one of the areas I'm most proud of.

This morning I woke up at 4:30, immediately getting into mapping the final areas. Four of the final level maps have their tiles placed. The big center area is still being worked on. I created it first with tiles, and later decided that it looked better using the exterior method. The main issue is the ceilings, which look horrible if you have anything large you need to place.

The only downside is the size of the module, which after adding the two exterior areas has grown to 40 MB, compressed. There's not much else of significance to add, other than the custom content. Music and voice might get up there in size, but the module itself will be quite large.

I'm feeling completely behind in my corrispondence and hopefully can catch up today. NWN2 is supposedly being released tomorrow, though I'm betting it'll take an extra day to get mailed to me. I won't quite have finished all the areas by then, but hopefully it'll be close. I'm quite excited to test everything out and see if all those fancy scripts of mine will actually work. Probably not, but hopefully it won't be long before they do.

There are a number of undead cards in the Pir...

October 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There are a number of undead cards in the Pirate Card game. One of these is the Death Master, which gives a bonus to all nearby undead units. Half the fun of the game is collecting cards and assembling your deck. Putting together theme decks around undead or certain card combinations can be both wise and entertaining.

I continue to plug away at the first module, counting the days until release on Tuesday. I'm off to the coast for a few days, which means I'll drop off the grid for awhile. Hopefully I can sneak in some development time in between kid watching and trying to stay warm on the Oregon coast.

The maintenance levels are feeling pretty done at this point, with some custom scripts created to manage the transition between areas. I split it into two levels in order to take advantage of some new NWN2 features. I've got about five or six areas to go. After that, I'll need to start testing and tweaking, getting custom content in, and a million other little things. Somewhere in there I'll be releasing the Pirate Cards game and maybe even playing the official campaign a bit.

There's nearly 100 different cards in the Pir...

October 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There's nearly 100 different cards in the Pirate Card game, so it's pretty easy for me to pick one for each day leading up to release. Today's is the Green Reaver, a charming little beastie with a special ability of being able to paralyze all foes when sacrificed. This can be extremely useful, essentially stopping your opponent's army for several turns. It's even better if they have something like Hellspawn which causes destruction of their focus gems.

Yesterday was crazy busy, so I didn't get a chance to fiddle with the module as much as I would have liked. I did manage to work on the maintenance level a bit. I moved some things over from the prototype and I'm planning out some of the aquatic effects better. Hopefully I can manage better today.

I'm trying to catch up with my e-mails and such today, which I'm being pretty bad about. I'm working on a better way to distribute and version modules during testing with Arachnid. I got a few appreciative e-mails from people who played the old campaign. I even got a "your modules suck" e-mail, which I haven't had for awhile. Ah, the true joys of fame.

I'm also off to the coast for a long weekend. Since I'm able to haul along my computer with only mild eye-rolling from my wife, hopefully I can sneak in some development time then as well. What's really crazy is that early next week, NWN2 will be available. It's surreal.

For each of the cards in Pirate Cards, I set ...

October 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

For each of the cards in Pirate Cards, I set up a little scene and took a screenshot. When I was working on the Fairy Dragon, it didn't look particularly small and cute until I stuck a bunny next to it. It's an odd card, using up a magic generator for both players. As a bonus, you can sacrifice it to cast another card in your hand, up to a power of two, though the selection is random. The Fairy Dragon works well in a small creatures deck, keeping the available magic low to prevent big creatures from coming into play.

I've been slaving away at my various NWN2 projects, as usual. I dutifully added the sound clips to the Pirate Cards game, which is feeling increasingly polished. In terms of Dark Waters, I ended up going back and polishing the fifth level even more. Empty rooms are the bane of my existence, and I was going back and adding proper furniture. The sound and lighting should be in place now too.

I'm excited to get to the maintenance level, as it'll be a challenge to get the aquatic portion looking good. I've learned a few tricks with special effects lately that I want to try out. Once I get the model import down, I want to give that a try too. I think I can do some fairly effective 3D fish, even without true animation.

The most traditional way to win a match of Pi...

October 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The most traditional way to win a match of Pirate Cards is to get your foe's avatar down to zero hit points. A more challenging way is to run your opponent out of cards. Cards like the Privateer can help with this, removing four cards from your opponent's deck and two from your own. Like all creatures that can be sacrificed, timing and luck can play a significant role. It's best to sacrifice your creature right before it dies, getting the most out of it as well as its special benefit.

I made a lot of progress with the module yesterday and early this morning. The fifth level is feeling increasingly fleshed out, now with lighting and more placeables. I put together a fun effect involving floating objects flying about a room. Hopefully it'll raise a few eyebrows.

I'm behind on correspondence again, something that will probably get worse before it gets better. I did manage a lengthy exchange with our semi-famous guest writer, who I'm still hoping to lure with my wiley charms.

I'm going to see if I can hunker down and finish up some last minute things for the Pirate Cards game, as I'm hoping to have an open beta right after NWN2's release. I fixed a bug with one of the card graphics this morning (the Privateer, in fact). I also have some more sound clips I need to chop up and attach to dialog.

Slowly getting there.

Small creatures, such as the Rat have an inte...

October 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Small creatures, such as the Rat have an interesting place in the Pirate Cards game. Though comparatively weak, there can be a big advantage bringing out a creature early in the game. If your foe only has large creatures, your pesky little rat may have a number of turns to slowly damage your defenseless foe. Also, rats work well in theme decks with other rats as well as the Rat King. Finally, cards like Pirate Horde, where all players draw extra cards, really help a small creature deck. Though Hellspawn and the Dragon are flashy, don't give up on the small creature decks.

I made some good progress on the module over the weekend. The fifth level is mapped, as is the maintenance level. Both need lots of polish before they're remotely ready. That leaves the five areas for the 6th level and two small outdoor levels, then I can call the first module fully mapped. I'm guessing I'll finish a bit after NWN2 hits the stores.

I spent some time over the weekend tinkering with getting the flintlock pistol in the game. I'm getting closer, but it'll take some fiddling yet. I also had a rough time getting new spells and feats in the game. They'd show up in the toolset with weird names. I may hold off until the final version arrives.

As for today, hopefully I can find some time to work on polish, which is never done. I'm pretty excited about an underwater area, which looks stunning. Now I just need to figure out how to work in some little fishies.

One of the limits in Pirate Cards is that you...

October 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

One of the limits in Pirate Cards is that you can only have four of any single card type (excluding Focus Gems). If there was no limit, you could simply fill your deck with cheap direct damage cards and win in a few turns. Still, cards like Treasure Hunt let you bend the rules a bit. If you've just played a card and want it returned from your discard pile, this card will do it. Even better, you get two cards for playing one, giving you a card edge over your opponent. Effectively you can reuse the same cards multiple times, making them quite useful in appropriately themed decks.

I made some good progress with the module yesterday. The fifth level is mapped, including some fun water effects. Next step, transferring over as much as I can from the prototype and then manually adding the rest. Slowly making progress.

It's strange to think that NWN2 will be out in ten days. Hopefully I can find the time to actually play the official campaign, though I think I'll be more excited about the bug fixes and toolset improvements. I'll also be getting ready for the release of Pirate Cards. Busy, busy.

Evil Eye is an unusual card, worthless unless...

October 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Evil Eye is an unusual card, worthless unless you have a Voodoo Witchdoctor in play. If you do, though, this card can be devastating, applying crippling effects to multiple creatures in play. Some cards work best only as part of a deck theme, and this is one of them.

I managed to get the music set for all the levels I've finished. It was a little challenging working around the TLK issues. In the toolset, the music is called wacky things like "Improved Sneak Attack IV". Fortunately players never see it and it doesn't slow me down too much. I also finished the lighting for the fourth level, which makes a huge difference in the mood. I may have to go through and do the same for the third level. I'm also itching to start mapping the fifth level and perhaps the maintenance level as well. The latter should be fun, as most of it is under water.

Danmar has made some good progress on texturing the ships. Mostly it was a dry run to make sure it was doable. You can head over to his site to see the results.

Sometimes you'll be playing Pirate Cards, and...

October 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes you'll be playing Pirate Cards, and pretty much all hope is lost. Your foe has a massive army whacking away at your Avatar and there's little chance you can turn things around in time. Cataclysm gives you that chance, destroying all creatures in play and destroying their bodies. Having a few of these cards tucked away is excellent insurance. Of course, timing is critical. If you cast it too soon, your opponent may quickly recover. Wise players may wait and hold a few creature cards, casting them after the battlefield has been cleared.

I made some good progress on the module last night, finishing placement of all the placeables in the fourth level. This morning I started in on lighting, which can dramatically set the mood for the area. It's wonderfully flexible and powerful, though it's easy to spend countless hours tweaking things to get it just right. That seems to be a recurring theme in the new toolset. With great power comes great responsibility.

I want to start getting music in the game. It should be a piece of cake, just fiddling with 2da files a little and I'm good to go. I think once that's done, I can start declaring areas ready for final QA.

It's nice to see progress being made, slowly but surely.

What would the Pirate Card game be without pi...

October 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

What would the Pirate Card game be without pirates? The Buccaneer is just one of the pirates you can play. He's relatively weak, though is one of the few creatures with a ranged attack. When the Pirate Captain is in play, he'll get a boost like other pirates.

Sadly my daughter has been sick the last couple days, which has filled up a lot of my time. I did manage to do some minor tweaks to the first module, but mostly I've spent my time keeping up with e-mail and such.

There was good news all around in that area. Danmar might be helping texture the ships, which is something we've desparately needed. I might also have a fairly well-known writer helping with side quests for the second module. We're still working out details, but hopefully I can share more on that. I also had a neat compliment on the Evil Avatar forums from an Obsidian employee. Evidently the Pirate card game is going over well. I even had a new voice actor audition out of the blue.

I'm not sure what today brings. Hopefully I can sneak in some development time in between watching sick Emma. Juggling work, family, and my little NWN2 hobby is certainly a challenge at times.

In Pirate Cards, the biggest asset your foe h...

October 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

In Pirate Cards, the biggest asset your foe has is their magic generators, used to summon creatures, cast spells, and generally give you a hard time. With Sabotage, you can take that away. Playing Sabotage destroys one of your foe's magic generators, making it less likely they'll be able to summon that Dragon and ruin your day.

I've been crazy busy as of late, falling behind on correspondence and work on the module. Still, I was drawn to the toolset like a moth to a flame. I spent a lot of time with the Visual Effects editor and the first level, adding waterfalls and nice spashes. There's some real texture gems buried in the toolset. I also had fun with sounds and lighting, giving the entire area a wonderful, haunted feel.

Danmar has graciously offered to look at our untextured ship models. He did wonderful work on the lighthouse and the Black Spot, so I'm terribly excited he might offer some assistance in that area. Ships really are core to Dark Waters, and there aren't really any ship models I could use that come with the game.

Today I'm going to try and catch up with my various e-mails and messages. Hopefully I can apply more polish to the levels I've done. For many parts of the first module, I'm going for a post-disaster System Shock style feeling. Sound, lighting, and water effects really help.

The Black Spot is one of the most simple and ...

October 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The Black Spot is one of the most simple and effective cards. When played, it kills the most powerful creature your foe has. If your enemy just brought out a dragon, it's time to play it. If they only have gnomes and zombies, it might be best to wait for a more opportune moment.

I spent a lot of time playing with the visual effects editor. It's complex, but incredibly powerful. My first attempt was to get a waterfall-style effect, with water streaming down the wall. The splash is minimal, instead subtly warping the textures behind it. I also ended up creating a marker symbol for each side of the Pirate Card game. It's now far easier to tell the two apart.

Finally, I got a little obsessive with a single room. It involves a partially flooded floor, wooden pallets, and a broken electric light spewing electricity in all directions. I must have spent nearly an hour getting everything just right. Hopefully people will appreciate the effort.

In Pirate Cards, the cards themselves determi...

October 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

In Pirate Cards, the cards themselves determine if you win or lose. As such, cards like the Cartographer can turn the tide, giving you a huge advantage over your oppontent. The Cartographer lets you draw an extra card each turn, with a maintenance cost of two focus gems. This tends not to be too serious if brought out later in the game, when there's plenty of magic and it's time to overwhelm your foe with summoned creatures.

I continue to plug away at the fourth level, having lots of fun customizing each of the beasties. The NWN prototype had them all looking about the same, while the NWN2 version has slight variations in height and coloration. I've also been varying the weapons a bit more, mostly to give players an opportunity to pick up their weapon of choice.

While the creatures in Pirate Cards tend to b...

October 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

While the creatures in Pirate Cards tend to be the most flashy, spells like Ship's Surgeon deserve mention. This spell is very simple, healing your avatar in proportion to the focus gem's you have in play. Early in the game, it's not that great a card. Late in the game, with lots of gems in play, it can easily turn the tide.

The Proctor dialog is in the game and cleaned up. It's timely, as I'm working on the level with the Proctor at the moment. The tiles are down and I'm copying as much from the prototype as I'm able. It's not perfect - placeable importing produces errors and the creatures seem a little funky when I bring them across. Still, having most everything else come across is a huge help. After that, it's putting down doors, placeables, adding some variety to the appearance of the creatures, and so on.

Testing is going to be time consuming, as it's easy for me to leave out some small detail. There's also some things that require a model importer, but it looks like folks are working hard on that.

The voice actors continue to amaze and astound. Wendy put together quite a bit of audio for me to peruse. I'm doing some more recording this weekend with a coworker who has a great pirate voice. Good times.

I've been showing off the bigger creatures in...

October 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been showing off the bigger creatures in the game, but the lowly Wolf deserves a mention. Decks that only have large creatures in them often do poorly, as it takes awhile before you have enough magic generators to summon them. Balance is key, as well as using cards that work together. Wolves have an aura that give nearby wolves a Haste effect, making them quite effective in packs.

The module goes well. I started on the fourth level yesterday and have most of the tiles down. I love the ability to mix-and-match tilesets in NWN2, and I'm using it to good effect.

The voice actors have also been working really hard, with Wendy cranking out huge amounts of dialog. I'm going to hunker down and get the new Proctor dialog in-game, mostly clean-up for existing problem dialog or a few missing gaps. It's nice to be making progress.

Letter of Marque is one of those game-changin...

October 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Letter of Marque is one of those game-changing cards that should be played with great care. On the plus side, you get posession of all your opponent's creatures(and they get yours). On the down side, all your magic generators are destroyed. If played at the right time, it can make all the difference in the world. The catch is that you have to win quickly, as the lack of generators will make it impossible to play new cards for awhile. Couple these cards with creatures you can sacrifice. That way you can sacrifice all your creatures, ensuring your opponent gets nothing when you play this.

The Pirate Cards game is feel pretty close to finished. I might tweak some things here and there, but it's mostly done. In terms of the first Dark Waters module, I have the dumbwaiter in. Now it's time to start mapping out the fourth level.

I also have a bunch of e-mails to catch up on. I'm finally starting to feel better, mostly through liberal application of caffiene and Advil.

Think of Fresh Wind like Dispel Magic

October 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Think of Fresh Wind like Dispel Magic. It removes all enchantments on creatures, as well as any global enchantments in play. This one card can easily make the difference between life and death if something like Hurricane is in play, massively damaging both creatures and players. Putting it in a deck requires a bit of faith, though, as it has no benefit other than countering your opponent's enchantments.

As for me, I'm nearly finished with the third level. I just have a dumbwaiter to put in a wall and I'm ready for the next level. I've also put in some serious work into the Pirate Cards GUI. It's going to be incredibly slick. You'll be able to see a list of your creatures, their hit points, and you can sacrifice them with a single click. Before you had to deal with a dialog and navigate through some screens, plus the updates weren't real-time.

I'm sorely tempted to rework the SAGE system to use the custom GUI. It would be a bit of work, but would be much more user friendly.

I'm also still sick, so it's a bit difficult to focus. I really should be in bed, doing something quiet, instead of staying up late fiddling with the toolset.

Today I wanted to talk about Second Chance

October 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today I wanted to talk about Second Chance. It's a fairly common, inexpensive card with the nifty power of bringing creatures back from the dead. If your Dragon dies, simply cast this and it'll be munching away at your foe within seconds. The only down side is that you have to actually have a good dead creature in play. Too often I've ended up using it on a Gnome or Rat, simply because there wasn't anything else out there.

I'm a bit sick today, and ended up with this zombie-like fixation on getting a custom GUI implemented in the Pirate Cards game. I stayed up way too late, but laid a scripting foundation that should let me do what I want. The GUI system is pretty darn cool and I'll be using it for High Seas later on.

I also worked a bit on the main module, putting down placeables as needed. I only have a couple more rooms to do and then it's off to the exciting fourth level.

I continue to work away in the toolset, conve...

October 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to work away in the toolset, converting areas from my NWN prototype to the NWN2 version. I'm continually amazed at how much flexibility there is now. I can make each room completely unique, picking from a long list of placeables to add appropriate decor. The bedroom of the captain's guard looks very different than the bedroom of a gentle lady.

All the flexibility does make things slow going. The main exterior is finished, as are the small buildings. I'm finishing up the third level and hope to start in on the fourth shortly. The lowest level scares me, as it's simply huge.

The Pirate Card for the day is the lowly Cow. It's cheap and allows you to sacrifice it for a little healing. I'm also embarrased to say that I've been killed more than once by a cow. It has a mean kick.

The pirate card for the day is the Copper Aut...

October 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The pirate card for the day is the Copper Automata. Though seemingly wimpy, it's pretty good at sucking up damage and distracting more powerful foes. It also has a fairly dramatic healing bonus should you sacrifice it. You can voluntarily destroy certain of your own creatures, giving a one-time bonus of varying benefit. If you time it right, you can sacrifice it right before it dies, to great benefit.

I continue to polish and enhance the pirate card game. I may end up making some custom visual effects, and perhaps some custom GUI elements as well. I also started in with the conversion of the first module. I'm busy getting icons for all my items, building areas, and slowly getting things ready. It'll take some time, but hopefully I can get something ready for testing soon after launch. I'm also excited to see folks are already working with the MDB format. Hopefully I can get the flintlocks in the game sooner than I thought.

As an aside, there's an artist drawing 100 pirates in 100 days. Some are fairly amusing.

Also, if anyone knows of a talented texture artist, please let me know. We're starting to see model import/export tools being developed and I'd really like to finish up those wonderful ships that Raz started. The payment is your standard fare - empty promises of grog and loose women, and perhaps some recognition from the community for a job well done.

Well, for those of you who are regulars, you ...

October 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, for those of you who are regulars, you probably figured out I've been in the beta for the NWN2 Toolset. While I still can't talk about it, I can say that I was a winner in a screenshot contest we had during the beta. I even had a new category of "Most Freaky" created just for me (the little girl with her "toys"). Quite an honor, I think.

The Pirate Card for the day is Simulacrum. It creates a copy of your opponent's biggest creature and puts it under your control. This could be great if he's got a Dragon out, but not so good if he only has tiny creatures or nothing at all.

As for what else I've been up to, I have the conversion of wav to mp3 sound clips down pat. The reduction in size is amazing, about 90% or so. I've got most of the voices ready to go in, though I've got one or two more I'd like to add. While I could probably spend endless hours working on loadscreens and the like, I try to remind myself that I have a full single-player campaign waiting for me too.

Exciting times.

I thought I'd start things off with the lates...

October 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I thought I'd start things off with the latest Pirate Card. It's the Hellspawn, one of the toughest creatures in the game. If you can get this one out and hold on to it, there's a good chance it'll destroy your opponent's creatures and then finish off your opponent in short order. The down side is that it destroys Focus Gems, so don't expect to be doing much after you bring it into play. If your opponent plays Paralyze, look out, as your massive creature is now a huge burden.

Yesterday was very productive. All the card models, icons, and deck icons are in the game. I'm integrating the new DisplayInputBox command so that you can more easily rename your decks (e.g. "Hot Flaming Death" or "Gnome Banzai"). I think I made a breakthrough with the voice clips - it looks like mp3 is supported now, which means I can reduce the size of the files considerably from their current wav format.

I still have some issues and tweaks to sort out, but my hope is that I can get a playable game ready for the launch of NWN2. After that, it's all about converting the first Dark Waters module.

Today's Pirate Card of the day is Hurricane (...

October 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today's Pirate Card of the day is Hurricane (click for large version). It's one of those "game clincher" cards, doing damage to everyone and everything each round until someone dies. If you have more life than your opponent, it makes for a good choice. If they somehow deal you damage and drop your life below theirs, you may lose the game with no way to recover.

Needless to say, I've been working on the Pirate Cards game and coordinating voice actors. Jules worked on some fairly amusing ones. Flik continues to work on Daniel. Magnus continues to play with his new choir plug-in thingie, making a lullabye that almost put me to sleep on my keyboard.

My to do list is pretty massive these days, as I can now do so much. I have some card icons to assign, bugs to squash, and endless areas to recreate. Fun, fun, fun.

Okay, I've been bottling it up, so this is go...

October 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I've been bottling it up, so this is going to be a big post.

First off, Neverwinter Nights 2 is shaping up to be exactly what I was hoping it would be. The toolset is streamlined, with things like the ability to open multiple areas being extremely useful. The graphics alone are amazing, with incredible flexibility over the look and feel of areas. You can truly make areas that look very different.

This does come with a cost, the old "with great power comes great responsibility" sort of thing. When you get an empty tileset and place each and every table, chair, light, and so on, it takes awhile. There's tons to fiddle with. Of course, there's something called "prefabs" that I'm sure will start showing up on the Vault soon. They're pre-defined groups of things. For folks who just want to make a quick area, that should make things much easier.

There's other "gotchas" that have been brought up in the community already. Module sizes are going to be much larger, mostly due to exterior areas. All that information about terrain texture, heights, grass, and so on has to be stored somehow. It's hard to say at this point, but I'd be surprised if my first Dark Waters module wasn't tens of megabytes in size, compressed. The "full" version with music and voice couple easily be several hundred. So, plan your Internet connection accordingly.

There's some behind-the-scenes things that have turned out to be pretty cool. The toolset has a "plug-in" feature that lets programmers make tremendous changes to the way the toolset works. I think we'll see ways to import and export models, wizards for terrain creation, and so much more. You couldn't do much with the NWN toolset, so this sort of open functionality is going to be huge.

In terms of Dark Waters and what happens next, it's all about doing conversions now. I need to test out the import functionality (you can open old NWN modules, but things have to be tweaked). There's lots of areas to recreate. That should keep me busy for quite awhile. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to recreate each area by the time NWN2 hits the shelves. I'm guessing it'll still take a couple months of testing and getting some of the models in. I really want to get at least flintlock pistols in the first module (there's a few scenes that might be silly without them).

So, time to circle back with the team today and start getting things organized. Here's a few screenshots to whet your appetite. Click on each for a larger picture.

Well, it looks like the toolset isn't out, as...

October 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it looks like the toolset isn't out, as hoped. I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping it comes out soon. I've been ignoring my team for far too long in fear of breaking the NDA in any way. The sense of guilt is palpable.

On the plus side, I'm hearing some great stuff from the voice actors. Here's a clip of Daniel that Flicked passed along this morning. I absolutely can't wait to hear it all in-game. I promised Flik he'd get countless e-mails from women praising his wit and charm. I'm also getting the rest of the Proctor and some piratey voices from Jules.

In terms of little ol' me, I can't say much as usual. I can say that I'm working on Pirate Cards still, at the moment fiddling with Photoshop quite a bit. The current hope is to release it as a teaser soon after the launch of NWN2, and then focus on the first module exclusively.

Update: The toolset is out and screenshots are hitting the net. Before I go to bed, I'll put one up of a first-pass at Heather in NWN2 glory. After two long years, it feels so good to see things come to fruition.

I did a massive push last night and woke up a...

September 29, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I did a massive push last night and woke up at 4:30 this morning to continue. Only five more cards to go. Even more exciting, only two days until the pre-release toolset comes out. I'm going to try to be good and get some screenshots for everyone.

The voice actors continue to do their thing, polishing up some missing dialog from the first module. I'm excited to hear Daniel's lines in-game. Currently that's the only major role that's missing for the first module.

I was sick yesterday, and in endless all-day ...

September 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was sick yesterday, and in endless all-day work meetings that seem to drain my will to live. I'm down to 28 cards left, slowly working away. Hopefully today I can do a big push and finish a bunch up.

I'm getting bug reports on the third module f...

September 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm getting bug reports on the third module from Bjarne, Flik and Jules are working on voices, and I've yet again finished up a few more cards. I'm over the halfway mark at this point. It's slow going, but the results are really cool.

41 cards done

September 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

41 cards done. 50 to go. My brain is tired.

I have a blank version of every Pirate Cards ...

September 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I have a blank version of every Pirate Cards card now. All that's lacking are images to paste in them. About a third are done, and hopefully I can finish up the rest over the next few days. Being a perfectionist, it's a bit slow.

Next steps involve creating icons, which should be a Photoshop batch job away.

Well, the pre-release toolset has been delayed

September 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the pre-release toolset has been delayed. There's anarchy on the boards and a general sense of frustration in many folks, myself included. I was all ready to sit down and crank out some screenshots, but alas, it seems we get to wait some more.

I continue to work on the Pirate Cards game. I have five cards created at this point. There's lots of details, but I'm quite happy with the results.

I figured out a way to actually post an image...

September 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I figured out a way to actually post an image, showing off some of my recent work with the Pirate Cards game. I've been looking for ways to spruce it up a bit and discovered a utility that creates images of collectable playing cards. It's a little clunky, but works well enough to create some fairly nice looking cards.

I have a bigger version too. In general, I like this format over the old one. I had symbols instead of numbers for the attack, defense, and cost, which ended up limiting them by the space on the card. I also like seeing a quick description on the card itself, rather than having to examine it individually. I'm also fond of the cute pirate logo on the right. The only downside is that the size of the hak pack will likely be pretty big - tens of megabytes at least.

A quick note for my evil minders - everything in this image was created using already released content. I'm being good, really. Only one more day until the prerelease toolset comes out and I can get a little crazy. Can't wait.

The NDA is killing me

September 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The NDA is killing me. I'm pretty sure my team hates me as I avoid them in fear of spilling the beans. Fortunately come Friday I can actually talk again and get some screenshots to you patient folks.

On the plus side, Flik has started recording dialog for Daniel. Once we have the three main NPCs recorded for the first module, I'll feel pretty well satisfied that things are working properly.

Magnus got a new toy for himself - a library of Latin-speaking choir sounds. We've been talking about possibilities for epic combat music. I'm eager to hear what he comes up with.

I can't wait for Friday. These text-only postings are as boring for me as they are for you.

Well, the pre-release toolset got delayed unt...

September 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the pre-release toolset got delayed until the 22nd, so it sounds like I'll be quiet until then. There's still I chance I can share something, but it's not a sure thing. We'll see.

In the meantime, make sure you polish up on how to talk like a pirate.

The countdown to the pre-release toolset read...

September 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The countdown to the pre-release toolset reads 2 days and 11 hours. Hopefully by Monday I can share things in more detail. All this secrecy is killing me. I'd make a lousy spy.

Well, it looks like the prerelease toolset wi...

September 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it looks like the prerelease toolset will be out in a week or so. At that point, the floodgates of information should be released.

As an aside, it looks like DLA released the Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. Mmm . . . horsies.

I'm working on an official way to share more

September 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm working on an official way to share more. Stay tuned.

I've been feeling vaguely guilty that I can't...

September 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been feeling vaguely guilty that I can't really talk about what I've been up to. I very much enjoy giving daily reports about my progress and my latest development victories and defeats. Let's just say that I go to bed every night thinking about Dark Waters and wake up every morning doing the same. I haven't been this enthusiastic about the project in many months.

And so, to distract everyone from what I'm not doing, let me talk about what everyone else in the team is doing. Magnus just sent over a bunch of tunes. Just to treat you, I'll pass along this one. It's fairly short (so to be nice to my little closet server), but a very pleasant introduction nonetheless.

The QA team continues to report bugs. For some reason, I'm now getting serious crash bugs, perhaps related to the latest NWN patch, or maybe some new file I uploaded for all. Hopefully this weekend I can tear myself away from my current building project and see if I can get to the bottom of it.

I continue to work very hard, often staying u...

September 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to work very hard, often staying up far too late and starting again early in the morning. Mostly I'm building and debugging, and occasionally getting new QA reports. It's tiring, but a good kind of tired.

I got an e-mail from someone wanting to turn the Shadowlords, Dreamcatcher, and Demon campaigns into a PnP game. It's always a treat to hear that people are still enjoying my old work.

I realize it seems like I've dropped off the ...

September 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I realize it seems like I've dropped off the face of the earth, but I've actually been working harder than I have in a long time. Mostly mapping, making good progress, and learning a lot along the way.

September already, and one month to go

September 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

September already, and one month to go. It's pretty strange after working on this project for nearly two years already.

I spent a bunch of time fixing bugs again. My favorite wasn't really a bug per-se, but rather a quest resolution that involved setting fire to yourself, a couple children, a dog, and anyone else who might wander by. Still, being forced to carry around the burnt corpse a little girl is probably a bit too harsh, so I ended up fixing that.

I also spent some time with the high seas system. You can talk to other merchant captains and pick up trading tips, which are then recorded in your journal. I made sure you can search for a particular pirate captain, capture their ship, and pillage it while still getting their unique treasure. I also made sure the deity-specific items work.

All-in-all, it was a productive day. Hopefully today will be more of the same.

It was an incredibly productive day yesterday

August 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was an incredibly productive day yesterday. For starters, there was a new patch, which added visible cloaks to the game. They were so cool looking that I immediately dropped everything and started adding some cloaks into the module. Following up with my deity-specific items, I added four more in, bringing the total up to seven. I think I have most of the alignments covered, and will likely add a few more in later. I'll probably add a generic one specific to whatever deity the player has, just so players who picked weird ones doesn't feel left out.

Each of those deity related items has a "conversion" dialog attached to them. While short, they each took a bit of writing. Hopefully those who convert to Bane feel their dark souls are truly lost.

In any case, I ended up updating every module and a couple of the hak packs to get the cloaks working right. It felt like time well spent, though there was a fair amount of file shuffling required.

Finally, I worked hard on the introduction to the third module, adding some coding this morning so that everything worked properly. I now feel I could start working on all sorts of things for the third module - the last main quest, side quests, or the grand finale. I'm giddy with excitement, trying to decide what to start next.

I fiddled with every module yesterday, fixing...

August 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I fiddled with every module yesterday, fixing bugs, attaching sound clips, and writing new dialog. I recorded a few missing lines of dialog, though it doesn't really sound much like me. I'm nearly done with the beginning of the third module. Hopefully I can do another final writing push and finish that up today.

The storyline for the fourth module is coming together in my head. I had several epiphanies, throwing in fun story elements left and right. One may require a custom creature or some creativity, but hopefully those issues will be sorted out by the time I need to make it.

Finally, I had a cool moment yesterday when a friendly Obsidian staffer helped sort out some issues with the beta toolset test. It was horribly flattering to get the personal attention and get things on track again. I'm not sure how long it'll be until I get to play with the toolset, and I likely can't talk about it much, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Well, it turns out that some of my "bug fixes...

August 29, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it turns out that some of my "bug fixes" made things worse. Fortunately it didn't take too long this morning to see where I'd made my horrible mistakes and hopefully patch things up again. Basically you could buy ships, but couldn't leave with them. Not fun.

The named merchants should be in place now too. I spent last night polishing up the board where you can read their names and look for interesting cargo. Like pirates, certain merchant ships now carry unique treasures as well.

Finally, I worked a bit more on the third module. I'd really like to be able to get the intro dialog wrapped up and the scripting in place to connect it all together. Currently the third module feels like a collection of quests and areas, and I'd like it to be somewhat more continuous.

The merchants are all in now, though mostly I...

August 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The merchants are all in now, though mostly I'm working on new treasures. I came up with one that's tied to some of the central themes in the campaign. You can get an item that's dedicated to a particular god or goddess. If you haven't already, you can dedicate yourself to them, which opens up new powers to the weapon. It's a one-time deal, though, so some of the choices may be difficult to make.

The NWN2 information keeps coming out. There's a new designer diary and the PAX convention just wrapped up. Supposedly we'll see some more details over at nwn2.warcry.com today.

It's a little slow going, but I continue to w...

August 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's a little slow going, but I continue to work on the High Seas system a bit more. Just so that do-gooder privateers don't have all the fun, I'm adding named merchants to certain merchant ships. They don't yet have unique treasures like the pirates do, but that's the next step.

I've also added a couple new crew options, such as Wizards and Druids. I've also layed the groundwork for monstrous crews, so that's next on the plate. I'd also like to put in some dwarven ships and crew. It takes a bit of time to add them all in, but the diversity should make for a more interesting game.

I amazed even myself yesterday

August 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I amazed even myself yesterday. I went through the full list of bugs and hopefully fixed them all. A few are tricky and require some follow-up, but I'm hopeful things are working much better in the prototype.

The new named pirate system is lots of fun. Some pirates have unique treasures and the crimes their wanted for make for a fun read. I still need to test the surrender system and a bunch of other things, but I'm liking the latest changes quite a bit.

I was dutifully bug fixing yesterday, like th...

August 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was dutifully bug fixing yesterday, like the other days this week, and got a report from PJJ that the pirates were too easy. "Too easy!" I scoffed. "I'll show him!"

I ended up implementing a system that's been floating around in the back of my head - pirate captains. Each pirate ship now has a named captain, they may carry unique treasure, and are much tougher than your average scallywag. I had fun making a random pirate name generator, including monikers (e.g. "Dead Eye" or "Bloody"), and the usual first and last names.

In port, you can read a board which lists the current pirates and what they're wanted for. Some have custom treasures, though I'd like to flesh that out even more. It's often more useful to capture a pirate ship than to sink it, though you'll get paid either way.

I still have more work to do. I want to list the name of the ship on the wanted sign, make sure custom treasures aren't destroyed when pillaging a ship, and make as many custom treasures as I can manage. Hopefully it's not too much work. Then I need to work on a surrender calculation during boarding actions, and work through the remaining list of bugs. Slowly getting there.

My kids got into the whole voice recording th...

August 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My kids got into the whole voice recording thing last night. I tried to get my three-year-old daughter to simply say "Please, help me!" but she started improvising about her dog Fluffly bursting into flames and we couldn't stop laughing. Actors.

I finally got around to bug fixing. PJJ gave me a fairly lengthy list of things to go over and I'm dutifully going through the list. Yet again, I can't emphasize how important QA work is. My modules would be pretty clunky without it.

First off, here's a relatively lousy screensh...

August 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

First off, here's a relatively lousy screenshot with the new ships. Trust me, they look better than my half-exploded version of the standard NWN cog.

I mostly did clean-up work yesterday, in what little free time I had. I still have one more dialog to finish in the third module, whip up a bit of scripting, and send the player on their merry way to the first main quest.

This morning I decided to try out my new microphone in earnest, recording myself reading the opening of the fourth module. It's not a spoiler in any way, though by listening to it, you'd get that impression. It's probably way too big to have a million people download from the server in my closet, but I'm going to post it anyway. There's some problems, most notably that I need to get a microphone stand, but I'm not entirely annoyed with my own voice. It's been slightly modified, as you can probably tell.

In any case, here it is, the Troupe of the Damned.

Well, I'm back from the beach

August 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm back from the beach. It turns out I forgot a bunch of things - the latest build of the third module, my bug notes, and some models that I wanted to fiddle with. I screwed up the journal entries for the second module and had to recreate them, some from backup and some from memory.

Still, I managed to be more productived than I thought I'd be. I replaced a couple of my extremely rough ships (the cog and fishing boat) with some more nicely textured versions from Darkness over Daggerford. High Seas is still obviously beta, but at least it's a better looking beta.

I wrote more dialog and scripts for the initial conversation in the third module. Today I'll combine it with the other new stuff I wrote and I'll be pretty close to done for that introductory dialog. I could even start in on the third dialog, or some of the side quests I have planned.

Continuing with the writing theme, I wrote some hysterically funny dialog for the fourth module. I may have to voice it myself, as it's most funny when spoken with a certain accent. I haven't screwed up my courage to face the microphone yet, but we'll see.

Today's images are a few more I found on Alec's site. I'm amazed at the range of dress that will be available. I also missed the gnoll the last time around. I'm starting to think we need more monster-crewed ships. Hmm.

I made some really good progress yesterday, f...

August 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made some really good progress yesterday, finishing up my second dialog and starting in on the third. I have one more to go and the whole introductory area will be finished off. I try to balance types of gameplay, from dialog to action to exploration. This is certainly in the dialog and character development category, though fortunately there's a big action scene in the first main quest.

I've also been quietly revising the third main quest, mostly to take advantage of features that have been revealed for NWN2. I'm not sure how much of the coding I'll be able to do, as the current engine doesn't support the fancy features very well. Still, it looks like the ETA for the beta toolset is in a month or so.

I'm off to the coast for this weekend, thinking piratey thoughts and hopefully getting some writing done in the car.

Nothing too exciting to report

August 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting to report. I sunk in some time this morning on the second of the big dialogs. It's going fairly well and I'm nearly finished. It's much easier since I don't feel obligated to go into the backstory in great detail like I did the previous dialog.

There was also an interview done over on the nwn2news.net site, with me going on about the state of NWN2. Nothing too earth shattering.

Though this is really NWN news, Darkness over Daggerford was released, with much of the content DLA has been working on over the years. There's some great buildings and ships in there, some of which might be "port worthy" to NWN2. Hmm.

I think the deluge of movies and information ...

August 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think the deluge of movies and information is slowly letting up, at least for a bit. I have a pretty good feel for how the official campaign will work. In particular it's interesting how much they've invested into keeps and large-scale combats. It reminds me of what I tried to do in Dreamcatcher 4, only with a much better looking engine.

The one dialog I've been working on for what seems like forever is essentially done. I have a bit of Vow scripting options to add, but that's about it. I've been trying hard to satisfy the Lawful Evil folks out there, such as bartering for souls or tightly adhering to a Machivellian philosophy.

I've started in on my second big dialog, which I'm trying to keep a bit more light. I probably won't be able to have quite as much branching, either, just to keep my sanity intact. I love having tons of roleplaying options, but it's a huge effort.

I also need to get back to the team, which I've been neglecting lately. I've been doing a lot of kid watching lately, which tends to put a crimp in module development.

The movies and screenshots just keep coming

August 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The movies and screenshots just keep coming. It's been a crazy weekend for PR stuff, especially now that there's only a couple months until NWN2 ships. That puts the pressure on me for getting as much as I can for the prototype while I can.

The huge dialog continues. The most time consuming part is all the branching, giving options to be lawful, chaotic, good, or evil, and combinations of the above. The decisions matter as well, culminating in a certain blessing/curse from an NPC at the end. It's tedious work, but I'm liking some of the amusing banter that's emerging from my caffiene-guided fingers. I'm really hoping I can drink some more tea and continue throughout the day.

The images and videos from GenCon are pouring...

August 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The images and videos from GenCon are pouring in at the forums. If you want to avoid spoilers, don't peek. Otherwise there's lots of great information and visuals about all sorts of things.

I, for one, was duly impressed by the inclusion of hats. In particular this one looks quite dashing and piratey. Raz made up a couple hats long ago that I have in the prototype. Now it looks like the game engine will support hats just fine.

I've had the kids by myself all weekend, so free time isn't really happening much for me. I did manage some writing time in the wee hours of the morning yesterday. My incredibly long dialog continues. For curious and insightful players, it explains a fair bit of the main plot. I figure by the middle of the module players should have a fairly good sense what they're fighting for. Of course, those who show no interest can certainly skip the whole thing too.

I was all ready to sit down and start writing...

August 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was all ready to sit down and start writing dialog this morning when a ton of new screenshots hit the web. I've been drooling over the refurbished GUI, the list of scripting functions, shots of the visual effects editor, and more.

I did manage some more dialog writing yesterday, and will hopefull get more today. The introduction is ending up fairly dialog-heavy and touches on a lot of the player's actions in the module before, which is new to me. Hopefully today I can find some time for more writing.

The screenshots for NWN2 keep slipping out

August 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The screenshots for NWN2 keep slipping out. I'm continually amazed at how huge a leap from NWN it is, from the detailed characters to the lighting, and more. I'm hopeful that within the month I'll get my hands on the toolset, but we'll see how it all turns out.

In terms of Dark Waters, it's been all about dialog. Endless, endless dialog. It's a nice contrast before I dump people into a fairly combat-heavy quest. I did take a bit of time to create a fun little custom item for the player, tailored to their class, degree of success, and generosity with the crew.

I made a fair bit of progress yesterday, star...

August 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made a fair bit of progress yesterday, starting in on the beginning dialog in the module. I'm going for a surreal, dream-like opening. It makes for some tricky dialog writing, trying to get the tone just right. The other thing I'm planning is for some significant permanent effects to be placed on your character, depending on how you handle the dialog and what you've done in the modules before. I've been sweating bullets trying to pencil out all the henchman secrets, what the player has discovered, and various dialog branches.

Today's picture is from some concept art from the game itself. I love the veil, which has a good chance of showing up on a particular NPC if it looks about like this. It has an exotic and mysterious quality that I very much like.

Just a short update

August 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN1

Just a short update. Demon won the 2004 Module of the Year award at the Vault. Here's my interview.

It's funny how much there is to do beyond the...

August 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's funny how much there is to do beyond the main quests. In some ways, the main quests seem almost incidental to the rest of the game. The player has to be able to move from place to place, get clear direction on what to do next, and hopefully have some interesting side adventures along the way.

This morning I took a few more baby steps in that direction. You can now get to the location of the two main quests, with one new area spawning on the map. Hopefully I can find time today and continue working on all the "infrastructure" stuff.

Update: My interview with the Vault on my winning the 2004 Mod of the Year has been posted.

It wasn't quite as productive yesterday as th...

August 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It wasn't quite as productive yesterday as the day before. Perhaps my caffiene levels weren't quite as high or something.

In any case, I worked on integrating the first quest into the module this morning. Needless to say, I found some bug. The most amusing was forgetting to put the destination waypoint on the island. The result was the player and companions simply appearing on the open ocean, tiny boats sailing around them. Fortunately it was pretty easy to fix.

Hopefully today I can do more of the same. I also need to update nearly every NPC dialog, which is a bit daunting.

I drank too much coffee and made some very go...

August 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I drank too much coffee and made some very good progress. There was assorted polishing, from journal entries to new dialog. The second module is feeling increasingly done, minus voice and music.

The third module is starting in earnest. The two main quests are integrated into it now, though you can't actually get to them yet. It needs all sorts of work, from introduction dialog to world map dialog, the third main quest, a conclusion, and endless planned sidequests. My goal is to get as far as I can before the game comes out. I'm hoping for a roughly finished version, which might be possible.

Of course, if the beta toolset lands in my hands and I can start the conversion early, that's what I'll be doing first.

More debugging, as usual

August 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

More debugging, as usual. It turns out I didn't have to transfer item variables from module to module. They already work just fine. Ah, live and learn.

I polished up one of the side quests, Catspaw Isle. It was pretty badly broken and needed an extra dialog and journal entry. Plus the treasure map you got at the end didn't point anywhere, which was annoying.

It looks like Atari is doing a beta test of their toolset, which is pretty exciting. With luck, I'll get it in my hot little hands within a month or so, though odds are I can't talk about it.

I'm nearly done with the latest batch of QA. Now I just need to respond and take a look at the latest list of problems.

Yesterday was one of the more incredibly prod...

August 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was one of the more incredibly productive days lately. I did an interview with Maximus at the Vault, so expect that up fairly soon. I also finished the final dialog, and spent a bunch of time testing it. It feels like a nice wrap-up before the next module in the campaign. Evil and unscrupulous characters certainly have opportunities to really make their crew upset, break off romances, and generally be jerks.

I ran into a funny bug during my testing. It turns out that if you save an NPC to a database while they're sitting, they'll perpetually sit from that point forward and can never stand up again. It was only funny for a few seconds, and then I had to purge the database and start again. Speaking of database bugs, I fixed another one where my henchmen would immediately start attacking bystanders. While amusing, it made it hard to test.

As an aside, I bought myself a relatively nice microphone in case I wanted to get some of my friends and families voices in the game. I was trying to get my daughter to sing "rain, rain, go away," but she couldn't remember her lines. Actors!

Today I need to work on the SAGE system that Sunjammer did for me. Well, I don't exactly have to work on it, but rather make sure the item variables are transferred from module to module. While local variables sure make life easy for creating systems, they don't get saved between modules unless you manually track each variable in the database. It's a fair amount of work.

If you're interested in seeing some large ver...

August 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

If you're interested in seeing some large versions of Raz's automaton, head over to this forum and take a peek.

I'm still slaving away at that final dialog. It's strange how long it's taking. I think it's because I keep adding different options and branching. Dividing up the treasure is being more complex than I thought, with different levels of stinginess and different motivations for generousity. I'm planning on having the player's generousity rewarded, perhaps with a "Best Captain Ever" trophy.

I was up before 5 am this morning and started...

August 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was up before 5 am this morning and started in on the final dialog. It's turning into a "pay the piper" conversation, where the player's actions are weighed, treasure is divided, and future plans are discussed. I'm still not finished, but it might happen today if I get the time.

Raz finished up the automaton model, though it still needs optimizing and texturing.

It's hard to believe that it's August already and NWN2 ships next month. I've been in "getting ready" mode for so long that I'm not sure what I'll do with myself if I actually get the game. In terms of how far I'll get, I'm still hoping to rough out the third module - I have two of the big quests finished and the rest is penciled out. It likely won't make it to QA before I start the conversion to NWN2, but we'll see how far I get.

Raz continues to crank out polygons at a prod...

August 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Raz continues to crank out polygons at a prodigious rate. He's currently working on a steam golem of sorts, an automaton that we can hopefully use in the Clockwork Man. I'm reminded again of our need for a texture artist. If there's anyone out there familiar with texturing polygons, we're in desperate need of help in that area.

I'm beginning to rally the voice actors, with Flik taking the lead for the voice actors. He's very comfortable with sound processing, which makes me a happy camper, as well as being a fine voice actor in his own right.

As for me, I've been working on dialog. It's not as glamorous, but there's some things I want to wrap up in the final moments of the second module. Currently the ending is fairly abrupt, and PJJ thought a little dénouement might be handy. Keeping with the nautical theme, the party hoists some grog around a table before setting sail.

There's been a bunch of videos coming out lately

July 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There's been a bunch of videos coming out lately. The ComicCon demonstration of the toolset was my personal favorite, though they all have their own particular qualities. The one with the pigs is fun too.

I managed to get all my written dialog into the game, as well as some QA time. It's always odd when I don't find the reported problem, but managed to fix something unreported along the way. I also started on a final dialog for the game, something to wrap things up and set the tone for the next module.

Just for fun, I scribbled a very piratey side-quest that started as a way to express my feelings about timed quests (hint: I pretty much hate them). I'm not sure when I'll have the time to work on it any time soon, but it was fun to think about.

I did a tiny bit of work on the module after ...

July 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I did a tiny bit of work on the module after being distracted by Prey. Fortunately it was pretty short and I just finished. While the kids had a water balloon fight in the backyard, I managed to write three pages of dialog. There was a particular moment in the module that deserved a little attention, and I got a little carried away with various options.

Another thing requested by PJJ was more writings, optional things that gave background to the module. They take a bit of time, but are enjoyable. I ended up writing a child's diary and hiding it in the rocks. I have a few more that I'd like to add, some that might be used for fun and profit.

I'm a little late with today's posting, thoug...

July 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm a little late with today's posting, though I've been fairly productive as of late. Mostly I've been spending my time on more QA stuff, adding dialogs, fixing script problems, and the like. I really enjoy PJJ's focus not just on things that are broken, but the overall feel of the game. For example, after the Firestarter quest, what happens to Sophia? Shouldn't Daniel be remarking on the growing connection between the player and Heather? I've put in a fair amount of dialog in response to his musings.

I thought I'd also treat everyone to another of Raz's models. The current cannon model is somewhat simplistic, so he thought he'd whip this one up for fun.

I felt like I got a little traction yesterday...

July 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I felt like I got a little traction yesterday and started moving forward again. I did some minor grammar and spelling cleanup with the first module, along with some bug fixes for the second. This morning I put in some QA work, making sure some of my fixes actually made a difference.

I also added, but haven't tested, a feature that lets you pillage and sink ships that you've captured. You get a little money out of the deal, as well as not having a long train of ships follow you around the sea. PJJ suggested that one, along with a bunch of other non-bug additions to the game. I'm really liking the polish time the prototype gives us. It's hard to tell when things like that are missing without actually being able to play the game.

As for today, I have some team organizational stuff to do. I'd also like to keep slaving away at the list of bugs in hopes of getting the second module relatively done.

The insanity still hasn't eased up, but I've ...

July 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The insanity still hasn't eased up, but I've managed to slog away at the project in any case. This morning's big bug fix was getting the inventories of the stores to persist between modules. Since much of the game takes place in the same set of areas, this is a huge boon. It took me a long time to figure out that store items with the infinite flag didn't come across properly. After a ton of fiddling, I think I've worked around the issue.

The insane busyness continues, though I manag...

July 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The insane busyness continues, though I managed to fix the problem with transferring cargo holds and stores from one module to the next. I learned all sorts of odd things about the database functions, which are very useful, if simplistic by database standards.

Hopefully today I can sink some time into development, not to mention getting back to all my correspondences. Busy, busy.

I'm incredibly busy, as usual when returning ...

July 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm incredibly busy, as usual when returning from a trip, so I'll keep this short for the moment. The beach was great, inspiring in a sea-farin' sort of way. I scribbled down lots of good ideas for my current and future modules, as well as a possible next campaign.

I continue to troubleshoot issues with the second module, and polish the Clockwork Man quest. The latter is feeling fairly finished, with flavor text, custom treasure, and the like. Right now I'm struggling to carry over all the important variables from one module to the next. Your ships come across, but without any cargo, which isn't a good thing. Obviously I have much more debugging to do.

Hopefully today I can catch up with my correspondences, which have fallen behind. Being disconnected from the Internet for a few days seems to do that to me.

Well, it's my birthday today

July 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it's my birthday today. 37 years. It's strange to think that I started my first NWN project nearly 5 years ago, and I played my first CRPG (Temple of Apshai) almost 30 years ago.

Periodically I try to show off the work of the team. Razvan's tower is nearly textured, though some on the team are ribbing him for making a fairly "cute" tower. Perhaps I'll surround it with butterflies and pink unicorns just to spite him.

EvilMulder continues to make some amazing nautical tunes, reminiscent of Monkey Island games. Though I'm sure my bandwidth-impaired server will hate me, I thought I'd link to a clip of his latest work.

PJJ is QAing the second module, giving suggestions on the High Seas system and pointing out all manner of bugs. He hit a big one recently, where one of the henchmen vanished after a major quest. Still, it looks like he'll be able to actually finish the module during his first QA session, which is a rare and wonderful thing.

As for me, I'm heading to the coast for a few days as a birthday present. I'll be without Internet connectivity, which hopefully means I'll have fewer distractions and can spend a lot of time on Dark Waters. Yesterday I finished the critical path for the Clockwork Man quest, though I still need to add in various extras. That leaves one more main quest for the third module, along with a ton of additional things I need to add in - sidequests, intro/conclusion scenes, and so on.

With NWN2 shipping in October, that should give me enough time to finish up the third module and possibly even start in on the fourth. Once I get the toolset, though, all my time will be spent doing conversions so that I can release as soon as possible.

I continue to be way too busy

July 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to be way too busy. In a way, I'm relived that NWN2 was pushed back to October. That'll give me yet more time to get the third campaign together, coordinate voice actors, and all the endless work that goes on for these sort of projects.

Yesterday I mostly did writing, trying to finish up the Clockwork Man quest. I think I'm almost there. I have scribbles to turn into typed dialog. I also really need to catch up with my various correspondence. Life's too busy.

I think I'm finally done with the sub area

July 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think I'm finally done with the sub area. It's funny how these little side things can end up taking up a ton of time. I keep justifying the cost in time to myself, hoping that hundreds of thousands of people play through that tiny section.

You can now get your ship repaired if it's badly damaged, stock up on new torpedoes, and generally make it through this outdoor area without too much difficulty. I'd like to add a little something for treasure hunters, but otherwise I'd like to move on.

The current quest I'm working on should be fairly close to finished. Mostly I need to do some dialog work, along with the scripting that goes with it. I'm still amazed at how much writing seems to be required for these little modules of mine.

I worked some more on my little underwater se...

July 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I worked some more on my little underwater section. I made a quick torpedo model, though it's on the screen for so short a time that it seems a little silly to make them too fancy. Currently torpedoes will track an opponent, though they're typically fired at a pretty short range. Some tweaking may be required. At the moment, I'm having fun shark hunting. Sure, there's enemy subs too, but for some reason I like going after the sharks. I was probably scarred by Jaws as a child.

Other folks on the team are doing their thing. Raz is polishing up a fancy tower. My mom, of all people, has broken out the red pen and started to provide grammar and spelling corrections. It's turning into the family business.

I put a submariner character into the game, t...

July 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I put a submariner character into the game, to explain how the submersible works. The new sub pen area also makes a nice set piece, with the sub hanging from the ceiling and making the player want to play with it. I barely started the torpedo script. Right now you can fire it, but it doesn't do anything. Next step will have it fly about and explode, as you'd expect.

I also did some more housekeeping, modifying the second module so that more things would properly pass to the third module. If you dig up a treasure in the second module, you shouldn't be able to dig it up in the second. Keeping track of everything is going to be rather exciting, though.

Well, I think I've taken care of the weird is...

July 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I think I've taken care of the weird issue where the henchmen's AI gets completely screwed up. I repackaged the first two modules with the fixed scripts, which hopefully takes care of a variety of issues. For the curious, instead of EffectCutsceneDominated, I ended up using the AI system, letting it know that the henchmen are busy and shouldn't do anything.

The underwater area continues to do well. I added the ability to turn the sub's lights on and off. It looks surprisingly cool, considering it's just a simple effect. I also couldn't resist adding in some ambient life. Though I'm not sure how easy it'll be to get fish into NWN2, I'm hopeful we can sort something out.

In a twist of fate, it looks like I'm going in for jury duty today. I just sat around, working on dialog, when I was called a year ago. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to do much of the same today.

I'm having fun with the submersible code and ...

July 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm having fun with the submersible code and area at the moment. It'll likely be short and sweet, at least in this part of the game. I think I'd like to do at least one other underwater treasure hunt if I can pull it off. I'd love to have some underwater creatures to act as dangers for the player, though I may have to wait until we learn more about custom content.

With luck I can make some more progress on this particular quest today. I got a little side-tracked with QA work, but I think I can sneak in some time before the next batch of problems passed my way.

I finished cleaning up the card quest

July 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finished cleaning up the card quest. One of the things I'm doing in order to make it challenging is to give the opponent's avatar extra life. It was a trick used in the original Magic computer game from years back, and worked relatively well. It also makes the battles very tough. I managed to win several times, if barely. Plus I got to see a dragon battling a pit fiend, which was a treat to watch.

I also got the sub working in-game, meaning the player can polymorph into a sub and go through an underwater area. There's nothing especially dangerous or interesting about it at the moment, but the plan is to add that in next.

Finally, I think I figured out the source of a really annoying bug. For awhile now, henchmen have stopped following the player on occasion. It turns out that EffectCutsceneDominate is causing the issue. Even if I remove it later, they become idiotic and just stand there. Now I need to see if there's a workaround.

I really need to catch up on the QA reports today. I've been ignoring them for awhile as other pressing things call for my attention. Still, I'd like to finish polishing the second module so I can focus on the third one. I have a funny feeling that the toolset might be available sooner rather than later, at which point I'll likely drop everything and begin the conversion process.

I spent some time yesterday working on the Mo...

July 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I spent some time yesterday working on the Mortuary. You can find the results at the Saving Sigil thread. I still wouldn't call it finished, but it's slowly improving. I'm not sure how much work I'd end up sinking into it before I needed it, but it's still fun to tinker with.

I also spent some time QAing my Pirate Card quest. I ran out of time, but I think I got it working after switching my greater than and less than signs around. Originally the only way to win was to lose. Oops.

It seems my nagging paid off, with Demon winn...

July 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It seems my nagging paid off, with Demon winning Module of the Year for 2004 by a single vote. Congratulations to all the other excellent module builders out there, especially Markus 'Wayne' Schlegel for coming in a close second with A Hunt Through The Dark.

I stayed up until ten o'clock last night and was up again before four in the morning. My obsessive nature kicked in and I decided that the Mortuary from Sigil had to be brought back from the dead. I fiddled with max, textures, and finally got things to a very hopeful point. I was extremely lucky in that batinthehat had already UWV mapped every model, which basically made it a task of finding or making textures and dropping them in the override folder.

It's not finished by any stretch of the imagination, but the hardest parts are done. I may just turn it over to the community to see what they can come up with in terms of appropriate textures. I have the perfect place for it in the Dark Waters campaign as well.

As for today, I'm hoping I can turn my attention to the module. I did a tiny bit of work on a minor subquest I'm sneaking in to the second module. Then I should refocus on the third one like a good little boy.

Well, it doesn't get any more exciting than this

July 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it doesn't get any more exciting than this. The vote is tied for first place. Tomorrow morning, I'll have to check and see how it all turns out.

I got a little time this morning to work on the module, drinking coffee from the lobby of a fancy hotel. I worked on the next big quest for the third module, as well as preplanning for the fourth module. My goal was to set up traditional RPG scenarios and then add a devious twist to the end. One of them should be extremely fun, assuming I can pull it off, and the other nicely ties together some long-running character arcs.

I'm hoping tonight I can sneak in a small quest back into the second module, since we're still doing QA work. The nice thing about prototypes is that I can rework previous modules based on ideas I throw into later ones. Handy, that.

The voting continues to be exciting

July 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The voting continues to be exciting. Checking this morning, I'm a single vote ahead. Wow. It closes tomorrow, so we'll see if I can hold the lead.

It's my anniversary today, but fortunately for you I woke up way too early and downed too much coffee. I ended up working on the Woodhaven section, adding things in based on QA feedback. You can now use some of your psionic powers in the arena, throwing your opponent off guard or discovering their weaknesses. I also added in a lengthy post-victory dialog with Heather, complete with some romance dialog if you've chosen that path.

It's interesting how on occasion if you're initially gruff with her, but then open up, you can do just as well or better than taking the "nice guy" approach. It wasn't intentional or planned, but I find that the dialog is evolving that way. Or maybe I'm just reflecting some of the conversations I have with my wife from time to time.

The voting for Mod of the Year 2004 continues...

July 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The voting for Mod of the Year 2004 continues to be neck-and-neck. Dreamcatcher won 2003, so it would be neat to get 2004 as well for Demon. Ah, fame. How it taunts me so.

Yesterday I turned my attention to the QA reports I've been getting about the Woodhaven area. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping PJJ can make it all the way through. So far most of the bugs have been relatively minor, though it looks like I'm going to add in some extra dialog and more psionic combat options.

I'm heading out of town for a few days, though I'll mostly be connected. It's my wife's and my eleventh anniversary. Fortunately she tolerates my little "hobby", though the limit of her gamer skills extends to a computer version of Yahtzee. As a plus, I usually put in some quality writing time on these long drives, assuming I'm well caffeinated.

I took Raz's untextured sub and threw it into...

July 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I took Raz's untextured sub and threw it into the game, only to have my son make fun of it for being all white and shiny. I decided to do a quick and dirty texture job. It may be a prototype, but I try not to embarrass myself too much.

Needless to say, the sub is in the game, as is my first underwater area. The plan is to give the players control of the submersible, though I haven't ironed out the details yet. I also want to make the outdoor area something more than a place to sightsee, though I don't want to give too much away.

In general, the current quest is coming along quite nicely and with luck I can finish it in a week or two. After that, there's one more main quest and lots of "glue" to stick it all together, along with some fun little side quests. Rumor has it the toolset may be available before the game is released, so I'm rushing to get as much done as I can before I start the big conversion.

Thanks to everyone who voted. It looks like Demon is within a few votes of first place now.

Somehow my wife was extra kind to me and mana...

July 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Somehow my wife was extra kind to me and managed to give me quite a bit of time to work on the module. Most of it was spent finishing up an area in the Clockwork Man quest, working on gnome dialog.

It's amazing how much work is required to do a significant conversation. There's the usual quest giving actions, tracking the state of the quest and changing dialog accordingly. There's also variation and allowing characters to use their skills, such as persuade, intimidate, and so on. It's pretty easy to create dozens of scripts in NWN just to support a single dialog.

With luck I'll be able to continue working on the Mechanist area. I made a fun little item yesterday called "Trap-in-a-Box" that lets anyone set a trap. There's only a few of them in the game, but since not everyone plays rogues, it's a neat gameplay element to let other folks try out.

Update: As an aside, it looks like Demon is running a close third on NWVault's Mod of 2004 poll. Feel free to vote, if that's your sort of thing. :)

It's always a treat when new images come out

July 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's always a treat when new images come out. A few popped up on Obsidian's site which I really liked. Having realistic looking faces really helps with conveying emotion. I can't wait to fiddle with the lip synching stuff.

I continue to work away at the module. Recently I've been revisiting and polishing the Sketch Artist and Mechanist areas. I created some new items and a three-piece set for fighters. It's not fully implemented yet, but it's getting there. I also worked on some gnomish dialog, which tends to wander and get into assorted family details. It's quirky, but hopefully interesting and different.

Since it's the fourth of July, I'll be doing lots of family stuff. Not a lot of time for the module, but I'll do as much as I can.

Work continues

July 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues. I created a little utility for the testers so that they can pull henchmen out of the database, fiddle with their inventory, and stuff them back in. I haven't decided if I'll release it with the actual module, as it's mostly a testing tool.

I started polishing up one of the quests in the third module, the Sketch Artist one. I didn't have suitable loot yet, so I started correcting that. I'd like to make more set items, as it really appeals to the collector in me. I was playing Dungeon Siege II the other day and realized the only reason to play was to collect cool sets of items.

I continue to cheerfully debug away, trying t...

July 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to cheerfully debug away, trying to squirrel out the odd bugs that keep popping up. PJJ is doing a great job finding the usual problems, in addition to those things that aren't really bugs. For example, there was an emotional moment where you rejoin your crew and they merely say "Where were you?" Needless to say, PJJ called me on it and I dutifully wrote a real dialog.

I've been doing a lot with High Seas as well, adding in things he requested. For example, there was no good way to find out what was in all your ships, so I expanded what you can view with your captain's log. I still have more to add and polish, but we're slowly getting there.

I posted a fairly long post over in our publi...

June 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I posted a fairly long post over in our public forums. You'll also see a link to them on the upper right in case you want to visit later. Raz has some great high resolution pictures of the new tower and ghost ship. The ghost ship is especially amazing, in my opinion.

The team continues to slave away, like any good pirate crew. PJJ has cranked out several pages of notes for me to review. It looks like I'll be adding some new dialog and features to fill in missing gaps, in addition to the typical bug fixes. Allyndyn has retured from Africa and hopes to rally the voice actors soon. Wisdomknight hopes to finish up texturing the sub this weekend.

As for me, I worked some more on my current quest. I'm having lots of fun writing dialog for my automaton, which tends to be overly complex and obtuse. I also worked on the battle scene, which will hopefully cause many fearful yelps from players who take the violent path.

I was a very good boy yesterday, fixing a num...

June 29, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was a very good boy yesterday, fixing a number of odd bugs PJJ found in the module. I also found a bunch of places where I hadn't quite finished a dialog or the necessary scripts to make it work properly. Unfortunately wishful thinking doesn't make code magically appear. I also had fun adding a few more journal entries, and will likely need more before testing is finished.

I even had a little time to work on the third module, starting in on the second "boss fight". It's a little different than your typical fights, so I'm hoping it's not too confusing for players. In any case, I'm hoping to include a number of non-combat options as well as choosing which of two enemies to fight. Hopefully I can work on that a little more today.

Razvan has been working on architecture, a ni...

June 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan has been working on architecture, a nice looking fantasy tower in this case. He's even mostly textured it, something that looks rather nice for someone who claims not to be a texture artist.

PJJ has begun testing in earnest. He's given me a lengthy list of things to work on from his early testing. I suspect it's time to start pausing my work on the third module and work on the broken dialogs, missing journal entries, and fun other bugs out there. The good news is that this is why we have a prototype - get the bugs out before NWN2 is even released.

I actually had a less than productive day yesterday, module wise. I mostly did housekeeping/communication stuff and poked around at the Sigil tileset. The main issue is that the textures are fairly low resolution and retexturing everything is a major undertaking. We'll see how brave I end up being down the road.

Of all the pages on my personal site, this on...

June 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN1

Of all the pages on my personal site, this one is clearly the most popular. At the moment, searching for "Adam Miller" on Google has this as the top hit.

Still, this section is pretty ancient, and my latest Neverwinter Nights entries are over on my NWN2 section. That's where you'll find my current work on Dark Waters, a pirate-themed campaign.

For those of you who are just discovering the Shadowlords, Dreamcatcher, and Demon campaigns for classic Neverwinter Nights, enjoy yourselves. There's links to downloads on the left as well as lengthy comments about the development process if you click "display old news items" at the bottom of the page. It's strange to think that this little hobby of mine started over six years ago and has grown to what it is today.

I think the secret to my success is just doin...

June 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think the secret to my success is just doing what I can each day. I scribbled out some more dialog and spent this morning working on a little boss fight.

I'm still reeling from being back at work from a long vacation, so I'm falling behind on my correspondences again. Hopefully today I can catch up and I can spend some time on the current quest some more. I'm not even close to finished and after that I'll need to do some polishing passes. Busy, busy.

I've been mostly writing the last few days

June 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been mostly writing the last few days. I started on a short backstory for the next module and ended up practially writing an entire chapter. Last night I was working on dialog, getting inspired after playing a bit of Planescape: Torment. I have high hopes for the writing in NWN2, as Chris Avellone is doing much of the writing.

I also worked on a little trap/puzzle combo, along with planning out my various "boss battles" for the area. People don't remember the countless creatures thrown at the player, instead it's the big fights that stand out in people's minds. I'm trying hard to make them as memorable as possible.

Progress has been a little slow as of late

June 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Progress has been a little slow as of late. I've added another room and some dialog to the latest quest. I'm trying to make this a fairly combat heavy area, though with extra options for players who want to be sneaky. It's hard for me to make a purely combat area any more.

My experimentations with the old Sigil placeables continues. This time I worked up a chalkboard with a funny little head and improved it. It's almost relaxing, like crossword puzzles. There's not much artistic talent required, just various technical skills with Photoshop and max. It's like paint-by-numbers, with models.

My little experiments with some of the old Si...

June 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My little experiments with some of the old Sigil tilesets and placeables continue. I think with a bit of fiddling we'll be able to salvage some of it for NWN2. There's a certain style that appeals to me, making me want to put in the effort. This morning I did some tests with specular and normal maps, as well as comparing the high and low poly version. So far, so good. I have a Saving Sigil thread over on the NWCitadel boards with a bit more detail.

I've had a bit of a cold and/or allergies since yesterday, so I've been dragging a bit. I did manage to turn a kid's game into a very minor side quest. One of your companions can spot something and will tell you if you're getting warmer or colder until you find it. A little silly, perhaps, but a nice distraction from the normal combat grind.

Well, I discovered a café near where we were ...

June 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I discovered a café near where we were staying, but only a couple hours before we were heading home. I feel completly behind, with new screenshots and NWN2 tidbits showing up while I was out. NWN Citadel is up and live, for example. There's also been

I spent a fair amount of time on the module. I figure I'm about halfway through the second main quest. There's a lot of fun little things I've added. There's a puzzle section with lots of misbehaving automata. I've tried hard to give lots of ways to solve the puzzles so as not to frustrate anyone.

I also added in a programmable automaton this morning. It's completely optional, so non-programmers don't have to feel frustrated. Still, for those folks who want to string together a few simple commands, they can have a little construct following them around, picking up items, jumping into combat, or whatever they'd like.

I'm feeling pretty behind, but hopefully I can catch up over the next few days. I'm still "on vacation", with a fair amount of kid watching duties, but I imagine I can sneak some NWN2 time in on occasion.

Well, I've spent way too much time this morni...

June 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I've spent way too much time this morning staring at crates. It seems almost required these days to make a crate puzzle, so I decided to toss one in for nostalgia's sake. I suppose it's entertaining in a way, thwarting a really dumb automaton who's just trying to do its job. Currently there are two different ways to solve the puzzle and I might add another. We'll see how it goes.

I'm off for a week or so, including a three hour drive that starts today. I'm packing pen and paper, along with my computer, so it should hopefully be a productive trip. With luck, I'll even have Internet access and keep these postings going.

Yesterday was far busier than I would have li...

June 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was far busier than I would have liked, but I did manage a bit of scripting for the new quest. It was fun, if simple. Right now there's only one way to solve the "puzzle" and I'd like to add some alternative angles. We'll see how much I can manage today.

I've been having a lengthy discussion about the old Planescape tiles and models the CODI team put together. It's looking like a number of them can be recreated for NWN2. In part, I'd do the work simply because I love the look and feel of Sigil and the Planescape setting. On a more practical note, the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" module would greatly benefit from a unique looking city. I think this one might fit the bill perfectly.

I'm going to be going on a week-long vacation starting tomorrow, so my Internet access may be spotty. It depends, in part, on whether or not we have wireless Internet access where we're staying. On the plus side, I usually am very productive on vacation, with two three-hour drives and many of the usual distractions will be absent.

I had a cup of tea yesterday afternoon, which...

June 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I had a cup of tea yesterday afternoon, which somehow kicked my creativity into high gear. I frantically scribbled down maps, notes, and pseudocode on a couple pieces of paper. I think I have the basics for the second main quest of the third module. There's some fun puzzles and custom AI that hopefully people will enjoy. I had some wacky ideas for custom content that might pan out. Later that night, I started building out some areas. So far, so good.

My Sigil experiments continue

June 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My Sigil experiments continue. My latest thinking is to use the NWN Sigil models as the low-poly version that's shown at a distance. As the player gets close, a new higher-poly version will be displayed. I've been having fun making higher poly versions. The Sigil tileset looks great at higher poly counts. The most noticeable difference is that curves are smoother. For a city of spires and spikes, it really makes a difference.

What does this have to do with my current mod? Well, there's some unusual locations in the game that would benefit from some unique architecture. I'm not sure I can convert the entire tileset and all placeables over, but there's quite a few that would add to the ambiance.

In terms of the campaign, I've been working on the transition between the second and third modules. It's extremely challenging and I've been working extensively with the database functions to pull it off. The humorous bug of the day was my henchmen deciding to battle to the death with some NPCs in the holding area. No idea why.

It was a fairly productive weekend

June 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was a fairly productive weekend. I think the main quest I've been slaving away on is essentially done. There's a pretty big and fun battle that happens towards the end. I also wrote in some more henchmen dialog, advancing the romance and adding a touch of humor.

I've been hatching a wild scheme to try to save the old Sigil tileset. Basically I'd take the buildings and turn them into placeables for NWN2. I might tweak the geometry a bit, adding in extra details. I'm also hoping that I can dig up some of the higher resolution textures that was made for the game. It's a beautiful tileset and it would be a shame to have it fade away.

I was bouncing around quite a bit yesterday

June 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was bouncing around quite a bit yesterday. I spent some time rallying the troops and generally getting organized. I went back to the voice acting for the first module, cleaning up the Proctor dialog and making a list of the things I wanted to re-record. It's looking like the sound hak pack is going to be 150 MB or so, compressed with RAR. I think I'll end up having a core module that everyone installs, and then have a separate download for music and another for voice. That lets me update the module regularly without people having to re-download an incredibly massive full version every time I make a change.

I'm plugging away at the last module, doing some playtesting and bug fixing. I think I have one more dialog to write and some kinks to work out, then I can call it done.

My next big effort will be to create the skeleton of the third module. It's a weird sort of thing, because I need to carry over so much from the second module. Certain areas will be blocked off and changed, but much will remain the same. I'm hoping to evolve the world to some degree, depending on the choices the player made in the second module. Tricky, but fun.

Raz has been showing off his sub on the new p...

June 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Raz has been showing off his sub on the new public forums. There's lots of good shots from various angles, along with some commentary. Though he claims not to be a texture artist, I think he does remarkably well. I'm already scheming on various ways to incorporate the sub into the game.

In terms of the module itself, I have all but one of the dialogs finished for my current quest. My favorite part is giving the player choices of a reward, some of which are non-material and interesting.

It's been an incredibly busy day today

June 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's been an incredibly busy day today. I spent a fair amount of time chatting with developers and getting assorted ducks in a row. It's looking like our current project manager, Elizabeth, is having to step down. She's in school, recently married, and expecting a baby, so I'm bidding her a sad farewell.

I've also been working with Papermonk, trying to put together some public forums for this site. Here's a very early version. Ideally we'll get an image gallery, developer forums, and so on. We'll see how it goes.

In terms of the module itself, I spent a bunch of time last night and this morning getting the first half of the big fight working properly. I need to polish up a conversation and start in on the second half of the fight. Hopefully someone will get the Star Trek reference I slipped in there ("My crew! My ship!"). Good times.

I'm in a fun position, watching two of the mo...

June 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm in a fun position, watching two of the modelers on the team work on two different sub models. It's sort of like dueling banjos, only with 3D modeling programs. Today I'm showing off Raz's work, who is going for a "mostly brass" look. I'm a fan of rivets, which this one has in spades. They're also fun to make normal maps for, all nice and bumpy.

I was also a good boy and did my part to support the QA team. PJJ is rolling up his sleves and getting ready to dive back into QA work. The Quality Assurance folks are the unsung heroes of module development. Without them, I'd be releasing large piles of garbage.

As for the module itself, I spent a little time working on the pirate AI for the Sketch Artist quest. It's fun to work on, especially when they stagger around and complain about the loss of their grog.

Periodically I find myself having to write ro...

June 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically I find myself having to write romance dialog. I try hard to steer away from heaving busoms and the like, instead focusing on the more amusing aspects of love. Occasionally I get on a roll and crank out line after line of hopefully quality stuff. That's what I did most of last night, staying up far too late to work on one of the dialogs.

I also got the scripting more polished, so I'm pretty close to done with the middle part. I think all that's left is a few triggers and statements, then work on the exciting conclusion.

There was some great new concept art posted o...

June 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There was some great new concept art posted over at the nwn2wiki today. There's a couple sea-side paintings that look completely stunning. If they can manage to pull this off in-game, I'll be quite happy.

I spent yesterday trying to convince myself I can introduce teleportation without breaking anything. I tweaked the power a bit, making it shorter range and putting in a fair number of caveats. I think it's currently useful and fun, but not too over powered.

I still need to work on the middle section of this first quest, but pretty soon I think I can leap into the exciting conclusion. The second module is relatively light on combat, so I find myself balancing by focusing on it quite a bit with this one.

I continue to hunker down and work on the thi...

June 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to hunker down and work on the third module. So far, I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing, though I've still got quite a bit of work to do yet. The areas are built, but that's the easy part. I've got dialog to write and a ton of scripting.

I'm a little nervous about introducing my next psionic power, teleportation. Because it lets players jump from place to place, there's a good chance they might leap over critical triggers, switch places with a villian and leave them stranded in some odd place, or otherwise cause havoc with my carefully planned module.

On the other hand, teleporting around is super cool. For some reason, I feel like I'm being incredibly sneaky every time I jump about.

I finished up some coordination, getting the ...

June 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finished up some coordination, getting the first two modules packaged up nicely and ready for testing. The second one is bound to have a host of issues, but I'm staying away for a few days to let the testers do their thing.

The third module is well underway. I'm having fun with my current quest, which is fairly combat oriented, though there are certainly some puzzle-like things to do as well. I enjoy giving players the opportunity to take the easy way out and miss out on a reward, or tough it out and get a little extra loot for their efforts.

I finished spellchecking the second module ye...

June 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finished spellchecking the second module yesterday, and while there's always a little here or there I'd like to work on, I decided I was done enough to send it of to the QA folks. Be gentle with it, guys.

It's looking like the Lite version of the first module is 17 MB and the Lite version of the second is 15 MB. Of course, if you add in music and voice over, that swells to nearly 300 MB for the first module. It's going to be interesting distributing this monstrosity.

Razvan is finished with exams and back to his wily ways. He whipped up a new submersible/sailboat combination. I'm scheming as to what to do with it and the other submersible. A little seafloor exploration looks like it's more and more likely.

Finally, I did some writing for the third module. Hopefully today I can take some of my paper scribblings and get them in the game. The first quest of the third module is shaping up to be both fun and piratey, so I'm eager to really get into it.

Whew

May 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Whew. Yesterday was fairly busy. I caught up on my various corrispondences, from e-mail to bulletin boards. I signed up with a new "custom content creator" group that Obsidian is putting together. Hopefully we can start gearing up for getting our assorted models into the game.

In terms of the module itself, I continue to tweak and debug. I ran a spellchecker on half the module, hopefully finishing today. It's embarrassing how many typos there were. I finally got the exploration theme into the game. It turns out NWN doesn't like variable-rate mp3s. I also forgot to properly set up some of my stores, which caused one of the islands not to sell anything. There's still a bunch of "nice to have" things I'd like to add, though I'm starting to lean towards packaging up what I have and shiping it off to QA.

I'm itching to start on the next module, which hopefully will be much smaller in scope. The fourth module is already starting to write itself in my head. Should be fun.

I'm learning all sorts of wierd scripting det...

May 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm learning all sorts of wierd scripting details while debugging HighSeas. For example, it turns out that GetIsValidObject isn't the same as comparing it to OBJECT_INVALID. It also turns out that if you pull a variable from a database and put it in a local variable, it's not actually set instantly. When you use ForceMoveToObject, it'll follow the object to the ends of Hell, or at least to another area. That's how I ended up with a sailing ship wandering around on the docks.

Needless to say, I'm slowly making progress with the High Seas system. The really glaring bugs are gone and now I'm tracking down the more mysterious ones. I'm also working on finishing up some things I left hanging. It seems that "wishful thinking" doesn't magically finish up dialogs with other sea captains.

There's always more I want to do and fit in, so we'll see how much I can manage today. I'd love to get in some kind of crew experience system. It would also be neat to record your wins and losses in your captain's log item. We'll see how far I get today.

"Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!...

May 29, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

"Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!"

It's amazing just how many things can go wron...

May 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's amazing just how many things can go wrong in a module this size. I'm getting a vague sense of accomplishment squashing them all, but more seem to pop up after each one.

The latest issues are around the High Seas mini-game. I need to figure out how to deal with captured pirate ships and the patrols around Port Brighton. It wouldn't do to get slapped with a fine just because a captured pirate ship had slaves aboard.

I've been making some progress in other areas of the game. I added in some telepathy options, letting you probe the minds of commoners for fun and profit, though your telepathy skill needs to be raised. I also worked on the dialog for the third module as I was stuck in the car with my sleeping daughter for awhile.

Fun, fun, fun!

I worked a little on one of the quests for th...

May 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I worked a little on one of the quests for the third module, mostly dialog but a little area creation as well. Now that I know what's possible in NWN2, I groan every time I have to make due with NWN's tile-based exteriors. Outside areas are going to look so darn good with the new game. I can't wait.

I used up a little development time last night on Infinite Dungeons. The technical aspects of the game are pretty neat. I admire all the work it took to dynamically crank out dungeons by the truckload. On the other hand, it's essentially all about combat and collecting loot, which has gotten a bit old for me. For those who enjoy a good dungeon crawl, though, it might be right up your alley.

I just finished fixing one of the more annoyi...

May 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I just finished fixing one of the more annoying bugs I've come across. My henchmen suddenly became lifeless when I started the second module. They wouldn't speak up when desired and generally lazed about. It turns out that it had to do with my module-to-module transfer code. When going to a new module, their "OnSpawn" script doesn't run and no variables are transferred between modules, so all sorts of important things weren't set. I was able to rerun the OnSpawn script manually after they came across and all was good again.

I went to the NWN2 chat last night, though due to technical problems, the developer's couldn't show up. Rob over at DLA showed off their stuff, however. It looks like there's amazing things coming out of that group come July. Can't wait.

I think I've recovered just about everything

May 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think I've recovered just about everything. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, and I ended up having to recreate only a single dialog.

Now I'm getting into some of the more bizarre problems. The most recent involves transferring henchmen from the first module to the second and their scripts seemingly get completely screwed up. I still can't figure it out.

I might get a chance to work on the third module a tiny bit, mostly mostly I'm in debug mode these days, trying to get things at least somewhat presentable for QA. I was able to make it through the Chronomancer quest this morning, at least mostly. I did have some really odd problems getting the henchmen to do my bidding. Fortunately I have a Plan B.

It was a good news/bad news sort of day

May 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was a good news/bad news sort of day. I made tremendous progress with the breaking and entering script, getting two places working just great. It's fun watching the residents wake up, run for weapons, or flee when there's only one of them left. If you let any go, you'll be wanted for murder as well, so be warned. At this point, I'm considering it done.

I also did my first full debugging pass through the game, finding all sorts of horrible problems. I wasn't able to play all the way through, but I managed to get through a couple of the main quests before running into game-stopping bugs. Most were easily fixed, but I still have to investigate some others

The most frustrating thing was realizing that I'd overwritten a week or so worth of work on the henchmen dialog. I carefully went through my backups and found most of it, but I think I'll still have to recreate some things. So, that's what I'll be doing today.

I normally have a hard time playing an evil c...

May 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I normally have a hard time playing an evil character in computer games. It's funny how morality spills over into an activity compeletely without consequences. Still, as a designer I feel obligated to provide the full range of opportunities for players.

Today I wrapped up the "break into a home" quest. Well, it's not much of a quest, really, more like a little side area to fiddle around in. A non-evil rogue could slip in, steal everything while the residents sleep, and slip out again. Of course, evil rogues or other players could just break in and kill everyone. If you leave anyone alive, the guards will be alerted.

I might tweak the AI a little more and add in a second, similar, adventure area. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty happy with the way it turned out. I'd like to do one more thing to the commoners in town, but then I think I'm done with every little side goodie that I ever wanted to stuff into the game.

I'm getting very excited about the first big quest for the next module and want to get started on it soon.

The last of the toolset articles is out, show...

May 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The last of the toolset articles is out, showing off yet more fun features of the game. Now we likely get to quietly wait four more months until the game is actually released.

In some ways, this is a good thing, as I'll need all the time I can get to polish up what I've got. Yesterday I worked on getting more developer's commentary in, as well as polishing bugs that I uncovered. I penciled out the scripts I needed for a "breaking and entering" side quest. I find there's few opportunities for stealth gameplay in NWN modules, wo hopefully this is a treat. Of course, you can always crash through the window and kill everyone, but where's the fun in that?

The amazing videos continue

May 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The amazing videos continue. I'm loving all the details that are coming out about the toolset. Today's little Flash thingie shows off some of the house placeables we'll see in the game. I even noticed a little rural lighthouse, which looked like a promising addition to the mix.

As for yesterday's work, you can see the I've added in a section for each module of the campaign. Even though a lot of story details haven't been finalized, what you see is my overall plan for things. I'll try to put up some "extras" on each page, such as renders, maps, or whatever I can throw together. It may be awhile, as I do have a campaign to build. Making pretty web pages is just an occasional distraction.

I started putting developer commentary into the second module. I also started spec'ing out a solution to a little problem I have. In order to make areas feel like a big city, I want to have a fair number of houses scattered about. On the other hand, I don't want them to be entirely useless "off limits" houses. I'm leaning towards creating a few little adventure areas for players who favor rogues, and putting in some deliberate stealth gameplay. The tricky part would be the resident AI, making sure they behave in a somewhat expected fashion when their house is being burglarized.

There were some amazing toolset videos releas...

May 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There were some amazing toolset videos released on the Vault yesterday. If you haven't gone there yet, head on over and take a look. It looks like creating areas is going to be surprisingly easy to do.

I continue to polish away. Nothing too dramatic, mostly just making sure that QA staff can do what they need, normal people see normal stuff, and information gets passed between modules as appropriate.

I fixed a bug where the final scene wouldn't work. I fixed another where the transferring companion was automatically added as a henchman and thus followed me around at inappropriate times. I was hoping to start adding in some developer commentary for the second module, but haven't gotten there yet.

I've been doing assorted odd polishing, going...

May 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been doing assorted odd polishing, going through the final part of the game over and over again. I think the final battle is just hard enough. The traps are pretty nasty, but you can avoid them with care. The most comical deaths are when I forget that bombers are sneaking up and taking position while I'm engaged in a heated melee. Sure enough, they'll lob in a fire bomb and my entire party will be engulfed in flames. It's fun.

One of the things that I need to get things to a "final" state is to make it so that our QA folks can troubleshoot, while letting normal people simply play the game. What I do is that the first time in, the player gets handed a "Game Option" item that lets them control a few global things. They can also turn on debug mode, which gives them the ability to tinker with things. If a character already has the "Game Option" item, the game will start out in debug mode and people can jump right into testing.

I also decided to add a "Developer's Commentary" option. If you turn it on, you'll periodically find a glowing little guy that you can talk to. I decided that was a good place to put in thoughts and tidbits about the game for folks who end up playing through a second time. Hopefully people will find it interesting.

There's a funny thing that happens when I've ...

May 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There's a funny thing that happens when I've been knee-deep in bug fixing for a month or more. I get so frustrated with the whole process that I start pretending bugs don't really exist and that it's time to start in on the next module. Anyway, when playing through the final part of the first module, I uncovered all sorts of bugs that I either carefully ignored or they somehow slipped through the cracks.

I'm nearly done with the thing. Today I was balancing for difficulty. I took in a typical 3rd level character with a fully party, armed with all the things you'd expect to find at this point in the module. It was difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. The most annoying part was trying to keep the party together, which should be much easier with NWN2.

The best part is still the unique AI for the enemies. I loved having the trap-setting rogue lay traps everywhere. If you don't kill them quickly, the room can fill up with all manner of obstacles. The fire bombers can be pretty entertaining too, often doing more harm to their own team.

Fortunately this morning's testing was fairly fun and an hour and a half went by before I even noticed.

I walked over a big red square on the ground,...

May 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I walked over a big red square on the ground, got hit by a spike trap, and giggled in glee. The last of my problematic troops, the rogues, were going around setting traps on the battlefield for an unwary player to run into.

I think the final battle is actually working again, made far more interesting than the simple brawl it was. Smart players can carefully use the battlefield to their advantage. What I like the most about the AI is that it doesn't simply run up and attack. Archers hide behind fortifications for cover, rogues sneak about setting traps, and if the player tries to lure them away from their duties, they'll turn tail and return to a safer place. I still want to add in a cutscene, but otherwise I think I'm slowly approaching completion.

Next on my list is to formally start testing the second module. There's a lot wrong with it yet, and endless details to polish, so it'll likely take a month or so to get "good enough" for a prototype.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll start in on the third module. Even if it's incomplete, it might be helpful to have a framework there so that we can test the transfer of variables and equipment from the second module to the third.

I think I write code for the same reason that...

May 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think I write code for the same reason that people do crossword puzzles. It's soothing, in its own way, and I get a feeling of satisfaction when I'm finished.

I've been reworking the final battle of the first module. Of course, when I say "reworking", I really mean horribly screwing things up. Well, it's not that bad, but it current isn't functioning properly. I have multiple types of attackers, each with their own strategy, and it's not quite working the way I want yet.

Oh, some parts are amusing. The little critters throwing the fire bombs are a laugh a minute, especially when they miss the PC and set their friends on fire. Oopsie.

I'm horribly behind my various correspondences. Mondays are typically really busy for me and yesterday was no exception. Hopefully I can find a moment to breathe and get to that today.

The Portland trip was surprisingly good, from...

May 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

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

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

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

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

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

The drive up to Portland was incredibly produ...

May 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The drive up to Portland was incredibly productive. I filled up several pages with tiny scribbles, which pretty much finishes up all the henchmen dialog. I even went through and added various options to use telepathy, which is specific to this campaign.

This morning I typed up some of my writing as well as working on the high seas coding a bit more. There were some things that I'd left as "to do"'s until the 1.67 patch was released. Now it's done, so I'm doing things like displaying the ship name when you get ready to leave an island. I've also made sure you don't leave your companions behind, as they're fairly critical to your success.

I'll be doing family stuff today, but there's a good chance I'll get a little time here and there to work on things.

For those who had problems getting to this si...

May 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

For those who had problems getting to this site yesterday, sorry about that. The electric company decided to cut power to our house for most of the day.

I'm heading off to Portland soon, hopefully downing a mocha before I leave and bringing along a bunch of paper to scribble on. I'd like to start laying the groundwork for the third module, even though I still have lots to polish for the second one.

I'm pretty close to done with the henchmen dialog. I think I've got some more scripting to do, but that's about it. I'd still like some periodic quips or conversations between the two of them. Hopefully the long car ride will spur some thoughts. After that, though, I think things are basically ready for testing. I know there's lots to polish yet, but we're slowly getting there.

Yesterday was mostly planning work, as I was ...

May 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was mostly planning work, as I was otherwise pretty busy. While bathing the kids, I scribbled down some plans for the final battle in the first module. It's nice being able to go back and tinker with things, but I suppose that's the reason for doing a prototype. I was also in an incredibly dull meeting and wrote out Daniel's second flashback dialog, which was surprisingly involved.

Finally, I put in yet another treasure map. In a pirate game, you just can't have enough of those.

I decided to forgo the fancy Flash animations...

May 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I decided to forgo the fancy Flash animations and latest screenshots, instead giving everyone a picture of me with my Bioware writing contest loot. It was a fun day yesterday, filled with the announcement that Jade Empire was coming to the PC, the trailer, and new screenshots.

As for the module itself, I finished up half of Daniel's dialog, with one more flashback to go. I'm hoping to tie the past to the present somehow, though I'm still working out options to do so.

I'm having thoughts about redoing the final battle for the first module. After reflecting on it, it's not as "epic" as I'd like. I'm leaning towards something more heavily scripted and involving a number of skills the player will have picked up along the way. We'll see.

I keep hoping to see more of NWN2 at E3 this year. Supposedly Thursday is the big day for demos, but we might see more before then.

Well, the official trailer has been posted

May 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the official trailer has been posted. It's not in-game footage, so it's primarily just setting the mood for the single-player story. Pretty, though.

I slowly worked away on Daniel's dialog. I went through multiple iterations in my brain until I settled for the proper set of flashback sequences. I've typed up one of them, but still need to script it. Hopefully I can do the second as well.

I have fond memories naming my decks back in my collectable card playing days. There was "Death from Above" and the "Bruise" deck. With this latest NWN patch, it's now possible to change the name of your decks, so I worked that into the Pirate Cards game this morning. It should minimize confusion when selecting decks from a list. Still, the biggest benefit is probably the "cool factor" of being able to name the deck you've carefully built up and tested.

Yesterday was very productive

May 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was very productive. I worked hard on the Pirate Card game, adding in some improvements that were made possible with the latest patch. When clicking cards, you no longer need to walk over to them. Instead, they're played instantly. You can also take henchmen into the game. Before you had to tediously leave them behind and tell them to join you again. Finally, you can give your henchman a deck and ask them to play with you.

I think the last is my favorite feature as it lets you build a couple decks and then try them out against each other. Admittedly the AI isn't smart enough for really complex strategy, but it plays well enough. I ended up getting beaten multiple times even when trying hard. It was fun.

I worked more on the henchmen dialog in the second module. It's not much, as I was distracted, but I've thought things through and generally know which direction I'm going in. So far I'm feeling pretty good about the amount of time I'm spending on the two main companions.

I think I've sorted out the Flash issues and ...

May 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I think I've sorted out the Flash issues and it's working the way I'd like. I had to pull out all sorts of funky Javascript skills to get the cross-browser stuff working. This is a voice clip from the first module. It's pretty low quality, due to the nature of the tools I'm working with, but hopefully gives you a feel for how it's coming together.

I spend much of yesterday, last night, and this morning, putting together the last of the Heather dialog. I'm looking forward to the new cutscene camera system NWN2 users. Right now the camera is in weird places and not particularly dramatic. Still, I'm happy with the results and think it will be a worthwhile addition to the game. Next stop, doing something similar with Daniel.

I've been focusing on Heather for the henchme...

May 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been focusing on Heather for the henchmen dialog and am pretty happy with what I've come up with. There's the usual "how's it going" sort of dialog, but I've also added in a remembrance system. Essentially it allows the player to experience flashbacks and backstory. As a side effect the henchmen get boosts to skills as they remember things.

I finished my first one, which took awhile to script properly. Still, I'm happy with the way things are going and will likely introduce similar things for Daniel, the second main companion. It takes awhile to put each together, but I think the results are worth the effort.

Update: Danmar continues to do some very cool work with his lighthouse. It's been fun hearing his ideas for a side quest and seeing what sort of things he comes up with.

I'm doing a little experiment with Flash, try...

May 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm doing a little experiment with Flash, trying to see if I can convert some of the latest videos and put them up on the site. I'm not sure this will be a regular thing, but it's fun to fiddle with.

I'm looking forward to the new lip synching and animation. When we couple that with voice, I think it'll make a huge difference in the emotional impact of the game.

Yesterday I hunkered down and started writing more dialog for Heather. Some conversation options will always be available, such as asking Heather if she misses home. Others show up depending on the state of the romance or quests. I have more of this to do today, and need to work on Daniel as well.

One of the things I want to do is give the player the opportunity to "unlock" new abilities in the companions, similar to Planescape. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do this. It won't necessarily be tied to the romances, but instead has to do with resolving internal struggles or fixing mistakes they made in the past.

Today's picture is of Danmar's latest lighthouse

May 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today's picture is of Danmar's latest lighthouse. In theory we have three light houses in the game, though only one is textured. For a seafaring game, three seems like a nice number.

I finished attaching Heather's voice clips to the dialog yesterday. It was a fun experience and I can't wait to see what else magically appears in my in box next. Last I heard, Daniel's dialog was recorded, but not yet processed. It's terribly exciting.

I worked on the module myself, mostly on dialog and a bit of scripting. I'm thinking the two henchmen romances (with other NPCs) is essentially finished at this point, as are the endings (minus some necessary scripting). Next on my list is to work more on the player romances. Right now there are "romantic moments", but they're not tied together particularly well. The two main companions also have no non-triggered dialog to speak of. After the first module, they clearly need many more opportunities to interact.

Update: As an aside, I put together a little analysis of the newly released movies. It's mostly technical, picking apart the game engine a bit, but might be of interest to folks.

I finally got a chance to start attaching the...

May 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got a chance to start attaching the dialog for Heather and was simply blown away. It's amazing. Allyndyn did a great job technically, and the quality of the recordings is very professional. His wife did an amazing job as an actress, bringing life to dry words. I'm going to try to finish attaching the dialog today. Usually such tasks are a chore, but it's so much fun to hear her speak that I'm eager to jump back into it.

I finished typing up the last of the dialog I'd written on my trip. The main quests in the module should essentially be finished. I still need a fair bit of polish and would still like to throw in a couple minor adventure areas. The henchmen need lots more to say, for example. Still, I'm pretty happy with the direction things are going.

Today's picture is again from NWN2. I find myself imagining some of the areas and characters I've prototyped in NWN redone for NWN2. With luck, Dark Waters will be better looking than I'd hoped.

A ton of information is starting to be releas...

May 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

A ton of information is starting to be released about the game, which has everyone in a tizzy. Over at the the official site, they've released some new screenshots, including a bunch with water. I did a little analysis on them, finding a few interesting tidbits.

Even more exciting are videos over at IGN. It looks like we get our first peek at the GUI, character creation, and more.

As for me and my little project, I continue to be insanely busy. Marque, one of the team's artists, wrote an article for Gamasutra. Danmar is working on some custom content for his part of the game. One of the team's musicians was recently hired by Ubisoft. Life, as usual, continues to be exciting.

I'm crazy busy again, falling behind on my va...

April 30, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm crazy busy again, falling behind on my various corrispondences.

I've entered some of the dialog I wrote over my trip, though I have a fair bit to go. Some of these NPCs of mine can get rather chatty. Hopefully I can finish up today.

I'm having a lot of fun with the new SetName ...

April 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm having a lot of fun with the new SetName function. I spent yesterday morning fiddling in my hotel, using the function in all the logical places. When new ships are created, it now gives them a random name from a massive list. You can also go up to the dockmaster and set your ship name to something new.

On the plane back home, I wrote several pages in tiny letters, finishing up the last of the main dialogs. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There's alignment shift opportunities, a short path for players who don't like to read much, and so on.

I'm starting to realize that I'm going to need a vast amount of testing for this module. All the systems are very new and prone to breaking. The High Seas system has all sorts of quirky problems, for example.

I'm probably going to be swamped with catching up today. I'd really like to start doing things with the Heather sound clips, as well as all the team communication stuff. Busy, busy.

Well, I'm posting from my hotel room, making ...

April 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm posting from my hotel room, making due with an old laptop and a fairly good Internet connection. I've actually been making some progress on the module, adding in the things necessary for the card quest.

I've been scribbling other dialog as I can, and beginning to lay plans for the third module. I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself, as I'm certain to be doing some extensive QA work after I "finish" this current module.

The 1.67 patch was finally released, which I've been waiting for. There's a reasonable chance I'll end up using some of the new tilesets, as well as the new functions. SetName is a biggie for me, as all the ships are currently called "Ship", which isn't particularly exciting. I spent some time this morning putting together a list of over four thousand ship names. I hope to put together a random name generator. Ideally I'd have one for each faction, but I may just keep things simpler and use a single list. Since they're all names that come from real ships or ships in fiction, there's a good chance people recognize some of them.

I'm traveling back home late today, but hopefully I'll get some time to scribble some more before the day is done. It's nice that one of the most time consuming tasks, writing, just requires pencil and paper.

It also looks like I've convinced Danmar to work on a quest for the campaign. He's another jack-of-all-trades sort of chap, and will likely do all the modeling, scripting, and writing for the area he's working on. I'm a longtime fan of his work, and used a bunch of his custom content throughout the Dreamcatcher series. He's also worked on a couple models already, such as the lighthouse and Black Spot. Exciting stuff.

I'm heading out on my trip today, so hopefull...

April 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm heading out on my trip today, so hopefully I'll get time to scribble while I'm waiting in airports, meetings, and hotel rooms.

I got word that Heather's voice was recorded for the first module, a fairly huge undertaking for which I am most thankful. It's a treat when these things magically appear in my in box.

This morning I whipped up a fun little item that ties into the Pirate Cards game. You can put cards into a special deck, activate it, and those creatures magically appear to fight along side of you for a short period of time. The card gets destroyed, which prevents it from being too powerful. The item also limits how powerful creatures can get. It needs a bit more tweaking, but I'm so far happy with it. Now I just need to work it into the game.

Sadly yesterday was extremely busy, so not mu...

April 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Sadly yesterday was extremely busy, so not much was done. I fixed a minor bug from the duel, properly removing an effect at the right time. I also scribbled down some dialog and came up with a card game quest idea that I think I'm pretty happy about. It's very short, mostly involving a rather unique custom item. We'll see if I can code it today, and perhaps work on more ending and henchmen dialog.

I'm off on a business trip for the next few days. I can never tell if that means more or less development time than usual. If I'm waiting around, I'll usually break out a notebook and scribble away, so sometimes I get quite a bit done.

I was a very good boy yesterday and spent sev...

April 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was a very good boy yesterday and spent several hours yesterday, last night, and this morning on cleaning up the Woodhaven quest. At this point, I feel pretty good that it generally works, though there's likely some bugs I forgot along the way. I feel better about the "fun" factor as well. The main part of the Woodhaven quest is relatively short. I made the area smaller as well, minimizing the "wandering around in a big area" problem. Now it feels tight and full of things to do.

At this point, I want to turn my focus on wrapping up the final parts of the main quest, polishing existing quests, and perhaps adding in a few other side areas. I'd like to get another treasure map you can purchase, for example, or add in a card duel outside of the main card shop.

As expected, I worked on journals yesterday, ...

April 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

As expected, I worked on journals yesterday, in addition to cleaning up some dialog.

This morning I've been mostly in debug mode, finding all sorts of problems with the Woodhaven quest. It's amazing just how many things can break. Things would start attacking me for apparently no reason, characters didn't respond as expected, people didn't show up when they were supposed to, and so on. Fortunately I'm slowly wading through the mess.

It's also hard to tell if the quest is as fun any more. I simply get too close to things and it's hard to say one way or another. It's different, that's for sure, and interesting in some ways. I suppose the true test will come later this year when it's finally released.

No huge updates

April 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

No huge updates. I finished up and tested a dialog this morning. Some bugs in the ship trading system were fixed. I have some journal writing to do today, mostly around the main quests.

I had a note from one of the voice actors yesterday. His wife is voicing Heather, one of the main characters, and has 45 minutes worth of dialog recorded. We're almost certainly going to have to have a low and high bandwidth version of these modules. I'm guessing we'll need hundreds of megabytes for the voice and music.

I worked on a variety of things yesterday

April 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on a variety of things yesterday. It seems I hadn't fully tested out the High Seas integration. Little things like buying cargo and storing your stuff in the cargo hold wasn't working properly. After a bit of fiddling, I tracked down the issue and fixed things. I still need to make sure the ship combat is working as well.

I got my voice acting assignments out yesterday, so my current obligations are discharged. I've also been working on dialog, including a rather amusing one I haven't quite finished yet. There's still endless polishing to do and dialogs to finish up. I'm sure the QA folks will be plenty busy once they start into it in earnest.

As for today, I need to get some ship weapons in place, as well as yet more dialog.

Well, I did one of the two things I promised,...

April 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I did one of the two things I promised, passing Raz's submersible off to wisdomknight. I still haven't gone through and written down comments for each of the roles in the second module, then passed them off to the voice actors. Hopefully today I can get to that.

I did manage a bit of writing time yesterday, working on Heather's non-player romance. It was fun and witty, if brief, and I'll hopefully wrap that up soon. I have a hard time shaking the feeling that the player is "pimping out" their crew, as the Heather and Daniel non-player romances bring small rewards that the player can exploit. I'm resisting giving the player the line "who's yo daddy?"

I worked on my final island for the module, one of the Sweet Isles where the player can optionally purchase illicit goods or do a sugar-rum-iron triangle trade. Of course, I haven't made any of those trade items yet, but it's on my to do list for today.

Yesterday was way too busy, as Mondays often are

April 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was way too busy, as Mondays often are. The best I managed was a few dialogs scribbled down during boring parts of meetings, of which there were far too many to sit through. Many apologies to my team members, whom I promised many glorious e-mails of voice assignments and models to be textured. I'm a loser.

I'm still polishing and fleshing out empty spots. I ended up creating a new port of call, Iron Mountain, home of the dwarves. Currently there's no quest or adventure to have within, merely a dock with a gruff dwarf selling cargo. I keep realizing that I want to add more of this or more of that. I'd like some extra card players for the Pirate Cards game, perhaps scattered about the islands as part of a quest of sorts. The henchmen need more dialog. Ah, will the fun ever end?

I finished up the Catspaw quest

April 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finished up the Catspaw quest. The one dialog turned out to be a little bigger than I thought. There's the "romancing Daniel" path, the "female PC not romancing Daniel" path, and the "male PC not romancing Daniel" path. It seemed more appropriate than a simple one-liner, plus I was inspired for the non-romance paths and they turned out pretty darn funny.

I have a lot of coordination to do today. I promised I'd get ship models to SJ and role assignments to the voice actors. Hopefully I can get out all the necessary e-mails. Busy, busy.

Well, I'd like to say the Catspaw side quest ...

April 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'd like to say the Catspaw side quest is finished, but it's not quite. I'm really close, just needing to finish up a short Daniel dialog and that's about it.

I did manage to finish up the three parrot treasure quest. I had more fun with it than I thought I would, especially the "catch the parrot" AI tweak. Currently it's a little on the easy side, but with NWN2's outdoor areas, I suspect it might be a little more challenging.

As a reward for the player, I also decided to start a new voodoo-themed set of items. Set items work together, giving extra boosts with each additional set item you wear. They take a fair bit of effort, so currently I only have two and a half sets, but they're fun to play with and appeal to the "gotta get them all" collector in me.

I have only a few minutes before today's team...

April 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I have only a few minutes before today's team meeting, so I'm going to type fast.

I worked long and hard on my custom AI this morning. It actually works surprisingly well and I could see using it as a model for future scenarios. Having unique behavior for a creature is far more interesting than simply having it run up and start swinging.

The catspaw quest is slowly wrapping up. I need to add a portion of a three-part subquest to the Catspaw subquest. It's pretty trivial, except for some writing. I also need to write some of Daniel's dialog before I can officially declare the area completed.

I still have another month or so of polishing and testing to go. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

My interview is up on the Vault now, along wi...

April 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My interview is up on the Vault now, along with the deluxe version of Firestarter. Hopefully people will enjoy it.

I jumped into the Warcry chat last night and got an immediate shout-out by the Obsidian developers. That was pretty flattering, and I wish I could have stuck around, though I only had a short window between soccer practice, dinner, and getting the kids to sleep.

I worked more on the Catspaw side quest yesterday. Today I need to write up some item descriptions, a final dialog, and do some AI coding. Should be fun.

Finally, tomorrow morning is our team meeting. I was a good boy yesterday and documented all the current roles for voice actors. Hopefully we can talk about assignments and put some of those talented actors to work.

Yesterday was insanely busy with interviews a...

April 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was insanely busy with interviews and uploading files and assorted correspondence, so I didn't really work on the module at all. This morning I worked in a house cat into the hak pack, which is needed for the little side quest I'm doing, but that's about it.

Hopefully today or tomorrow the deluxe version of Firestarter will finally be available, as well as the interview I did yesterday for the Vault.

I also get to decide today between organizing all the dialog for the voice actors or working more on the module itself. Maybe I'll get lucky and find the time to do both.

It looks as if NWN2 has a fairly firm release...

April 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It looks as if NWN2 has a fairly firm release date of September 2006. That gives us about five months to get as much work done on the prototype as possible. I still have another month of wrapping things up with the second module, but I'm hoping the third one goes much faster. I shouldn't be introducing any new gaming systems, so it'll mostly be new quests to implement. I might even be able to start in on the fourth one before NWN2 is released, depending on how things go.

I started more seriously working on the last of the side quests yesterday. It should be short, contain some custom creature AI, and is tied into Daniel's romance path. I also wrote more on Heather's non-player romance. It's fun fleshing out your companions and turning them into real people with lives of their own.

Finally, the contest winners were announced and it looks like I'm officially ranked #1 as voted by the community. I'll try not to let the fame get to me, though I always wanted to have one of those downward spirals, fueled by booze and women. Expect an interview on the Vault and a download of the deluxe version of Firestarter shortly.

If you look very closely at this character's ...

April 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

If you look very closely at this character's head, you'll see . . . absolutely nothing! The infamous "flag on the head" bug finally got squashed this morning. It turns out I needed to tell my "flag creator" object to apply the flag effect. I had it all ready to go, but forgot that critical step. Later when I went to remove it, it couldn't find any flags applied by the "flag creator". It took me close to an hour to track that one down.

I worked more on my Daniel-specific sidequest yesterday, writing a few paragraphs and defining some AI behavior for a special monster. I'll probably continue to split my time between making new content and debugging what I currently have. Woodhaven still has problems, but it's slowly shaping up.

I had the kids the whole weekend, so I didn't...

April 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I had the kids the whole weekend, so I didn't work on the module a ton. Still, I managed some solid progress. I started writing the beginning of the fourth module, which is slowly solidifying in my mind. I'm not sure if it'll make it through unchanged, but so far I'm pretty happy with the opening.

Focusing on the task at hand, I hunkered down and went through the Woodhaven quest. Things were pretty badly broken, but I'm fixing them as quickly as I can. In one case, I deleted a key house and forgot to add it back. In another case, you couldn't actually learn new skills for use in the arena, which basically made it impossible to win. I've also reduced the number of fights you have to engage in. Mostly I want it to be a fun little area and not a series of tedious battles.

It still needs things like journal entries and more polish, but it feels good to start taking care of the last of the main quests.

I also had another side quest come to me. I've been wanting to give your companions and the romance with each of them a bit more attention. So far Heather gets lots of action, while poor Daniel doesn't currently do much more than admire the player. This new potential quest fixes that, though you can certainly engage in it out of friendship instead of l'amour.

I don't have a ton to report

April 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I don't have a ton to report. Mostly I worked on a lot of miscellaneous things, from finishing the side quest to beginning the final "end module" script. I worked on some simple scripts to make a couple NPCs do more than just stand there, waiting for someone to approach. The smith will whack on his anvil and check his forge. The archaeologist examines ruins and takes soil samples. It's the small things that count.

I hope to continue the "end of the module" dialogs and scripts today, assuming I can find the time. Transferring everything to the next module is going to be tricky. Players can have multiple ships, each with a cargo hold. I want to capture the state of various quests. I've made things a bit hard on myself by splitting a big module into two smaller ones. Still, I think it's the right decision.

I usually give the good aligned characters lo...

April 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I usually give the good aligned characters lots to do in my modules, cheerfully going on quests, saving princesses and the like. Evil characters typically get a token maniacal/murderous option. What I felt was missing was the devious evil approach. I ended up creating a special item you can purchase that gives the player new options, letting the player bargain for NPC's souls. It's Doctor Evil funny, which is my favorite sort of evil. Plus if the player vows to complete the quest, they can get boosts to both Lawful and Evil alignments.

I'm nearly done with the little side quest. I need to script the quest giver a bit and test the thing.

Hopefully today I can start in on my final "to do" list. It's still pretty long, though I started in on some of the writing last night. Busy, busy.

I got the ghost ship into High Seas

March 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I got the ghost ship into High Seas. It's the cute and little version, which I suppose makes it hard to strike fear into the hearts of mortals. I have plans for a big version too, so that people can ooh and aah over it in all it's haunted glory.

I was a little inspired by Raz's latest work and did some preliminary fiddling with one of his other models. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to texture the whole thing, but I had a few minutes to kill and wanted to make sure my skills weren't completely rusty. It's amazing how time consuming texture work can be.

In terms of the campaign itself, I worked on dialog for the second module. My least favorite part of writing dialog is the "getting to know you" phase, where introductions must be made and the character explains their place in the world. Still, I try to throw in a few tricks to make it interesting, so we'll hope for the best.

With luck, I'm getting a new power supply off a coworker this morning, so my computer woes might be better by tonight. This weekend probably won't be terribly productive as I've got both kids to myself as my wife goes off to the beach. I'll have to satisfy myself with dreams of virtual oceans.

I slaved away over High Seas again, putting i...

March 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I slaved away over High Seas again, putting in the boarding code and the start of a bounty system for sinking enemy ships. Of course, when I went home to test it, it ended up spawning in a tremendous number of crew, all of whom wanted to see my poor little PC dead. Fortunately my test character was able to mop the floor with them, being level 13 and all.

The big shock came this morning when I went to turn on my main computer and nothing happened. After a bit of fiddling, I decided the problem was with the power supply, so I've got to order one today. Deciding that fate was conspiring against me, I switched over to working on Raz's ghost ship model. The import flipped some of the normals over, so I carefully flipped them back. I then did some serious polygon reduction so that it wouldn't crash NWN and mostly got it into the prototype. I have some more fiddling to do, but hopefully it'll get in the game shortly.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of switching to other things while a power supply gets to me. A new team member has proposed some coding optimizations that I'd like to look at. There's dialog in the second module I need to update. I'd like to fiddle more with the ghost ship. No rest for the weary.

Raz finished up the texture for the ghost shi...

March 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Raz finished up the texture for the ghost ship, which is pretty amazing looking. I need to do some fiddling on my end to get it in the prototype, but can't wait to see it in combat. He's doing a whaling boat next, having finished up the UV map this morning. I think he's developed quite the talent for shipmaking over this last year.

I've been working on High Seas, as usual. Crew damage is in. Factions are in. You now have a captain's log that tracks your exploits. I fixed a number of bugs, such as getting a free shot with your weapons. When going to the world map, it now spawns an appropriate number of ships, rather than an endless horde that slowly takes over the ocean. I still have a bad AI navigation bug that I've been diligently ignoring. It's actually handy to have the ships move in a straight line while I do horrible things to it in the name of testing. If it tried to run away, I might have to actually plan my attack.

Today is all about setting up the boarding action. I'm reviewing ship deck tilesets and think I have a single option rather than building my own. Heed's Ship decks are okay, a bit abstract, but something that should function fine for a prototype. For the NWN2 version, I'm hoping we can make something a bit more flashy, perhaps incorporating the ship models we're putting together.

The secret to finishing these incredibly comp...

February 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The secret to finishing these incredibly complicated systems is to do a little bit each day and try not to think about all the work that's left to be done. I feel like a horse with blinders, ignoring all the annoying bugs so that I can finish up what I'm currently working on.

Players can now sink enemy ships and return to the world map. It seems an obvious thing, but these small details all must be done. When sails take damage, the ship slows considerably. I had to fix a funny bug where if they took more damage than total hit points, they'd suddenly speed up and zip around the map.

Theoretically player ships can be destroyed as well, but I've yet to test it. For some reason, the catapults the enemy uses are damaging my sail and not my hull.

I'd love to start in on boarding actions today, though we'll see how it goes. I still need to fix the world map spawn issues. I'd like to start introducing factions and bounties and such, so that sinking a ship is a worthwhile thing. Some surrender code would be nice too. Oh, and crew damage should happen as well. Busy, busy.

It was yet another day of bug fixing

February 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was yet another day of bug fixing. I managed to get all three types of weapons working (cannon, ballista, and catapult). For awhile, the cannons and ballistas were reporting that they were out of ammo until I figured out that I'd marked them as requiring the boulders that catapults use.

I fiddled with the visual effects a bit more, making things look a little nicer. I had to keep reminding myself that this was just a prototype and I shouldn't spend too much time polishing such things. I was playing Pirates! the other day, noticing how simple their ship combat system was, but so visually beautiful.

I've been trying to walk that line between realism and fun. One example is the issue of facing. Realistically, weapons on ships had a limited arc of fire. If I were to follow that approach, though, I'd need to keep track of each weapon you buy, where you place it, where weapon mounts were for each type of ship, and so on. Instead, I may just go for a general penalty to hit if you're not broadsides.

We've also had a new modeler start doing some work for us. He's into sea creatures, which fits Dark Waters quite nicely, and has experience with some of the same software packages being used by Obsidian. With luck, we'll see some of his goodies make their way into the campaign.

It's been all about fixing bugs last night an...

February 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's been all about fixing bugs last night and this morning. You can now buy ammo for the weapons you have. When in port, you can set the lead ship of your fleet. I added some QA options so you can immediately jump into the action with a fully loaded ship. These sort of time savers are immensely helpful at this point.

I also tweaked some of the models. The cow vortex was funny the first dozen times, but it eventually became a little annoying. I may end up working with the ship models some more, depending on how much time I have and how horrible things look.

I also added in the visuals for firing catapults, ballistas, and cannons, though I've only tested the first mere moments ago. Now it's back to kid watching and hunting down some coffee.

The AI ship now attempts to attack the player...

February 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The AI ship now attempts to attack the player ship, and sometimes actually succeeds. Mostly I'm staring at debug output, trying to track down the huge number of bugs I managed to introduce yesterday.

What I really need at the moment is to sit down and sort through a huge number of issues. I seem to be breeding bugs faster than I can squash them. I screwed up the ability to sell your ship, for example, though it's now fixed. There's still a ton of things that simply aren't working right. Some are math problems, some are simple logic issues, and a few are just plain weird.

With luck, I can get some testing time this weekend and get the combat system in a somewhat useable state.

Raz finished up the shields on the ghost ship

February 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Raz finished up the shields on the ghost ship. It's pretty amazing looking, with only the head and tail to go. The shields bring some nice color to the thing and for some reason I really like the chains next to the mast. One of the things I most like about this campaign is the neat new ships we're bringing to the game.

I worked hard on the High Seas system yesterday. I ended up rewriting some functions to make them more general. You can now fill your ships with certain types of crew, just like you can fill it with cargo. The AI is now making smart decisions as to what it should do, though it's not doing much about it yet. I really need to brush up on my trig.

With luck today I'll get to the firing portion. It's partially written, but needs to be redone to allow players and non-players to do it. I also want to have a better system for selecting preferred ammunition. Right now there's only one ammo type per weapon, but I'd like to introduce a greater variety soon enough. For example, grape shot does damage to the crew rather than the hull.

The official NWN2 site was briefly up yesterday. It's down again, after some issues were discovered, but we got some new images and tidbits. It looks like some nice features are making it into the game. The first is RTS-style controls as an option for controlling party members. The second is some amount of control over the GUI. Hopefully that means that I can flash up a set of buttons that says "turn to port", "turn to starboard", and "fire cannons", or something along those lines.

Razvan continues to astound and amaze

February 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Razvan continues to astound and amaze. The texturing of the ghost ship is coming along nicely, with the shields nearly finished. After that, all that's left is the head and the tail and that's one less ship to worry about, and a very cool one at that.

I've continued to work on the AI scripting, which is tremendously challenging. I find myself having to think back to my trigonometry classes, adding vectors and finding angles between points. When an AI decides to board your ship, it needs to figure out where you're going to be and not just where you are. Wind speed and direction gets tricky too.

There's also some tricky parts where the AI evaluates relative crew and weapon strengths, making sure you have ammunition for various weapons. I also need to add in the ability to auto-buy and auto-load crew and ammunition, as otherwise it takes too much time.

The amusing bug of the day was getting the fi...

February 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The amusing bug of the day was getting the first AI ship in the combat area and having it turn into a werewolf. I quickly tracked down the problem and it now turns into the expected ship type. No full moons were involved.

Yesterday was all about getting ready for the hardest part of the system, the ship-to-ship combat stuff. You can now buy weapons and ammunition, though I still want to make that process easier.

The AI is extremely stupid at this point, simply moving in a big circle. Today I need to put in the AI routines so it can figure out whether to board, flee, or simply fire away. The rules are somewhat complex, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it goes smoothly.

My "to do" list includes routines for determining the "power" of each ship for AI purposes, the relative crew strengths, and starting to implement the ship's weapons. With potentially multiple types of ammunition, things could get a little tricky.

Well, it's now possible to transition to the ...

February 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it's now possible to transition to the ship-to-ship combat screen and order your ship about. It responds to the wind in a proper fashion. When you click "Turn to port", it queues up the command and executes it during the next heartbeat. This prevents the problem of rapid clicking turning you too quickly. Different ships also have a different turning radius, with smaller ones generally coming about faster.

I ran into one issue that seemingly took me forever to track down. A ship's speed is set using an EffectMovementDecrease effect, which was completely ignored. It took me forever to figure out that creatures set as Plot aren't affected by such things. After I unchecked the box, it worked like a charm.

As for today, I'd like to get the AI ships somewhat working. There's some complicated things it depends upon in order to work right, such as weapons, ammunition, and crew, that aren't in the game yet. We'll see how far I get.

I thought I'd show off one of our works in pr...

February 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I thought I'd show off one of our works in progress, Razvan's ghost ship that he's been texturing these last few days. It's coming along very nicely and I'm hopeful that we'll have another finished ship in our fleet before too long.

High Seas continues to get all the attention. I put in some code to allow the player to bring along henchmen and such. They're now tucked away in the corner of the map until you return to shore. I'll have to dust them off and set them into action during boarding actions, but otherwise they'll stay out of the way.

I've also started the most difficult part of the system, the ship-to-ship combat portion. Right now I have it so you can jump to the area, but that's about it. I spec'ed out how I'd like the ship AI to work. Essentially there's three strategies: Close and board, attack, or flee. The AI evaluates hull damage, crew strength, weapons, and so on to decide which is best. Of course, this is all just pencil on paper, so we'll see how long it takes to get there.

I worked on two things yesterday

February 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on two things yesterday. The first was a rewrite of some dialog. I had initially made the ship's repair the motivator to getting the player to talk to some NPCs. Now it's authorization to buy a ship. Small change, perhaps, but it requires redoing a fair number of things.

I also got some basic NPC ship AI in. Merchant ships sail from port to port, trading their goods. Patrol ships slowly circle an island. Pirates simply wander around at this point.

I still have a bunch more to do, much of which is tied into the combat system. I'd also like some detection scripts, having patrol ships seek out and intercept players who have turned to piracy. Busy, busy.

Nothing's more deadly than a Cow Vortex you s...

February 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing's more deadly than a Cow Vortex you say? What about an Infinite Cow Vortex?

Yes, I managed to spawn in a huge number of whirlpools when fiddling with the weather system this morning. This was an improvement over trying to spawn in an infinite number of NPC ships, though not by much. I did get everything sorted out, but it was again pretty funny.

I figured out how I want to spawn in ambient ships, filling the sea full of merchants, patrol ships, and pirates. Of course, they're not interesting yet, as they just sit there. I haven't turned on their AI at this point, but the proper number spawn in as expected.

We have a team meeting in a few minutes, so I'm going to leap into the shower and get ready to chat.

Update: The team meeting went really well. The new plan is to cut back on the overall voice recording, which was daunting in its massiveness. I think we're sticking to key dialogs and opening lines for most characters. We also have a tentative approach for texturing some of the ships, which I think is key to the whole game. Finally, we all brainstormed some ways to limit the player's access to the world. I don't want people to pull a Morrowind and sail straight to the final area.

There are many dangers upon the open sea, but...

February 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

There are many dangers upon the open sea, but few as terrible as the dreaded Cow Vortex.

As you can see, I found a hysterical bug this morning. I put in the code for some weather effects, along with the basics of the damage system. When testing it out, I found that the whirlpool periodically flashed a floating cow above its surface. Where it came from, I still have no idea. It's not part of the creature model or the visual effect. I suppose it's just one of those mysteries of the deep, like the Bermuda Triangle.

On the plus side, the basics of the damage system are there. You can head out into a storm, take sail damage, return to port and get it fixed. Of course, there's currently no consequence of taking sail damage, or hull damage for that matter. Hopefully today I can sneak in a bit of that.

If I get some time today, I'd like to also start looking into spawning ambient ships, setting up trade patterns, and the like. I'm still thinking about the best ways to handle factions, which will be fairly core to the game.

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning, ...

February 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning, drank a cup of tea, and made some tremendous progress on the High Seas game. You can now purchase multiple ships and head out to sea. The lead ship is under your control, while the others in your fleet follow dutifully behind. It's fairly fun to move from island to island, a row of cargo ships trailing my pirate raider.

The cargo management is now about as streamlined as it's going to get. You can buy and sell cargo in bulk. I think the only thing that remains is putting in some nice informational messages about how much cargo space you have, the relative prices of cargo, and so on.

I also worked on the deluxe version of Firestarter yesterday. I fiddled with the sound files and am nearly done. Unfortunately a bit of miscommunication on my part lead to some dialog not being recorded, so I'll be circling back with the actors to record a few more lines.

As for today, I'll see if I can start introducing concepts such as factions and non-player ships. I might also throw in some weather, such as whirlpools and storms. I need to put in some things that'll cause ship damage in order to get the repair system working next.

I was fairly busy with family things yesterda...

February 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was fairly busy with family things yesterday, though I still managed to put in some time on HighSeas. You can now sail into port and ask to be filled up with a single type of cargo. It'll load up every ship you own in port, which is neat, and load it all automatically. The next obvious step is to be able to sell everything.

Since I'm putting so much effort into owning multiple ships, I'd like to work on a "caravan" approach where a player can sail out and bring all his ships in tow. For those who have played Pirates!, it's a familiar concept and hopefully works well. I'll probably put a cap on how many ships a player can own, otherwise things start getting pretty crazy.

Yesterday was fairly busy, with seemingly end...

February 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was fairly busy, with seemingly endless time spent on emails, chats, and other coordinating efforts. I did manage a few more development pushes towards the HighSeas system.

The smallest was probably some custom content and visual fiddling. There's some nice mini-map icons and I fixed the blocking part of the ocean tile so that the sky didn't show through the depths of the sea.

In terms of scripting, cargo management is becoming increasingly streamlined. You can do mass unloading and loading of cargo from all your ships in port, though there's still some funny little bugs to be squashed. I'd also like to allow for mass purchases and loading of cargo as often players will sail into port, expecting to fill their holds with the best priced cargo.

Finally, I got the last of the voice clips for the "deluxe" Firestarter module. I'm probably not going to get to it today, as I'm spending time with my family for Valentine's Day, but with luck I can put it all together by the end of the week.

I'm a fickle, fickle man

February 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm a fickle, fickle man. I threw out the previous map tileset and islands in favor of a completely 3D set of islands and a simple tileset of just water. The main advantage is that I can make any size map I want, putting down islands as I see fit. The total look is closer to what I'll be doing for the final version of High Seas, since I'll try to use their built-in terrain heightmap stuff. As an added bonus, it's actually much smaller. The total size of the hak pack is a little over a MB, much reduced from the 8 MB size of the graphics-heavy version.

I converted all my islands, trying to get some nice variety in the mix. I may add a few more if the situation calls for it. I also made some tiny placeable trees and buildings just to give the rather barren islands some life of their own.

Not to be content with just doing custom content work, I started in on some complex scripts for the cargo management. My goal is to make it easy to unload, buy, and sell cargo. The challenge to the player should be on the sea, not on the docks.

Finally, I tested out the overall world a bit more, making two islands you can trade between. The basics are working, though there's still lots of work to be done.

The last two days I've been knee-deep in scri...

February 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The last two days I've been knee-deep in scripts, doing some fairly wacky things. As of this morning, I think the hard parts are over and all my crazy experiments actually ended up working.

You can now buy and sell cargo just like anything else from a store. The hard part was making it so that the prices of different goods varied from store to store (since there's no SetPrice function). I ended up creating template items on the dockmaster that was copied over to fill the store with correctly priced items in the proper quantity.

The second tricky part was creating a ship's hold where players can put their cargo, as well as other miscellaneous goodies they might pick up on their adventure. I ended up creating a store for each ship they own, and carefully adjusting the markup so everything costs a single gold piece (which is refunded after every transaction). The only gotcha is that you can't currently store zero-cost items, though there isn't much that costs nothing in the game.

I have tons of things to do yet. I'd like to auto-unload and auto-load cargo, have surpluses and shortages that disrupt the normal pricing structure, simple crew management and experience, ship upgrades, repairs, and so on. I need to put in limits, so you can't stuff thousands of tons of cargo into a tiny ship. I'm also emphasizing multiplayer and thinking about persistent world support. I think I can also spawn in meeting places where players can gather on their ship to make plans in private.

Then there's the actual ship-to-ship combat, which is bound to be quite tricky. I'm trying hard to emphasize fun over realism. Keeping track of weapon placement and reload times , and incorporating that into AI routines, would probably make my head explode. I'm slowly narrowing things down to a simpler system that while not necessarily realistic, would hopefully be fun.

So, there's lots of things going on. I'm pretty happy about progress, though there's a long way to go yet.

I'm simply having way too much fun with High ...

February 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm simply having way too much fun with High Seas these days. You can now buy and sell different ships, choose a ship to sail when multiple ones are in port, and roam about the world map a bit.

I'm noodling over next steps and leaning towards implementing trading and upgrading, using an inventory-based system. There's a few tricky "gotchas". One is that I want the value of cargo to vary, so I'm using the new SetName function to display the value, while the game value is technically zero. I'd also like to treat crew, ship upgrades, and cargo in essentially the same way. That lets the player talk to a dock master and do one-stop shopping for all their shipping needs.

I'm also getting multiplayer ideas to support carrying PC passengers about. While they won't be used in Dark Waters, I'd really like to make all this stuff I'm creating useful for other modules and persistent worlds.

The other thing I want to show off is Raz's latest ship model. Things like this made me desperately want to let the player sail different ship types. It's just too cool to own a merchant cog, pirate raider, and ghost ship, picking one to suit your mood.

I've been working on HighSeas again, redoing ...

February 09, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on HighSeas again, redoing some of the basics. One of the big things I want to try is letting the player sail a variety of ships. With Razvan cranking out a model a week, it seems a shame to stick the player with a single ship for the entire campaign. Of course, that ends up having all sorts of other implications, so I've been fiddling to no end. Where things stand at the moment is that the player can walk out to the docks, sail off to the main map, and sail back. That's it.

I have run into some amusing bugs along the way. The first was when the player turned into a boat and didn't go anywhere. I wanted to caption this screenshot "Old Man Plays With Model Boat" or something.

I also put in a bunch of work on the Woodhaven arena. The AI was acting dumb and it took me awhile to figure out what the problem was. For a long time, the AI would turn into a boar, no matter what, and I spent endless combats turning into a dragon and squishing pigs. Of course, now that I've fixed the bugs the AI is a bit too good. I may have to introduce a random element so that the player actually has a chance.

I'm also terribly excited to hear that we may have a texture artist join our crew. There's a lot of ships waiting to be textured and made pretty.

I was amazingly prolific yesterday

February 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was amazingly prolific yesterday. In theory, the Dominator and Woodhaven quests are scripting complete. Now, that doesn't mean they're close to done. They still need lots of testing, polishing, and various details. I did manage to add in several dialogs, lots of scripts, some extra NPCs, and the like. The next step will be testing everything.

I'd like to get at least a minimal version of High Seas thrown together so that I can move from island to island. Right now I have to use the QA item to leap from place to place.

I was a very good boy yesterday and finished ...

February 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was a very good boy yesterday and finished up all 148 dialog clips for the Proctor and sent Jules off a note requesting a handful of "do-overs". I now have the greatest respect for voice actors and the folks who do sound processing. Tough stuff. The good news is that it turned out really well and I'm excited to hear it in the game. The next step will be attaching all the sound clips to the dialog, though I may end up delegating that.

I've been fiddling a bit more with HighSeas, popping our one textured ship model into the game. It still needs some tweaking, but looks fairly good. I'd also like to work on the island art a bit more, pretty things up a bit.

Fiddlings continue, however slowly

February 06, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Fiddlings continue, however slowly. I resolved a funny bug where my exciting psionic combat was halted by the two psionic projections avoiding combat and just hanging out. A quick faction fix solved that one, though it took me awhile to track it down.

I think I'm liking the fact that I've integrated the various subquests together as it makes it easier to incorporate certain items, scripts, and systems. On the down side, everything takes longer to open and compile.

Hopefully today I can focus on finishing up Dominator and Woodhaven, as well as the Proctor dialog sound processing. No rest for the weary.

Razvan continues to be a modeling maniac. I awoke this morning to find four new ship images sitting on the discussion boards. Words cannot describe how amazed I am at his prolific modeling talent.

I'd also like to thank everyone who voted on Firestarter. It's doing quite well in the rankings and I've been reviewing some of the comments as well. It's nice getting some bonus QA work out of the whole thing.

My map project continues

February 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

My map project continues. I've whipped up some appropriately colored islands, recycling my old hand-drawn islands. It works well enough for now, though I'll probably end up tweaking it even more, knowing me.

I worked more on Woodhaven. It turns out my peaceful option wasn't working properly. After a bit of tweaks and the addition of a new magic item, it seems to be working again. Now the peaceful option is relatively easy for the clever player.

I'm also starting to work on integrating all the various quests together into the main module. I'm starting to feel pretty good about the overall progress, though the end of the module is still quite a ways out. There's still a bunch of quests that are just ideas on paper, not to mention endless polishing and debugging. Still, it's nice to feel like progress is being made.

Periodically, I go a little crazy

February 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, I go a little crazy. I ran across an antique blank map which was covered by the Creative Commons license. I ended up downloading the whole thing, chopping it up into 42 512x512 pieces, writing a script to generate 42 tilesets, and getting it into the game. After a dozen or so game crashes, I finally got it working.

It looks beautiful, though I don't have any islands or such to throw on the map. That'll be the next step, making placeable things to decorate the place.

I worked more on the Proctor sound files. Some of them are hysterically funny. To give you the scope of the thing, one dialog in the game ends up having nearly 50 voice clips, each one which has to be cropped and cleaned and named properly. I think it'll be worth it in the end.

I've continued to fiddle with Woodhaven a bit...

February 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've continued to fiddle with Woodhaven a bit more. I decided to tighten up the forest areas, dropping one and making the other much smaller. It just didn't seem to make sense to have the player wander around quite so much. With NWN2, I may change the way the layout works, but for NWN, this seemed a better approach. I also decided the arena fights were too long, so I ended up giving the creatures fewer hit points. That increases the random element a bit, but I think that's okay. I also want to make the bigger creatures more hard-hitting, perhaps doubling the amount of damage they do. Right now they all seemed more evenly matched than I'd like.

I worked on the "spirit harvesting" code a bit as well. The image of the day is from me, er, harvesting a poor little pixie. There's less violent ways to do it as well, fortunately.

I spent way too long working on sound processing yesterday as well. I think it's going to be one of those things I need to pass to the experts, but I'm halfway through this batch. I suppose it gives me a greater appreciation for what they do as well.

Firestarter continues to do well. Should I be the one to be crowned with the Bioware wool cap, I shall take my solemn duties quite seriously. Whatever they are.

The folks over at Penny Arcade made up a comi...

February 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The folks over at Penny Arcade made up a comic related to the writing contest. It's pretty funny, but very much not appropriate for children under twelve.

Firestarter continues to get votes, through some strange and magical process. It's weird seeing most of the votes very high and a few quite low. There's been a lot of discussion on the boards as of late as to the flaws in the voting system and how easy it is to manipulate things. Ah, well.

Getting back to the project, I spent a long time yesterday processing the sound files for the Proctor character in the first moudule. It's amazing how much time can be spent fiddling with sound files, taking out funny breathing noises, adjusting levels, and so on. The good news is that it's turning out rather well and makes the character quite interesting.

I also worked more on Woodhaven this morning, fixing the spawn system and assorted scripting bugs. Today is likely more sound and scripting, hopefully wrapping more of it up.

Work on Woodhaven continues

February 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Work on Woodhaven continues. I have one big dialog remaining, and I'd like to put in some assorted townsfolk dialog as well. As I found out while testing this morning, I have many, many bugs. I didn't even get to the actual arena fight, though hopefully that's not too far off. Hopefully today I can make a serious push to finish up the area.

I wanted to drop another quick note about Firestarter. It's available for download and voting. With 300 entries in the contest, I suspect it'll be hard to have a fair vote. I randomly sampled ten and most have no votes, a few had one vote, one had two votes, and a lucky one had six votes. Hopefully the situation will improve as the week rolls on. It looks like Firestarter has six votes already, for which I thank everyone.

I talked with the voice actors more yesterday. It sounds like we're going to be releasing the deluxe version of Firestarter in a few more days, depending on when people have time. It was very much a rush recording job and I'm happy people were able to do as much as quickly as they have so far.

Well, I'm feeling better, my wife has returne...

January 31, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm feeling better, my wife has returned, I've caught up with e-mail and the boards, and I'm ready to leap back into the saddle again.

Last night was all about testing the new voices I added to the module. It took far longer than I thought, as I ran into all sorts of funny problems. Some of the sound clips had file names greater than 16 characters, which isn't allowed. I ended up renaming them all several times to make my life easier. It turns out there's also a maximum distance after which you can't hear spoken sounds. I ended up creating special objects just to play the sounds.

As for today, I now have all of the Proctor's dialog ready to be integrated into the first module. I'd also like to put some work into all the different quests I'm juggling at the moment, such as Woodhaven and the Dominator, which are close to being finished.

Update: It looks like the Bioware contest has begun! You can download the module here. Feel free to vote and speak your mind.

I'm sick as a dog today, surviving by way of ...

January 28, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I'm sick as a dog today, surviving by way of painkillers and way too much caffiene. Add watching the kids for the weekend while my wife's out of town, and the chances of working on the project get pretty slim.

Friday was fairly productive, though. I got more sound clips from the voice actors and added them into the Firestarter module. The lengthy Proctor dialog for the first module was finished up as well, though I haven't managed to download the thing yet.

It brings up an important issue. The sound files we're creating are simply massive. With luck we can use mp3 or a similar compressed format for the voice clips. At the moment, we're stuck with wav files, which are ending up being hundreds of megabytes in size. I think we're going to end up creating a "big" and "light" version just for development, otherwise our dial-up team members will be stuck passing CDs around.

Progress continues

January 27, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. I did a few more walkthroughs of a non-voice version of the Firestarter module last night, so I'm fairly satisfied that things are working as I want them. The only minor change was adding a few more alignment changes through a particular dialog. If you really pushed it, you could swing a full ten points in evil (which is always the easiest to gain), nearly that many for chaotic and lawful, and six or so points towards good alignment. I'm not sure all my side quests will change alignment quite so much or have quite this many options, but it's a nice goal when I can manage it.

In any case, I hope to upload the contest entry this morning when time permits. Hopefully it'll be received well.

I also worked more on Woodhaven, adding in more dialog. Strangely, I'm more excited about what happens after the quest is resolved than the quest itself. Right now the dialog I'm writing feels like the necessary support for the interesting aspects of the area. There's lots of scripting that goes along with it too, hopefully something I can make some serious progress with today.

The voice actors continue to do their thing. I'm hoping that within a week or so, I'll have all of Firestarter finished. Voice acting in a game completely changes the way it sounds. Great stuff.

Update: Okay, the game submission is in. The tentative plan is to upload the version with the voice acting in a week or so. Already we're finishing up the last of the voice acting. Very exciting.

After two painfully busy days, I finally got ...

January 26, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

After two painfully busy days, I finally got a chance to hunker down and put in some real work. I'm also caught up with all my e-mail and such, which is a nice feeling indeed.

Flick finished recording one of the main characters lines in Firestarter and it's turned out sounding simply great. I've thrown all his dialog into the module itself and did a brief test this morning. I'm waiting on one more main NPC and then assorted villager comments. If all goes well, I'll probably submit the "light" version tomorrow to Bioware, though I'll have to do a bit of final testing to assure myself that it all works properly.

I made a somewhat last minute dialog change yesterday, adding in some more branching. VivianC reported that a particular dialog was a tad too linear, which after looking at it I decided was very much true. I was sneaky about it and did it without having to record any new lines.

I also worked on the second module some more. The Chronmancer quest that I slaved away on is now integrated into the main module. You can use the QA thingie to teleport yourself to the island and get started on the adventure. After Firestarter is finalized, I'll do the same for that.

I added more Dominator dialog in and will likely work on that some more today. I don't think I'm too far away from finishing up that quest.

It was another crazy busy day yesterday, whic...

January 25, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It was another crazy busy day yesterday, which was unpleasant. The emails and such are still piling up, though I'm going to make some time for them today, come hell or high water.

I did manage to type up some of my written dialog yesterday, putting more work on the Dominator quest. I still have more to type and a fair bit of scripted combat to put in place. Still, it's slowly getting done.

The module is broken up into two phases, with four quests for the first phase. So far, Chronomancer and Firestarter are essentially done, with Dominator and Woodhaven over halfway finished each. After that, I have four others to do before the module is considered complete. I'd also like to throw in all sorts of side quests, similarly to what I've done with Port Brighton.

The next two modules are still a little sketchy in my mind. I know the ultimate goal, but have yet to decide on the exact roadmap. The next module will have some significant undead themes. The final module is the one I'm tempted to throw some ideas from XCom into. We'll see how it goes.

I was crazy busy yesterday, so not much happe...

January 24, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I was crazy busy yesterday, so not much happened on the gaming front. I have e-mails unread, discussion boards unvisited, and a list of recently found bugs unfixed.

On the plus side, I was stuck in some long and boring meetings yesterday and scribbled down a bit of dialog. I think I'm going to try something a bit unusual with the player's companions. In most RPGs, the player themselves get a chance for romance, but I thought I'd throw in the opportunity for your companions to find happiness as well. So far, I like the ideas I've sketched out. We'll see how far I take it.

As for today, I have a ton of dialog to type up and script. Hopefully it'll be less crazy.

I made a ton of progress yesterday

January 23, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made a ton of progress yesterday. The two main quest givers are in the game, along with their respective areas. I polished up the legal system a bit more. Committing murder results in imprisonment, rather than the guards and commoners ganging up on you to pummel you to death. They may toss in a few beatings first, just for fun. My son discovered a bug in the jail system when he set his jailer on fire pyrokinetically and was made it impossible to escape.

I even started in on the Dominator quest a bit more. You can now get to the combat portion of the module, which I'm hoping to script a bit to make interesting. I've got some dialog I need to get into the game, along with the necessary minions to make things interesting.

As an aside, my son and I have started playing Zelda: Wind Walker and having a great time. There's a number of elements in it that I'd like to see in Dark Waters. The islands with their unique styles, the interesting puzzle-solving, and the open-ocean sailing are all things I very much admire. My campaign will be much more adult, of course, but I still admire that little game's spirit.

Yesterday's team meeting went well, with plen...

January 22, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday's team meeting went well, with plenty of pirate jokes and the like. I think we're on track for getting the voice actors organized for Firestarter, and of course the main campaign.

Yesterday I continued work on the crime and punishment aspect of the game. If you steal, you must pay a bounty or be sent to jail. Murderers go straight to jail. Of course, that's not the end of the game and a clever person can slip away.

I also worked on Port Brighton some more, putting in the Underground section. It's actually quite neat looking, though I'm eager to see what it'll look like in NWN2. I'm starting to connect up the various areas of the game, with Port Brighton being a fairly big hub for the player's assorted adventures.

If I get a chance today, I'll keep working on tying together the various areas. I have two main quest givers that still need to be added to the game, though I'm nearly there with one of them.

Our team meeting starts in a few minutes, so ...

January 21, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Our team meeting starts in a few minutes, so I'm rushing about a bit this morning. I got a scripting piece working this morning that I had put off for awhile. You can now steal something and if caught, the NPC will report you when you leave the area. When you come back again, the guards will approach you and demand that you pay for your theft. If you do, your bounty is cleared and you're free to go. I've yet to get to the part where you're thrown in jail, though that's easy enough to do as well.

Yesterday was fairly busy, so I didn't get as much done as I'd like. I got some more villager dialog for Firestarter, which I put into the module. There was also some more issues QA reported (thanks PJJ). I think it's slowly approaching completion.

I did sneak in some torches that you can extinguish with the newly created water bomb. It's an homage to the water arrows of Thief. A few areas where rogues can be stealthy would be nice.

To go hand-in-hand with my newfound pyromanic...

January 20, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

To go hand-in-hand with my newfound pyromanic streak, I decided to create a "water bomb" item that puts out fires. I thought it only fair if you accidentally set yourself or a companion ablaze, which seems to happen far too often in certain circumstances.

The voice acting scramble continues. I still have voice clips I need to get into Firestarter. We have a team meeting tomorrow morning and voice acting will likely be a big topic for us.

I'm pretty sure I can hit the deadline of the 30th for submissions, even with our "deluxe" version. It might just be a little exciting for the next week or so.

I spent last night repeatedly setting a man o...

January 19, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I spent last night repeatedly setting a man on fire. A certain script wasn't working quite right, so after a fair bit of fiddling I finally managed to whip things into shape.

It looks like the writing contest has begun and submissions are being accepted. The deadline is the 30th, so I'm trying to scurry around and take care of last minute details. Sophia's dialog is all in the module, as is a single line from one of the villagers. I'm really hoping that I can get a bunch more in for the "deluxe" version of the submission.

Yesterday I actually had a chance to work on the Woodhaven area some more. There's a couple NPCs that I want to rethink how I've implemented them. I wrote a bunch of dialog for one, and I think there's a way I can reuse it for two, along with making things interesting for your companions. Slowly getting there . . .

Yesterday was insanely busy, so I didn't do n...

January 18, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was insanely busy, so I didn't do nearly as much as I'd like. I started going through the dialog for Sophia, one of the main characters in Firestarter, and attaching them to individual lines.

I also started the process of integrating the Chronomancer quest into the main module. Where possible, I think I plan on making quests stand-alone during development and then integrating it into the main module for final QA. Life tends to be a bit simpler when I'm working with smaller chunks of content.

Hopefully today I can hunker down and finish the dialog, as well as catching up with my various message boards and correspondences.

I had lots of fun yesterday getting the tatto...

January 17, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I had lots of fun yesterday getting the tattoos and earrings working properly. The earrings were already in, but I think there were only two choices to select from. I've now expanded it to a half dozen and I'll be sure to add a few along the way.

The tattoos got even more work. You can get up to three tattoos, which work similarly to scrolls. Along your travels, you can come across tattoo patterns and sell them to the tattoo parlor, at which point, you can get them as well.

The hardest part was limiting the player to only three tattoos. I ended up using a standard store, which seemed the simplest interface. Unfortunately there's no way via scripting to close a store when the player gets the maximum amount of tattoos. Instead, I empty out the store, so it's not possible to buy anything else. I then had to fill up the store every time, but it turned out to be easier than I thought.

Hopefully today I can start in on assigning voice clips to the Firestarter module and get that ready to go. I suspect there will be some QA tasks for me as well. The fun never ends.

Even though Razvan is theoretically busy full...

January 16, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Even though Razvan is theoretically busy full time with schoolwork, he seems to be unable to completely stay away from modeling software. I think this latest entry will become a statue, guarding something terribly important.

Firestarter hit the testing phase this morning. I spent yesterday doing some more polishing and tweaking scripts. Still, I'm sure they'll come up with various things I missed.

I'm having to make some painful choices with the voice actors. There were a couple brilliant auditions that cracked me up. Unfortunately I can only have one in the game, so I made some assignments that hopefully end up being both funny and true to the story.

I did some daydreaming and long-term planning yesterday as well, scribbling on paper as my daughter played with PlayDough. I generally know where I'm going, but certain pieces of the campaign shift about the closer I get to them. I think the second module is going to be the biggest, joining two modules into one to increase the player's freedom.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have today. I'd like to go back and work some more on unfinished quests. I've also been itching to get the tattoo scripts working.

I finally got around to putting Danmar's ligh...

January 15, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got around to putting Danmar's lighthouse into the prototype. It was surprisingly difficult, as the NWN engine is very picky about having the model set up properly. All modifiers have to be collapsed, all transforms reset, all geometry needs to be turned into meshes, and so on. Still, it ended up looking remarkably good. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the NWN2 engine, though I suppose I'll settle on NWN for the moment.

I'm hoping to better organize the teams models and textures, finding a common location in the repository for them all. Right now they're scattered across multiple locations and I sometimes forget where things are. It took me a week to get the manor model and all the textures to Juliano, for example.

Firestarter continues to be worked on and polished. The journal entries needed to be fleshed out a bit more yesterday, which was fairly fun to write. I think the scripting is mostly in place, though it could still use some more time. I still have a bit of time before my family wakes up and descends upon me like tiny locusts. We'll see what I manage to find some time for.

I put in some more testing and fixing time fo...

January 14, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I put in some more testing and fixing time for the Firestarter quest and started organizing voice actors to start recording their lines. I'm in the enviable position of having a number of well qualified voice actors, so it's pretty easy to fill roles. Of course, it also means I have some painful decisions when doling out some of the more popular characters.

I even managed some time with Woodhaven, working on the arena and creature spawning scripts. It's not quite time for debugging, but it's slowly getting there.

I made a lot of good progress yesterday

January 13, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made a lot of good progress yesterday. The Firestarter quest is "finished", in the sense that I'm in the testing phase. I found a slew of bugs this morning, but actually managed to finish the entire quest. I think I'm going to ask the voice actors for a rush recording session.

I even managed to get back to the Woodhaven area a bit. The area maps are essentially finished, though I've got a bunch of dialog and scripting to work on. I'm crossing my fingers a bit, hoping the little game you play there is actually fun.

Once these quests actually get complete, I'd like to start integrating them in to the main module. Right now the Chronomancer quest is done, Firestarter is nearly done, and hopefully Woodhaven will be next. Hopefully Sunjammer can get the High Seas component to a state where I can integrate it in, letting testers sail from island to island. I do have a magic QA item that allows for instant teleportation, but it would be nice to see something more official.

The big news for the day is that we have a we...

January 12, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

The big news for the day is that we have a wedding on the team. Our team manager, Elizabeth and Ove, our web and testing person, are planning on getting married. I would like to have said that I played cupid in some small way, but the reality is that they've been together for eight years. Ah, young love.

I made a fair bit of progress yesterday, mostly around voice recording and debugging the first module. There's a really annoying bug that I hopefully squashed. I also worked on the scripting for Firestarter some more, getting the gravedigging and cross-dressing corpse burning working properly.

I made some good progress yesterday, typing u...

January 11, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I made some good progress yesterday, typing up the majority of the dialog for the Firestarter quest. I've got a fair bit of scripting to do yet, but it's nice to feel like I'm in the home stretch.

A few new bugs from the first module were reported, so I might actually turn my focus to that for a bit. I also got a new batch of voice recordings to attach to things.

No rest for the weary.

It's been busier than I would have liked thes...

January 10, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

It's been busier than I would have liked these last couple days. I did manage to work on the Firestarter quest a bit this morning. Like in any good pirate story, there's an awful lot of digging. I think you can now dig up all the evidence, treasure, and odd bits of loot except for one that's, well, rather smelly. I think all the items and such are created now. I have a few more journal entries to write, though I added another this morning.

The main thing that remains is the dialog and scripting to support the various endings. With luck, I can find some time to pull that together today and slowly move towards testing.

I really like the way this quest has turned out and I feel it's the stronger of the two entries for the contest. I may end up just submitting this one over the other.

Some amazing new media came out for NWN2 yest...

January 08, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Some amazing new media came out for NWN2 yesterday. The renders in particular caught my eye. There's such a huge difference between the old NWN creatures and these new ones that it's night and day. It's exciting to think that later this year I'll actually get to put my hands on the game.

Yesterday I drank four cups of strong tea, hoping for divine inspiration in the Firestarter quest. Fortunately it came to me and I've plotted out four main ways to finish the quest, along with a variety of minor changes. I'm also including what I like to call "Scooby Doo" elements, letting the player find clues and unravel mysteries.

To set the ambiance just right, I've switched everything to nightfall and put in what visual and auditory touches are possible within NWN. So far I'm really liking this quest, and am excited to finish it up. I have a bit more dialog to write, some journal entries, and a fair amount of scripting. Great fun.

I've been working away at the Firestarter que...

January 07, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working away at the Firestarter quest these last couple days. Last night and this morning I mostly focused on debugging some scripts. I also wrote a bit more of Sophia's dialog. There's still a fuzzy part in the middle that I'm waiting on inspiration for. I think I have the evil path fairly well defined in my head, but the good path isn't quite solidified. I really like having so much branching and freedom after the very rigid structure of the Chronomancer quest.

The voice actors continue to amaze me. One of the new recruits has tried out for one of the main villagers in the Firestarter quest and is simply hysterical. All the extras, from voice acting to music to new models are really going to make this campaign stand out. Hopefully it'll also distract from any horrible design decisions I've made along the way.

Work plods along

January 05, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Work plods along. I fiddled some more with the Chronomancer quest. There's now two bonus goodies you can pick up if you're clever or stubbornly persistent. I did a bit of polishing and of course moved the word count closer to 5,000. Silly me.

I started in on Sophia's dialog for the Firestarter quest yesterday. It's tricky hitting the right notes with her, though I feel I'm doing okay. I also want to introduce some complexity around completing the quest and haven't quite settled on the specifics. Still, I feel pretty good about how this quest is coming along.

I did some work with the voice actors yesterday, putting up a page that showed all the dialog, actors, and assignments. All I can say is that the people assigned to Heather and Daniel have their work cut out for them.

Well, I spent a good chunk of time last night...

January 04, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I spent a good chunk of time last night and this morning debugging and adding more options. I'm up to 4,800 words, but I very much like the additional choices the player has. Some are fairly obvious ways to get killed, but some are less straightforward. There's even a way to get an extra treat from the quest, though like the rest of the area, it's fairly convoluted.

I'm debating how much more to fiddle with the quest. I could add more branching and options, more ways to get yourself killed. I could probably polish the scripts a bit more. I should take a look at the writing one last time. Still, it's feeling increasingly close to finished.

The main advantage of the Chronomancer quest is that it's likely to be very different than most things out there. The two problems I see are limited player choice and general confusion as to what's going on. I'll continue to listen to my team's feedback to emphasize the first and minimize the latter issues.

Hopefully today I can start in on Sophia's dialog for the Firestarter quest. I feel a bit like an actor, trying to "get into the character". At this point I'm trying to imagine what her life is like, how she got to where she is and why she's willing to go along with it. Tricky.

Update: It looks like the Vault interview finally got posted. The delay was unfortunately my fault, due to vacation. Fortunately I was able to pass along some images and sound clips too, so it turned out rather well.

Today wasn't quite as productive as yesterday

January 03, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Today wasn't quite as productive as yesterday. I came down with a bit of a cold, so I've been less than creative as I drag my body about, leaving an oozing trail as I go. The first round of QA was done on the Chronomancer quest and people pointed out the biggest flaw to the quest.

At the moment, there's not enough player choice. It's all dialog-based and there's a few branches, but most of the time the player is simply going from point to point. I think what I need to do is add more branches, many of them wrong choices, and let the player fail. It'll play hell with my word count, but I'd rather do that than have something that isn't fun.

The Firestarter quest is very different and less controlled. In some ways, it may be the stronger of the two entries.

Yesterday was quite productive

January 02, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was quite productive. I started in on the Firestarter quest in earnest, continuing the dialog I had begun and getting some of the scripting in place. Working with a 4x4 area in the toolset and not being allowed to use any outside content has been an interesting creative challenge. I really have to make every tile count and I find myself fiddling with the map over and over to get things just right.

The Firestarter quest is much smaller in scope than Chronomancer, which means I can be far more generous with my word count. There's still a lot of branching, journal entries, and the like that I can include. I've also yet to start any dialog for one of the main NPCs. Overall, the tone of the writing is a mix of ironic comedy and sorrow. It's an interesting blend to work with, and hopefully I can do it justice.

There's a bit of scripting, though it's fairly light. I worked on the most troublesome part last night, making sure my idea would actually work. It took me awhile to figure out why the game was trying to spawn an infinite number of objects. I did a quick walk through of the system and it seems to be working just fine now. For the technically minded, I was looping through objects with a certain tag, destroying them, and creating new ones with the same tag. Adding a delay in the creation fixed the problem nicely.

Happy New Year from all us clones

January 01, 2006 by Adam in NWN2

Happy New Year from all us clones. I was having problems with clones yesterday as I went through debugging the Chronomancer quest. I think I have most of the weird issues sorted out. The other amusing bug is that I accidentally froze the PC's animations and she drifted from point to point after that, like a statue on wheels.

I think most of the big issues are sorted out. I've yet to run through the entire thing, though I've extensively tested each phase and several blocks of phases. I also want to go through with a spell checker and do some careful editing. This is a writing contest, after all.

The word count is at 4,500, about a thousand over the theoretical limit for the contest. Fortunately it's supposed to be a target, so I think I'm safe.

I also had a solid hour for writing, thanks to my daughter who can only nap in the car. I started in on the Firestarter quest, which I'm liking so far. The word count should be much lower, so I can spend that "extra" on nice things such as journal entries, conversation branching, and the like.

Tomorrow I return to work and life theoretically returns to normal. I'll be reading e-mail then and hopefully catching up with the real world. Wish me luck.