Progress continues

December 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a good boy this morning and started in ...

December 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a good boy this morning and started in with the debugging again. It's nice to see the list of issues getting so small (at least in comparison to the early days). I even found a bug of my own - there was a dialog where the import process from NWN1 had dropped off the "e" from "Touché".

I continue to give the alphabet assault game my love and attention. Yesterday I worked on a second level and this morning I fiddled with some custom content. It's fun.

I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have...

December 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have a touch of a cold and couldn't manage to drag myself to the bug list this morning.

Instead, I decided to inject a little more awesomeness into the Alphabet Assault game. I started a second level of the dungeon (it needs at least three or four, but currently has only one) and added a new feature. There are certain weapons in the dungeon that if you're using it and you spell a word with a key letter, it'll give the weapon a temporary boost. For example, if you have the Axe of B and spell the word "grab", your axe will do massive electrical damage for the next 60 seconds. It's a fun additional feature, guaranteeing that this mini-game will likely be my favorite in the whole module.

I also worked on a timesaver for the sound files. I worked up a new technique that ditches copying and pasting into Excel to create lipsynch animation. Now I copy the wav files into one folder, run a batch file, and the compressed version and fxe file appears in another.

After several days of taking it easy, work ha...

December 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After several days of taking it easy, work has returned like an unwanted itch. I've been very busy the last couple days. I did manage some time to add additional polish to the Sanity Defense game. I'm hopeful I got rid of the most recent bugs, though it likely needs to have the balance adjusted a little more.

Our brave testers have been hard at work and I've been dutifully flagging e-mails to follow up with later. The list of issues continues to shrink, but it would be nice to take care of the remaining ones.

Also in the last few days I put together an improved method for moving files around. Basically I plug in an external drive and run a batch file. I run another batch file to create a full set of installers. It's pretty handy and should hopefully save me time and minimize bugs in the future.

The brains were flying left and right while h...

December 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The brains were flying left and right while hordes of enemies attacked. It's a typical morning in the Miller household, with me slowly finishing up this particular mini-game. It's coming along nicely, with a proper sequence of events and all of the enemies and defenses in the game.

I still need to whip up some dialog, fix some bugs, and balance things, but hopefully that won't take too long.

Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Min...

December 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Mindflayers with floating brains. The main guts of my Sanity Defense game are working nicely. The map updates with the position of the player, enemies, and active portals. It's not as smooth as the real map, but it gets the job done. The only thing I might fiddle with is showing off the direction the player is facing, as I found myself getting turned around a few times.

The game itself is fairly fun. I need to add a few more enemies, suitably bizarre, of course. I've already got the dialog planned out, though I've yet to write it.

It's really fun getting back to module building after the long weeks of QA work. I really like the way these D&D versions of popular online games are turning out. I've been eyeing "Elite Beat Agents" lately. With my new GUI skills, I think I can pull it off. Hmm.

Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled...

December 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled at my computer this morning while everyone slept, freezing away in my in-laws' breezeway. Despite my camaraderie with Tiny Tim, I managed to whip up a fairly cool GUI for the little mini-game that goes along with the bizarre area I created yesterday.

Even though there's not an actual game behind it yet, I really like the way it's turning out. The GUI lets you pick a defense (the assorted brain icons) and click on a map of the area to place it. The are 400 invisible buttons above the map, in a 20x20 grid, which translate into x and y coordinates. The appropriate defense is summoned, ready to fight off enemies. You can see one of them on the left, hovering above the meteor-pocked landscape.

I've started making some of the enemies, which I'm trying hard to make look suitably bizarre. Currently I have a fleshy-looking thing with giant eyeballs floating above it. Needless to say, I want more of those things.

I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up t...

December 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up to Portland. At the core, it's Desktop Defense, a flash mini-game that's fairly popular. The theme is "insanity", which makes for some fun placeables and terrain. I also need to whip up a GUI that lets you place your defenses and keep an eye on the various waves of attacks that come after you.

I sketched out the scripts that I'll need to make it work, which don't seem too tricky. The custom content is a bit more challenging, but it's frankly really fun to do. How can you not love floating brains fighting off hordes of mindflayers?

I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought ...

December 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought I'd show off a little of what I did yesterday. The Clockwork Man quest is coming along nicely, though I still have a lot of area building and conversion to do. Some of the automata already have voices, synthesized, of course. If I get time at my in-law's, I'd like to continue and maybe even test it.

In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd pass along an appropriate holiday video, made for our kind of people.

I stayed up a little too late last night, wor...

December 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up a little too late last night, working on getting the end of the module to a workable state. The most challenging bug was amusingly the drinking part, especially getting the steins to appear in the party's hand. Initially they were drinking their weapons, then they'd drink from invisible cups, and finally the requisite stein. There were some other odd issues, such as the game not checking your alliances properly. I think it's finally all sorted out and I'm eager to get the latest build into the testers' hands.

I actually got some time to work on other things yesterday. I started in on the Mechanist quest. It turns out I hadn't entirely finished some of the dialogs. There's also several areas that need to be built out. I'll see if I can do some more work with that today. It's a fun change of pace after all the bug fixing.

I'm packing up my computer tomorrow and we're headed to Portland for holiday festivities. Fortunately my in-laws have a fast Internet connection, so I should be able to stay mostly connected.

I went through the final moments of the game ...

December 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the final moments of the game and it turns out it's pretty messy. Heather teleports away, Daniel starts up a conversation, and then proceeds to drink his sword repeatedly. Amusing, of course, but not exactly what I'd planned.

I just finished recoding the script, adding in the missing items, and putting in some debug scripts in case things fail. I'll test it out tonight and hopefully get things to a state where it's worthy to send to the brave QA crew.

Nothing too exciting today

December 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting today. I've gone through the list of the most critical bugs and am hoping to make new builds for the testers tomorrow. The holiday madness is starting up and I'll be out of town for this upcoming weekend (though I'm bringing my computer along).

I got my external hard drive yesterday, which I'm hoping can minimize some of my "oops, I lost a file" issues I've had in the past. Ideally I'd set up some sort of versioning system. In a pinch, though, I can always just copy files over with a simple batch file.

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things

December 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. I have a new tester who ran through the first module again and came up with all sorts of funny issues. Your soldiers in the Remembrance: War area no longer have Dwarf as their racial type.

The second act is getting attention as well. PJJ pointed out that while all of a person's possessions were supposedly going to be given to the player, the NPC was actually dirt poor. I fixed that, and gave them little treasure chests the player can freely loot. I have some journal entries to fix and other little things to fiddle with today.

Still, the issues I'm taking care of now are much more simpler than the ones I was fixing a few weeks ago. Progress feels good.

Crazy busy today

December 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Crazy busy today. I scribbled down some notes about how I'd technically accomplish "Lute Hero", but otherwise did very little.

My favorite bug report of the day was that the newly added fish make cat noises. While the reality is that I used a cat creature as a base and changed the appearance, I'd love to just decare them "catfish" and leave them in. Maybe not.

Okay, I was a bad boy this morning

December 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I was a bad boy this morning. I didn't look at my list of debug notes once so far.

Instead, I had this crazy dream of doing Lute Hero within Neverwinter Nights. Players would pound on their keyboards as the camera panned around them. Hordes of demonic fans would be cheering the player on as flames flew from their fingertips. In the end, the devil himself would nod begrudgingly, admitting defeat.

Well, it turns out there's a huge number of technical issues trying to implement this. By default, you can't have a custom GUI accept keystrokes. I ended up using a NWN1-style dialog (seen here, partially removed) and modifying the GUI. I think I can throw up my own GUI and let the player press the keystrokes to play chords. The main drawback is that only one key can be pressed at a time and keys can't be held.

I also looked into camera controls, as it's not Lute Hero without a slow circle around the player. It turns out Gestalt's camera system still mostly works for NWN2. With a little fiddling, I think I can make it work.

So, I think the basics are there. We'll see how enthusiastic I get later on.

Periodically, I have to publicly admit the ex...

December 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, I have to publicly admit the extent of my lameness. This would be one of those times. Months ago, Rob and Eshinee sent me Heather's dialog, along with a bunch of songs for the tavern. I was knee-deep in debugging mode at the time, focusing on getting the game to a playable state. I didn't really listen to the songs, but stuck them in a folder to deal with later.

I finally had a chance to listen to them yesterday and have to say that the songs they put together are simply awesome. Eshinee has a beautiful singing voice, the lyrics tie directly to the story, and the tunes got stuck in my head as soon as I heard them.

I created a jukebox system for the Black Spot. Each time you enter, you'll hear a different song. If you wait around, the songs will cycle through. You can also talk to the singer and have her switch to the next one if you like.

I have bugs to fix as well, but I'm so glad I had a chance to put these in the game.

I went through the last of the bugs yesterday...

December 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the last of the bugs yesterday, fixing a little here and polishing a little there. I have a bunch of new builds I need to upload and pass along to the QA folks. Just one more step on the way to a public beta.

The big fix was that an entire side quest is now playable. It has an underwater area, which I had previously done by covering it with deep water. Unfortunately there are a ton of bugs when doing that, the biggest being that you can't actually see your character or any placeables. I got rid of that and put in a wavy blurring effect that when coupled with fog looks somewhat realistic.

Things still seemed somewhat sparse, so I added some cute little fishies. To make them more interesting, they also have some fish-like behavior. They'll move away from the player, follow nearby fish, and wander around on occasion. Silly, I know, but ambiance matters.

Update: I just got a note from PJJ that Dark Waters 2 can actually be completed. That's a first and a pretty big milestone on our way to release. There's still bugs to work though, but we're pretty close. It's also nice to hear that he thinks DW2 is better than DW1. Hopefully everyone else will too.

I did some odds and ends work yesterday

December 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did some odds and ends work yesterday. I had fixed some issues with flintlocks the other day (monk melee feats gave them a bonus and bolt properties were applied to flintlocks). I straightened out the 2da file, but was left with flintlocks shooting a rather large rock out the end. It took awhile, but I tracked down which model it used and replaced it with a small version of the cannonball I used in the first module. It looks much better if you freeze the action (especially if you dramatically move the camera). The only downside is that bullets always bounce off after impact, which looks a little odd.

I also improved the look of the Turtle Rock ruins. I fixed a recurring issue with feats turning invisible. Now they're fine, but the psionic feats aren't showing up. I guess I'm okay with that, as players basically use the feat item for the effect anyway. Just a little odd.

I have a new batch of debug things to work on tonight, thanks to PJJ. I've fixed a few and some are new. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a new build to everyone for the weekend. Slowly getting there.

I finally got Daniel's romance working properly

December 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got Daniel's romance working properly. It's fairly smooth now, with a gentle reminder from Daniel and the option to jump right to the relevant NPC and back again. I also discovered that the voice clips my sister recorded hadn't been hooked up to the dialog, so hopefully that's in place now too.

The sheer number of other bugs I fixed is pretty lengthy. The biggest was probably the Turtle Rock side quest, which you should actually be able to complete now. It turns out a light above the door was actually blocking it, so you couldn't go in. I'd like to spend some time working on populating the area with placeables as well, as it looks a little sparse in some areas.

I'm also hopeful I have the flintlock bugs fixed. The Shores of Haldun PW integrated them recently and reported some odd behavior. After fiddling with the 2da file, it should be working better. I had to test it out by making some brimstone ball and powder and set things on fire. Worked like a charm. I do notice that there's a large rock showing up when I attack things. I think I can replace it with something more ball-looking.

I also made a "DW2Lite" installer. It looks like the no-music, sound, and transition screen version clocks in at 78 MB in size, while the full version is around 180 MB. That probably reflects the overall size of this module. There's a ton of new areas and content, probably my biggest release yet.

Oh, and I typed up some dialog for what I'm calling the Alphabet Assault area. It's fairly tongue-in-cheek, but hopefully I'm walking that fine line between amusing adventure and outright parody.

I set sail for Woodhaven this morning

December 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I set sail for Woodhaven this morning. Daniel's possible romance with one of the elves isn't working properly. I think I knew it had a problem, but I was pretending otherwise. In the NWN prototype, it was pretty easy to move people around areas and start up conversations, as everyone was in the same area already. With NWN2, I have multiple modules, so when you show up on the Woodhaven docks, I need to start up Daniel's "Can I visit X?" dialog, then transition, then switch control to Daniel, hide the PCs, and start up the NPC conversation. When it's done, I need to move everyone back to the previous module in the right place. Much trickier.

Still, I think I have it nearly done. Everything works except when the NPC dialog fires, it almost immediately ends and jumps back to the High Seas module. I'm pretty sure it's the typical "you can't really talk to an NPC unless they're in the same area" problem I know and love. Hopefully it's not too hard to fix.

I have a long list of more bugs to fix today. Should keep me busy.

Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet A...

December 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet Assault game. It's very simple, but elegant. The coding took only a few days to put together. At this point, the basic mechanism feels pretty solid and all that's left is to flesh out the dungeon and add some quest-related dialog.

I made some general changes. You get letters when damaging your opponent, not just killing them. Depending on the damage you deal or hit dice of the killed creature, you might get bronze, silver, or gold letters. These give increasing bonuses to the word's power. If I have a power of 5 and the word has the letter N, it'll give a negative level to nearby foes. If the word also had the letter Z, a ray will zap your opponents for 10 points of damage. If the power of the word were increased to 25, the word would drain 5 levels and do 50 points of damage.

It all sounds complicated, but during testing I started to forget about the mechanics and started just spelling long words. Depending on the situation, I might want to save certain letters for later, or play my gold U to get a massive undead right away. Pretty soon pretty spell effects are flashing everywhere and melee combat is relegated to refilling my supply of letters.

I'm whipping up some dialog for the area, making it hopefully more than a dungeon crawl and spelling bee combination. So far I'm quite happy with the result.

The testing from the weekend has started pouring in. I'm still struggling to find a good file hosting site for me to upload files to regularly. Filefront, my favorite, strangely stopped working for me. Hopefully I can get that resolved soon.

I've been really busy fixing bugs last night ...

December 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been really busy fixing bugs last night and this morning. The first module got some extra polish, fixing up some odd camera motion in some of the cutscenes. Robert gets his old head back, which I'm hoping my previous appearances.2da fiddling fixed. I had some missing lipsynch animation which should be fixed now. For the second module, I recorded some new speech as testers kept wanting a certain action at the end of the first module to be noticed (which I completely understand).

I have a workaround for the summoning bug in place, which hopefully will do the trick. Scenes where companions were invisible should now have them visible again. The biggest problem was my own fault, which let old 2da files slip into a hak pack and cause issues. That should be fixed as well.

I feel pretty good about sending along a new build to everyone tomorrow. Maybe I can find some time today to work on my spelling area. I'm starting to get some silly ideas about how I want it to turn out. Should be fun.

As a total aside, my sister ran into a couple people who were fans of my games. It always strikes me as funny when that happens. For some reason I think that only imaginary people on the Internet play my games. Certainly no one in the real world.

I've been working on debugging this morning

December 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on debugging this morning. I think I have a workaround for the summoning bug that showed up in the last NWN2 patch. Basically Daniel will unsummon his animal companion, and then be fully rested to summon it again after the transition. This is a bit of an extra advantage he has over the other party members, as he regains spells and hit points, so I might take it out once the bug gets fixed in a patch.

I've also been going back and fixing issues from the first module. Heather and Daniel were supposed to drop hints about a locked door in the maintenance level. Now they do. I've also fixed a couple cutscenes and improved the camera. I'm going to see if I can do that for another one some time today.

I've also reverted Robert back to his old head, hoping that my changes to the hak pack fixed the "Frankenstein Robert" bug that happens with MotB players. There's some other head-related bugs I've fixed. I'm tempted to make Heather's head go back to the way it was, as I like it more, but there do seem to be some hat issues that can only be fixed by using a "normal" human head.

No pretty picture today

December 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty picture today. Just imagine I'm posting about an old school text adventure or something.

I debugged the alphabet game yesterday, which continues to amuse me. Little pop-up text over the letters say things like "A is for Armor" and "B is for Blindness". When you spell a word with those letters, that effect happens. I've only got a quarter of the way through the alphabet, so things like Z don't do anything exciting yet. You can also spell words such as "Sword" that in addition to the letter-based effects, also make the party do maximum damage with melee weapons for the duration. I'd like to add more of these to reward the thoughtful wordsmith.

I also did basic area building, making the level actually look like a real place. It's amazing how much time it takes to create a single level, placing lights, placeables, and so on. I'm going for a straight dungeon-crawl feel, which is actually pretty different from most of the areas I have in the game. Today I'd like to work on getting creatures to "drop" new letters, with more powerful creatures giving out bronze, silver, or gold letters which give a more dramatic effect.

I had problems uploading the latest build to FileFront yesterday, so I couldn't pass things out to the testers. I'm going to try again today, and switch over to several other file sharing servers if it fails.

Update: I just noticed that there was a new developer post on Obsidian's blog today. Looking at their plans for the 1.12 patch, it appears their #1 item is:
Eliminate the errors caused by transitioning with familiars summoned.

So, it looks like it's not my fault. In my next build, I'll see if I can unsummon Daniel's companion before each area transition. It's a bit silly, but should work.

Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for th...

December 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for the next module. On the left is a "Letter Fountain" where you can fill up on letters. They show up on a GUI to the right where you can click on them to spell words.

The plan is that every letter causes a certain type of effect. For example, maybe "A" is for armor, which increases your party's AC. Perhaps "B" is for Blindness, which temporarily blinds your foes. Some of the more challenging to use letters, such as Z, would have more powerful effects (e.g. "Z" is for zap, a lighting bolt against your foes). Coupled with this, longer words produce more powerful effects, so you want to spell words using as many letters as possible.

You can gain more letters at fountains like this, or when killing opponents in the dungeon. I'd like tougher foes to drop letters with a certain bonus, say bronze letters that are worth twice normal letters, silver for three times, and gold for five times. It might also be fun to have traps or opponents that steal your letters.

I also have this concept where you can spell certain words for even more effect. For example, spelling "rest" or "sleep" would cause the whole party to rest and heal (the dungeon is otherwise no rest). Spelling "big" causes the player to get enlarged. Should be fun.

There's lots of polish to add, such as showing when you've clicked a letter (and can't reuse it), and actually making the effects happen. I did get to impliment a binary search against my dictionary 2da file. I can usually tell if a word is in the dictionary with only a dozen or so reads to the file, so it's quite fast. I was pretty proud of myself, as I don't usually do that sort of programming any more.

I think we're finally figuring out what's been causing the crashes. The panther in MotB uses the same 2da lines as in Dark Waters. I found a way to get rid of my appearances.2da file from my hak. It turns out I was only using it to reskin a creature, which can be done via a special effect. I'm going to get a new build to testers today in hopes that fixes the issue entirely.

Debugging continues

December 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues. I fixed my GUI problems I ran into yesterday. It was also pointed out that the infamous Soul Gem was missing from Doctor Fenril's. It's my favorite evil item, allowing players to be rewarded not in gold or goodness, but in the NPC's immortal soul. Anyway, it turns out the base item type was wrong, which was easy to fix.

I'm also partial just hanging out at Doctor Fenril's place. Though it takes a fair bit of time to set up, he's one of the NPCs that walks around their shop actually doing things. He'll mix up his cauldron, cast spells, and check on the customer, all the time holding a massive spoon. I can respect that sort of devotion to his craft.

The only worrisome thing is that I have several testers reporting serious crash bugs. I'm going to pass along the most recent build, in hopes that fixes the problem. I've also asked a couple folks to pass along some of the nitty-gritty debug files. With luck, the problem will magically vanish with the new build or the problem will be obvious. I spent some time this morning going between ports and couldn't recreate the problem. Isn't that just typical of those pesky bugs?

Update: One of our brave testers seems to have uncovered the issue. Crashes only happen when Daniel has a panther out. Since panthers are specific to Mask of the Betrayer, it never happened to me. My guess is that I need to update my appearances.2da file so that the panther shows up properly. Hopefully we can sort this out soon.

I put together another GUI yesterday, which i...

December 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I put together another GUI yesterday, which is mostly working. You can see your current psionic skills and use up skill gems to increase them. The only thing that's not working is the hover text that says how many gems it costs to increase the skill. I need to fiddle a bit more and see what I'm missing, as I do this exact same thing somewhere else.

I might actually have a day to explore options for the next module. I've been hesitant to do much as I've been so focused on finishing up the current module. I ran across an odd little game called Bookworm Adventures that was strangely inspiring. There's quite a few technical challenges getting something like this working for NWN2. Most interesting is dealing with the dictionary and coming up with an intelligent search and/or indexing system. I'm not sure how fast NWN2 would be reading through 60,000 words to see if they're valid. Anyway, we'll see what wacky things I can come up with.

Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chrono...

December 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chronomancer quest again. This time it was a campaign script that I had deleted from one of my computers, but not another, and when I copied things around, it arose like the dead to feed upon my brains. It was very easy to fix once I figured it out, though figuring it out took awhile.

The Cat's Paw problems were very easy to fix as well, a typo and some missing journal entries. There were a few more minor fixes if I recall correctly.

I'd like to put together another tab on the stats and achievements GUI screen that displays all the psionic powers you can get and their skill level. Currently it's buried a bit by using a skill gem and assigning powers, which isn't very intuitive.

As for today, I'm busy uploading a new build for the testers and I'll send it out shortly.

It's amazing how much polish there was to do ...

December 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's amazing how much polish there was to do in the Woodhaven area. After making all the fights more challenging yesterday, I toned down the arena difficulty more today. I ended up losing constantly even after I had all the forms and bursts and knew what I was doing. There's also a couple ways you can cheat for players who poke around a bit more.

There were small fixes, such as making a more impressive visual effect when using your totem or knife. Bigger things involved getting the combat balanced better and dealing with some GUI problems.

Hopefully today I can get to the Catspaw bugs, which so far don't look too bad.

I made some good progress yesterday and this ...

December 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made some good progress yesterday and this morning, returning to Woodhaven to clean up some issues that our crack team of testers discovered. I increased the difficulty, as it was just too darn easy to make it through each battle. There were also problems with creatures not spawning properly, which should now be fixed.

Finally, it looks like a couple of my named opponents got lost in the shuffle, so I recreated them. Losing things seems to be a recurring theme, so I'm tempted to buy myself a portable hard drive and stick Visual Source Safe on it. There's more overhead, checking things in and out, but I think it's worth it.

I have another quest to debug sometime today, but hopefully I can get that finished and whip up a new build.

I'm hoping the waves of illness that have swe...

November 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm hoping the waves of illness that have swept through our family are finally over. I found some time today to start digging into the bug reports. There's a few bad ones, and another batch of smaller ones. The lists I'm getting keep getting smaller, which is a good sign. Hopefully this weekend I can whip up a new build and get it to the testers.

I was deathly ill last night, which translate...

November 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was deathly ill last night, which translated into me being up at some weird hours. On the plus side, I was able to do a full test run of Chronomancer and I can say that it can be finished, at least with respect to the "good" ending. I did notice some unvoiced Konrad dialog lines, which I quickly recorded this morning. I also noticed some semi-bug issues where you can quickly click through dialog lines and the actions stop matching up with the words (e.g. you'll be in one place while talking about another). Still, I think it's an acceptable trade-off and it makes debugging much easier.

As for today, I'm feeling much better and am going to see if I can find the time to dig into PJJ's latest bug reports. So far it sounds like we're getting into the area of polish rather than fixing horribly broken bugs, which is a good sign of progress.

Periodically life gets insanely busy and I ca...

November 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically life gets insanely busy and I can't get to the game. Sadly the last couple days have been that way, coupled with my annoying, lingering cold. Hopefully in a day or two I can dig myself out and get back to the final QA work.

My bug fixing continues

November 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My bug fixing continues. I actually went back to take care of something that's been lingering for a long while. There's a single room in the first module where you can play a little ball game. Sunjammer worked on the coding, but the transfer from NWN1 to NWN2 never quite worked out particularly well.

I finally took the time to get it properly working, with nice clean lines and the edges of the playing field in the right place. For the soccer fans out there, you can now whack the ball around, though admittedly there's not a very big challenge.

Of course, I also spent some time fixing some other things. It turns out that the feats got screwed up along the way somewhere. When I leveled up, they showed up completely blank. I fiddled with the 2da file and things should be much improved. While I was there, I made it so all the sling-based feats now referenced flintlocks. Since flintlocks are really slings, all the combat feats relating to them actually benefit flintlock use. For the gunslingers out there, it should now be more obvious which feats to take.

Finally, I was debugging the Lord Tyson quest and realized he didn't have any voiced lines. I put on my most evil voice, which was actually helped by my lingering cough, and got them chopped up and attached to dialog. Now I'm in the process of getting the format right and making the lipsynch files.

Still on target for a new release tomorrow. With luck, most of the big issues should be resolved. High Seas probably needs a bit more polish. I'm tempted to have an option where a first mate pops up and gives advice. Otherwise some of the problems can be a bit tricky to figure out. For example, if you're headed up wind, it would be nice to tell the player they're doing that. If their hull is damaged, that would be a good time to mention the benefits of having a carpenter on board. We'll see how it goes.

The bug fixing continues

November 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The bug fixing continues. I added help screens to a couple High Seas GUIs. I've also made it so you can't defeat a particular enemy by clicking on him quickly as he runs away to have his minions to attack (which starts up his final dialog). There's lots of smaller fixes, such as some completely messed up dialog I managed to record. Progress continues, and feels quite good.

There's still things I'd like to do, but I'm feeling increasingly good about the state of the game. Today and tomorrow I want to go through and polish some more things up, and get a new build to the testers on Monday.

Today has been fortunately pretty relaxed, wh...

November 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Today has been fortunately pretty relaxed, which means I've had some time to seriously dig into the bug reports. The Chronomancer quest was indeed screwed up again. Part of the problem had to do with a funky piece of code that chose which dialog companions should speak, depending on which act their in. It turns out that was overriding other conversation requests, so I gutted the whole system and switched to something entirely different. The good news is that seems to have fixed the looping Chronomancer conversations, and probably others as well.

I've also added in some help text for the High Seas system and will likely add more (some in the journal and some on individual GUIs). There's a bunch of other bugs to investigate and fix, and some balance issues with High Seas.

Still, all this work gives me something to do while everyone else watches football and eats.

Periodically, a hate computers

November 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, a hate computers.

It turns out my e-mail hasn't actually been getting sent since last Friday, which includes my message to the testers with the latest build. So it and all my other e-mails just left my computer, several days late.

In any case, I continue to cough away, though I keep hoping I'm on the mend. I spent some time this morning collecting more debug notes, though I've only just realized that they're for the previous build. Still, people are testing out parts that I haven't tinkered with yet.

I did find some time this morning to start looking into an issue with the High Seas trading system. It turns out I can buy a single item and it magically turns into two items. I can then sell them both back for a tidy profit.

Though amusing, I should probably fix that.

From time to time, a single debug mention lea...

November 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

From time to time, a single debug mention leads to hours of testing and tweaking. Today it was a comment about the Tattoo Treasure Map quest not working right. Sure enough, there were all sorts of problems, from the quest name not having spaces, to the treasure map giving wrong directions, not to mention that NPCs weren't moving around and talking to people appropriately.

I enlisted my sick son to run through the section over and over, with me writing a little code in between. Through sheer willpower and repetition, I think we've mostly beaten the quest into shape. The only downside was that the game hung when loading Port Brighton after digging up the treasure, so I couldn't test the end.

The random crashes trouble me and are really hard to diagnose. It only shows up every once in awhile, and I've yet to record the issue in the log file. Slowly getting there.

As usual, it turns out I'm an idiot

November 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, it turns out I'm an idiot. My previous workarounds to the CopyObject bugs that the 1.10 patch introduced didn't actually get into the last build. I redid them, among other things, and passed it off to the testers.

I also gave Chronomancer a bit more love, adding placeable decor, putting in some cameras for better shots during dialog, and so on. The Chronomancer periodically drives me crazy, as it's entirely dialog based and has serious cutscene scripting that requires lots of tweaking and adjustment. Hopefully this new version will work out relatively well.

I also recorded some more lines for Spider. At the testers' prompting, I added some dialog for completing each quest, which means more voice acting. I have a cold today, but hopefully it won't sound too weird.

I still have more bugs to investigate, though the list continues to get shorter. Busy, busy.

One of the advantages of being sick is that I...

November 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

One of the advantages of being sick is that I strangely have a lot of free time to work on the module, in between the coughing and sneezing. I fixed some of the more dumb bugs, such as setting the variable "SpokeToSpider" instead of "SpokenToSpider" (notice the missing "n"). Others are more cryptic and harder for me to reproduce.

For example, I was able to buy and sell cargo and the like, though I'm getting reports that it's not working properly. I also didn't run into problems talking with companions, even though I got that bug report too. Ah, challenges.

Sick as a dog today

November 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sick as a dog today. The testers are feeding me a steady stream of bug reports. It turns out that Lord Brighton's new dialog is causing crashes, probably due to the lipsynch code. I'm also getting weird issues with half-Drow, which is hard to test as it's a MotB issue.

We'll see if I can work on things tonight, or perhaps just take a hot bath and curl up in bed.

Success! My workaround for the CopyObject ...

November 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Success!

My workaround for the CopyObject seems to be working. I didn't have time to play through the entire Chronomancer quest, but the problem parts seemed to work okay. The various clones that appear were well behaved and moved around like they should.

I also added the Lord Brighton dialog that Raphael has finished so far. It always takes a bit of fiddling to get formats set right, files named, and lip synch files generated, but the outcome should add a lot of life to the character.

Gears of War arrived on my doorstep yesterday. How is this related to Neverwinter Nights 2? Well, they integrate the same lipsynch technology into their editor. So far, I haven't figured out how to generate the magical FXE files that NWN2 uses, though I found mention of it in the documentation. If I'm lucky, there may be a way to make real lipsynch animations, though I'm not going to hold my breath.

In any case, I just e-mailed out the latest build to testers. With luck we're slowly getting closer to that magical public release date.

To quote Han Solo, "It's not my fault!" I br...

November 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

To quote Han Solo, "It's not my fault!" I braved the attack of the clones to try and figure out what the problem was with the Chronomancer quest. It turns out that the 1.10 patch broke the CopyObject script. While it copies the object, it doesn't return the object variable, so all subsequent calls using that variable fail horribly.

There's sort of a workaround, which is to look for the object once it's been created. I'll need some time to dig through my code looking for all the CopyObject functions. Some things may stay broken until the 1.11 patch, unfortunately. For example, I'm getting reports that you can't buy cargo, crew, and the like, which I suspect is related. It may be harder to deal with stackable copied objects, but perhaps there are ways to deal with that as well.

Finally, I had a great time in Disneyland with the family, including my life-long dream to eat at the Blue Bayou restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We all had a great time and I'm refreshed to leap back into the fray of debugging.

As usual, I've gotten myself in a bit of trouble

November 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, I've gotten myself in a bit of trouble. The Chronomancer quest is amazingly broken, even after my attempted fix from yesterday. What's weird is that I swear it was working a few months ago. For whatever reason, the behavior of my player and Heather clones is really weird and unexpected. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, so I'm not giving up yet.

I also got achievements working. Some day I'll learn that computers think UIPANE and UIPane are totally different things.

I won't be able to put together a new build for testers for awhile. I'm hopping on a plane with my family to Disneyland. Perhaps I'll get inspiration from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. In any case, I'm bringing along a notebook in case I get some time to scribble down some more dialog for the third module, so my little hobby project won't be completely on hold.

This isn't an actual achievement that you can...

November 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

This isn't an actual achievement that you can find in the game, but I've been working hard on the module once again and wanted to reward myself. If only I got developer achievements, maybe something like "Code Monkey" for writing ten thousand lines of code.

In any case, I managed to get achievements and stats added to the second module, though untested. You can see the DW1 achievements in DW2 on another tab, tracking your progress through the game. There's also all the various stats, from times died to how often you use your psionic powers. Hopefully it's of use to someone.

I'm starting to get the voice clips from Raphael for Lord Brighton, and they're sounding pretty good. That's one of the key voices I haven't had yet and I've been itching to get it in.

I also took a look at the latest QA reports. There's a few horribly broken things, but they're not totally unexpected (having caused me problems before). Yes, there's a lot of miscellaneous things I need to test out and fiddle with. The good news is that each bug list seems a little smaller. I don't think I've seen a typo in weeks.

Mondays are always hard

November 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are always hard. I have a long list of bugs waiting for me, but sadly haven't had the time to touch them. I might find a little time later today. PJJ was reporting some good news tracking down a performance bug with the High Seas area.

I did manage a bit of time yesterday getting my stats and achievements system working for the first module. Some of the achievements are a little silly, but I suppose it's a way to show people that they're making progress and their effort is noticed.

Friday was a good day

November 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Friday was a good day. I went through and fixed the majority of the reported bugs, packaged up the files, and sent a note to all the testers. I haven't checked, but hopefully by Monday I'll get a fresh batch of bug reports. Since I'm leaving for Disneyland with the kids next week, I might be hard pressed to get another version before I go. We'll see how bad the reports are.

Not being content to just sit and wait, I decided to take up one of PJJ's suggestions to give the player better feedback about things like player loyalty and so on. I really liked what I'd done with the stats and achievements for High Seas, so I'm planning on replicating the same for each Dark Waters module.

I'm currently working on the first one, reporting on things like the number of times died, how many Slithers have been killed, the number of unique focus gems found, and so on. I'm still finding glitches in some of the stats, but in general it seems to be working okay. I'm hoping I can get achievements for the second module working as well. It's a fun addition and gives important feedback to the player.

I got a huge amount of work done yesterday an...

November 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got a huge amount of work done yesterday and continue fixing bugs and adding polish today. I just finished adding a bunch of dialog so you can report back to Lord Brighton as you make progress on your various quests.

I also figured out the issues with the installer for the first module. I had to rewrite it to pull from my current game directory, but once I got the bugs sorted out it seemed to work okay.

I'm hoping I can zip through many of the bugs I've seen and upload the latest version to testers by the end of the day. Progress feels nice.

I think I found the root cause of my problem

November 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I think I found the root cause of my problem. I generate installers and use that to move thousands files from place to place without too much trouble. Unfortunately it looks like the way I set up the installer on my home PC caused it to not pick up the most recent DW1 module and campaign files. Even though it worked great on my PC, the installer had old junk in it that didn't work.

I'm going to work on fixing some of the other serious bugs that were reported, and then get my installer working properly tonight. Already I've fixed a few of the problems that have been reported, such as replacing Robert's Frankenstein-like head with a more boring one.

PJJ made some neat suggestions about feats and showing companion loyalty. I'm not sure how easy they'd be to implement, but I might give it a try.

I gathered up the first round of somewhat hor...

October 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I gathered up the first round of somewhat horrific bug reports, went home, and promptly got as sick as a dog. I'm much improved today and somewhere in my delirium I think I've figured out one reason things went so poorly for everyone.

I've been giving people two installers, one for the first module and another for the second. I'm betting that while I cleaned up those pesky campaign-level scripts that cause problems from the second installer, I missed the first. What that means is that there's a fair amount of garbage sneaking into the game, causing all sorts of scripting weirdness.

Of course, that doesn't fix everything. For some reason, Mask of the Betrayer makes Robert look like a Frankenstein. Combined with the High Seas area having the player Godzilla-sized, it makes for a great monster movie mash-up, but probably not a game that makes any sense.

So, I'll be fixing those issues and others today, and hopefully get a new build for the testers soon.

I sometimes have these naive visions of being...

October 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I sometimes have these naive visions of being able to get things done on Mondays. Instead, I've been swamped, barely able to think about the game. Hopefully tonight I can actually spend some time with it.

PJJ has reportedly made a lengthy issue of list of issues, a few of which are somewhat critical. I've yet to peek at the details, but I'm sure they'll haunt me for the days ahead. Perhaps I can feed myself to a shark in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

I got some great response from volunteers, passing along the latest link to someone who asked on Friday. Three more came in over the weekend and I'm tempted to ask them to wait until I fix the most serious issues PJJ has reported. I try hard not to pummel my QA folks with too many runs through the game. Mere mortals can typically handle one or two full playthroughs. I think PJJ and Brad may be robots, but I'm too polite to ask.

I spent a bunch of time working on the under ...

October 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a bunch of time working on the under water area. It takes a huge amount of work, painting down textures, creating tipped buildings, and generally making things look underwaterish. I tried to get light patterns on the bottom of the sea floor, but couldn't quite get it right.

I finally decided to test out my work, but couldn't get the module to load. I stripped out the imported areas, leaving my new area intact. It loaded just fine this time.

Amusingly enough, all the scripts kicked in and soon enough I found myself the target of assorted enemy subs. Torpedoes started homing in on my poor little PC, explosions all around me. It's a good sign, even though this was a very preliminary test.

I'm happy to say that through an odd combinat...

October 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm happy to say that through an odd combination of file-upload sites, I finally got the new build to the testers. I'm also putting out a call to anyone who's interested in lending a hand with testing. I'm not certain we've caught all the critical bugs, but I keep thinking we're getting close. Help is most welcome.

I'll probably turn my attention back to the third act today. Lots to do there yet.

I've found myself in this situation more than...

October 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've found myself in this situation more than once, my player standing knee-deep in the ocean, various ships plying the sea around me. I'd feel like something out of a Japanese monster movie, but everyone else seems so calm about it.

It turns out that I let some important scripts move from the module to the campaign folder, and bad scripts were overriding good scripts. Once I got rid of them, the world was a happy place once again.

Yesterday was spent cleaning up miscellaneous small issues. The Iron Mountain dock area has a little mine cart that comes out of some big doors and a dwarf pokes at it. It's just background, but I still ended up fiddling with it until it looked relatively good. The dockmaster there also sells iron ore, which he didn't before. He was also incredibly small, probably a product of earlier fiddling due to 2da changes.

As for today, I spent a big chunk of time getting a new build to the testers. Occasionally it's a headache moving 160 MB files around. I'm half tempted to throw money at the problem and just get a place to host big files. My poor little closet server might work in a pinch, but the bandwidth is pretty marginal.

With luck, I'll get endless bug reports soon, along with the inevitable sobs and head bonking against walls that come with them. I can't wait.

I did a little more puttering with the second act

October 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a little more puttering with the second act. For performance reasons, all the docks from the High Seas system are actually interior areas. This means they're rather dark and dreary looking.

I ended up giving them a little more love so they didn't look completely weird. They now have a skydome with a nice sky texture. It doesn't use the official one, so there's no stars, moon, or sun. Still, it looks far better than a black fog that surrounds the docks.

I even added a little dock worker who does things in the distance, adding a small visual touch to the place. Maybe today I'll add some sharks moving around the Sweet Isle docks or mine carts in the Iron Mountain area.

Mondays are always crazy, and I never get as ...

October 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are always crazy, and I never get as much done as I'd like. I have puttered around with a couple things lately. The sub now has a spinning propeller and emits bubbles. I need to test it out at some point, as I had to do some weird things in order to get it to work right. For example, the propeller effect can't have a position other than dead center, which means the rest of the sub got shifted forward.

The torpedo is in now too, as well as portraits for the sub and existing ships. Before this latest patch, the ships showed up without a portrait and looked a little weird.

My list of things to do is huge as always. My two main testers have been quiet lately, so I haven't been fixing many bugs lately. I suppose I can virtually keel haul the scurvy dogs, but they've been so darn helpful over the months and years that I'd probably feel a little guilty. The third act is keeping me busy, mostly doing fun things like model work and painting areas. Eventually I need to stop puttering around and release the second act, though.

I was also having some crazy ideas while sitting in a bored meeting the other day. "Lute Hero" was one of them. I also pondered a dance-fight section. We'll see if the insanity ever sees the light of day.

I went back to the burning shop area this morning

October 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went back to the burning shop area this morning. As I had discovered previously, the fire didn't really spread and the player didn't have any risk at all going into the area. It turns out the problem wasn't exactly with the script, but rather issues relating to the distance between burnable objects in the store. After a bit of work, I think I have a solution I'm happy with.

I lined up crates like a fuse, leading to an explosive barrel next to the little girl. I increased the distance fire can spread and added in a longer delay for the spread to happen. Now the player has sufficient time to rescue the girl, assuming they don't dally and check out the contents of the shop crates. Plus there's an increased chance of catching on fire, which is always a bonus.

I continue to putter around, trying to make t...

October 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to putter around, trying to make the final act of the campaign as extraordinary as possible. One of the areas in the Clockwork Man quest is under water, which requires a fair bit of custom content. The submersible was modeled by Razvan and textured by myself. It needs more work, but doesn't look too bad. The shark is from the first Neverwinter Nights, and looks fairly good with a normal map.

Sadly I haven't been able to actually animate them properly. After many long hours with the expotron plug-in, I couldn't make even the simplest animation work. For now I decided to switch to plopping a model effect on top of an invisible human. They move around, not quite realistically, but if you squint it's not too bad.

What fun is a city full of mechanical beings ...

October 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

What fun is a city full of mechanical beings without making them look like Cylons? Yes, I spent way too much time trying to get a glowing red spot move back and forth inside of a visor. I ended up making a long graphics file with a bunch of frames showing a white dot moving back and forth on a black background. That got turned into a billboard effect, which was incorporated into an effect that can be used in the game. After all that work, I ended up with this.

I continue to bring over the Clockwork Man areas from the prototype. I really only have two areas in the prototype that are finished, along with a fair amount of dialog. It's the roughest of the prototype areas, as the game came out before I could finish. I'm still a little nervous without that preparation, but I remind myself the Dreamcatcher was made completely on the fly and turned out quite well.

I decided it was time to get back to the busi...

October 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I decided it was time to get back to the business of actually shipping the second act (I gotta come up with a better name - Dark Waters, Episode 2?). I tested the Trap in a Box, which worked like a charm. I knew there was also a problem with the "save the girl from the burning building" quest. Previously fires never spread, which made the quest very easy.

Well, I'm not sure if the patch changed things or I did something, but now fire engulfs the entire shop in mere seconds, followed by the death of everyone I was supposed to save. Oops.

To top it off, it turns out some key campaign scripts got replaced with older versions, so now I have to dig through my various versions and see if I can find the things. Hopefully it's a recent mistake and the last full build has the good version.

So, that's what I'll be fixing today . . .

Update: Fortunately the last build was just fine and had the right files, so reverting was painless. One of the testers was having problems getting the files, so I passed along some Megaupload links in hopes that'll help. For now, I've gone back to working on the Clockwork Man quest, converting areas and so on.

I had some home networking issues yesterday, ...

October 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had some home networking issues yesterday, so I'm doing a delayed update. Yesterday I spent way too much time working on getting an organic looking spot of goo on the ground. Eventually I figured it out, but it took a good long time.

I also threw together a little combat-focused area after making my assorted fleshy custom content. I have a tendency to make my final module in a campaign more combat focused, if only to give the player lots of opportunities to show off the equipment they've accumulated over the span of the adventure. There should still be plenty of puzzles and storytelling, though the focus tends to shift a little.

Some Swedish and German design students asked me some questions about modding for a school project today. If I take my own advice, I should be taking more risks and doing things the big publishers dare not attempt. Hmm.

I did a little bit of modeling today, putting...

October 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a little bit of modeling today, putting together some broken automata for a part in the third Act. Nothing too exciting.

I keep refining the story behind the final chapter in my head. Hopefully I can do something that's fun without being overwhelmingly complicated. I've found that on occasion I have a crazy idea that ends up generating a huge amount of work for me. Of course, it's being different that's what makes the modules memorable, but sometimes I go a little too far.

I occasionally take a break from the huge inf...

October 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I occasionally take a break from the huge influx of great games to work on my little project. Yesterday I fixed the "Trap in a Box" item now that the CreateTrap functions are working with the latest patch. It's a quickie trap for non-rogues, allowing them to place a trap themselves. I need to verify that it works okay, but I'm guessing it does.

I also did some more work on the next act, which is looking to be the last in the campaign. It's been awhile since I've done area creation, and I've forgotten just how long it takes. It's a very puzzle oriented area, which is a nice contrast to some of the more combat-heavy ones.

There's no coincidence that yesterday marked ...

October 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

There's no coincidence that yesterday marked the release of Portal and my lack of posting. Portal is brilliantly funny and has some of my favorite AI humor in it. It's quite short, so don't expect anything epic.

I was inspired to work on the Clockwork Man quest from the next act. There's an interesting text to speech demo over on the AT&T site. The result was this clip, which I'm fairly happy about.

I don't think our voice actors will be out of business any time soon. This approach only works well with robotic voices and it's pretty devoid of emotions. Still, for this little niche, it's fun and quick to do.

In terms of the current state of the project, I've passed along the latest build of the first and second modules to the testers, which Chris gratiously hosted. Dunniteowl sounds like he'd like to do some more voice acting for the project, and I have few roles still unvoiced. I'll hopefully get some Lord Brighton from Raphael once his cold clears up. Exciting stuff, all around.

As for me, I should probably be reviewing QA notes to make sure I didn't miss anything. I'm tempted to work on the next act, though, as a fun treat for myself. So far I've put together the skeleton of one of the modules. It needs areas, custom content, and a bunch of other things. No rest for the weary.

Well, since I'm so fickle, I decided that the...

October 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, since I'm so fickle, I decided that the one cutscene in the first module needed it's own area so I could probably desaturate it. There's a new beta for the brave among you. As you can see by the picture, historical beverage quaffing will now be done while properly desaturated.

Of course, someone is now reporting that Robert's head looks completely bizarre in the expansion, so you might want to hold off downloading and installing this version until I take another look. Ah, the joys of patches!

I'm slowly getting used to the latest patch. The new Strategic camera takes a bit of getting used to, but it reminds me a bit of the old Baldur's Gate days. It's also odd to see Heather's bat popping up next to her all the time. I never bothered having Heather summon a familiar in the past. Now she's gone all batty.

Mondays are always crazy busy for me

October 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are always crazy busy for me. I should just accept the fact that it's hard for me to get anything significant done.

I did manage to package up the two modules. For the brave among you, you can try this beta version of the 1.05 version of Dark Waters 1. This isn't the new stuff, so don't get excited. It's basically the first module, with some fixes that should allow better transfer of characters and variables to the second module. It should fix the invisible companion issue in the final area. I also added a desaturate effect to the Remembrance areas (Minus one, I just realized, which shares the main island map. Maybe I can fix that.) In any case, play at your own risk, but if you find something weird, please let me know.

I've also had a volunteer do Lord Brighton, which is one of the last unvoiced roles that I really wanted to fill. The actor is English, which helps set the proper mood. It's been interesting for me to help with the voice work. I'm learning a lot about Audacity, which is a pretty good piece of free audio software. For example, this latest sound clip had some noise and balance issues that I was mostly able to clean up. Expensive audio equipment fixes this at the source, but is obviously not available to everyone.

I really want to get the latest build to the testers, but I'm not sure if I'll get the time today. Too many things going on.

I'm working hard this weekend, trying to get ...

October 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm working hard this weekend, trying to get things ready for the testers. I ran across this bizarre bug that I'm hoping is a one-off issue. I went to Port Brighton without any issue, went inside the magic shop. When I left, the world had vanished and the stars twinkled beneath my feet. It was disconcerting and put an end to that particular round of testing.

I attached some sound clips that I'd had sitting around. They were from some Remembrance scenes for Daniel, which seemed lacking if only Daniel was the one talking. I also fixed some camera angles and other miscellaneous issues.

One really big problem presented itself with this latest patch. Before, the camera would stay on a speaking character until the player clicked. Now, it immediately switched back to the PC. This is because I was using a non-standard way to create my mp3 files. Before I was vaguely annoyed. With the latest behavior, I was highly annoyed.

Fortunately the developers had posted how to do it and I carefully followed their method. I converted the 3,000+ mp3 files in both acts of the module to wav, then converted them back to mp3 with the proper header. Where I could find the original wav files, I used those to maintain maximum quality. Now the camera stays on whoever is talking until the sound clip ends. I also took the opportunity to clean up some of the dockmaster's sound clips, as a number had some padding at the beginning which looked weird (as the lipsynch animation played before you heard anything).

I'm thinking things are doing relatively good at the moment. I think I'll package up what I've got and get things to the testers next week. I might do a public beta of the first module, as I don't think there's a lot more work that needs to be done there. Busy, busy.

I fiddled some more with the meaty looking ar...

October 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I fiddled some more with the meaty looking area, currently called "In the Belly of the Beast" of something equally dramatic. The door frames look silly, so I tried to make some bone framing for effect. It also needs some goopy looking things on the floor so that it's not just wall-to-wall meat.

Of course, the game currently crashes when I test it out, so I'm likely doing something wrong. I'm thinking it might be the format of the texture files, so I may end up making some custom textures (I'm currently reusing the terrain ones).

I also hit a major milestone today. I finally got all the sound clips chopped up, attached, and the lipsynch animation files generated. I have 1,253 voice clips for the second act, all of which I've fiddled with in one way or another. If I can summon the energy, I'm going to work on making a new build and see if I can do some light testing to make sure the thing generally works.

I'm probably not completely done with the voice work. I have some Lord Brighton clips that should be coming my way. There's some miscellaneous characters I'd like to work in. Still, it feels like I'm nearly there, assuming the next round of debugging goes well.

I played around with the new tileset retextur...

October 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I played around with the new tileset retexturing code. It looks like I can make some suitably gross interiors with minimal effort. A reskin isn't as good as a new tileset, but for my purposes it's likely good enough. I need to work on doorways, as they currently don't look very good. I'm sure there's endless other things I could tweak.

I've been plugging away at the sound clips. I made some good progress this morning, continuing to enjoy Chris' side comments as I chop up the files. There's a few lines I wish I could work in somehow, just for amusement value.

Well, I found the place where you can adjust ...

October 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I found the place where you can adjust the degree of desaturation. After I toned it down to only mostly gray, I think I hit the proper effect. Events that occur in the past now have a faded look, which is a very traditional visual cue that the events you're seeing already happened.

As an aside, I also got my new 2.66 dual-core CPU, motherboard, 2 GHz of memory, and GeForce 8800 GTS card yesterday. The biggest difference is the CPU, I think. I used to hit CTRL+F5 to test a module, go away for awhile, and return to click an OK button so the module actually runs. Now the button comes up right away and the game loads the module fast enough to keep me in my seat.

This morning I went through all the past areas and desaturated them to a good level. Hopefully today I can find more time to work on voice work, which is the last big thing before testing can resume.

I finally got around to installing the latest...

October 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got around to installing the latest patch, complete with the new "desaturate" effect. I'm sorely tempted to use the black and white look for the past sections of the game. My only hesitation is that some of the more complex areas (such as the war scene) is a bit long for a "gimmick" effect. Still, for this second act, it works quite well.

I still need to find the time to work on dialog. Unfortunately my life got pretty busy all of a sudden.

Progress continues on hooking up all the dial...

October 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues on hooking up all the dialog files. It's tedious work, listening to everything, finding the best take, and linking it into the conversation in the toolkit. On the plus side, I get to hear the voice actors cry. I think I'm about a third of the way done, so it's hard to estimate how much longer it'll take. Awhile yet.

The Isle of Flesh is done for now. My son got really into it and is itching to make other islands that are equally outlandish. I think we'll do a frozen island next, though it's a big mundane in comparison.

My son has been egging me on, getting me to a...

September 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My son has been egging me on, getting me to add more and more weird detail to my Isle of Flesh. There's gaping maws, surrounded by teeth-like structures, strange hairs, and a weird orifice that leads literally into the bowels beneath the ground. We even have what Sam refers to as a "Meat Man". Needless to say, the whole place is terribly gross and my daughter refuses to look at the thing.

My goal is to have more islands in the next act that are equally fantastic. The new game engine can do some amazing things and it's fun to explore the options.

I got a little carried away with the super-gr...

September 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got a little carried away with the super-gross terrain textures. I'd also forgotten how much mesmerizing fun it was to paint down textures, especially when they look like weird fleshy bits. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with this particular island when I start seriously working on the next act of the campaign.

I was also a good boy and continued to work on the sound dialog. Derek was kind enough to resend some files that had gotten lost in the mysterious tubes that make up the Internets. I also chopped up and attached another of Daniel's dialogs.

I'm fortunate to be working with some really funny voice actors. Derek has been ad libbing some of his lines to great effect. After this game, you'll never think of invisible monkeys the same way again.

I've never made custom terrain before, but my...

September 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've never made custom terrain before, but my hope is that I could work in quite a few for the third module. It took a bit of fiddling, getting the files in all the places where they needed to be. I finally got my pleasant mound of brains where I wanted them, glistening in the sunlight.

I'm still working on audio, chopping up files and the like. I'm embarrassed to say that I misplaced some of Drake's lines, though Derek nicely pointed me in the right direction. Just managing all the various files for this project is occasionally a massive undertaking. It's well over six thousand files of various types (sounds, animation, models, load screens, etc.).

As for today, I'll keep plugging away at dialog, perhaps stopping to make a few more custom textures for the next module. It's a fun break from the tedium and there's something special about covering the ground with weird fleshy parts.

Nothing too exciting to report

September 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting to report. I finished chopping up and attaching the first of the dialogs. Like Chris says, he can sure talk a lot. I'm afraid to count how many more dialogs to go.

I also splurged and bought some new hardware for my computer. Hopefully it'll speed up testing times, as it's currently a bit tedious to make a change and quickly test it. Supposedly the NWN2 toolset plays well with dual CPUs, which should help.

I made a big wind indication object for the s...

September 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made a big wind indication object for the ship-to-ship combat section, since wind direction is so important. I also toyed with adding crew responses to your orders, such as "Hard to port, sir!" It seemed more distracting than novel, however, and so I took it out. There's plenty of sound effects for weapons, though.

I did have an interesting AI event happen during testing. Most of the time, enemy ships will try and board you if they're in pretty good shape and their crew is higher rated than yours. If they've got cannons, they won't use them if you're already pretty damaged. Well, I took advantage of that and was cheerfully pounding away at them while they closed to boarding range. I must have damaged their ship enough for them to switch strategies, as they went from "Board" to "Attack" and promptly sunk me with their full compliment of cannons.

I've started chopping up Daniel's sound files. Chris Serani is a lot of fun to work with. Since this is the first time I've chopped up his dialog, I get to hear all the funny comments he makes to himself. It's a nice break from an otherwise tedious process.

Hopefully I can finish with the dialog this week, put together a new build, and wait for a fresh wave of bug reports to pour in. It's what I live for these days!

I've had an embarrassing problem for some tim...

September 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've had an embarrassing problem for some time now. I'm theoretically quite good at math, but when it came time to code the ship combat AI so that the enemy would turn and head towards you, I have been failing miserably. I was breaking out the trig, scribbling angles on paper, and watching ships either go in a straight line or sail in circles.

Yesterday I decided to try something different. There's a built in function that makes a creature turn to face a point. The catch with boats is that they don't turn on a dime, so I turned it, found the ideal direction, and then turned it back. It worked like a charm and there weren't any weird flipping animations that I was afraid of.

I'm adding some additional polish in the ship combat scenes. I want to add in more sound effects, an indicator to wind direction, and make sure the whole thing is fun. For example, ships no longer try to sink you (based on your hull damage) if they're trying to capture your ship. Being repeatedly sunk was no fun.

I'm also hoping to at least get started on the Daniel dialog. My wife is back in the country after her Italy trip, so hopefully things will be less crazy at home and I can start moving towards a final QA run before a public beta.

I dreamed about the GUI last night, a sure si...

September 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I dreamed about the GUI last night, a sure sign that I've been working far too long on this one aspect of the game. The good news is that I think I've resolved the last of the issues and added in the features that I want. There's still some potential issues, but they're pretty obscure and should only happen rarely. It's possible, for example, to load up on over nine crew types and not be able to see them all for selling. There's workarounds, but most people probably won't have to deal with it.

I decided to enjoy the fruits of my labors and head out upon the sea. It was a beautiful night for sailing, the full moon shimmering on the water and the Port Brighton lighthouse shining in the distance. It made me feel like these last couple weeks of coding GUIs was worthwhile.

I still want to tweak the ship to ship combat some more. Enemy ships aren't behaving as expected and I'm not sure why. Somewhere along the way their turning scripts got wacky, I suspect. There's always more to do.

It's been a challenging week for me, managing...

September 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's been a challenging week for me, managing the kids while my wife is overseas. I continue to plug away at the GUI. Most of the issues are fixed now. I had a funny issue where if you bought cargo, you only got how many could be stacked. I ended up making a new item type for High Seas items. Hopefully people won't buy over 50,000 tons of fish any time soon.

I'm counting the days until my wife returns. In the meantime, I'll try to sneak in time here or there. In particular, I'm itching to sort through the dialog Chris sent over and get it hooked up to Daniel's dialog. Other than the QA work, it's the one critical thing I wanted to get together before release.

It be the closest thing to a holiday, here on...

September 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It be the closest thing to a holiday, here on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Me keel-haulin' of the crew paid off and Chris passed along 184 MB of sound files. I be havin' to chop up them files o' his, but it be amusing to hear him wail about like a banshee.

I think I solved the riddle o' the GUI problem. I had these bizarre errors buying and selling. Sometimes the wrong thing would appear, sometimes the wrong quantity. It turns out I was looking at what I was buying even when I was selling, which made no sense at all.

I got a bit more o' fiddlin' ta do with them scripts, then I be settin' sail for more testin' and tossin' in Daniel's voice clips. Yaar!

My wife left for Italy a couple days ago, ret...

September 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My wife left for Italy a couple days ago, returning Monday after a week that seems like it's taking forever already. I'm managing the kids and trying to do some real work (the kind I get paid for) in between.

I did manage to sneak in some more fixes to the GUI, but have yet to test it. You can buy ships now, which is handy. Previously it was one of the few things you couldn't do from the GUI. The cargo buying is a little off. Your alignment doesn't change when trading illegal or immoral cargo. There's also a fun bug where you can infinitely sell cargo. Still, progress is being made and I think this should make the lives of players much easier.

At this point, I'm calling the Achievements s...

September 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

At this point, I'm calling the Achievements section done. It'll tell you clearly what you need to do to unlock an achievement. There's a nice question mark that shows until you do. Once unlocked, you get the image, along with a mouse-over focus image. Clicking on it plays a sound and displays a cute little saying. Barring problems when collecting statistics, it's all good.

The cargo, crew, and weapons trading is getting better, though it's not quite there yet. I'm seeing weird errors with the cost of items strangely changing, selling doesn't work, and occasionally buying one item results in two being purchased. There's also some alignment issues which are tedious to fix and I still need to add the ability to buy ships. Still, I'm hopeful I can find some time today or tomorrow to clean up these odd issues.

In general, I'm loving the new GUI features of NWN2. It's a lot of work, but lets you do things that simply weren't possible with the original NWN game.

The Achievements system and stats page is in

September 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The Achievements system and stats page is in. I haven't fully tested it, but it does seem to be somewhat working. For example, when you've captured 10 ships, you get the "Pirate King" achievement. When you've sunk 10 ships, you get "Privateer". I tried to make them available to everyone, so even if you don't become a pirate, you can still get the Pirate King achievement (by boarding pirate ships instead of merchants).

The cargo buying and selling doesn't quite work yet. You can buy cargo, but it doesn't get loaded onto the ship. That should be easy to fix. I'm also going to want the ability to buy new ships from the GUI, I think. I also want a confirmation when selling a ship, as it's potentially very bad to do on accident.

I managed some more testing time yesterday, a...

September 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I managed some more testing time yesterday, along with new buttons for the GUI. You can now specify your lead ship, sell ships, repair them, and rename them. The cargo stuff isn't quite working yet, though I did manage to get them at least displaying properly.

I also started scheming on a Stats/Achievements tab. It would keep track of various things you do during your adventures and light up achievement images when you get them. I'm thinking of things like "Pirate King" for capturing over a certain number of merchants. Of course, doing that means I have to build in counters for all those different things. Fun, fun.

Well, I did my first GUI tests last night

September 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I did my first GUI tests last night. Though I never expect things to work right off the bat, it was a bad sign when absolutely nothing came up. Eventually I figured out the flaws in my xml file and at least got something to appear.

After a fair bit of hard work, I now see the list of ships in my fleet, along with the ability to switch my lead ship. I can pretty easily add the ability to rename and repair. Hopefully I can whip up some nice looking icons for those actions.

What's not working yet is the cargo pieces. Initially, cargo wasn't being properly created on the dockmasters (I gave up on the store approach due to bugs). It should be now, but I'm still seeing some odd behavior.

Hopefully today I can sort out the last of the issues and get back to debugging other problems.

It's amazing how much work is involved with m...

September 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's amazing how much work is involved with making a new GUI, especially one as complicated as the one I'm working on. I glanced over at the line numbers for my High Seas include file and it's well over 3,000 lines of code. Zowie.

I haven't even seen it in action yet. I've been coding out XML files, trying to envision in my head where exactly various buttons and labels are going to go. There's a certain amount of scripting required before you can even test a new GUI. Hopefully tonight will be that magic hour.

The end result should be pretty handy. You can review your fleet, set your lead ship, manage crew, buy and sell cargo, and add weapons and ammunition. Eventually I'd like to be able to repair and rename ships. I'm also entertaining ideas of additional things that could be added, such as special upgrades for ships and the like, but I'm not quite ready for that yet. Best to get the basics working first.

I sunk in a tremendous amount of time yesterd...

September 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I sunk in a tremendous amount of time yesterday, mostly testing global variable things. It turns out my problems had nothing to do with the Save and LoadGlobalInt. Instead, it looks like the campaign file that ties all the modules together was screwed up. I carefully went through re-linking modules and miraculously things started working as expected again.

After all my hard work, it seems that the Sweet Lady now magically appears. Of course, sending Heather over had some consequences, both horrible and comedic. Jack returned her as a werewolf, which made me giggle for awhile. I fixed the bug, though it was with a touch of regret.

I continue to have ideas for a High Seas GUI system, something that allows trading, repairing ships, managing crew, and so on. I'll probably spend time today sketching out ideas.

Eventually, of course, I need to get back to the QA reports. They call me like a siren, promising sweet, sweet love, but offering only sorrow and suffering. Okay, it's not that bad, but I feel like waxing poetic on occasion.

Well, I think the vanishing inventory issue i...

September 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I think the vanishing inventory issue is actually a NWN2 bug that's purely visual. If I wait long enough, I can take another look at the inventory and all my stuff is there. That means the transition between the first and second modules should be okay. There's still a few weird issues I'm sorting out. The global variable issue seems to be working better, but I still have to be careful with things. At times, the campaign database approach seems more appealing.

I've been pouring over the 1.07 beta patch notes. There's no mention of fixing the store inventory bug, which may mean I get to overhaul how ship cargo works. I'd probably end up making a GUI of some kind or another, as the current method is clunky and partially broken. We'll see how brave I am tomorrow.

The upcoming patch does have a fair number of goodies, including a desaturate effect that I've got to use. I continue to think about the next module and what goodies I'd like to include. Fun, fun.

Well, the good news is that variables and cha...

September 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the good news is that variables and characters seem to be transferring from the first module to the next. The bad news is that my main character lost all her inventory.

So, more testing is required this weekend. I'm also doing a lot of cleanup and polish that I've needed to do. I'm revamping the set items and discovering a few things I had forgotten (sorry, Brad - the Davy Jones' set has benefits out of water too). I'm nearly done with the walkthrough and readme file. I have a few folks to add to the credit section and I want to document all the various treasures and such. Busy, busy.

Here's a scene no one has ever seen before

September 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Here's a scene no one has ever seen before. It's the end of the first module, where Heather and Robert are actually visible. Yes, I woke up at 4:30 this morning and decided to try and fix some of the really old bugs in the first module. I ended up using the guess and check method to isolate the problem. It's pretty time consuming, as it takes five or so minutes to test each coding change.

It turns out that if I remove Heather and Robert from your party, they become permanently invisible. No idea why. I use the same code elsewhere without any problem. The plan at this point is to comment out those lines. It messes up some of the later cutscenes, but not too badly.

The other important thing is making sure the variables are being saved properly at the end of the module. Previously, the second module won't remember some of the key actions you performed in the first module. They seem to be at this point, though I'm still running into some issues actually using them. The magic DarkWaters.xml file is showing up with useful things in them. Hopefully I can sort that out today.

I may make some other changes to the first module. Heather may get a new head (the old head has some problems wearing hats). The Farewells cutscene is a little twitchy and the player walks back and forth a bit too much. Minor issues, but it would be nice to resolve them.

Finally, I spent a ton of time yesterday getting the readme fleshed out. I have most of the quests documented, including the incredibly huge Firestarter quest. I still have to document the various locations of treasures, set items, and so on. I think I can finish it up today, which would be quite nice.

Sadly no pretty pictures today

September 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sadly no pretty pictures today. I spent most of yesterday working on the readme/walkthrough file. It's another reminder of just how big this second act is (it seems silly to call it a module at this point). I think I'm about halfway through documenting the various main quests. Compiling lists of treasures, set items, and so on, is going to take a fair bit of time as well.

The Woodhaven arena fights seem pretty good t...

September 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The Woodhaven arena fights seem pretty good to me at the moment. It's switched over to a heartbeat approach rather than using the "delay" script that breaks if you do a save and reload. The camera still isn't behaving, so I may just leave it up to the player. The PC also isn't paralyzed properly for the duration of the fight, for reasons that I just don't get. Still, the game itself is short, funny, and much less frustrating than before.

I switched my focus to another weird bug, the lack of the Sweet Lady spawning in properly. It turns out the cause was a deeper, more serious flaw in how I stored and loaded global variables. Basically, I wasn't, which meant that variables that I set in one module didn't get carried over to the next. I think I've fixed that now, but I've got to do some serious testing to see if it really is working properly.

As for today, I think I'm going to see if I can spend some time working on the readme file and walkthrough. I'm also hopeful that I'll be getting some new voice actor clips this week. The actor that plays Daniel is hard at work, and a new actor, Raphael, was going to see if he could do Lord Brighton. There's still a handful of voices remaining, but the big ones are feeling increasingly done.

The arena scripting goes well

September 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The arena scripting goes well. I really like the new GUI approach. It's pretty clear just how clunky the dialog-based method was. This morning I added tooltip text so you can tell what each of the buttons do. I fiddled more with some of the behind-the-scenes numbers, hopefully getting the proper balance right. I'm still trying to get the camera to switch to a good angle automatically for the fight, rather than having the player have to pan it around so it shows the action. Details, details.

The most fun aspect remaining is getting all the named opponent dialog written. There's lots of opportunities for the player to be rather silly about the whole thing.

It was back to Woodhaven today, for a lot of ...

September 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It was back to Woodhaven today, for a lot of in-depth testing. I focused entirely on the arena fight. The switch to a GUI had some bumps, but looks pretty good so far. There's a few glitches I need to sort out, but I'm generally happy with it. Players should have all the information they need always visible, along with the choices they can make during the fight.

I also added an important element that was previously lacking: humor. What good is an arena fight without professional wrestling references and elven WWF-style names? I think it was Stephen Gagne who once said in an interview that if you can't make something fun, make it funny. Hopefully I can do a bit of both.

I did a test last night, mostly just to make ...

August 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a test last night, mostly just to make sure the new build sort of worked. I was able to start the game just fine, hear the new voice work, and see the new lipsynch animation. At this point, my two big things to fix are the Woodhaven arena fight and the Heather's non-PC romance. The arena fight doesn't seem fun enough yet and for some reason the ship that carries Heather's beau about isn't spawning in properly.

I've passed along the latest build to the QA folks. We'll see what they have to say about this version that I've been fiddling with for the last two weeks. All the new voice acting has brought the size up to about 150 MB in size. Whew.

I finally got the last of the new sound files...

August 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got the last of the new sound files attached. It's time consuming work, but hopefully worth the effort. I have a new build compressing away as I type. I'll see if I can do a quick test tonight and make sure it works before sending it off the brave QA folks.

I think I'm going to redo the control scheme for the Woodhaven arena fights. Currently it's done via a dialog, which is somewhat clunky and contributes to the combat being not fun. I'm going to see if I can put together a custom GUI, which hopefully helps bring all the information you need to play into a well-organized place, along with being able to pick your combat options much more easily.

After some coordination with moving really bi...

August 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After some coordination with moving really big files around, I now have all of Heather's dialog in my hot little hands. I've only just started to go through all the sound clips, but they sent along this wonderful outtake.

Eshinee is an amazing voice actor and conveys a range of emotions that really bring the character to life. Her husband Robert does a wonderful job on the technical side, despite the tedium of chopping up sound files. It's been a treat to work with such nice and professional folks (as are Derek and Chris). I don't have a lot to offer in the form of cold, hard cash, but perhaps I can offer a small measure of public recognition.

In any case, I'm back to attaching sound files, probably through tomorrow. I really want to make a new build by the weekend for the testers. Even though there are remaining, known issues (Woodhaven comes to mind), I've added enough goodies and fixed enough problems to make another run-through useful and hopefully fun.

I set aside Bioshock for a little bit this mo...

August 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I set aside Bioshock for a little bit this morning to record some new dialog for Spider, one of the main quest givers in the module. It's the first voice on the clip I have today. I think I was channeling Peter Lorre from the Maltese Falcon when I did it.

Instead of a picture, I thought I'd upload a clip of the various voices I'm doing. It's done with some fiddling to the pitch for most of them, along with a complete absence of shame. I'm sure my accents sound pretty horrid compared to their real-world counterparts. Fortunately I can claim that that's the way a Cockney accent sounds in the world of Dark Waters.

Friday was amazingly productive, working thro...

August 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Friday was amazingly productive, working through the long list of QA issues, slowly getting down to the nitty-gritty ones that I needed to do some careful testing of myself. Lots of typos, scripting issues, and the like got resolved. It was a good feeling.

Then Bioshock arrived. I spent big chunks of the weekend exploring Rapture and immersing myself in the art deco undersea world. It'll end up being game of the year for sure.

What's fascinating to me is that there are a lot of elements to the game that I tried to fit into the first Dark Waters module - the horrible disaster, notes of the time before, the water pouring in, mental powers, and even some art deco touches. Of course, Bioshock is an order of magnitude better, from the amazing art direction to the polish of the various game systems. Still, there's something neat about seeing some of my dreams come to life, albeit in someone else's game.

Despite my procrastination, others on my team have been working hard. Robert just sent along Heather's dialog, so I'll be working to get that into the game today. With luck, I'll put a new build together this week. The Woodhaven area still needs some attention from me, but other areas seem increasingly polished. With luck, there's actually a fun game in there somewhere.

It was all about sound clips yesterday, chopp...

August 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It was all about sound clips yesterday, chopping them up and attaching them to dialog. My only hope is that since my silly accents make my kids giggle, some of the NPCs will at least have some amusement value. If you're four or eight years-old, at least.

I recorded some more this morning, including some general crew voices for the High Seas area. If I'm feeling brave, I might put in some clips in to make the combat a little more lively. I also snuck in some more minor NPCs, just for fun.

Yet again, I had another very productive day

August 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yet again, I had another very productive day. I finished up the big batch of QA work (minus the two extra days that came in while I was working on things). This morning I fixed a nagging issue where the player wasn't being properly pummeled after a dialog. The script had my pugilistic NPC with the wrong tag, an easy fix once I figured it out.

This morning I also recorded a bunch of miscellaneous NPC voices - shopkeeps and such. At this point, I think I've passed beyond the typical embarrassment that comes with hearing my own voice. Sure, half the random people in town sound like me doing silly voices, but hopefully that'll all be part of the charm of Dark Waters.

Today I may spend chopping up and attaching those files, or perhaps I'll dig into the latest set of QA reports. Ah, choices.

I made huge progress yesterday

August 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made huge progress yesterday. I'm almost through the current batch of QA reports (minus the ones that came in while I was fixing things). It's amazing how many typos, weird bugs, and other issues show up in the game.

I've also made some additions along the way. Brighton Church is one of the places where you can find a monothiestic God being worshipped, but there was no way to convert. That got added yesterday, along with everything else.

There were a few glaring omissions, such as most set items not working properly. I still have a lot of QA things remaining before I can breathe again. I've also got walkthroughs and the like which will keep me busy for a couple days. I think I can easily say that this is the most complex module I've made ever.

Well, I think I have my earring code working ...

August 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I think I have my earring code working properly again. The various exploits should be closed and things are hopefully working as expected.

There was also the issue with the tattoos. You could actually get more than three, despite the dire warnings given by the tattoo artist. Well, you can now get more than three, if you really want, though bad things should properly happen now. It should have some amusement value, if nothing else.

The debugging continues

August 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The debugging continues. I found a couple hours of time yesterday to work on things, but haven't had much today. My current project is getting the earrings and tattoos working properly. Evidently my "Tattoo of the Boar" wasn't summoning the right creature. Now it does, but it's a wolf. I think I'll just change the name and icon of the tattoo.

There's also a way to cheat with earrings, letting someone use it, hand it to a companion, and have them use it to get the same effect. I think I know how to put a stop to the scoundrels, but it takes a bit of code. Fortunately the visual effect seems to be working okay, at least for my wise-cracking elven companion.

Well, I didn't get eaten by a bear on our cam...

August 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I didn't get eaten by a bear on our camping trip, so it looks like everyone will still get to play Dark Waters.

I started in earnest debugging on Friday, mostly a lot of little things - typos and such. Today I've been working on bigger issues that typically require playtesting. For example, you couldn't get to Serpent Isle. It turns out the dock had an incorrectly named tag, so it couldn't figure out where to put the player. They just appeared as themselves, standing in the middle of the ocean. Funny once, sure, but probably something that would get some complaints.

Now I need to make sure the dock master at the Sweet Isles actually sells sugar. Otherwise, people might be confused about the name.

After my hours of working with sound clips, I...

August 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After my hours of working with sound clips, I've returned to my QA work. There's lots of bugs to fix, so it'll keep me busy for awhile.

I'm going camping with my son tonight, as my wife and daughter are going to Portland. I'll probably be able to find some time to debug over the next couple days, in between the action movies, Sam and Max marathons, and other guy activities.

Well, no image today, but I have a sound clip

August 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, no image today, but I have a sound clip. It's just a handful of outtakes from various recording sessions. The first is Derek, playing the lovable scoundrel Jack. The second is my sister Sadie, voicing the sultry Silver. Finally, there's me, trying to say "incorporeal" with a vaguely Brooklyn accent.

Yesterday was all about sound clips. Everything I've got is now in the game. It's tedious work, hours of chopping up sound files, modifying formats, generating lip-synch animation files, and so on. I do feel that having voice acting in the game is worth the difficulties, bringing added humor and emotion into otherwise plain text.

As for today, I should start in on the latest QA work. It's seemingly endless, but necessary for getting a product that people will actually be able to play.

Life is keeping me busy again, though I'm sne...

August 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Life is keeping me busy again, though I'm sneaking in a little development time when I can. This morning I whipped out the microphone and recorded some lines. I should probably apologize in advance if every minor character in the game sounds like me. I'd probably do the barmaid if I could pull off a good girly voice. Unless she's in drag, though, I don't think it's an option.

It was all about the High Seas system over th...

August 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It was all about the High Seas system over the last couple days. There's lots of little details to go over and bugs to fix. Some were show-stoppers, such as being sunk and having your character remain invisible and alone on the ocean. Others were minor, such as not having your ship appear next to the docks on a certain island.

I'm eager to get the latest sound clips in the game. It's tedious work at times, but well worth doing.

I also whipped up a new build for the testers. They're still finding bugs faster than I can fix them. That's pretty typical for early in the QA process. Hopefully we'll eventually get to the "polish" phase where we can work more on balance and such. Slowly but surely . . .

I continue to work on the High Seas system, a...

August 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to work on the High Seas system, along with a variety of other miscellaneous bugs. Yesterday I finished sorting through several days of bug reports, from typos to weird scripting issues. You can now go from the High Seas module to the Woodhaven module and back again. Before, well, you didn't quite end up where you were supposed to.

There's still work to be done. I did a quick test and discovered that if I get sunk while on the High Seas map, I get stuck forever. There's also some additional bugs waiting for the 1.07 NWN2 patch, such as all the inventory management functions.

Derek also got a bunch of Jack dialog to me. He's the (occasionally) lovable scoundrel, and a possible love interest for Heather. I still have some dialog to record and more to chop up and add. Still, it seems like it's all coming together, slowly but surely.

I was a bad boy yesterday and didn't accompli...

August 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a bad boy yesterday and didn't accomplish as much as I'd like. I'm getting some reported issues of slowdown on the High Seas worldmap. For awhile I thought it might be due to the lighthouse model, as it's fairly high poly. I made a lower poly version that looks okay in miniature. After a little testing, though, I don't think that's the issue.

Instead, it seems to happen when there's lots of ships nearby. I think they all work really hard trying to decide if the player is friend or foe and setting strategies as appropriate. The easy fix is to distribute the ships around the worldmap more evenly, as they're only bunched together at the beginning.

Then there's the broken pirate dialog, assorted scripting errors, and all the other fun things to fix. Sometimes being different and daring is a bit of a hassle.

I keep plodding along, squishing bugs slowly ...

August 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I keep plodding along, squishing bugs slowly but surely. I just hit the lengthy list of High Seas bugs. Of all the new systems in the module, it's the roughest. Lots to do yet.

I continue to squash bugs left and right

August 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to squash bugs left and right. It's satisfying in an odd way, especially as I haven't had to face anything too mysterious and nerve-wracking. It turned out all the card icons in the Pirate Card game were off by one in the 2da file. My psionic feats didn't have proper descriptions. Then there's all the typos, odd grammar, and funky scripting issues.

I'm strangely eager to find more time and do some more debugging. Maybe tonight or tomorrow morning. Fun, fun.

I continued my grand QA efforts yesterday

August 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continued my grand QA efforts yesterday. It was deeply satisfying to start taking care of some of the more weird and obscure issues that came up.

One of the bugs I ran into made me giggle a bit. There's a couple houses in Port Brighton that you can break into. Unfortunately it wasn't working right and there were a variety of issues (e.g. delayed scripts that didn't survive a save/reload, windows that didn't go anywhere).

In any case, I fiddled with things and had a fairly successful B&E session. Along the way, I did run into a funny little bug. Due to some patch and 2da changes, the children in the house got really tiny. After dispatching the boy, he sort of got stuck under my foot. It looked like I stepped in something.

Morbid humor aside, I sent off a new build to the testers (Build #2). I still have endless bug reports to wade through, which should keep me busy today.

I was sick as a dog Friday night, rolling abo...

August 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was sick as a dog Friday night, rolling about in agony on the floor. Fortunately I somewhat recovered by Saturday and have felt almost normal today.

I've been continuing to dig through the QA reports. It's simply amazing how many fun little problems there are to find. There's typos, cards that damage companions, ships reporting weird statistics, and doors that don't work properly. I've probably put a couple hours into fixing things today and will hopefully get another one or two in. It's tricky work, but satisfying to cross one more thing off my list.

I took a short break from my QA stuff today a...

August 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I took a short break from my QA stuff today and put some effort into the infamous readme file. My first modules, way back in the Shadowlords days didn't have any walkthroughs. I found myself deluged with e-mails asking all sorts of questions. Since then, I've learned to put every little scrap of knowledge I can recall when designing the game.

Since writing walkthroughs can be a little boring, I try hard to add in a little quirky humor whenever possible. Here's some sample questions you'll find in the readme:
How do I get me some hot companion lovin'?
Can my companions can get love too?
I'm not too keen on having my player worship this God fellow. Can I change it?

You'll find the answers to these and many other questions, thoughtfully considered in the dw2.txt file.

Debugging continues

August 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues. This morning I went through and polished up the duel scene. It's pretty fun, even though I keep losing. There were a couple very serious bugs, the first being that it didn't start at all. The second was more comical. After being shot, my faithful companions decided to take out their aggression on the magistrate overseeing the event. I changed the scripts so that the module itself was applying damage to the player instead of the magistrate and it worked just fine.

I still have a good chunk of issues to sort through, but I'm feeling relatively good about the progress of things. I'm also cleaning up issues I find along the way, such as scripts that aren't compiling properly and the like.

Slowly getting there.

I'm an idiot

August 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm an idiot.

It turns out that your companions from the first module aren't transferred over to the second module. Why? It seems I remove them from the party right before the module ends. Once I comment out the lines in the script that does it, they come across just fine.

I have no idea why I set things up that way. Perhaps I was thinking I would store them in a database or something (like I had to do with the NWN1 prototype). In any case, it means I'll need to release an updated version of the first module at some point. For players that still have a saved game from the first module, Heather and Daniel will reappear, just without the equipment you gave them (I give them stock gear). Sigh.

QA progress continues in general. I'm still getting bugs reported faster than I can fix them, though that's pretty typical early in the process. I recorded a couple voice lines for a creature this morning. I get strange satisfaction mangling my voice and making it sound horrific.

Progress continues, slowly but surely

July 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues, slowly but surely. Most of the work so far has been doing tedious but necessary things. For example, characters would forget that they talked to the player. Doors wouldn't go back to where they came from. Other doors could be opened when they weren't supposed to go anywhere.

The testers are passing good stuff my way. Now I just need to find the time to actually fix things.

I made some really good progress this morning

July 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made some really good progress this morning. The kids have been playing well together (some elaborate pretend game involving superheroes and Magneto's sidekick). In the meantime, I've read through and fixed a number of the reported bugs. I even had a chance to add in a new dialog and some good/neutral/evil options (being evil will be tempting for many).

There's still plenty for me to do and I need to report my fixes back to the team (in addition to making a new build). Still, it felt good to make a lot of progress for a change. Quite a switch from the insane business of the last week.

After nearly a week of not touching the tools...

July 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After nearly a week of not touching the toolset, I woke up at five this morning, rolled up my sleeves, and started in on things. I need to remind myself that there's no way I can actually fix all bugs at once. At this point, I've fixed precisely two bugs. The first was a tricky custom content issue involving people having a hard time opening the door to the Black Spot. The second was having companions leave you for a certain quest (they didn't before, now they do).

I also need to put together some actual instructions instead of popping up an empty text file during the install. I think some of the testers problems may be due to the second module being installed first and the first module being installed second. Odds are, files will get overwritten with older version and all sorts of problems could happen.

I have the kids all myself this weekend, so I'm not sure about my free time situation. Perhaps I can sneak in a little debugging during their afternoon quiet time.

Come Hell or high water, I'm making myself ge...

July 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Come Hell or high water, I'm making myself get back to the task at hand. The PJJ and Juliano have been dutifully testing things, uncovering huge volumes of problems. I've yet to hunker down and go through them all, but I'm going to try hard to start on that today.

Work continues to be insane and I have the kids to myself this weekend. Sometimes it's a challenge to balance work, family, and my little gaming hobby.

To quote the movie Airplane, "I picked the wr...

July 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

To quote the movie Airplane, "I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue." Work has been hammering me hard lately, with a 12 hour work day on Monday, getting paged at midnight that night, and two solid days of workplace insanity. Needless to say, I haven't had a free moment to touch the game.

I am getting good reports from the voice actors. Chris is sweltering in hot Midwest temperatures and chopping up voice clips for Daniel. I'm hoping Heather's voice follows soon as well.

The first thing I want to do when I get a free moment is to see how PJJ's testing is coming along (assuming our file fiddling worked). I'm sure the list of bugs is long, but I'm eager to start fixing things as soon as I'm able.

I came across the most bizarre bug ever late ...

July 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I came across the most bizarre bug ever late yesterday. Nearly everything appeared compressed down, the text seemed huge, and the mini-map looked bizarre. It never repeated itself and was likely due to me switching around between programs in the background. Still, it was hysterical to see for the few minutes I had it running.

I made a new build and I'm trying a new method to share files with the QA folks. Megaupload works pretty well as long as you're in the US, but there's weird limits if you're elsewhere. I'm trying another one, which I hope does the trick.

I think I have most of the companion dialog and remembrance scenes working. I'm sure I'll be deluged by issues with other areas soon enough.

For some reason, debugging code hits all the ...

July 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

For some reason, debugging code hits all the various reward and punishment circuits in my brain. If the bug fixes come quickly, I get cheerful and happy. When the problems are mysterious and keep happening, the gloom sets in like a dark fog. Fortunately it is, after all, just a game. It's not too hard to move on to other things.

As for today, I fixed a whole bunch of bugs relating to Turtle Rock and the cutscenes. I'll see if I can find more time today, though the reality is that I have a couple kids clamoring to have me pay attention to them.

There's always a funny "What should I do now?...

July 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

There's always a funny "What should I do now?" feeling after I upload the first version for QA to poke at. I decided to roll up my sleeves and start digging into the testing myself. Sure enough, a lot of things weren't working properly, especially with the henchmen-specific "remembrance" options.

One of the things I enjoyed about Planescape and BG is the way you could guide your companions through their personal difficulties. Dark Waters 2 has quite a bit of that, letting your companions remember things from their past, develop romances, and so on. Much of the things that were breaking involved these transfers between modules, campaign-level scripts, and so on.

I've been fiddling with them today and I think I have much of it fixed. I still have a bunch of testing to do yet.

Also, I've heard from the main voice actors behind Heather and Daniel. I should get their voices in fairly soon, which is very exciting. There's still some assorted voice work that could be done, though the list is shrinking.

Ah, progress.

Well, it's my birthday today

July 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it's my birthday today. I decided to celebrate by posting an alpha version of the second act (for the team members, they can check the QA section of the boards for the link or I can e-mail it to you if you'd like).

There are bugs, including some significant ones I'm sure. For example, I chose to skip the prologue and found Conley hanging out with me. I guess he was a time traveler among other talents.

Still, it's time for me to start the sometimes grueling QA process, despite the extreme busyness of my life these days. As for how long it'll take before doing a public beta, I'm never certain. Perhaps it'll be a month, perhaps two. This act is more complex than the first in many ways. It's actually nine modules instead of one, which required a lot of changes to the "glue" that holds everything together. In particular, handling transitions of NPCs and variables between modules was quite challenging.

So, another milestone in the epic campaign. I suppose I won't have that "I'm done" feeling for a long while, but it's nice to take these little steps along the way.

I'm back from vacation, returning to a new cu...

July 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back from vacation, returning to a new cubicle in a new office on the other side of town. It's taking me some time to adjust and the longer drive isn't my favorite thing (I used to ride my bike to work).

I managed a bit of writing while I was on my trip, mostly for the third act in the campaign. The prototype for the first two acts is very well fleshed out, but the third is only partially finished and the last is still at the concept phase. Writing is a tricky business, with inspiration usually tied to large amounts of coffee.

I also received the sad news that a longtime member of the Neverwinter Nights community passed away. Mea Culpa died of a heart attack last Tuesday. He was a regular reader and would often send amusing e-mails and correct my occasionally horrific spelling. He will be missed.

It turns out we had an extra day before we le...

July 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday I wrote all the Death dialog, as pl...

July 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday I wrote all the Death dialog, as planned. This morning I did all the recording, though my voice was pretty raw at the end of it all. I'm going to have to cut out my coughing when I chop up the dialog.

I also spent some time yesterday getting an installer together. The size of the second act is currently 128 MB for the full version, though I'm sure that will grow as I add more voice acting.

I'm also heading out of town for the next four days, going on my 12th anniversary. I have no idea what we're doing, as it's my wife's turn to surprise me. Odds are, I'll do a bit of writing in a hotel lobby as she sleeps in, but otherwise I won't do much module development for a change.

No fancy picture today

July 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

No fancy picture today. I sunk a few hours yesterday, working on the sound clips. I chopped up and cleaned over 50 clips from Woodhaven, along with adding lip synch files and attaching quite a few others. At this point, I'm feeling fairly up-to-date with the sound clips. I need to work on my Death dialog. I continue to be horribly behind on older e-mail, which I'll hopefully remedy today.

If all goes well, maybe I can even make an installer before I head out for my long weekend.

Progress continues

July 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. Yesterday I added even more voice clips to the game. I'm up to 442 sound files at this point, with a ton more ready to go. Chris dropped me a note saying he was ready to go with Daniel, which will be a fair amount of clips right there.

I did a bit of testing as well this morning, despite a nasty headache (currently controlled with a fun mixture of Café Mocha and Advil). Monroe, the treasure map and equipment vendor, is fun to talk to. He waves his arms about as he sells his wares and is wonderfully voiced by Derek.

I did run into a few bugs, but they'll hopefully be easy to fix. It's slowly starting to feel like I'm working on an actual game instead of a collection of odd components duct-taped together.

Progress continues

July 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. I figured out the issue with the lip synch files. It turns out that a handful of them had the wrong file length (it's very picky about file lengths). I also came to the conclusion that a couple bugs related to store inventories are going to remain unfixable at this point. I'm hopeful the 1.07 NWN2 patch lets me fix them. Hopefully it won't be too long from now.

Things are getting really close to the QA phase. I did some more testing this morning, finding the Pirate Card game continues to work just fine. Unfortunately a couple triggered dialogs don't work yet, so my henchmen kept appearing next to me, wanting to talk but not finding the right words. Poingnant, I suppose.

I'm doing my best to get through all of my e-mail. I'm embarrassed to find ones that are almost a month old in there. A couple were really kind and enthusiastic. It's odd, but it really is motivating to hear such positive things. I think I let the endless bug reports get me down on occasion.

I have a couple more dialogs to attach voice to, lots of team coordination stuff to get organized, and maybe I can find the time to put together an installer for the current monstrosity. I copied the campaign folder today and it's approaching 200 MB in size (including DW1 sound clips and such). I wouldn't be surprised if the installer was well over 100 MB in size. Whew.

Well, it's been two steps forward and one ste...

July 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it's been two steps forward and one step back as of late. I got a ton of voices into the game, which sound really good. Unfortunately there's something horribly wrong with the lip synch animation files, causing them to crash whenever they're played.

I also started to look closely at the end of the module, making sure the proper conversations fired and the right information got to the next act in the campaign. It turns out there was a lot of work to be done. The hardest part is the ship cargo contents. I went through a bunch of different approaches, one of which resulted in endless cargo containers spawning around me.

I think I have a solution in place, essentially making the cargo containers part of the roster of characters that get moved from place to place. It's a little tricky, but seems to work reasonably well. I did a quick test by putting stuff in my cargo hold, leaving the module, returning, and having it magically appear, complete with the right inventory.

Now I just need to sort out the lip synch issue and polish up the end module code. Slowly getting there, as always.

Well, I didn't get as much done yesterday as ...

July 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I hoped. Today I'm vowing to change that, working hard to get as much voice clips as possible into the game. I'm doing a particularly hilarious graveyard scene, trying hard not to laugh too loud. Tonight or tomorrow morning I'd like to try an actual walkthrough and see how far I get.

I'm also trying to rework the way I do e-mail. People sending me e-mail are getting two week delays as checking GMail isn't part of my normal routine. I'm now forwarding those e-mails to my work address, which will keep me more up-to-date.

It feels good to slowly approach completion. This second Act is the biggest of them all, introducing several big gaming systems, lots of custom content, and a range of islands to explore. I'm hoping people enjoy it.

It's the 4th of July and I took the day off, ...

July 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's the 4th of July and I took the day off, managing to sneak in some development time somewhere in there. Yesterday was all about getting the load screens in place. Every area should have a real one, many of them custom. No longer should there be random load screens when going into areas.

Today I slaved away at getting my sister's voice work chopped up and attached to dialog. It's tedious work, but I'm enjoying the results so far. I also have a bunch of work from the other voice actors waiting for me. With luck, I'll find some time tomorrow to rename and attach those.

It's also looking like my family will be out of town for a couple days. If I can tear myself away from house projects, maybe I can actually spend some time testing this monstrosity.

Work on the High Seas system never seems to end

July 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Work on the High Seas system never seems to end. Yesterday I made sure the fleet aspects worked right (you can own and sail multiple ships). I tried to get the deed items to show the ship statistics, but the SetDescription command seems a bit touchy. I may end up making an item for each ship type or something.

I made a bunch of load screens so far today. I also have a ton of voice work that needs to be put into the game. I need to add a way to get to the next act when you finish this one (currently it tries to load a non-existant module). I realize that the game is likely very buggy at this stage, but progress continues to be made.

Success! The super annoying "lock up for a c...

July 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Success! The super annoying "lock up for a couple minutes" bug got fixed. I switched from a delayed script to a heartbeat script so that you could save and reload while on the high seas. I want it to run more frequently than every 6 seconds, so I have multiple delayed commands to run another heatbeat script. Unfortunately if you leave the area, it would still run those heartbeat scripts and fail horribly. I added a quick check and now it doesn't try to do anything bad.

I still feel somewhat frazzled with all the things left to do. A bit of testing would be really good, just making sure the QA folks can get around. I also have sound to attach, load screens to take, and so on. I'm trying to decide how much cleanup I want to do before throwing together an installer and passing it along to the testers. We'll see how brave I feel today.

It's good news and bad news, as usual

July 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's good news and bad news, as usual. The good news is that I got a lot of little coding tidbits done yesterday. Theoretically ships should move on the world map according to their maximum speed, the card game quest can be finished, and various High Seas bugs should be fixed.

Unfortunately there's also a bunch of bugs left, to the point where I can't test my fixes. The worst is an apparent infinite loop bug. Performance crawls to a stop when leaving the world map. I'm thinking there's a delay command that's causing infinite looping and I need to track it down. Hopefully that can get fixed and I can actually test to see if my other changes work.

Though I have no flashy pictures for today, I...

June 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Though I have no flashy pictures for today, I actually accomplished quite a bit. There's an annoying store inventory bug that popped up which I implemented a workaround for. You can't go through a store's inventory the normal way, so I had to use a "guess and check" method. Basically I ask the game engine "Do you have this kind of item?" and loop through the possibilities. It's not as efficient, but it works.

I started in on some of the cutscenes. With the new multi-module setup, it's a pretty complicated process. You can talk to your companion via a campaign-level dialog, jump to another module (remembering which module you came from), do the cutscene, and return back to your starting point. Theoretically it should all work, but it could be rather exciting. Hopefully I can get that coded today.

Well, I think the world map GUI is close to f...

June 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I think the world map GUI is close to finished. I ended up making it wider, which I'm a little nervous about for folks running at 800x600. I suppose they can close the GUI window or just click H to hide all the GUI elements. My only remaining task is to show the cargo on the Status page. That should give a pretty good overview of what you've got.

Fairly soon, I'd like to finish up with High Seas and write the code for the parts I know are remaining. That's mostly some cutscenes and transition to the next module, though I'm sure there's a ton I'm missing. I'm trying hard to hand something to the QA folks that's actually playable.

After that, it's all about fixing bugs, adding polish, and getting the voice and music ready. Busy, busy.

Well, I started in with my little GUI redesig...

June 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I started in with my little GUI redesign, adding in a status panel when sailing around on the world map. It's still in rough shape, but looking better. The main thing is that I'll probably have to either redo the tabs up top or make the box wider. Currently I don't have room for four tabs.

Things seem a little calmer today, so I might be able to continue in on the remaining High Seas issues. I also have a new annoying issue that cropped up. When going to the ship combat screen, it takes a few minutes for the area to load. I'm guessing there's some weird loop it's getting stuck in as before it was fairly snappy.

It does seem that I'm paying for my time off ...

June 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It does seem that I'm paying for my time off over the last week. Today was an insane return to work, with barely a moment to breathe.

I did manage a little testing time yesterday and this morning. The visual effects now show up on the ships. It's not perfect, but people should get a feel as to whether the damage was hull, sail, or crew (the big red spray and screams gives it away). I also put in some more code to avoid cheating, such as overloading your ship with crew, weapons, or ammunition. If you buy a cheap fishing boat, don't expect to do much with it other than get around.

Of course, I thought of more things I wanted added to the worldmap GUI. Eventually I'll need to stop adding features, though I think it makes sense to have a screen that shows your lead ship, total cargo, damage, weapons, crew, and so on. Busy, busy.

This is a very quick post, as my four year-ol...

June 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back! It was a very long but productiv...

June 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back!

It was a very long but productive vacation. My quiet time was typically spent fiddling with my computer, in between swimming with the kids, exploring caves, and generally enjoying sunny central Oregon.

In particular the High Seas game got a ton of attention. The worldmap GUI lets you see nearby ships, whether they hate you or not, special ships with unique captains and treasure, and trading tips. Ship to ship combat now mostly works, minus some visual effects that I implemented this morning while we were packing. Boarding actions work nicely and are pretty epic in scope if you haven't taken out the crew with weapons first. I love the named captains and the special treasures you can find.

I also spent some time working on the Chronomancer quest. It was horribly broken and I carefully went through piece by piece until it mostly worked. There's still some polish to do, but I think you can complete all of the major quests at this point.

There are side quests that are unfinished and some cutscenes and a card game quest that I know are broken. Still, having a week away from distractions was exactly what I needed to get things ready to get to testers. I fixed some really weird bugs in the last week. One of my favorites was the new system where you see your ship waiting for you at the docks. Initially it was a massive werewolf statue, which was creepy yet somehow appropriate. The second bug involved ships suddenly moving about on the world map partially submerged. It turns out that polymorphed creatures lose their scaling after a module reload. Weird. I ended up rescaling the ship models outside of the game and it turned out okay.

I'm going to try and put together a movie of the high seas area once I fix the last of the visual effects. It's nice to be back.

Well, I'm off for over a week

June 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm off for over a week. With luck I can find an Internet connection and post a bit. Hopefully my poor little server will stay up and running without babysitting. The new modem is on the way.

I did a ton of fixes yesterday, the biggest being switching away from DelayCommand and using heartbeat scripts instead. The problem with DelayCommand is that a save and reload breaks it horribly, basically making it useless for anything more than short delays. I'm hopeful I've fixed some of the firing issues too, and I have a plan to properly implement some of the visual effects. Hopefully I can get some time to work on it during my trip.

The High Seas mini-game is an open system of ...

June 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The High Seas mini-game is an open system of sorts. There's general goals, such as getting booty, trading cargo, or simply getting from island to island in order to do the next quest. For the most part, there's formal no stories that occur on the high seas. You can fight, trade, or simply explore. To some degree, that's a problem, as the lack of a well-crafted structure can lead to repetition and boredom. On the other hand, it gives a sandbox to players to make their own stories.

This morning I made my own High Seas story, mostly by accident. I was testing the combat system and decided to attack the nearest cargo ship I could find. Little did I know, I had crossed paths with the infamous bald merchant queen! My crew put up a good fight, but soon Daniel and Heather were laying on the deck, dead, and I soon joined them. Fortunately, Death owed me a favor and I returned to finish off that pesky bald merchant.

Soon I was sailing away with my ill-gotten booty. The merchant ship, in addition to carrying valuable cargo, had along a special treasure called Mask's Vestments. A good percentage of these ships carry unique cargos, which makes for good motivation. Since pirates and merchants carry different ones, I suspect the unsavory players may end up making enemies all around.

In any case, it was a fun little event and it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the High Seas system.

I continue to debug, and there's still lots of things to take care of. I figured out why my ninja's weren't appearing. I know why sometimes I lost boarding actions, even though I really won. I think I've figured out why I can't fire all the various weapons. The visual effects for combat still need polish, but I think I'm getting closer. Finally, I need to find a wig for my Merchant Queens.

Fun, fun!

I keep hoping that somewhere under the curren...

June 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I keep hoping that somewhere under the current state of High Seas is a fun game. Some parts are working great. I love the world map, sailing from island to island. It's very pretty, especially things like the Brighton lighthouse that shines away in the darkness.

Unfortunately, my debugging continues in earnest. I made some progress yesterday, getting the ammo display sort of working. Speed now changes depending on your angle to the wind. My own crew doesn't try to attack me during boarding actions.

On the other hand, winning a boarding action seems to cause me to lose my ship. My crew decided to attack and sink a ship on their own, clearly a keel-hauling offense. Even worse, I swear the enemy ship looked like a giant werewolf for a time. It brought memories of the Cow Vortex bug from the prototype back to me.

In any case, I continue to be insanely busy, wishing for a few moments of quiet to putter away and get things to a manageable state. I keep hoping that next week's vacation will bring that tranquility, a Zen-like state of fixing bugs and getting things ready for testing.

I did do one fun thing yesterday, getting ninja and samurai into the module. When you board a ship from the Silk Isles, you should theoretically get some cool pirate versus ninja action. Finally the question as to who has Total Ultimate Power will be settled.

Well, I had a catastrophic network failure la...

June 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I had a catastrophic network failure last night. I think the internal DSL modem in my closet server at home gets overly hot sometimes. Shutting down the PC and letting it sit overnight fixed the problem for awhile. I'm in the process of ordering a new modem, which should hopefully keep the downtime to a minimum.

Life, as always, is insanely busy. I did manage to focus on the High Seas mini-game last night, without any pesky Internet distractions. My favorite new addition is the ability to get a list of the ships on the world map, along with their distance and direction. For privateers and pirates, knowing where your prey is can be crucial. It's no fun wandering about the world map, looking for something to do.

I'm also slowly working on the ship-to-ship combat portion. The GUI is fairly good at this point, though it's pointing out all manner of problems now that I can see some of the numbers. Ship's velocities aren't changing depending on the wind facing. Weapons aren't firing (though the buttons become disabled when you're out of range quite nicely). I can't start a boarding action, though the enemy sure can. Finally, when I do a boarding action, my crew hates me, but I'm friends with the enemy's ship. Crazy.

At the end of the week, I'm heading off for a week-long vacation. Though my wife rolls her eyes, I usually bring along my computer. Hopefully I can get in some long development hours while the grandparents watch the kids. We'll see how it goes.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so insanely busy al...

June 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so insanely busy all the time. It makes hobby game development a hassle when it's hard to find 30 consecutive minutes to test things.

In any case, progress does continue. I got to the boarding section of the High Seas mini-game. It was on accident and the enemy crew ignored me, but for the most part things actually worked. Since I couldn't be attacked nor could I attack the enemy, things sort of paused at the end. I think I have the faction issues fixed now, though I still need to test it.

I'm also working on the new GUI. While it may look pretty, it currently doesn't do anything. Today I'm hooking up the various buttons to functions that should let me get rid of the current dialog method. We'll see how it goes.

I spent a bunch of time this morning working ...

June 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a bunch of time this morning working on the High Seas GUI. Since ship-to-ship combat is sort of working, I felt it was time for a bit of polish. I still need to get the weapon-specific buttons finished, but I generally like the layout and it fits in a fairly compact space.

Of course, it doesn't do anything at the moment. I'll need to hook it up to the existing functions. I display everything currently, but it's all dialog based and somewhat clunky. This new interface should make it a much more enjoyable experience.

I also spent some time getting the effects for High Seas in place. There's a mini-game called Attack of the Killer Swarm which is strangely mesmerizing, in part due to the quirky visuals and sound effects. Hopefully I can make demolishing ships equally satisfying.

Progress continues nicely

June 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues nicely. Cargo holds are now working in the game, looking like a chest. They appear and join as companions when you enter port. You can then shuffle inventory around between them quite easily.

I tested out the new fishing boat, deciding to engage a merchant in combat. It actually worked, getting me to the right area, letting me sail about, and so on. Of course, not all was perfect. Later I had pirates attack, there was a very short boarding action, I think, and then my invisible PC stood there waiting forever.

Still, that was more progress than I thought I'd be making so far. Slowly getting there.

It's not horribly impressive, but the fishing...

June 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's not horribly impressive, but the fishing boat is now in the game. I'm trying to give a range of vessels to the player to play with. At this point, there's four ships to choose from, though my ideal is to get a few more in as I'm able.

In terms of everything else, I'm insanely busy. I managed a bit of time working on High Seas this morning. The clones are gone. I can buy a ship, sail around, and dock again. Some things still feel a bit rough, but they're getting there.

The amusing bugs continue, even though progre...

June 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The amusing bugs continue, even though progress is made as well.

I dragged my sister to the microphone and made her record a number of the female extra roles. I still have to chop up the dialog, do some cleaning, convert it to the right format, and generate lipsynch files. Still, it felt good to have even more voices recorded.

I sunk some time this morning into the High Seas system. One of the more amusing bugs was having Daniel and Heather cloned every time I entered the area. I sort of have the new cargo system working. It's added as a companion. Unfortunately it has a weird icon and the game crashes when I look at its inventory. Obviously there still some things to work out.

I keep thinking I'm approaching the magic QA phase, but I want to at least let testers be able to go from place to place. Currently it's pretty badly broken.

Firestarter is feeling pretty well polished a...

June 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Firestarter is feeling pretty well polished at this point. The most amusing bug is when one of the NPCs had their voice sound like a chipmunk. It turns out that the original WAV file was recorded at 22kHz instead of 44kHz, which was fairly painlessly fixed.

I had a good idea about the High Seas mini-game this morning. Right now the system is broken due to a scripting bug in NWN2 that's specific to stores. I temporarily changed cargo holds from a store to a placeable, but decided that having them as creatures would work best. Right now managing cargo is complicated, but if I add them as a temporary party member, it should be a simple drag and drop.

Of course, none of that is working now. I started diving into High Seas and found all manner of bugs I need to fix. We'll see if I can get things sorted out today.

Finally, my sister is in town for the day and I'm hoping to steal her away to do some voice recording. She has a lovely voice and my plan is to see how much work I can get out of her while she's here.

Chronomancer continues to scare me, so I poli...

June 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Chronomancer continues to scare me, so I polished up the Woodhaven and Firestarter quests. Commoners weren't spawning properly in Woodhaven, which is actually an important part of the quest. For Firestarter, some of the key placeables weren't spawning in properly. For example, in today's grave digging screenshot, you can spy a corpse I uncovered.

I'd like to polish up Firestarter soonish and brave the horrible Chronomancer bugs. Who knows, I might even be able to spend some time with High Seas and the long list of side quests.

I spent some time on the Chronomancer quest, ...

June 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent some time on the Chronomancer quest, ending up somewhat frustrated at the degree to which certain things were broken. It's heavily dialog-based, with lots of scripts to tie things together. The madness extended to clones a'plenty, weird camera angles, and scripts that plain wouldn't fire.

Fortunately I switched over to Firestarter and found it much more pleasant. The main quest could be pretty much finished, though there were lots of broken things. My favorite part is breaking out the shovel and digging up whatever I can find. It has a nice animation and VFX, so it looks pretty good. Plus there's something entertaining about digging up graves and whatnot.

It was fun getting this particular screenshot, violating graves under a blood red moon. Good times.

I finished my first quest today

June 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finished my first quest today. After a lot of pain and suffering, the arena combat now works. The two creatures battle it out and you can control them in a variety of ways. There's still some tweaking to do, but I made it all the way to the end of the quest, which was very satisfying.

I have a list of things to tweak, which I'll probably work on until the kids wake up this morning. Maybe I'll find some time during the day to work on Firestarter or Chronomancer. It actually feels like I'm making progress today, which is nice.

I got crazy busy yesterday and didn't do much

June 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got crazy busy yesterday and didn't do much. This weekend it might be tough finding time as well, as I'm watching both kids while my wife is out of town. Still, I managed to spend some time working on Woodhaven.

I remember from the prototype that the arena quickly became incredibly grueling. The scripts were complex and the dialog-based control mechanism is somewhat clunky. At this point I have the creatures spawning in and visible, but they don't attack each other and the only thing I can do is lose the match.

I'd like to get the main quests basically working so that I can turn my attention to the lesser quests and High Seas system. At the moment it feels that some of them mostly work, but nothing is completely tested. Busy, busy.

Since I didn't have a screenshot for yesterda...

May 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from most of my bug fixing yes...

May 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from most of my bug fixing yesterday and spent some time to attach all the dialog that people have recorded so far. It was a rare treat, getting it all together. I want to see if I can generate some lipsynch files today and put together a little movie of it all in action.

Other than that, it's mostly working on the various main quests. I discovered Chronomancer was missing a lot of key things, so I imported more dialogs and am working on getting the front door to work properly. Busy, busy.

I always feel insanely busy right after getti...

May 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I always feel insanely busy right after getting back from a weekend. I'm still working on catching up on e-mail, mostly to start coordinating voice actors in a more serious way. The second act has seemingly endless dialog, written in the previous couple years while making the prototype. I don't think all of it will get voiced, but hopefully a big chunk can be. I actually recorded a bit myself over the weekend, for a parrot of all things.

Yesterday I sunk a few hours into debugging and cleanup. I think the Dominator quest can actually be played through, though I haven't made the final verification. The Woodhaven quest is broken in a key spot. I can't even start the Chronomancer quest. Firestarter is broken somewhat, though better than the others.


In any case, I cleaned up what I could. I also snuck in a new ship for High Seas, a tiny fishing boat that has the main benefit of being really cheap. Slowly getting there.

Work continues at a good clip

May 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues at a good clip. I spent way too much time yesterday getting the firework effects working properly. For the longest time, they simply shot downward when in-game, even though they looked great in the VFX editor. I finally ended up modifying the fireball VFX extensively to make it look good.

At this point, the entire first series of cutscenes is completely playable. The second act has very few of them in comparison to the first, which is a good thing in my opinion. Which ones there are, I want to have look good.

I'm trying to get the QA item working properly. It mostly works at this point, though I'm still investigating a few issues. The change from henchmen to companions and the switch from a single module to multiples makes a pretty big difference in how certain things work. Slowly getting there.

Late into the night and again early this morn...

May 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Late into the night and again early this morning, I spent countless hours working on the Dominator quest. I nearly got it working this morning, making it to the very end of the thing. Sadly, the psionic power I was granted was the wrong one. I had to take out my telekinetic frustration on a nearby foe.

Things are coming along nicely. I keep adding more and more polish to the game and it's starting to show. I spent a frustrating half an hour trying to figure out why the game would crash in a certain area. It turns out I just forgot to bake it, and telling an NPC to move somewhere confused the game to death.

Hopefully today I can get the Dominator quest working and I can move on to Woodhaven, Firestarter, or Chronomancer. Then there's the endless side quests that I have to work on too. Busy, busy.

I made it through one of the main quests this...

May 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made it through one of the main quests this morning, though admittedly there were lots of bugs along the way. I think this is a portent of things to come, basically fixing the most horribly broken issues so that QA can actually get through the game to the end.

There were also tons of little things I've added and tweaked, mostly scripting issues and adjusting more things to the way NWN2 works.

I also finally made it through e-mail and was happily surprised at some of the great work the voice actors have been coming up with. I haven't been rallying the troops much lately, so it's a treat to see them so motivated already. I can't wait to have people hear Captain Drake in particular, a wonderfully drunken, evil scoundrel.

The insanity continued yesterday, and all I m...

May 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The insanity continued yesterday, and all I managed was to copy over the journal entries into the new module. Fortunately I woke up early today and spent some time getting the Dominator quest put together. It's one of the few quests that makes use of a privy in a clever and satisfying way.

The most frustrating debugging involved getting a conversation to pop up when clicking on a door. As my DW1 experiences showed me, locking it and attaching a script to the "failed to open" script doesn't work well. Players might not try to open a knowingly locked door. Plus, if they have lock picking skills, you have to wait to have the attempt fail. I switched to an invisible object approach, which I think works better, though it still has a few issues to work out.

All-in-all, it does feel like a game is slowly coming together.

Man, my life is busy

May 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Man, my life is busy. I still managed a bit of work yesterday, getting the henchmen dialog put together, the psionic scripts cleaned up, and trying to fix a few other things. This morning I managed a bit of debugging, enough to generate a new list of things to work on.

Today I have a new list, with lots of things to work on. Journal entries need to be transferred, broken door conversations need to be fixed, remembrance areas need to be completely rescripted. Busy, busy.

Progress continues, in fits and starts

May 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues, in fits and starts. I got the digging animation working again, guards and commoners spawn correctly, and you get in trouble stealing things from shop crates. Two levitating buildings are now safely back to earth. A number of other miscellaneous problems should now be fixed.

Probably the most fun I had was getting a pesky parrot to fly about in an amusing fashion. He now properly squawks and returns to his roost when players have left him alone.

The game still isn't ready for testing. There's all sorts of known bugs and things preventing QA for testing very much. I have companion dialog to implement, Death dialog to write, and endless bugs to fix. Still, I'm pretty happy with progress. In only a couple months I've managed to get the second act roughly pulled together. My guess is that it'll take another month before it's ready for QA. Then we'll spend another 2-3 months debugging, fixing music, and getting the dialog together. Even then, that seems faster than I thought it would be.

It's almost funny going through the game at t...

May 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's almost funny going through the game at this point. You can start it and sort of move to different points. Half the stuff is broken in weird ways, sometimes looking hysterically funny. For some weird reason, for example, some of the ships are partially submerged, their masts poking out as they move around.

It looks like the beta for the 1.06 NWN2 patch is out. It includes some wanted trap functions and an OnClick event for placeables. Sadly, it looks like the store inventory bug was pushed back to 1.07, so High Seas will remain partially broken for awhile. Still, there's lots to test for the main quests. I'll see if I can do a bit of cleanup today and get the QA stuff in place.

I'm also horribly behind on e-mail again. Bad, bad me.

The second act of Dark Waters is massive

May 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The second act of Dark Waters is massive. There are so many places to go and things to do. QAing such a monstrosity is going to take awhile.

On the up side, I got the polymorph issue sorted out. It turns out I had both a module and campaign version of a key script, which messed things up until I deleted one of them. I now properly transform into a Junk as planned (for testing purposes anyway).

I ended up wandering around the world for awhile, stumbling into the Woodhaven module for the first time. It was fun, though only about half of things worked properly. I ended up getting stuck in a conversation with myself, which wasn't too fun.

Still, I'm starting to generate bug lists. At this point, I want to see if I can get things roughly working and the QA infrastructure is in place (e.g. the Game Options widget that lets you teleport around). I don't even think you can get to most areas. Still, it feels like things continue to move forward nicely. Slowly getting there.

Well, I finished all the areas yesterday

May 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I finished all the areas yesterday. It's a fairly big milestone, though quite a bit remains to do. Still, it felt good to get that out of the way and now I can focus in on other things.

This morning I decided to spend some time on the High Seas mini-game. There's huge amounts of things that are broken at this point. The most notable is that the player doesn't polymorph into a ship when going to the map. It seemed to happen all of a sudden and I'm still trying to sort out why.

I'm slowly getting through the last of the areas

May 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting through the last of the areas. Catspaw still needs a bit of work, but I started in on one of the Remembrance areas this morning. It's weird spending the time on an outdoor area that will only be seen for a few seconds, and even then it's just an optional area the player might never see. Still, I suppose if thousands play, it's worthwhile.

Ideally, I'll finish up the areas today. We'll see if I can pull it off.

I finally got the Junk into the game

May 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got the Junk into the game. It's the third ship that you can use in High Seas. I felt it was one of those "gotta have" models so I hunkered down and did the texturing myself. It turned out reasonably well, especially on the world map which is fairly zoomed-out.

The High Seas module does have some problems. For whatever weird reason, my PC model isn't polymorphing properly to a ship. I'm also noticing some AI problems, probably due to the bug in the store-specific inventory scripts. Hopefully that'll get fixed in the upcoming 1.06 NWN2 patch.

In terms of the rest of the game, I'm slowly working on Catspaw Isle. I retextured a creature to make it fit more appropriately. I need to polish up the areas some more. Still, it feels like progress.

I got busy yesterday, and skipped a post

May 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got busy yesterday, and skipped a post. That's a rarity for me.

On Monday I finished up Woodhaven, at least from an area building perspective. The one interior is finished and I think I've imported all the necessary scripts, items, and creatures.

For whatever weird reason, I spent much of yesterday texturing Razvan's Chinese junk. It's slow but steady work. At this point I have most everything textured with something, but I'd like to go back and add some more distinctive touches. I'm quite excited to see how it turns out. I'll have to get Schazzwozzer's Samurai outfits for some pirate versus ninja action.

This morning I worked on the last of the islands, Catspaw Isle. The exterior, which is small, got finished very quickly. I have one interior partially done and another I need to start. Small outdoor areas are loads of fun to put together since you can get something that looks great relatively quickly. I also find I don't have to be as careful with tree placement and use of textures.

As for today, I'd like to finish the Junk and work on Catspaw some more. I've also got some creatures I'd like to slightly retexture. Fun stuff.

This weekend was all about the Woodhaven area

May 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

This weekend was all about the Woodhaven area. It's one of the biggest outdoor areas, with rolling hills and lots of trees. I could probably spend even more time today laying down shrubbery and foliage, though it's looking reasonably complete at the moment. In NWN, it was multiple areas, but under NWN2 I opted for one large outdoor area and a single interior. I was worried about performance, but it seemed okay during testing. If the need arises, I can chop it up further.

As for today, I'm hoping to get some of the scripting in place so that the quests could be attempted. I also have the one interior to do. If I somehow finish that early, perhaps I can start in on the final two modules (the cutscene one and Catspaw Isle). Fun, fun.

I finally packaged up and uploaded the 1

May 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally packaged up and uploaded the 1.04 beta patch. It's on Megaupload, which is sometimes slow, but it's hard to beat free. I haven't fully tested the patch, but the changes are fairly straightforward. If someone could run through it and e-mail me, that would be great. Here's the list of fixes:

* Changed the way the "touch the gems" line in the End of Days cutscene worked to make it more robust.
* Changed the "shadowy woman" psionic trap in the labs so the dialog is more robust.
* Made secret door on Level 4 unpickable.
* When Heather or Daniel join the PC, always set their XP to the player's.
* Fixed an incorrect tile in the Maintenance area.

In terms of the second release, I set up the basics for the three final modules, two islands and an all purpose cutscene module. Currently I'm working on the elven home of Woodhaven, which is going to take a bit of work. Large outdoor areas require a lot of effort to make look nice. My guess is that it'll take a few days to get looking right.

I was up at 4:30 this morning and spent two s...

May 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was up at 4:30 this morning and spent two solid hours finishing up the ship cabin. I decided to turn it into a real tileset, learning some things along the way. It turns out you can have lots of different meshes in a tile, not just the three they have in the official campaign.

I suppose I could make the tile a bit more flexible, such as giving it the ability to attach to other tilesets. There's also some odd camera issues, depending on the camera angle. Still, after two hours, I may just call it good enough.

Yesterday I did a bit of scripting work, trying to make the different modules in the campaign work well together. My old method for moving characters around involved a holding area that I'd jump NPCs in and out of. Now that it's broken into different modules, I have to create the object from a list of campaign creatures. It's a bit of a hassle, but having a single module for everything would make testing nearly impossible (as load times would be ten minutes or more).

I'm heading up to Portland to visit family this weekend, so maybe I can work on some writing. Death in particular needs some more dialog. I have a bit written already, but I'd like to get the comedic elements finely honed. Death turned out to be a popular character and I'd like to continue using him in the future.

Sometime late last night I finished the last ...

May 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sometime late last night I finished the last of the interiors for Port Brighton. I might polish a bit more, but they all seem good enough for now. It looks like I have at least two more islands to do, one of which is for a main quest. I also have several "Remembrance" areas to work on. Those are tricky, as potentially players could trigger them when in any of the Act 2 modules. I'll need to find a way to teleport them to the Remembrance module and then jump back to where they were when it's complete. I have a plan, but it's not tested yet.

One other area is for a ship cabin. I'm looking at a NWN tile that should be adequate. Hopefully I can get a functioning tile without too much trouble.

As for today, I might start working on exterior areas. There's also some scripting things to work on, as well as adding journal entries and the like. Busy, busy.

I continue to pull out my hair, maniacally fi...

May 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to pull out my hair, maniacally finishing interiors. I think I have one more remaining in Port Brighton and then I get to work on some exteriors for a change. As always, I'm behind on e-mail and still haven't made a new installer for the patch. Having a single-minded focus can be both a blessing and a curse.

On the plus side, I've incidentally tested out some of the quests almost by accident. They generally seem to work okay, though there's bound to be some rough spots. At some point I need to go through every Port Brighton quest and do my normal QA. For now, I'm just making sure areas look okay, things are linked together, and there's no horribly obvious flaws.

I finally finished the Manor area today, feel...

May 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally finished the Manor area today, feeling like I've been playing with an adult version of a doll house. Well, a doll house where Barbie and Ken carried Great axes. That probably would have made it more appealing to me as a kid.

I've got one more manor that I'm working on today, two more interiors, and then I think I'm done with Port Brighton. After that I've got a couple more islands and accompanying quests to go. It's amazing just how big this second Act is. I thought the first module was big, but this one is pretty massive.

Once I get the areas built, I've got to assist in getting the voices in the game, debug quests, update scripts, and so on. It's fun watching it all come together, though. Slowly getting there.

On occasion, I'm amazed at how long area crea...

May 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

On occasion, I'm amazed at how long area creation takes in NWN2. Interiors seem to be the trickiest, putting down tiles, adding lights, and then the countless placeables that make a place feel homey. This morning I started in on a large manor, importing from the prototype, and after a couple hours got a bare-bones, no placeable interior that's ready to go. It'll probably take a few more hours to pretty up the place.

Yesterday I worked on little things, such as doing basic debugging of the Port Brighton area. Some area transitions didn't work, item icons were missing, and the commoners looked weird. I also got the "burning building" mini-quest working for the most part. I think I need to make it more dangerous, as it's mostly a cake-walk now.

As for my fixes to the first module, I think I've given up on finding the time for a full walkthrough. I think I'll whip up a beta patch today and post it, assuming I can find the time for that. My e-mail inbox has filled right up again, and need to find the time for that too. Busy, busy.

I had way too much fun yesterday making one o...

May 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had way too much fun yesterday making one of the Port Brighton shops. After yesterday's Armory fun, I decided that the mysterious Doctor Fenril needed to have a little ambiance as well. He'll mix potions, cast spells, and generally look like he's busy doing things in his shop. It's sort of mesmerizing just watching him.

I also got some placeable hats into the game to spruce up the Mad Hatter, a skull for Doctor Fenril, and Razvan's printing press for the Port Authority area. There's still countless details to sort through yet. I have another area to finish, lots of items to give icons to, and basic testing to see if I can actually get into all these different shops.

For a change, I actually made some good progr...

May 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

For a change, I actually made some good progress yesterday. I finished a couple more interiors for the second module, Lord Brighton's Manor and Brighton Armory. The armory has been fun to work on, as the blacksmith has a little "ambiance" script that has him moving around and doing interesting things. One of the nice things about NWN2 is that there's a greater range of animations, such as working a forge.

I finally got caught up with e-mail as well. There were quite a few bug reports, though many were due to older patches. I did find a couple more issues I'd like to fix in an upcoming patch. One of the things I'm discovering is that there's no guarantee that scripts will fire in a timely manner. NPCs moved into the area may take one second or more, depending on the person's computer. Action queues sometimes clear out. Hopefully the new fixes will take these issues into account. Of course, now I have to put together a new build and make sure I didn't break anything. Maybe I can do that this weekend.

I'm also hearing some grumbling about the new deity system. Essentially you either pick "God" or nothing. It's difficult to explain without spoiling too much, but the matter is fairly key to the campaign. If it's any consolation, more deities will be available as the campaign progresses, including a number of familiar Forgotten Realms deities.

In any case, it feels good to make progress again. Slowly getting there.

After nearly two weeks, I cracked open my e-m...

May 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After nearly two weeks, I cracked open my e-mail InBox, filtered out the spam, and am down to 25 messages. Hopefully I can tackle those this morning. My apologies if I've taken forever to get back to you.

Yesterday was incredibly busy, as it often gets. I did manage to sink some time into the Brighton Authority Cells area. Many players will end up there during the course of the game, depending on how sneaky or law-abiding you are. Area creation takes a long time in NWN2, but the end result is much nicer. Flickering torchlight really gives the place a dank and creepy feel.

I'm back home, though I didn't get too much t...

May 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back home, though I didn't get too much time to work on things since I left. I managed a bit of writing on the plane back, and this morning I moved over the last of the graveyard headstones. I still have a number of Port Brighton interiors to work on, but the list continues to shrink.

I've still not cracked open e-mail, which probably has grown to mammoth sizes. There's still some issues needing to be fixed with the first module, which I need to get to. As I work on the second Act, I find myself making a lot of changes to the campaign scripts. Hopefully that will go smoothly when people want to transfer their saved game from the first module to the second. I'm trying really hard to make it all compatible.

Busy, busy.

Well, this business trip hasn't been the pana...

May 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, this business trip hasn't been the panacea of time that I'd hoped it to be. Yesterday I spent mind-numbing hours going from airport to airport without doing any writing. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime, I managed a fair amount of work on the earring system. The hardest part was getting the earring to look reasonable on the head of every race and gender. I covered the main ones and most heads should look okay with them. Basically I created a custom model for each combination, coupled with a custom VFX. The scripting piece was relatively easy by comparison.

It's starting to feel that the huge Port Brighton area is coming together. I've had some worrisome crashes that I don't fully understand. I'm also finding that some of the custom hats aren't showing up properly in the game. Hopefully I can track down the cause of those things, assuming it's not an issue with the 1.05 patch.

I've been obsessively working on converting areas

April 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been obsessively working on converting areas. It's slow work, but I've made some pretty good progress. I think I have two main islands I haven't started on, but the others are approaching done. Port Brighton is over halfway finished, with several interiors remaining.

Yesterday I did battle with the Shadow Fortress tileset. It was amazingly difficult, but I felt pretty happy about the end result.

I'm still hiding from e-mail and the inevitable bugs in the first module. With luck I'll have some time over the next few days to catch up on my correspondences. I'm on a business trip and I'll probably have some time in a hotel room where I'm not doing much of anything. I'd also like to get in some writing, which I haven't done for awhile. There's still lots to do.

I worked on more areas yesterday, fleshing ou...

April 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on more areas yesterday, fleshing out Brighton Church. Area creation takes a long time in NWN2. For exteriors, there's terrain painting and all that. For interiors, there's lots of placeable decoration to add. The prototype doesn't help with that at all, so I'm staying busy just making new areas.

Today I focused in on some of the global issues with the 2nd Act. There were scripts to be turned from module to campaign scripts, more module transitions to put into place, and making sure everything compiles. Each module should have their proper module-level scripts. I still need to dig into each script and make sure things are properly converted over to their NWN2 format.

It feels like progress is being made, however slowly.

Yesterday and this morning I focused on rebui...

April 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday and this morning I focused on rebuilding what was lost, along with linking up the various areas. The High Seas module is really the glue that holds the overall 2nd act of High Seas together. I was seeing if I could go from the high seas docks area to Port Brighton and back again. It took a lot of fiddling, but I think it's generally working.

I also spent some time trying to improve the performance of the Port Brighton area. It turns out the pretty smoke effects are extremely taxing on the CPU. I might have to bring back the Far Plane a bit too, though those sort of optimizations can wait until later.

My goal for today is to start working on the various areas of Port Brighton. There's only a couple interiors that have been fleshed out. Making areas is one of the more fun and relaxing aspects of module building. Debugging and releasing, not so much fun.

Tuesday was insanely busy, so much so that I ...

April 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Tuesday was insanely busy, so much so that I didn't really touch NWN2 or do anything useful.

I spent some time this morning trying to recover from an issue that the NWN2 1.05 patch created for the High Seas module. For whatever reason, all my docks areas stopped opening, along with a nasty toolset error message. I've mostly recovered one area, basically recreating it from scratch. This morning I tried to make sure I could transition from the High Seas world map to the Port Brighton dock area and finally to the Port Brighton module. There's still a few bugs to work out, but I think I fixed the hard things.

I've been ignoring e-mail lately, so my apologies if you haven't been able to reach me. Maybe today I'll take a peek if I can get the rest of my life a bit more manageable.

Today is patch day

April 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Today is patch day. I just finished uploading a new version of the Pirate Cards game. This one makes cards have no weight. Previously a full deck of cards weighed 40 lbs, which is crazy. Of course, people who play with exported characters will still have the massive cards, though they could sell them off if they wanted. Maybe they'll become collector's items.

I also uploaded a new version of the first Dark Waters module. I did a full walkthrough yesterday and didn't run into any snags. I'm still getting odd issues trickling in, so it looks like I'll be fixing things again today. Also, though the files are uploaded to the Vault's FTP site, they're not yet linked into the module page. Hopefully that'll happen soon.

Finally, when testing yesterday, I actually kept going into the second module. I worked up a short list of bugs for me to fix before I called it quits. There's a bunch that still doesn't work, but it's a good sign that the first little bit is sort of playable.

Update: Maximus was zippy and the new patch should be live on the Vault now.

I sunk many hours into the first module, clea...

April 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I sunk many hours into the first module, cleaning up even more bugs. I think I found the cause of many of my problems - the handy but vaguely evil DelayCommand function. It turns out that delayed functions don't survive a save and reload. My guess is that some of the problems people were running into was due to that. In particular I sunk a lot of time into the Remembrance: War section, which has always been problematic.

For people who are very brave, you can try out the 1.03 beta patch for the module. You can look at the very lengthy list of fixes. I'm hopeful someone will power through this version to make sure it can get posted to the Vault. I did a bunch of spot testing, but haven't had the time yet to go all the way through.

Once I can get the last of these annoying bugs wrestled to the ground, I want to refocus my attention on the second module. I still have a number of areas to make and want to start testing individual quests and adapt them to NWN2.

Here's a quick screenshot from the Brighton U...

April 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Here's a quick screenshot from the Brighton Underground part of the second module. It's still pretty sparse in terms of placeables, people, and so on, but it's getting there. Yesterday I worked on getting all the scripts to compile, but otherwise haven't had a lot of time to work on the new stuff.

Instead, I've sunk a lot of time cleaning up the old things. I have a version of the Pirate Cards game that has weightless cards. It wasn't as hard as I thought and the difference is pretty huge. While 1 lb playing cards are okay for a mini-game, it's completely unacceptable for the real campaign.

I also sunk a lot of work into the first module, going through the bug reports that Bjarne has been gathering from the Vault boards. Here's my bug fix so far:

* Fixed possible issues with Heather not being removed during Cable Car cutscene.
* Added "just in case" scripts to remove soldiers after Remembrance: War.
* Fixed dialog where Daniel calls Heather "Heather" instead of "Kendra".
* Changed lighting in the gardenhouse area.
* Fixed issues with deities.2da. Made Kendra's deity "No Deity" and Daniel's "God".
* Added "just in case" scripts on 3rd level to ensure Daniel and Kendra aren't with party.
* Better indicated where bubbles are in maintenance level (note that they still can't been seen unless
the camera is underwater).
* Changed Robert's weapon focus to Greatsword.
* Changed control panel valve creation system to hopefully fix the "missing #1" issue.
* Gave Heather and Robert full hit points from the start.
* Added "Help! I'm stuck!" to 1st level after Robert battle in case things go wrong.

I want to do a bit more testing and look at some of the quirkier issues that people are reporting. Hopefully I can turn out a new version this weekend that is relatively bug free.

I did a bunch of things yesterday, yet strang...

April 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a bunch of things yesterday, yet strangely nothing had to do with working on the module itself. I caught up with e-mail, posted the updated version of the Pirate Cards game, and got some high-res screenshots to a German gaming magazine. This morning I noted that I have 11 more e-mails to read.

Earlier today I looked over the 1.05 changes. Sadly the store inventory bug isn't fixed, which means High Seas isn't working properly yet (you can't engage in ship-to-ship combat). I'm hoping the 1.06 patch fixes it. It also looks like I need to fix the deities.2da file. I can properly pick deities in the first Dark Waters module now, which is a fairly simple proposition. In the first module, you can either pick "No Deity" or "God". Forgotten Realms is all about this huge pantheon, with many adventures driven by Greek-like machinations of the gods. Dark Waters has a different take on religion, beginning with a vague monothiesm and later letting the player choose from the "new gods".

So as usual, I have tons to do and I'm never sure where to start. My priorities should be to clean up the 2da files, read e-mail, and fix bugs. It would be fun to sneak in and work on the second module a bit more. We'll see how the day goes.

The 1

April 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The 1.05 is looking fairly nice, based on my brief look at it yesterday. Some things within the toolset have shuffled about, but in a good way, and there's other new features I'm liking.

I have ten e-mails in my inbox, listing various bugs that have popped up in the first Dark Waters module. I'll spend some time today trying to resolve those. I also have a new build of the Pirate Card game that I want to upload. The new version deals with the custom GUI in a much better way, which hopefully prevents future problems with patching. I also cleaned up some visual effects issues.

Finally, I spent some time yesterday working on Brighton Underground. I'm using an exterior tileset, so it's very organic looking. I'll see if I can whip up a screenshot for tomorrow.

Is there ever a time when I'm not insanely bu...

April 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Is there ever a time when I'm not insanely busy? Yesterday I continued working on the Port Brighton areas, getting the Mad Hatter properly outfitted. I'm running into some weird issues with bald manikins, but hopefully that can get sorted out shortly. I love the new hats, especially the tricorn that Schazzwozzer made. Very cool stuff.

The 1.05 patch came out today, which means updating time for me. The big feature is the GUI improvements, which means the Pirate Cards release no longer screws up people's installs. I'm going to release a new version for folks, hopefully soon. I'm also curious as to how well the deities.2da changes work.

I'm behind on e-mail again, but hopefully I can take a peek today and pull together a list of issues people are running into with the new module. With luck, I'll release another patch that'll include the 1.05 fixes as well.

Finally, I'd love to be able to get back to Port Brighton. When the madness of release issues get to me, it's nice to relax and paint down some happy trees for a change.

I'm still a bit grumpy from the release of th...

April 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm still a bit grumpy from the release of the first module, but hopefully the new patch fixes some of it. I remember how poorly received Demon was when it first came out, and it took a couple months of frantic cleanup before things worked properly. I'm thinking that the release of the second module will be a bit different, initially posting it as a beta and waiting a month or so before declaring it done. It's less splashy, but is probably safer from an expectations perspective. Shucks, GMail was beta for a couple years.

In any case, I'm pushing forward with the second module. Yesterday I sunk a bunch of time into Port Brighton. It's the biggest area in the module, both in terms of complexity and size. The exterior area is coming together, though it needs more work. The Black Spot interior looks good, and I even made a little parrot for the place.

I'm hearing a lot of complaints about how linear the first module is and that many people don't like the early cutscenes. If it's any consolation, the player pretty much gets dumped into the action almost immediately. It's up to them to fend for themselves.

Well, I'm throwing caution to the wind and up...

April 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm throwing caution to the wind and uploading a patch without having played all the way through. I'm really hoping I don't break anything horribly. I was able to test specific places, and they seemed to work just fine. I also started from the beginning and was able to get through the infamous cable car cutscene even when I was using the keyboard to move.

I'm hopeful people will be patient with these early issues. What's most frustrating is that the problems people are seeing were actually fixed during testing, but somehow didn't make it into the build that was released. I develop on various computers and my guess is that key fixes vanished into the ether somewhere along the way.

Here's the full patch notes (note that the 1.01 and 1.02 patches are being released at the same time):
1.01 - 4/15/07

• Two doors in the entrance on level 2 have been made impossible to pick.
• Added SetCutsceneMode to the cutscenes in the village, by the vault doors, level 3, and at the Farewells section.
• Changed how companions were removed, which hopefully means that the soldiers won't stick with the player post-War.
• Fixed Robert's AI
• If reloading after Slither possessed, it'll spawn on the wrong side of the door, but you can possess it, move about, and you'll jump back.

• Fixed mirror puzzle when Daniel interjects with a dialog (hopefully).
• In lab, non-PCs will no longer duplicate (and control switches to player instead of companion).
• Fixed issue with Gem Belt and Ring of Appreciation so you can't put in a second gem.
• Fixed description of Gem of Appreciation.
• Made a couple gems in the lab non-useable when they did nothing.
• Fixed Lucy's gem - can now summon her and in the ranged slot has a different effect (+2 Mighty).
• Bard's gem in armor does something useful (Bonus Feat: Weapon Proficiency - Exotic).

Some of the bug reports are driving me a bit ...

April 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Some of the bug reports are driving me a bit bonkers. I thought they were fixed, but evidently they snuck back it. I'm also running into problems where people were using the keyboard to go through a cutscene or clicking somewhere, which ended up breaking things.

I'm also trying hard not to let the bug complaints get to me. Yes, they're there and it's annoying. I'm working on it.

I think I'll go have breakfast with my family now.

The game is out and bug reports are already s...

April 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The game is out and bug reports are already starting to come in. I'm trying very hard not to go crazy, though I admittedly have a touch of a headache today. Soon I'll make myself an espresso and all my worries will vanish in a puff of caffeine. I'll start getting a patch ready, probably after the 1.05 NWN2 patch is released, do another round of testing, and get it out the door.

Yesterday I worked on the second module quite a bit. You can now go from the Highseas module to the Port Brighton module. From there, I could go into the Black Spot and theoretically play a round of the Pirate Card game. Everything is still extremely rough and I can see it'll take several weeks just to flesh out all the areas for the game.

Still, it's fun to work on the outdoor areas. Sailing about continues to be cool. Hopefully the issues with store inventories with be fixed with the 1.05 patch and I can test out the ship combat sections. Slowly getting there . . .

Well, today's the day, I think

April 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, today's the day, I think. Friday the 13th. Not only that, but the NWN2 expansion news hit the Vault. I expect the NWN2 patch to hit any moment too, which hopefully won't break things. As you'd expect, I'm trying hard not to be nervous and hiding from my e-mail Inbox a bit.

I decided to put away my little text adventure for awhile and sunk some time into the second module. The first cutscene nearly works. It needs polish and fixing, but it's better than it was where Heather would simply loop through her dialog endlessly and everyone was standing in thin air.

The plan for today is to get Port Brighton fleshed out more, as well as starting to put together the island transitions. The second module has far fewer cutscenes and is much less linear, which means testing should be a less difficult process. We'll see how it goes.

Update: It seems that trying a release on Friday the 13th has indeed returned to haunt me. I neglected to check e-mail early enough today, so I didn't find out until 3pm or so that Maximus needed me to fill out some submission forms in order to get the module posted. At this point, I've done my thing, but it may be too late for today. Sigh.

Final Update: Maximus pulled through, got everything posted, and my baby is finally ready to go. I'm tired and going to bed.

The final promo day continues over on the Vault

April 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm in the process of uploading the module fi...

April 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm in the process of uploading the module files to the Vault. It looks like the promotional madness has begun and Maximus has kicked off several days of screenshots, movies, interviews, and more. Thursday appears to be the big day for release.

My brain is still a bit numb from all the last minute activity. I've been soothing it with my fun and wacky little text adventure. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to write text parsers. You can now move from room to room, pick up and drop items, examine things, and check your inventory. Of course, now I need a bit of a story and meaningful things to do.

I should also turn my attention to the second module. I already made some progress duing the QA period. Several islands have had their areas mapped out and turned into modules. They need lots of testing and I've got plenty of scripts to update due to the multi-module campaign approach I'm taking. The fun never stops.

I'm done

April 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm done.

I gathered up the last of the bug notes, mostly typos and odd little quirks. I finished making a final build, which testers can go through again if they'd like. In a couple days I'll upload it to the Vault for the masses to play. I just shipped off some more screen shots to Maximus and he's planning two or three days of previews.

I think I'll go with the flow for the next few days, taking it easy before the inevitable patches post-release. Hopefully the issues will be fairly minor.

And now, of course, the second module awaits.

I've started the ball rolling on the release

April 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've started the ball rolling on the release. It looks like it'll happen by the end of the week, though there's endless last minute things to take care of. I'm still fairly frazzled trying to keep up with it all, but I'm confident that I'll be able to make the magic release date.

While I stayed away from the full campaign yesterday, I played around with using NWN2 as a text adventure game. Mostly it's just a proof of concept, but it was awful nostalgic to say "go east" and watch my player move east to the next room. I have a tentative plan to turn this into a side adventure for the campaign, though I suspect it'll be somewhat optional.

For now, I'm still busy getting the module out the door. Busy, busy.

There are unviewed e-mails in my inbox and pr...

April 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

There are unviewed e-mails in my inbox and probably a few last minute things I could do, but it's Easter and I'm doing family things today. I feel pretty good about the state of the module after tracking down that weird AI issue. The remaining things are fairly minor in comparison.

The only other thing I'm a little nervous about is the fact that the 1.05 NWN2 patch is coming out at almost the exact same time as I'm releasing the module. There's some deities.2da issues that I might need to fiddle with after the patch comes out. We'll see.

I did a little experimentation with using NWN2 as a text adventure game. I could only envision doing it for a completely optional side adventure, but for us old gamers it might be a fun nostalgic moment. I wrote a text adventure game on my Commodore 64 back in the day and it would be fun to give it another try. We'll see.

Another day, another release candidate

April 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Another day, another release candidate. This one is pretty darn good, minus a particularly annoying AI bug that happens towards the end of the game. It's not critical, but does annoy. Strangely, if I jump to the end of the module using my magic QA tools, everything's great.

The good news is that a great number of bugs have been fixed, a couple that were fairly serious. An optional puzzle couldn't be completed and a side quest area couldn't be returned from. All manner of little things have been fixed too, from question mark icons to misnamed placeables, and more. Everyone's help has been very welcome.

This morning I woke up at 4 am to do a full walkthrough and make sure I didn't break anything with my latest round of fixes. At this point, I've uploaded a new version, updated the URL that the testers have used, and plan on sending out e-mails to everyone in a minute. With luck, there's a few folks who haven't started testing yet and are willing to take a look at the latest version.

I also have an interview to write and screenshots to pass along. Ideally I'd like to take a crack at fixing the annoying AI bug. We'll see how much time I have before the kids wake up and family responsibilities take over once again.

Update: I'm doing a little happy dance. I figured out why Robert's AI stopped working later in the module. It turns out it was all my fault, as suspected. I was carefully overriding his default movement behavior during a particular scene, but forgot to turn it off after it was needed. Silly me. I think I'll try to throw together a quick fix and upload it now.

I had a few somewhat serious issues reported ...

April 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had a few somewhat serious issues reported yesterday, so I did some quick fixing and created a new build. For you testers out there, check your e-mail for the latest download instructions. Hopefully none of my fixes created more bugs, which is always a worry at this stage in the game. I did some spot testing, but didn't have the time for a full walkthrough.

I still have a few more reports to read, but it's nice to see a bunch of people checking for last minute bugs. Hopefully it's going well. The folks at Obsidian wanted a peek too, and I was happy to oblige. It looks like next week will be the week of Vault interviews, movies, and screenshots too. It looks like I'm getting increasingly committed to "about a week" for releasing this thing.

It also looks like Obsidian is hosting a module building contest. I'm tempted to join, as the Bioware writing contest was very motivational. I'd be making something I could later reuse for Dark Waters, of course. The time frame is pretty tight, though, and time these days is at a premium. We'll see how it goes.

Every time before I release a module, there's...

April 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Every time before I release a module, there's a strange anxiety that washes over me. It's a fairly personal act, showing off something that I've worked on for so long. I know there's parts that could have been done better, and things that look weird or don't work quite right. Still, I'm fairly happy with the module as a whole. It sets the stage for the campaign, has a lot of variety in gameplay, and has a nice blend of humor and drama. I'm still quite fond of the following modules and seafaring adventures, but it's good to ground the player in the world before setting them loose with a fast ship and a brace of pistols.

I've had some great response for my call for beta testers, with over a dozen people volunteering to do a final idiot check for me. Release is always a tentative thing, with post-release patches just a way of life. With the upcoming 1.05 NWN2 patch, I know I'm going to have to make changes to the deity system. Still, I don't know when the final patch will be out, so I'm pressing forward come Hell or high water.

At this point, I'm switching from development/debugging into promo-mode. If this final round of testing goes well, the plan is to release it next week, preceded by screenshots, videos, and an interview. I suppose I've become an old-timer of sorts, as the drill is quite familiar to me. My goal for post-release is to maintain a Zen-like calm in the face of the inevitable bugs. They'll be fixed, but I don't have to be a giant grump until they are.

Yesterday was crazy busy, as it gets sometimes

April 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yesterday was crazy busy, as it gets sometimes. I did manage to put together multiple packages of the different versions of a release candidate. I have the full NWN2 version at 123 MB, a smaller NWN2 version at 35 MB (no sound, music, or load screens), a huge 200+ MB NWN1 prototype, and a smaller 16 MB NWN1 prototype (no sound or music). All that means that I am indeed ready for folks to do a quick beta test before release. Hopefully the various sizes and versions will let just about everyone give it a try. The NWN1 prototype will certainly have bugs, but it would be nice to know that people can actually install and play it.

In order to download and play the beta, send me an e-mail and I'll get you the files. I'll probably keep it open until Friday afternoon, then let people play all weekend. Assuming all goes well, my hope is to release early next week. If not, well, we might do another round of testing.

To top it off, I woke up at 4:30 am this morning and worked on a promo video for the module to include with an upcoming Vault interview. As I worked on it, I found myself feeling a great pride. It wasn't for myself, but rather for all the people who had worked on the game over the years. I ended up highlighting the voice acting, a number of Razvan's models, Evil Mulder's music, and Sunjammer's puzzles and SAGE system. As of late I've been highlighting the QA efforts of PJJ and Bjarne, but it really has been a team effort for these last few years. It feels wonderful seeing things finally come to fruition.

On a closing note, our old project manager Lizabeth and her husband Ove are expecting a second child. She stepped down when she became pregnant with her first. It's funny to think that during the development process of the first module, a couple babies were conceived. Congratulations to them both.

Update: The promo madness has begun. Here's a new interview.

It's getting close

April 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's getting close. I read and fixed a number of bugs that PJJ reported this morning. Most were fairly minor, such as icons that were missing or the wrong type, some unlinked dialog, and so on. At this point I have one more bug report to track down, a journal entry that's coming up incorrectly. Ideally I'd like to do another full walkthrough, but with my family back, that's harder to do.

I've sent off an e-mail to Maximus at the Vault in preparation for the big release. The full NWN2 module looks to be 123 MB in size, the "Lite" version is 35 MB in size, and I'm guessing the old NWN prototype is going to be 200+ MB with all the uncompressed WAV files. I haven't done much with the latter one, so I'm not certain how playable it is. There's a lot of things missing and different, but people who don't have NWN2 should be able to play something.

I'm also leaning towards doing a semi-open beta right before release. This would be a final test to see if there's any show-stopping bugs that would stop me from posting it. While I'm not shooting for perfection, I'd like to minimize really annoying bugs that keep people from having fun.

Still, before people get too excited, I need to do some more organization on my part. As the saying goes, watch this space. Hopefully in the next day or two I'll have some more details.

Another day, another full walkthrough

April 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Another day, another full walkthrough. While I didn't run into any show stoppers, I found more things I wanted to fix. Fortunately the list keeps getting smaller each time. Yesterday I fixed a couple especially tricky bugs, ones that had existed even in the prototype of years ago.

This morning I added yet more voice recording and cleaned up a few more issues. I need to generate some lipsynch files for the new dialog.

My kids are back, crawling about beside me as I type. I'll try to throw together a new testing package today if I can.

I've been a very busy boy

March 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been a very busy boy. Fortunately for all of you, my family isn't coming back from the beach until lunchtime today. That gave me that rare and precious gift of time that I rarely have these days.

Last night I did another full walkthrough, finding several more annoying bugs. One was a crash to the desktop bug, apparently due to some script that tried to destroy a henchman object. It turns out you have to be very careful about destroying companions and henchmen, as it'll result in crashes and crazy behavior otherwise. I also found some area transition doors that didn't go anywhere, assorted camera bugs, and so on.

When I woke up this morning, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and started debugging. I think I have fixes for all but one issue at the moment, which I'm about to attempt to fix. I also recorded some more voices. I'm afraid you'll be stuck listening to me for assorted roles - Jeffery, Death, Mr. Baker, and a few others.

Now I'm off to fix that one last bug and see if I can do another walkthrough before time runs out.

As March comes to a close, it feels like the ...

March 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As March comes to a close, it feels like the module is increasingly getting close to release. I wasn't able to do a full walkthrough yesterday, but I did a lot of spot checking. The two show-stopping bugs have been fixed. The troops from the Remembrance: War section no longer magically appear upon reloading. The Slither Contest dialog fires appropriately, as does the post-flooding dialog. Lots of little things have been changed, including Heather's sound set, which was annoying me. It's all good.

At this point, I want to get a final build out to the testers. I'd also like to record more dialog lines and plead with the voice actors for a few more lines. Getting every line voiced seems a nearly impossible task, but I think it's worthwhile effort.

I'd also love to do another full walkthrough this weekend, though with my family coming back, I might be hard pressed to pull it off. If I can make it all the way through without any significant bugs, well, I'll break out the champagne when that actually happens.

Most days I'll put in an hour or two of work ...

March 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Most days I'll put in an hour or two of work on the module. Yesterday, though, it was like a full time job. I spent over eight hours working on it, including three and a half hours doing a complete walkthrough. I didn't explore every nook and cranny, I knew how to solve every puzzle, plus I zipped through most dialogs, so it could easily be closer to five or six hours.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete the module without cheating. There were two show-stopping bugs, both easy to fix. In one case, there was a door without a transition, which I thought I had previously fixed. In another case, I marked a critical key as Cursed, which unfortunately means you can't even take it out of a desk.

Though it wasn't show-stopping, I had another really annoying bug that involved my entire troop from the Remembrance: War area respawning next to me when I reloaded a game. I was so annoyed that I led them one at a time to their deaths in a lightning trap.

On a whole, I actually enjoyed myself. There's some quirky humor that the voice acting really enhances. I wish I had more lines recorded, though it's getting close to the end and I'm not sure I can turn around the new recordings soon enough. I had fun with some of the systems, such as SAGE and the burning script. Psionics and flintlocks make for a fun distraction too.

Last night and this morning I worked on fixes. I have the bulk of them in place, though untested. I might be able to do some spot testing tonight, though doing another full walkthrough might be hard to fit in. My family is arriving Friday, I think, which means it's back to chasing kids about and getting my one or two hours of free time to work on the module. Fortunately PJJ and Bjarne can help with a final set of testing. I may also do a quick, limited beta test before posting to the Vault.

After all these years, it finally feels like we're close to release. I can taste it.

I spent last night and this morning going thr...

March 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent last night and this morning going through and fixing assorted bugs in preparation for a full walkthrough today. I ended up putting in quite a bit of work in the third level again. There's a chase scene and PJJ pointed out that unless the player knew where to go, it was essentially impossible to get to the proper spot.

My solution was to create a trail of sorts. There's muddy bootprints and dust that are created in the wake of the person being chased. It makes for a pretty clear lead as to what's supposed to happen next. It ended up taking awhile to get working properly, but I'm pretty happy with the result.

I have a rather unique day ahead of me. My wife and kids are off at the coast and I've taken the day off. Now I'm going to fortify myself with food and caffeine, and hunker down to see if I can get through the entire module.

I'm back from the coast, where I spent a fair...

March 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back from the coast, where I spent a fair amount of time working on some of the areas for the second module. Creating islands is loads of fun, which is fortunate as I have so many to do.

I've tested out the whole multi-module campaign process and it seems to work okay. I was able to sail from Port Brighton across the wide sea, docking at another island which loaded up the appropriate module. Everything is still quite rough, but it's nice to see the general concept works.

As for today, I've got to get back to the first module. I'm guessing the testers have a load of issues for me to address. My secret plan is to spend a good chunk of tomorrow doing my own full walkthrough. I'm also curious as to how big the module is. I'm guessing it's between two and four hours long, but I may be way off.

I uploaded a new build to the testers

March 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I uploaded a new build to the testers. I'll be away this weekend at the coast, so I probably will look into the latest round of problems come Monday.

In the meantime I've continued to lay groundwork for the second module. There's lots of little islands and areas to work on. At this point, I'm mostly working on cosmetic things and likely won't get into serious scripting issues until later. It's actually quite refreshing making exterior areas after so much time working on bug fixing.

The other delimma I'm going to need to deal with soon is the issue of the 1.05 NWN2 patch. My hope is that it'll be released a bit before my module. That should hopefully give us a chance for a full walkthrough to make sure there aren't any issues that would otherwise pop up.

Testing continues

March 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Testing continues. I did a couple minor tweaks yesterday and have things to the point where I think I can put together a new build for the testers. The final testing and polish phase of a development effort is often the most grueling. It involves lots of detail work, repetition, and very little new creative work.

I'm trying to balance that with some work on the second module. I spent some time yesterday trying to get together the beginning portion of the module together. My multi-module approach is going to be tricky, but hopefully worthwhile. For testing alone, fast load times are a huge benefit.

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly si...

March 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly six months that I've been working on the NWN2 version of the first module. It turns out the conversion of custom content, scripts, and testing ended up taking longer than I estimated. Hopefully the second module won't take as long, but I'm not going to hold my breath. It's amazing how much complexity goes into make a game - creating inventory item icons, generating lipsynch files, converting models into the new format, working with the new functions and coping with the loss of some old ones, and so on. Still, I'm getting increasingly happy with the quality of the work. There's still a few bugs I want to work on, but it's getting to the point where I won't be embarrassed to show it off.

Last night was working on some cutscenes, making sure the sounds were appropriate and some scripting pieces didn't go awry. Today will likely be more of the same, though perhaps I'll sneak in some work on the next module if I get a little restless.

As an aside, the Pirate Cards module is currently ranked as #3 in the list of NWN2 modules. It seems like we're not seeing as many modules for NWN2, which is a little disappointing. Hopefully I can do my little part to turn that trend around.

I was up way too late last night, trying to f...

March 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was up way too late last night, trying to fix the last of the Lab issues. I think it's pretty good. Some of them were purely cosmetic, a telekinetic trap thingie that didn't have very good visual effects. Another was a second beam trap that both looked and worked strangely.

I'm still working through the latest list of issues. I have a couple more left, mostly visual or auditory. They're important, though, and I'm hoping to get them fixed soon.

I've been quite busy lately

March 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been quite busy lately. It turns out level 6 had a few issues that so far had gone undiscovered. The lab area in particular had some weird problems, many of which I've fixed. I also ended up recording some new dialog lines for a room that was otherwise empty. I also snuck in a very difficult fight, something completely optional. My philosophy is generally that the main storyline should be relatively easy, but there should be some extremely challenging side quests to keep things interesting.

Hopefully I can fix the last of the issues within the next few days. I'd like to do a full walkthrough myself, perhaps next week. Over Spring Break, my wife and kids will be out of the house for a few days. Perhaps I'll avoid the booze and loose women and focus instead on getting the module wrapped up.

In my continued repentance, I decided to put ...

March 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I admit it

March 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Another busy day

March 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Another busy day. The good news is that the list of bugs from the testers for the fifth level was far shorter than previous ones. Even better, the bugs were mostly typos, missing icons, and other minor things. I should probably test some of my changes, but maybe I'll actually get a new build to the testers before the end of the week for a change.

That leaves the final level remaining. It's a pretty huge one, five different areas, with the grand finale taking place in the center. I'm most interested in the final battle testing, but should probably make sure the others are relatively polished as well. I'm slowly running out of things to do with the first module, which brings the release date ever closer.

My life is way, way too busy

March 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My life is way, way too busy. I did manage some work on the project last night. I decided to work on a very simple area from the second module and see if I could start converting it over. I picked the Firestarter quest, which is a single area module.

I got the area textured, placeables added, new appearances for the NPCs, icons selected for the items, and so on. Some of the scripts seem to be working okay, while others were completely broken. What was great, though, was being able to load up the module in an extremely short period of time. From a developer's perspective, that's one of the biggest benefits of a multi-module campaign.

I did run into some weird bugs. This was the strangest, a single dialog branch where a NPC's face seemed stretched in odd directions. I wish I could replicate it on command, as it was a neat effect.

I mostly worked on cosmetics for the High Sea...

March 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I mostly worked on cosmetics for the High Seas area yesterday. There were some nice NWN shipwreck placeables that I ported over, along with a scripted splash effect. It makes for a nice point of interest while sailing about the wide open ocean. Each island now has distinct sounds, with my favorite being Serpent Isle. I do enjoy making an area look and sound nice, even if it's not directly related to the gameplay.

I also managed to work on getting more dock areas. Most islands will have one, essentially a place where you can buy and sell cargo. Other islands that are purely adventure areas won't. The main purpose of the dock areas is to keep High Seas related content all in one module. You can trade, engage in piracy or pirate hunting, and have relatively small load times. When someone goes to a place like Catspaw Isle, though, they'll load up a new module.

I suspect that I have a new batch of QA issues to work through once I check e-mail. If I have time, I'd like to work on the High Seas area a bit more and finish those island areas. We'll see how it goes.

I finished up with the world map, doing the l...

March 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finished up with the world map, doing the last couple islands and polishing up a few other areas. I'm really liking the look of the world so far. I want to tweak a few of the effects, such as having the lighthouse only operate at night, and add in a few more sounds. Then it'll be perfect.

I also made sure the module transitions work. It's interesting having the world map and docks of each island as part of one module, while each island is a separate module as well. The big plus is that load times are much reduced, which is critical for testing. It does mean that I have to be careful with scripting, though.

As for today, I'm going to see if I can work on a cutscene module, or perhaps start in on the Port Brighton module itself. So much to do.

Busy day

March 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Busy day.

I got a new build together, just as one of the testers let me know that there was a simple, but fatal flaw. The door that went from the fourth to the fifth level didn't go anywhere. I just fixed the problem and am trying to put together a new build. It's a little tedious, generating the installer and uploading the 125 MB file, finally sending out the e-mails. The QA folks can jump around it, of course, but it's such an embarrassing mistake that I feel morally obligated to provide a new build.

Yesterday I worked on another piece of custom content, the Black Spot. It's a key location in the second module, a tavern made from half a ship. Danmar put this one together as well and is another of my favorite pieces of new content in the game. I somehow managed to get alpha transparency working for one of the meshes, but not another. I also found a much faster way to combine meshes, which is a necessity when creating NWN2 models. I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

As for the weekend, I'm hoping to put in some more time with the High Seas system, finishing the world map and maybe working on some of the islands. Fun, fun, fun!

Well, my poor closet web server died today, s...

March 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, my poor closet web server died today, so my update is late. I did some more debugging this morning, including fixing a show-stopping bug where the game wouldn't progress. I kept thinking my script had a problem, when really the dialog that was imported from the prototype was broken. Since I was testing with a female PC, that dialog branch never came up. Fortunately my testers kept doing their thing and pointing out it was still broken.

I also got more dialog for a couple NPCs, especially some key ones towards the end of the module. Many thanks to Rob and Eshinee for getting that to me.

With luck, I can do a bit more testing tonight and package up a new version for the testers tomorrow.

I've was a good little boy today and hunkered...

March 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've was a good little boy today and hunkered down to do some testing. I use a variety of techniques when fixing problems. In order to fix a sound problem, I had to re-edit the file and throw it into the campaign folder. I'm having weird issues with animations, so it's the guess and check method for that one. At other times, I cross my fingers and add in some "just in case" code that really should never run, but probably will from time to time.

Most of the bugs I fixed are on the fourth level, which is one of my personal favorites. It's quirky and has a huge variety of mini-games. Even if you don't like one, it'll be over in a few minutes and you can move on to the next.

I haven't had much more time to plug away at ...

March 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I haven't had much more time to plug away at the module, but I wanted to show off the latest pretty picture from the world map. I continue to have fun making small versions of the islands and adding in visual effects to make them really stand out.

For those of you wanting an extra copy of Neverwinter Nights 2 for your friends, enemies, or second computer, GoGamer is having a pretty good deal where it's going for $25. Enjoy.

It looks like Rob has sent in a bunch of voice clips my way, so I'm going to see if I can find some time to sort through them and get them attached to dialog. I'm sure I also have new issues from the QA folks that I ought to go through. It's starting to feel like we're getting down to the wire. Only a few more weeks left.

Most of my development effort is focused on t...

March 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Most of my development effort is focused on telling a good story, along with the technical necessities to make it happen, such as good scripting systems along with high quality dialog.

Sometimes, though, I sink in a bunch of time just to make things look pretty. Long ago, Danmar modeled a lighthouse for me. I put it in the NWN prototype without much difficulty. Today I spent two or three hours trying to get it into NWN2. It's not perfect, as things like alpha transparency isn't working for reasons I don't understand. Still, the quality of the model is great and the normal maps help bring out that gritty quality up close.

My favorite part was adding in the light, which uses the visual effects system quite nicely. There's a rotating billboard for the beam, along with a projected texture to make the ground and nearby ships light up. The whole thing rotates too, making for a rather hypnotic effect. I need to make night a little darker so that it stands out, but otherwise I'm very happy with how it has turned out.

I tracked down the problem with High Seas

March 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I tracked down the problem with High Seas. It turns out the problem is with a bug in the code that goes through the inventory for stores. Since my cargo holds are effectively stores, it's currently broken. Odds are it'll get fixed in a future patch.

I decided to switch to a different task and finish up the world map for the second module. It's kinda fun, making little islands with tiny little houses and trees and such. I suppose it's like playing with dolls, but in a much manlier sort of way.

I pulled a muscle riding my bike yesterday, a...

March 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I pulled a muscle riding my bike yesterday, and coupled with a bad headache, it means I had a hard time sleeping. Fortunately for all of you, I was up at midnight doing testing while the Advil was kicking in.

There were plenty of bugs to fix. I spent most of the time on the 4th level, over halfway to the end. There's a fun little mini-game where you get to play artist. Unfortunately many of the effects didn't translate well from NWN to NWN2, so I had to go back and redo some of the visual effects. Hopefully it's an entertaining break from the other parts of the module. In general, it's seemed more bug free than the other levels.

I'm going to see how many other bugs I can clean up before shipping a new version out to the testers. Hopefully there won't be any show-stopping bugs this time around. I'm getting paranoid and adding more "just in case" pieces of code. My latest trick is to add in some "Help! I'm stuck!" placeables that players can use to get out of a jam if scripts fail for some reason. Hopefully no one will ever use them, but it's nice knowing they're there.

I'm not feeling quite as discouraged as before

March 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm not feeling quite as discouraged as before. It turns out that some of my previous fixes got lost along the way. It's frustrating, but sometimes happens when I move a 100+ MB file with thousands of custom content files around. Fortunately re-fixing problems is faster the second time around.

PJJ has also handed me a nice list of new issues. There's at least one critical bug that I need to address, and many more "nice to do" things. There's also a fare share of typos, including a mysteriously vanishing umlaut from the word "möbius".

Still, all this polish should lead to a nicer user experience. The little typos and odd discrepancies in a game tend to break the immersion.

It's always darkest before it goes totally black

February 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's always darkest before it goes totally black. Or something like that, anyway.

I ran into some really weird issues with High Seas. When doing ship-to-ship combat, everything just stopped. I isolated the issue to the code that determines ship speed. There's a piece that cycles through the crew, looking for a certain type that improves your sailing speed. Unfortunately it simply stops in there with no explanation why.

Ironically, it was working before. I think I broke it by fixing the issue with the ship cargo items not being a valid item type. Now that they are, the above function started looking at them and horribly breaking along the way.

I also finally peeked at the bug reports from the testers. It was fairly bleak, with some nasty bugs stopping all progress at one point. It looks like I'm going to have to spend some serious debug time myself to sort out what's going on. In this case, a required conversation isn't firing and I'm not sure why.

I've been doing some more work on High Seas, ...

February 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been doing some more work on High Seas, procrastinating on getting back to debugging. In a way it's good, as I'm starting to think more about what having a "campaign" really means from a technical perspective. I think I have to go back and cleanup some common scripts so that they work properly in the future modules.

Today I worked on icons and the appearance of the various crew members for boarding actions. I'm about halfway through, trying to make sure everyone is interesting looking. Later on I want to make the boarding action area into something real looking. Right now it's just a big grassy plain. It's fun work, though, after spending so much time working on interior areas.

The new NWN2 graphics engine really makes for...

February 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The new NWN2 graphics engine really makes for some pretty shots. I ended up leaving a test open for five minutes until the day changed and the moon rose. I can't wait to start putting in "extras" to the world map like light houses, ships wrecked on rocks, and other fun touches.

I made good progress scripting-wise yesterday, spending way too much time cycling through the same set of tests. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why even the toughest ships kept surrendering to me in battle. It turns out that they never had any crew. The reason they didn't have any crew is that none of the high seas specific items were being properly created. And the reason for that, as I finally figured out, was that in the prototype they were a unique type of stackable item. I quickly changed that and things magically started working again.

I also got the flags working, which I felt was pretty key to identifying ships. It involved creating a separate polymorph for each flag/ship combo. It was a bit of work.

I still have a few really core things to sort out. I'm thinking that I'll start boarding actions with a very simple "two ships of the same type" area. That means you might end up attacking a fishing boat and doing boarding on a somewhat larger vessel. Still, it's far simpler than trying to make a different area for each combination of vessels. I'll start there and see how it turns out.

I also need to check up on PJJ's progress. Odds are he has a ton of new bugs for me to sort through. Can't wait!

Work continues, though I skipped posting for ...

February 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues, though I skipped posting for a couple days. Mostly I've been working on High Seas while testing continues. All the icons I made for NWN have been moved over, though I haven't yet linked them up to all the item blueprints. I've also been trying to get the various High Seas systems working properly. Only minutes ago, I managed to get the action moving from the world map to the ship-to-ship combat map. Now I need to test out boarding.

I did have some frustration yesterday, trying to get the ship models working properly. Unfortunately there's some weird technical issues that mean that ships will be able to run through each other. I ended up shrinking down the ships so it wasn't so weird looking, but I do find it quite annoying.

I'm also working on visual effects, such as getting the clouds and whirlpools looking good. The world map needs more attention too. Busy, busy.

Well, it's taken longer than I wanted, but I ...

February 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, it's taken longer than I wanted, but I finally got through PJJ's latest list of issues. This morning was all about the piano, one of the things you can interact with on the creepy third level of the keep. The list of issues was pretty long, from not being able to sit, to the music not playing, and some admittedly weird camera angles.

I ended up removing all mention of sitting in the dialog, as sitting in NWN2, while possible, is tricky to do scripting-wise. It turns out placeables don't make sounds, so the player now has a conversation with themselves. Finally, I added a few cameras to get the angle working better than it was.

I'm going to see if I can whip up a new build to get to the QA folks today. I also need to catch up on my e-mail and see if new tidbits came in. Maybe I'll get back to working on High Seas, making icons or something.

Two steps forward, one step back

February 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Two steps forward, one step back.

I think PJJ saved the toughest issues for the end. There was a horribly broken script for the 3rd level that I think I finally got pretty much fixed. I was up around 4 am this morning, and worked for a couple hours straight until it was time to go into work. Basically I need to be very careful with moving NPCs around when starting conversations. If they're not in the area when the ActionStartConversation event fires, it won't wait for the JumpToObject script to finish getting them there.

I also did some more polishing. There's a place where you could find a combination to a safe. Previously, it would just let you open it, but now you have to do a little bit of work and enter it into an input box. I ran into some weird problems where what you entered didn't match the text properly. It turned out there was some mysterious invisible character tacked on to the end of the string.

I'm feeling closer to the next build, though I'd like to do some more testing tonight and polish off a few more issues. I have a hard time judging how far until we can release. It's going to take at least three more weeks, I think, and maybe more if testing goes poorly. Still, we're close, after two years working on this project, that's just the blink of an eye.

I started in on debugging the module again ye...

February 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I started in on debugging the module again yesterday. PJJ is doing a fabulous job, finding all sorts of issues, big and small. Some are typos, others are broken scripts, and there's quite a few suggestions to simply improve the play experience. I've appreciated the fact that he's tested the prototype as well. Over the weekend he caught a bug where some missing dialog wasn't firing properly, something he remembered from playing the prototype over a year ago.

As for today, I'll continue the debugging process. I'd also like to run through Remembrance: War again. At PJJ's suggestion, it's now No Rest, which means that you've got to be very careful with your troops. Before you could rest up between fights and it wasn't much of a challenge. I worry a bit that players will lose their entire troop, making the rest of the battles extremely difficult. We'll see how it goes.

My computer is back together and NWN2 is full...

February 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My computer is back together and NWN2 is fully installed and patched. Taking advantage of my functional computing, I put in some quality time with the High Seas system. It's the core of the second module, tying together all the various islands. Without it, you couldn't sail from one place to another.

At this point, it's somewhat working. I'm able to go from land to sea where the player polymorphs into a boat. I can then sail about, interact with the other ships on the ocean, and return to shore. Ship to ship combat doesn't seem to be working properly, though I'm hopeful I can fix that soon. There's some issues with the ship models - currently they don't block other ships at all and so you can sail right through them. The cargo and weapon icons aren't in place. I only have a single island working. The world map needs more work. Flags aren't working. Storm and whirlpool visual effects aren't in place. Each crew type needs to have a unique appearance.

Still, the visuals of NWN2 are stunning and the scripting parts of the system seem to be working well. Ships are given random ship names. Most importantly, I can get from place to place. Hopefully I can dig into the above issues today.

I begged, borrowed, and stole a few more voice clips. There's still going to be a few unvoiced lines, but the majority of conversations should have dialog. I've got to get those cut up and converted today, which takes a bit of time.

Somewhere along the way, I need to get back to the latest QA reports as well. Though it's fun to sail ships about, my hope is that I can wrap up the first module relatively soon and get it posted for all to enjoy.

I've been having a fairly catastrophic comput...

February 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been having a fairly catastrophic computer failure at home, and get to do the fun task of reinstalling things. Fortunately I have backups galore and a second computer that will run NWN2 just fine. At the moment I'm chopping up sound clips that I made my mom record last night. To be honest, she didn't do a great job and there were tons of distractions. Still, I hope everyone is nice about it because, hey, it's my mom. I admittedly had fun making her say "When I was your age, I felt a certain hunger that only a man could quench." Tee hee.

I also spent some time with the world map for the second module. The ability to scale things in NWN is priceless. For NWN1, I had to make all sorts of custom placeables to pull it off.

It's funny how testing always seems to get ba...

February 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's funny how testing always seems to get back to the Remembrance: War section. Even in the prototype it was touchy, with lots of scripting problems and balancing issues. Some of the bugs reported were pretty weird. For example, when saving and reloading in the area, the NPC you're controlling jumps back to the PC character, who is tucked away in a tiny space for the duration of the area. I ended up having a module heartbeat that tracks the NPC's position and jumps them back after a reload.

There were lots of other things, including new additions such as more voice acting, journal entries, and descriptions. I just finished uploading a new build to the testers, giving them their first look at the lip synch animations. Hopefully they'll like it.

As for today, I might have some time to work on HighSeas a bit more. I'm still debating over the various ways to handle boarding. I'm also torn whether or not to let players sail any ship in the module, or give them only one and work on building a sense of ownership as they slowly upgrade it. It's tricky, from both a design and technical perspective.

I had some weird drive errors with my main co...

February 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had some weird drive errors with my main computer, but seem to be up and running again. Yesterday I worked on getting some of Daniel's new lines into the game. Chris has done a great job with the character and is hysterically funny. I can't wait to have people hear it in the game.

I'm taking today off work to hang out with my family. I might be able to sneak in some testing time. I want to make sure I haven't introduced any weird bugs with my latest round of fixes. If all goes well, I'll make a new build and pass it along to the QA folks.

As predicted, I had a very long list of bugs ...

February 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As predicted, I had a very long list of bugs to fix yesterday. Some where fairly serious show-stoppers. Some were cosmetic. The most time consuming was adding a description for every enemy in the game, though I think it's a nice touch. It felt good to take a few more baby steps towards release.

I tried really hard last night to get my ships properly marked according to faction. My first attempt was to get a big logo on the main sail using tint maps. It sadly failed miserably. For now, I'm going with flags instead, which is what I did with the prototype. It works fairly well, though the flags can sometimes been pretty small. I still might be able to get full-sail logos as well, or perhaps give the player some options to pick some. We'll see how it goes.

It took hours to get right, but the Carrack i...

February 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It took hours to get right, but the Carrack is ported over to NWN2. While the bulk of NWN content looks pretty shabby in NWN2, there are clearly exceptions. Since it was designed as a tileset, the polycount is extremely high (close to 6000) and the addition of normal maps greatly improves the look. There's still one or two things to clean up, a mysterious untextured object showing up as the dreaded question mark cube. It shouldn't be hard to find.

I'm amazed how long the carrack took to convert, though. The big issue is that the NWN2 game engine can only handle models with 32 meshes. The NWN model had over a hundred. It was very tedious joining all the meshes together, but I like the end result.

As for today, I'll probably be getting the weekend's batch of bug reports and working through it. If I get a little free time, I'd like to work on the second module a bit more. It's fun.

I had forgotten how fun it is to mess around ...

February 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had forgotten how fun it is to mess around with custom content. I managed to get the ship in the game. It turns out the vanishing mesh problem only happened in the toolset. In the game itself, it looks very nice. I even did a test where the player transforms into a ship and sailed around my temporary sea a bit.

Already I'm making plans for getting High seas itself ready to go. On Friday I converted it to NWN2, though the scripting and areas need massive working. I can't wait to get started on the world map. I have plans to use the tint system to create a variety of sails with different patterns.

The boarding issues are more tricky. My hope is to do away with the generic "two ship" tileset and go with boarding scenarios that reflect the ships involved. The trick is that if I let the player crew a variety of ships, I have to allow for a huge range of ship pairings. The walkmesh issues are daunting. One option is to only let the player crew one type of ship. The other is to only allow movement on one ship. Finally, I could try to have an invisible flat plane everyone can walk on and spawn in ships and blockers to control movement. I may have to do some tests and see what looks best.

One of the things the next module needs is sh...

February 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

One of the things the next module needs is ships, the more the better. There's a ton of great ships out there for the original NWN, many of which should look good enough for NWN2 with a bit of tweaking. I decided to convert one of the simpler ships in the TNO tileset and see if it was possible at all.

The first thing I needed to do was to combine a number of meshes to get down to a reasonable number. The NWN2 game engine can theoretically handle up to 32, so I worked hard to get that number down as far as I could. The render looked pretty good, so I decided to export and get it in the game. For the longest time, I thought something went horribly wrong. It turns out that it was invisible when viewed from up close, but looked fine further away.

There's some other issues, missing meshes and weird transparency issues. I'm going to keep fiddling and see if I can sort them out. With luck, I can whip up a nice little array of friends and foes for Dark Waters.

I also spent some time testing the lip synching last night. In my opinion, it looks pretty good. It's admittedly a little off, as the lips don't move with the correct words, but I think it's better than staying still. Danie's animations are a little weird, though. I'm pretty sure I know how to fix it, modifying his fxe files to put in the correct race type. It's somewhat tedious, but I'll improve as best I can.

Success! I finally figured out why the lip...

February 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Success!

I finally figured out why the lip synch animations weren't working. Inside each fxe file is the name of the wav file that it's for. It turns out that if any of the letters are upper-case, it doesn't work. After I switched to lower case, things started working again. My task for today is to regenerate the hundreds of fxe files, making sure they're appropriately lower case.

I tested my theory with a quick conversation with Death. It was quite amusing to see his jaw move about as he chatted away with me.

Testing continues

February 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Testing continues. This morning I tried to figure out why the lip synching wasn't working and ended up with some really weird results. The Pirate Cards lip synch wouldn't work when I moved it over to my test module. Something fishy is going on and I need to investigate more.

I got some more bug reports, most of which were easy to fix. A few are game engine bugs, which hopefully will be fixed by patches. Most of those are cosmetic, and not too critical. The only worrisome bug is a timing issue - I think slower CPU computers have a weird experience during certain cutscenes. Hopefully I can put some "just in case" code around it to make people's experiences similar.

I went through the list of bugs and fixed som...

February 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the list of bugs and fixed some more. The funny mating dance from yesterday is strangely difficult to fix, or at least I can't figure out why it's happening. I did improve a bit of the cutscene involving the sword. It looks okay if you don't mind their legs moving about like rubbery noodles.

I got some brand new voice work by one of the new, prolific voice actors. He's Mister Clark in the first module, but he has a ton of voices for the second. People are really liking the voice acting, so I'm excited to start in on the second module and put all the voice acting to good use.

Nothing too exciting lately

February 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting lately. I got a new build to the testers and worked through a new round of bug reports. My favorite bug of the day is the following:

When Daniel went to get the sword from the statue and came back, my PC and he were facing each other, holding candles and wildly moving their arms and legs. It was like some exotic mating ritual, hilarious to look at.

While I'm all for exotic mating rituals, I better take a closer look tonight and see if I can sort out what's going on.

I worked on lots of little things yesterday

February 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on lots of little things yesterday. PJJ, a military historian, pointed out that the icon for the flintlock pistols was actually for a percussion cap pistol. I made some more this morning and added some variation for the blunderbuss and possible future magic ones.

I cleaned up some scripting to make it more robust. I also added a neat little visual effect at the beginning of the Remembrance areas. Patch 1.04 lets you put the hak pack in the My Documents area, so I switched around the installer for that. All-in-all, things seem to be coming along nicely. I don't think the latter parts of the module have been tested very well yet, so I'm eager to hear what the testers say about that.

As for today, I want to finish up the walkthrough and catch up with the latest bug reports.

Debugging continues

February 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues. I found a couple of the issues that the testers reported. I had slipped in a couple changes right before the last build that I thought was improving some things and it actually made things worse. I think I've improved things to the point where it doesn't look so bizarre.

There's a couple places where you see through another player's eyes. Unfortunately it was somewhat abrupt and it wasn't obvious what was going on. I added a bit of dialog that hopefully improves that some more.

Finally, there's a hidden easter egg, but it had no clue to even tell of its existence. I put in a little note that gives a hint that there's something to look for later on.

I made a new build last night, with the full ...

February 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made a new build last night, with the full build size sneaking up to 119 MB in size. Part of that is fxe files for the lip synch animation, so I'll take those out if I can't get them working. The plan is to get that to testers today so they can do their thing over the weekend.

It feels good to keep making progress and getting things polished up. I wrote a lot of the walkthrough and fleshed out the readme file some more. I've been fixing the odd bug where I find it, mostly things like camera angles, typos, and the occasional scripting glitch. I have had some serious reports about really weird behavior, but haven't been able to replicate them. In one case, I added some "emergency exit" placeables that let you escape an area if a problem comes up. Hopefully people won't have to use them.

Finally, the mirror puzzle got tested extensively last night. I think absolutely everything works, from having Daniel help to the secret easter egg hidden away.

Well, I'm back to the mirror puzzle, which ha...

February 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I'm back to the mirror puzzle, which has haunted me for a long while. It's solveable, but there are problems with Daniel "helping" the player. Currently when he solves it, it actually ends up moving all the mirrors into oblivion, thus making it impossible to move forward.

I've nearly hit the end of the first round of testing, though there's still some issues I need to follow-up on. A couple are biggies that I'd like to track down in more detail. The QA cycle is pretty slow, unfortunately, as it takes a couple minutes to fire up the game, load the module, and jump to the area I'm testing.

I also need to upgrade to the new patch and take a look at the new goodies that come with it. I think some files have moved location, such as hak packs actually working in the My Documents folder, which is best.

Update: Oh, I forgot. I did an interview with an Italian gaming site (scroll halfway down the page). Registering in Italian was interesting, to say the least.

It looks like Stephan Gagne did one too. It's interesting comparing notes with another big developer. I certainly sympathize with his leaving of the hobby development world, the rest assured that Dark Water will be finished come hell or high water.

Well, the lip synch animations that I worked ...

January 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, the lip synch animations that I worked so hard on yesterday didn't work. I'm not quite sure why, at this point. I'm going to do some experiments and see if there's something obvious going on.

My debugging continues, working through PJJ's lengthy list. For example, in the prototype, I had this conversation that popped up when you clicked on a sign. It turns out it's rather clunky, so I moved it to the placeable description instead. With NWN2, you can have "Examine" be the default action. Otherwise it was pretty rare that people would go around examining everything. Unfortunately it took me a half an hour to switch them over.

There's plenty to do. Hopefully I can get through the bulk of the list today and get a new version to the testers. I'm really liking the voice acting. With Daniel's voice in the mix, the characters really come to life.

I'm incredibly busy, but it's a very good kin...

January 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm incredibly busy, but it's a very good kind of busy. Chris did the bulk of the voice work for Daniel and it's really good. I'm lucky to have some great voice actors and the majority of the dialog should be voiced. It's been pretty grueling to put everything together, but hopefully people appreciate it.

I have an untested implementation of my Kung-Fu style lip synching. It's not actually lip synched, but should hopefully provide the illusion of speaking. I think I've found a way to match the length of the voice clip to the animation, but I'll know more after testing tonight.

Debugging continues, with PJJ doing a wonderful job providing lots of good feedback. I'm still about halfway through the big bug report from the weekend. Good QA is another critical thing when doing these projects and I'm very grateful for his help.

All-in-all, things are going very well. No promises as to when I'll be truly finished, but hopefully it's not too long from now.

After feeling like I was just puttering aroun...

January 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After feeling like I was just puttering around for a couple days, I finally got into the meat of things. First off, PJJ did a wonderful job testing, giving me pages of tidbits to go through. Sure enough, there's a fair amount of problems. Most are pretty easy to resolve, but a few are going to take some investigation on my part. I'm going to spend today going through the rest of the issues and see if I can take care of the easy ones. For the rest, I'll probably be adding debug code and seeing what comes up.

I also managed to convince my wife to record some dialog for the game. She's not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but she was surprisingly enthusiastic. I'd never really thought about the quality of her voice before, but it's rather nice and I may end up giving her some more work in the future. The main advantage is that she's always about and I can quickly steal her away to redo some part or another.

I think we're down to one major NPC who needs the dialog finished and a fair number of small parts here and there that I'd like to fill in. PJJ is really enjoying the voice acting, so I'm hoping it helps make an impact on the storyline.

I worked on odds and ends yesterday and this ...

January 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I worked on odds and ends yesterday and this morning. For whatever reason, I got the urge to write, and worked up some dialog for later in the campaign. I was quite happy with how it turned out and can't wait to move the story to that point.

Awhile back I got a request to add an RSS feed to this site. Since it's all coded by hand, I read up on the specifics, did a bit of coding, and whipped something up. There should now be a cute little RSS icon next to the URL for folks using Firefox or IE.

I also finally got around to adding a Downloads section to the navigation, though currently the only thing there is the Pirate Cards game.

While I wait for QA to get cracking on testin...

January 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

While I wait for QA to get cracking on testing, I've been finishing up some of the sound clips. Today it's working on my Lord Highcastle voice. I have a hard time judging my own voice, but hopefully it's not too horrible. I'm actually more excited about Chris' Daniel that he's working on diligently. He did some great stuff for the second module and Firestarter and can't wait to hear more.

I also need to find some time to work on other things like a walkthrough, list of credits, and so on. It's been rough being sick the last few days, but I think I'm on the mend. I've also got some interviews that people would like me to do (for my old NWN stuff, of all things). Busy, busy.

I completely forgot

January 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I completely forgot. I wrote up a toolset review for the NWVault the other day.

I'm still recovering, trying to find some time to get to e-mail and such. I have some sound clips I need to chop up, process, and stick in the game. Slowly getting there.

I was as sick as a dog today and stayed home ...

January 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was as sick as a dog today and stayed home from work. While I couldn't move around much without upsetting my stomach, I did manage to finish the official campaign for NWN2. The final part of Act III was superb, clearly the focus of a lot of polish. Obsidian also did a great job at tying together a lot of the characters storylines at the end. Looking back over the entire campaign, I can now see how lots of the decisions I made impacted the ending.

Though I didn't work on my project at all, it was in the back of my mind the whole time. One thing I really enjoyed was upgrading my keep. I may end up changing things around with the player's ship in the second module. Currently you can switch ships like pairs of pants, but you lose a sense of ownership that you get when you have your own vessel, lovingly upgraded over your adventures. Anyway, something to ponder after I finish with the upcoming bug fixing and release of the first module.

I spent today working to make sure the QA fol...

January 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent today working to make sure the QA folks got it. The free file hosting sites are all somewhat sketchy in terms of spyware and such. Still, I tried a couple different sites and hopefully got the file to the people who needed it.

I continue to work on last minute things. I recorded a couple of the NPCs myself last night, just to get 'em done. It was fun playing with the various sound options in Audacity to make the voices sound like a totally different person.

I continue to try really hard to get lip synching in the game. Due to weird technical issues I need to make the length of the sound clip files to be a certain number of characters. I ended up spending a bunch of time making a toolset plug-in to make it happen. I'm not done yet, but I'm getting there.

It's done

January 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's done.

It took me longer than I wanted, but I packaged up everything, uploaded it, tested the download, and made sure everything actually installs. I then went over to the dusty project boards that I've been ignoring far too long and made a post.

I already have a few things on my "to do" list for the next version, but for tomorrow I want to try and catch up on my e-mails. I suspect I'll be busy enough fixing bugs in a few days, not to mention getting the last of the voice work together. Still, it's a great feeling to reach this stage of the project.

I was all ready to work on a new head for Dan...

January 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was all ready to work on a new head for Daniel, one of the main NPCs. I took an existing head, retextured the head, smoothed out the normal maps, and got it looking great in the toolset. Unfortunately after a save and reload, the head vanished. I decided not to pursue the matter, as even a chance of a headless Daniel doesn't appeal to me.

I switched to cleaning up other issues. I finished writing and scripting the final dialog. It's a bit of dénûment, a calm interlude after the main action. I also made sure variables and NPCs were properly saved off.

I tested the transfer to the second module. The transition is a little odd - if the second module isn't present, you'll have to click on a "Load Module 2" placeable nearby. It works, but is a little quirky. It's challenging releasing an entire campaign in pieces.

Hopefully tomorrow I can package up what I've got and send it off to the testers. It's been a long time coming.

Progress continues, though no flashy screensh...

January 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues, though no flashy screenshots for the time being. I added a campaign description and penciled out some dialog for the final scene. I toyed with modifying the default heads for a couple key NPCs, but decided it would simply take too much time for not that big a payoff.

I'm also trying hard to keep up with e-mail. I've got a toolset review coming on the Vault sometime this week. I tried to do a dump of odd things I've learned along the way, so hopefully it's somewhat useful.

110 Megabytes

January 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

110 Megabytes. That's how big the full install is shaping up to be. Of course, I haven't gotten all the voice actor work in there, so it'll likely get even bigger. I haven't done a "lite" version without load screens, music, and voice acting. If I were going to guess, it would be a third of that or so.

Anyway, I spent this morning trying to get the installer to work. I needed to manually copy a tlk file to a certain place, but otherwise it worked pretty well. I must have fired up the game a dozen times, though. The little "beep beep" the accompanies the Atari logo continues to echo in my brain.

I'm still feeling like I want to do a bit more cleanup before I unload this massive file on the QA folks. Hopefully next week I can finally get some other people taking a look at this monstrosity.

Update: So far it looks like the "Lite" version is 35 MB in size, which might be in reach of patient modem users. My rough estimate is that it would take a little under two hours to download.

Today was overwhelming, with work and family

January 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Today was overwhelming, with work and family. I managed an hour or so this morning, debugging yet some more. In this case it was to add some "just in case" code if the player ends up getting in combat or killing off a couple of the henchmen right before a particular cutscene. I'm still exploring hosting options for the QA work. It looks like there's a bunch of free ones, though I'll have to muffle my guilt at exposing the poor QA folks to endless ads. We'll see how it goes.

Will the game stopping bugs ever end? I foun...

January 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Will the game stopping bugs ever end? I found a new batch yesterday, most of which have been fixed. There were some weird ones, such as having party members miraculously jumping through locked doors. Now I just have an issue with dead companions not appropriately vanishing, instead following the player around like a haunted dead critter. That should be easy to fix.

Still, progress seems very good at this point. I feel closer to QA release than I have been in many weeks. EvilMulder has some polished music releases I need to integrate into the campaign. I want to get an installer ready to go. I also need a good readme file and walkthrough, though I may work on that during QA testing. There's also some voice acting work that's missing, some of it fairly major. In a pinch I think I can just "make it happen", but the quality may not be as good as I'd like.

The tricky part is finding a good place to host the files. I'm currently looking at a 100 MB download, with 10 or so QA folks downloading new versions each week. My poor little closet server can't handle it.

I still have an SVN server I can use, but I'm not sure how easy it is to deal with files spread out across so many directories. The installer approach is simpler in some ways, though admittedly leads to big downloads.

Anyway, it's starting to feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sure there's a number of hurdles before we're finished, but I'm pretty happy with how things are coming along.

More game-stopping bugs

January 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

More game-stopping bugs. I finally got around to testing through a section of the game I hadn't really touched before. Sure enough, there were all sorts of issues. In one case, a custom floor I'd put down in an area was unwalkable. In another, a cutscene fired but never finished. Now I'm wrestling with a ladder that's supposed to allow easy travel between levels, but doesn't actually do anything.

The good news is I think this is the last of the mostly untested sections of the game. Hopefully I can get this level's kinks worked out, polish up the end a bit more, and get this monstrosity to QA to find out what horrible mistakes I've missed.

I also treated myself again and got into the third act of the official campaign. I wish I had more time to play, as I'm starting to really enjoy it.

I made some really good progress yesterday

January 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made some really good progress yesterday. Several more show-stopping bugs have been fixed. I also made sure a key conversation fires that makes the interaction between the player and a companion much more interesting. There were also endless little polish and side bugs that got fixed along the way. At this point, I can think of one major area I need to sweep for serious bugs. I also want to write some text for the final scene. Then it's a matter of getting this massive beast QA'ed.

The underwater section of the game was completely broken, with players, creatures, and placeables turning invisible. Plus the whole "holding your breath" part wasn't working. After resetting the environmental settings and adding the right area variables, it seems much better now.

The load screens ended up to be more work than I thought. It turns out the loadscreens.2da file doesn't like entries over 255, so I had to move mine up to the 200 range. I also added some TIPS and LORE text that appear on that screen, which is pretty snazzy. I can see using that considerably in future modules.

It took me far too long to get all the load s...

January 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It took me far too long to get all the load screens working right. I had two module-corrupting crashes along the way, but carefully recovered from backup and kept trying until I had them all.

I treated myself to a bit of play time with the official campaign. I'm towards the end of the second act in the final dungeon, I think. My party seems pretty unstoppable at this point, with death happening only when I'm careless. High level parties tend to be that way.

I tried hard to catch up with e-mail yesterday

January 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I tried hard to catch up with e-mail yesterday. I had a couple from some gaming magazines, wanting screenshots and text and such. I was a little late with their requests, but hopefully they can still get something to print. One of their requests was for screenshots, so I took the opportunity to get some load screens as well.

Load screens are at an insanely high resolution, 1600x800, which one of my computers can barely do. I ended up taking them in the toolset, which was easier to position properly. I'll probably limit the number of load screens since they're pretty big in size, though the total size of the module is already fairly massive.

It was fun to revisit some of the areas I haven't seen for awhile, such as the underwater ones. Hopefully today I can do the 2da file work and perhaps write some text for the tips that appear on the screen. Finally, I'll need to assign a load screen for each area. Currently they're random, and often look pretty odd.

I think the last of the polish issues have be...

January 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I think the last of the polish issues have been resolved in the Remembrance: War area. I might tweak the balance a bit more, currently it seems a tad easy. I'm currently going through other sections of the game, noting various bugs.

I hit another show-stopper, an unwalkable area on the 1st level that made it impossible to move forward in the game. Assorted minor bugs continue to pop up, from conversations that don't properly fire to two doors placed in a doorway. Plenty of work to do yet.

More show-stopping bugs

January 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

More show-stopping bugs. I was running through the beginning of the module and found a couple places where the player simply couldn't progress. The worst was when an NPC kept endlessly jumping back and forth, never triggering the conversation that took the story forward.

I'm insanely busy, but trying to catch up with e-mail again. I have this agreement I need to sign in order to the the Pirate Cards game onto the german PC Gamer magazine. I'll get it in the mail tomorrow, hopefully. Busy, busy.

I was getting ready to post a "I haven't done...

January 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was getting ready to post a "I haven't done anything" message, but I ended up waking up early this morning and managed some solid debug time. There were some game-stopping bugs right after the entrance, evidently broken in the prototype and carried over to the NWN2 version. Repeating conversations that never end sure can be annoying.

I snuck in a tiny bit of modeling as well. You can see one of the broken crystals in the background of this screenshot.

I'm going to try really hard to get to my e-mail today or tomorrow. My sense of guilt is palpable.

Yowza have I been busy the last few days

January 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Yowza have I been busy the last few days. I'm taking time I don't have for a quick post.

I think the Remembrance: War area is finally working well enough. There are issues that I'd like to address, but they're mostly cosmetic or balance issues.

At this point, there's still some sections of the game that I haven't gone through in great detail, but the list is shrinking fast.

Debugging continues, seemingly endlessly

January 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues, seemingly endlessly. Well, it's not that bad, it just seems that every time I play through a section, I make note of all sorts of issues. Some of them are theoretical, some are possible exploits, and others are downright game-stopping.

My wife gets back today, so maybe I'll get more time. I also have to get to reading e-mail and discussion boards, which I've ignored for way too long now. I may be pretty good at making modules, but I'm a lousy project manager.

Testing of the War area continues

January 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Testing of the War area continues. I have some balance issues at the moment - it's generally way too easy. There's also some dialog that isn't triggered, plus the horrible game lock up at the end of the area. Obviously, more work is needed.

Being the sole parent of two kids this week, one of whom is sick, is a bigger challenge than I thought. I've been sneaking in time here and there, but finding several solid hours to code is an impossibility. Ah well, my wife arrives tanned and rested from Mexico tomorrow.

One of the things I felt vaguely guilty about...

January 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

One of the things I felt vaguely guilty about was giving QA a pretty badly broken module to test when I was working on the prototype for the first module. You couldn't get from place to place, some areas didn't work, and it was quite the exercise in frustration. I'm trying hard to have the NWN2 version be at least playable from beginning to end, even if there are assorted issues along the way. There's still a couple areas that aren't working and would effectively keep a player from finishing.

Today I worked on the end of the Remembrance: War area, making notes about balance and the fact that the cavalry never shows up at the end (metaphorically speaking - there are no horses in Dark Water). This is one of those game-stopping bugs where the player twiddles his thumbs and wonders why the game isn't progressing any more. Hopefully it can be fixed soon.

One of the things I've always struggled with ...

January 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

One of the things I've always struggled with is how to best handle death in the game. For companions, it works much like the official campaign. If they fall in battle, they'll lay there and groan until the fight is over, returning wounded but alive. For the main character, though, I didn't want to simply take the "reload game" approach. Occasionally people get stuck in situations where they haven't saved in a long while and I don't really want to waste their time playing through an area again.

I've struggled with the concept in most of my modules. For Dark Waters I introduced Death, who shows up to collect you. I added the skeleton head model, wrote the dialog, and recorded my own voice. Hopefully it's an amusing way to handle the issue. Odds are, people will keep trying to die simply to find out what Death does next.

The debugging continues. Some of it is pretty minor at this point, like why some barrels aren't exploding in flames as desired. I'm hoping I can give it some more attention today, though with my wife out of town and a sick son, it's a bit of a challenge.

I did some fiddling with the heads of a coupl...

January 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did some fiddling with the heads of a couple key NPCs. The custom NPC heads that come with the game have a nicer range of skin tones, in my opinion. It also gives me the option of subtly modifying the heads later on, which might be fun.

I'm a full-time parent this week, so finding development time is even more of a challenge than usual. I managed to run through the final battle several times, getting things working as expected. It's a tough fight, and players who are cautious will have an easier time of it. The trap setting was especially challenging without the CreateTrapAtLocation function, but I managed to cobble something reasonable together. The hardest opponents are the firebomb-throwing Slithers, which can wipe out the party in moments.

I'm running out of areas that are untested. The lab area probably needs some looking after, as do the other parts of the sixth level. Other parts of the game need polish, especially the cutscenes now that I've figured out how to properly fade the camera. Progress continues to be steady.

Happy New Year to all

January 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Happy New Year to all. Somehow between the various illnesses running rampant in our house, I managed some serious debug time this morning. The fan puzzle works great now, complete with moving dials, floating gems, and multiple ways to solve it.

I also fixed a bunch of other bugs, some cosmetic and others more serious. Several more cutscenes now work fairly well. There were some places where you couldn't get from level to level or pass through a door. At the moment, I'm working on the final battle, trying to get creatures to set reasonable traps. I'm also working on getting the player to respawn properly.

Still, it feels like I've made significant process lately. It seems like I'm on track to get this to QA in a couple more weeks.