Dark Waters Album Released

July 24, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

Rob and Eshinee Veith just released the full Dark Waters album, complete with new songs that never made it into the game. You can find it here. I'd like to thank Rob for all his help over the years. Eshinee did a wonderful job playing Heather, and Rob spent many hours chopping up dialog and getting the music ready for the game.

I leave for England tomorrow, which should be a wonderful adventure for my son and I. Hopefully all the castles, Roman ruins, and jousting tournaments will inspire me. I'm bringing along a notebook in case I get an urge to write dialog for Dreamer.

I continue to get bug reports and am dutifully keeping track of them all. After I return, I'll try and go through the list and come up with a patch for the game.

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Finally Live

July 16, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

And it looks like we're finally live on the Vault. You can read a short interview as well. Here's the fancy YouTube preview, just for fun.

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Posting Soon

July 13, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

The game should be posted in the next day or two. I'm busy doing all the last minute details. I feel strangely calm, though I know things always get a little crazy after release.

I've started more serious work on my Dragon Age project. Way too much scripting, yet again. When will I ever learn?

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Slowly Wrapping Things Up

July 06, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I sent out an e-mail to the folks at Neverwinter Vault, which I think means I've passed the point of no return. I'm still nervous and I've had a few more bug reports. I think most of the remaining ones fall into the "NWN2 doing weird things for unexplained reasons" category. Hopefully the issues won't be too widespread.

I continue to experiment with Dragon Age custom content, playing around with different looks. I love the free-form "playing" part of game design. It's way more fun that grinding through bug fixing.

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Back to the Real World

July 02, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

This week has been insanely busy at work and home, leaving me only a few brief moments to collapse asleep and start again the next day. I think things are improving, fortunately.

This morning I was up at 4:30 and managed to process and attach a bunch of new lines Derek sent my way. As usual, his work is amazingly cool and I couldn't resist posting a few short clips. Hopefully they're not too spoilery.

I did get a note about show-stopping bugs, but I think it may be one that's out of my control. For some reason, some people get stuck at the "loading area" screen, which is very frustring.

In any case, I need to putter around some more and send an e-mail to the Vault folks. Hopefully I can get the last of Drake's lines recorded and send it in.

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Release Candidate 1

June 29, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back from vacation and unless I hear anything horrible about the last build, I think I'm good to go. I haven't gone through all my e-mails, but the plan is to do that today. In the meantime, here's a list of the different versions I put together over the weekend:

Full Install (563 MB)

Lite Install (227 MB)

Manual install package (600 MB)

The full install is exactly the same as the last build. The Lite Install has the sound, music, and load screens removed. The manual install package is for Macs and anyone else who wants to copy files to the right place themselves. The latter option isn't very well supported, as I don't have a Mac, but I think it generally works.

I'll try to get things released on the Vault relatively soon. I have a preview video floating around somewhere.

As for Dragon Age, I did a bit of writing and art tests over this last week. I'm still fiddling around with the creative side, so we'll see what happens.

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One Last Build Before I Go

June 19, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I'm off on a short vacation for the next week, but here's the latest build:

Dark Waters (full)

And as before, here are the bug notes

I think this build may be relatively good for release. I think all of the very serious bugs are taken care of (minus the weird High Seas ones). People are generally able to finish the module. I'll probably let people fiddle with this release for the next week. If I don't hear anything critical, I'll start the release process.

On an unrelated note, I'm eager to finish up Dark Waters so I can get started on my Dragon Age module. If I get inspired, I might try some more writing and planning during my long car ride.

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My Trusty Crate Posse

June 18, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I did some more testing this morning, validating that most of my fixes actually worked. My biggest fear at this point is that I'll make a small fix and end up breaking something badly.

I was using debug mode like a maniac, bouncing between modules and acts. I ended up at the beginning of the game with a large group of crates in my party. It wasn't really a bug, as normally it would never happen, but it was an amusing little side effect of my testing.

I'm going to work on packaging and getting out a new build before I head off for vacation for a week.

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Brains

June 17, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

Good progress yesterday and this morning. I think I have all the bugs either fixed or listed as requiring some more testing.

I spent a fair amount of time with the Sanity Defense mini-game. Something must have changed in one of the patches, as when a creature is killed, their ondamaged event doesn't fire any more. While you could still beat the mini-game with this issue, it did make it more challenging. I think I have most of the issues worked out, but want to do some more testing.

Hopefully over the next couple days I can put together a good build that I can declare a "release candidate" or something similarly lofty. I'm off with limited Internet access next week, so I'll probably wait until afterwards before I think about releasing anything.

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Another Day, Another Bug Fix

June 16, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I can tell I'm suffering from QA fatigue, a rarely discussed medical condition that mod developers sometimes suffer. I think I'm in the second or third month of bug fixing and occasionally my enthusiasm wanes.

Still, I've decided to dig into the latest round of issues that were reported over the weekend. Some were weird, such as a treasure digging script that used to work, but stopped working for some reason. I added a delay to the script and it started working. Maybe something changed in the latest NWN2 patch?

There are a few other quirky things like that. My hope is that I can get a new Friday build together. When I go on my vacation next week, I can haul along my computer and work on any issues that pop up. Maybe when I return, I can finally make it live?

Hope springs eternal.

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Links

Neverwinter Vault
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Interviews, etc.

Golden Dragon
Dark Waters
Lute Hero
Podcast
Pirate Cards
Italian Interview

About Me

I've won multiple awards for my Neverwinter Nights modules, which I've been working on since the year 2000. In the real world, I'm a web developer for a healthcare organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.