The Black Scourge of Candle Cove -- Tchos' development diary

[Tchos]

Today was more conversation, movement, and spawning work, including for the main quest. I added a couple of new branches and conditionals based on area and quest stage, but I still need to add the final bit that takes into account if the player chooses to come back to the mainland for any reason before tackling the boss.

 

Basically, if the player takes the time to resupply and rest on the mainland, this gives the boss time to prepare and summon more help, which makes that fight harder, and potentially even allows the boss to escape if the player takes too long.

 

This part of modding is actually one of my favourite parts. There are a lot of parts that I enjoy, and others that I don't. This is the part where I actually see results from all the groundwork I laid down beforehand.

 

I think I still need one more pass through the big, difficult-to-load city area so I can place a few spawn points I forgot, tag some doors with unique tags and put in their opening script so that I can potentially expand this module at a later time (by setting their usability flag to "true" and adding a second module), and add the necessary descriptions on the shop signs. The town exit is already handled by a campaign conversation, so that can be expanded easily.

[Tchos]

Added the smith, and resisted the urge to name him Morrissey, or Bigmouth, or something like that. The smithy is largely from a prefab, with some alterations and improvements. I also added some scripted waypoints for more activity to take place within, which is a delightful touch I saw used to great effect in the Dark Water modules. I haven't seen it in action, yet, but it should work.

 

I included two people in the shop, similar to the way it was in the Denerim smithy in Dragon Age: Origins. One is the vendor, and the other is the craftsman.

[Tchos]

The walkwaypoints worked partially. Not properly. He's not actually walking to stand where the waypoints are, and I tried moving them around and making sure they were well within the walkmeshes.

 

A search suggests to me that it might be because my script uses ActionPlayAnimation() (both looping and fire/forget) in some of its cases. A post from 3 months ago by kevL says that these should use PlayCustomAnimation() instead. The walkwaypoint template used ActionPlayAnimation(), but that apparently doesn't work as well in NWN2, and the template was originally written for NWN1.

 

Took a while to set up the smith's store with the items I wanted him to sell.

 

Also had to figure out how to change the "north" direction, because this prefab was oriented differently than the exterior. After getting a lot of strange results, and after not being able to do so at first, I found you can rotate the direction marker like any placeable, and from there I could see that what I actually wanted in the numerical field was a negative number, so it was (0, -1). (I had seen that it couldn't go above 1, but it didn't occur to me that it could go below 0.)

[Tchos]

Turns out that the waypoint script took me the entire day to get working properly. Using PlayCustomAnimation() didn't seem to fix it, but I left it using that anyway. The problem is that the blacksmith kept stopping far short of the waypoints and performing his actions with nothing in front of him to perform them at. For example, in a standard room tile's space, where the waypoint was near a wall, he stopped at about the 75% mark. Looked ugly. I tried all kinds of things, such as different waypoint placements (setting them far past the intended stopping point, for instance, which sometimes worked), different walkmesh allowances, different delays in the script, etc.

 

The thing that ended up actually working was to add a ForceMoveToObject() command in several of the specific cases of the walkwaypoint script. Why that was necessary, I have no idea, because I would have expected that the standard walkwaypoint script would try to make the NPC move to the waypoint by itself, and not stop until it got there. But it works now. All in the name of making a blacksmith with a little personality.

 

Here's a place where I ask a general opinion. I used the Shirtless Saga for the blacksmith, because it's hot in there, and that's staying. I also used the shirtless human model I worked out earlier for the vendor, who has to stand near the forge to sell the goods. The question is, does he look too silly in the outfit I have him wearing? The cape was mainly to cover up a clipping problem with the battle harness he has on, but I'm not sure it helps. Also not sure if the harness is necessary, or if he would look better with no shirt at all. He looked terrible with any of the shirts available in the default toolset, because they were just too much to be wearing in that heat.

 

Another alternative is switching it with one of the sleeveless open shirts in the Always Summer collection. Totally shirtless may not be professional-enough attire.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8crmtyd2Fk

 

In other news, I played through the entirety of Limbo in two sittings. Great puzzle/platforming game.

[Tchos]

"Use the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset to create your own adventures for friends to enjoy."

 

When I play NWN2, I see that loading tip often, and sometimes it makes me think. I like how that sounds. I like to think that I'm making a module for friends to enjoy. That each person who downloads and plays it is a potential new friend, and that the experience of this module is like a gift for them. I think I would be happy to know that they got some smiles out of it.

 

I got a little distracted by some spell experiments, and there was also the P&P day in there, but look! Here's me working on the module.

 

Due to some non-forum feedback about the vendor's outfit that made it clear that he was giving off the wrong impression, I ended up changing it to a simpler one, which is from Always Summer. It's a sleeveless, wide-necked open shirt. I repainted several parts of the texture maps, though, to eliminate some jagged edges and improve the folds of the cloth. I also changed the pants to short pants. That takes care of everything at the smithy.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NAbDo1up48Q/UKE317HjglI/AAAAAAAAEv8/OVn5bRn6AL4/s320/bcocc+smith+vendor+shirt.jpg

[Tchos]

Today got off to a better start than other times because I left the next item of business open for me to see, so I didn't have to think about what to work on next.

 

It took a very long time to get some information I needed, because it was in the crash-prone dock area. I needed the names of the sets of waypoints I have in there, and I hadn't copied the names to my big list of waypoints for later reference. After many attempts at opening it, I rebooted the system, and it opened, and I got the information I needed. Incredible bother.

 

I added the scripts I needed for the sets, and introduced some random pauses and an occasional random choice into the mix, to try to keep things from looking too uniform. There are four sets of waypoints, plus some purely random wandering, so it should be okay.

 

Next I fixed up the selections at a couple of the shops. In the future, I'm going to use scripts to spawn the store elements at the beginning of the module instead of placing them directly, so that I don't have to open up the areas to make changes, and avoid crashes.

 

Next order of business was the League of Merchants headquarters. I made this from a heavily modified and cut down copy of the merchant company headquarters from SoZ. I left the lounge largely unchanged except for some minor rearrangement and the addition of a side entrance, but the rest of it is pretty much a different place.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V10Z-EddeC0/UKQNYO57muI/AAAAAAAAEwo/QAnNNIKYhXs/s200/bcocc+hq1.jpg

 

I still need to populate it, aside from the officer who starts outside, then goes inside for the rest of the game. This place could have the opportunity for some thievery, but to make it worth it, there should be the possibility of negative consequences for attempting it. Considering this place's importance for the main quest, I'm not sure I should encourage that.

 

Eh, all right. I added something, and imported a new placeable to do it. Can't say what it is, of course, because it's a hidden extra, and it relies on class skills. If I use this kind of trigger again, I'll modify the scripts it comes with to add a visual effect and/or sound when something is found, because for a smaller item, it could be easy to miss it spawning in.

 

And as it turns out, I found a use for that unused ledger model I found in the data files earlier.

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VdYWzFr9YTQ/UKQNY5eNmiI/AAAAAAAAEww/EbSeQI0GMho/s200/bcocc+hq2.jpg

 

Had to make a special script for the League Officer, because when I respawn him inside the building, there's no way to delay a command from the conversation to give him time to fully spawn before changing his quest marker.

 

There's one problem in this place, and that's a particular door that appears heavily shadowed until it's opened, and then it's fine after that. I don't know what's causing that, but I've tried both moving the light and replacing the door, and neither helped.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4f9bpbTgKKI/UKQNZwutKgI/AAAAAAAAEw4/_VgBD2bK-Ec/s200/bcocc+hq3.jpg

[Tchos]

I wrote up a long selection of barks for the guildies to use in chatting with each other in the lounge, for atmosphere, with occasional voice chats, random pauses, and the structure for custom animations, though I just used the built-in ambient system for that. It's very much an old rich white men's club, where they gather to brag and gossip as they sip cocktails, smoke cigars, and complain about having too many servants.

 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WhsqoG3Jmls/UKVn7RIkpTI/AAAAAAAAExk/0uj866yPEZ0/s320/bcocc+old+men%2527s+club.jpg

 

(Note: cigars are not actually included.)

[Tchos]

Today I didn't do anything except texture this safe.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WV0zLKJU3EA/UKbQSLWIQtI/AAAAAAAAEyQ/RP4pYRiiAq0/s320/bcocc+safe.jpg

[Tchos]

There's a lot going on at home. My very living situation is uncertain, for lack of employment. For various reasons, I haven't done much on this project since last report.

 

Nevertheless, in almost any situation there is downtime, and I have gotten some things done.

 

I designed and built the boat rental office, and finalised the design of the harbourmaster. As a placeholder, I had the OC NPC Daeghun Farlong playing his role, but I would never have used such an ugly model as a final product. I decided that this town needed a little more representation of the other races in the setting. Despite my efforts at making it more cosmopolitan, it's still a human-dominated town, with largely human architecture, with a sizable elf population, and a fair number of dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. Just a handful of tieflings. I decided to make him a friendly water genasi.

 

I couldn't actually find any genasi blueprints in the toolset, so I applied the proper appearance and special effect to another race.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UCVelFZKXuA/ULWIyxvRX0I/AAAAAAAAEzA/2wfQVbZoad8/s320/bcocc+boat+rental.jpg

 

I had some preliminary playtesting, thanks to my brother. Don't worry, those of you on the list for formal playtesting -- you're still on the list. This required my direction to test out specific things. The experience was enlightening. I see that for my estimate of play length for the module, I'll have to add perhaps 3x or 4x to the amount of time I take running through an area, for familiarity reasons.

 

I watched how he navigated through the conversations, and how he interacted with the quest items, and how well he managed the fights, and it looks like it's working as intended. He had no full party wipes except once on a mini-boss, and the second try was successful.

 

He found a couple of bugs for me to fix, and one of them was the trapdoor. I'm using the trapdoor placeable from Amraphael's placeables pack, which includes a script to open and close it like a door, even though it's a placeable. However, the script doesn't seem to take into account whether the object is locked or not, which it needed to be in this case.

 

Well, since my previous door script was designed to eliminate the animation of the door opening, and just move the player on the first click, I preferred this trapdoor not to animate opening either. So I wrote a new script to replace the one that it came with, and had it check the placeable's locked state, read the tag of the required key from the normal "Key Name" field, and check the party for that item. It checks the whole party, unlike a normal door, so it's not necessary to open the door with the party member that holds the key. It also uses the standard "Key required feedback message" field for the text to display if the party doesn't have the key, with a default of "Key required" if you don't provide one. I didn't include a code section for lockpicking checks, though, because I didn't need it for this instance. Perhaps later. It also removes the key on use, and ignores the setting on the object that normally determines if it should do that. I couldn't find a function to read that setting, but I could add a similar check for a local integer on the object. It assumes there's only one copy of the key with that tag to remove.

 

Anyway, that fixes the locked trapdoor issue. One other one that's a little trickier is that the swimming animation messed up when we had the druid companion along for the ride. I'm guessing this is because it's assigning the wrong appearance to her, being of the n_elf appearance instead of the regular elf. I'll add a special line in there for her, which I think will fix it. Her face isn't actually a concern in this case, since everyone will be wearing the diving helmets, so it won't matter if I need to assign her an appearance that doesn't have her actual face in it.

[Tchos]

The last of the shops is the apothecary, and for this I textured the second of the potion bottles that Eguintir separated from the set of vanilla placeables for me. I would also have a third new bottle to use, but the UV map is currently unusable.

 

There would have been a quest here, but I've cut it for time, and plan to use it in my next venture.

 

I was also inspired to make a new wrought iron texture, which I suppose can be used for fences, gates, or barred windows of some kind. (Click to look at the full-sized version.)

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vH6l5obAZz8/UMQyMDuTc5I/AAAAAAAAE0A/Nlyzhht1fbQ/s320/bcocc+wrought2.jpg

 

I tried to do some work in the town, but I couldn't get the area open, and I didn't want to reboot again just then, which seems to be the only way to get it to open now.

 

I decided to try retexturing one of the four vanilla bottles for use as a decorative bottle. I found, as is the case with many of the other placeables, that this one uses a shared diffuse map with the other three bottles. I expect this kind of texture economy was a legacy from the game's NWN1 roots. The UVs are horribly designed, being mushy and asymmetrical, poorly suited to precisely lining up the edges on the texture to avoid obvious seams, which is possibly why the original texture is so free of detail.

 

So, since I just couldn't work with something like that, I took it upon myself to gain the necessary knowledge to modify the UV maps on the objects directly.

 

I had three choices in the matter, based on what plugins were available to import and export the NWN2 MDB format: 3DS Max, Gmax, and Blender. Since I already had Blender, I tried that first, but I could not get the objects to import properly using the plugin. Only the points appeared, and none of the faces. 3DS Max was out of the question, due to expense, so I turned to the free Gmax.

 

Learning to navigate an unfamiliar interface, and learning a new set of vocabulary and such is always a bit cumbersome, and was occasionally frustrating in this case, but after perhaps 3 or 4 hours I had remapped and exported the new bottle model. There was some trouble with it. First, Gmax bizarrely doesn't seem to include an option to export a UV template, so I had to use LithUnwrap. But LithUnwrap doesn't read NWN2 files, so I had to install a plugin for Gmax to allow it to export to Quake 3 format, which LithUnwrap reads.

 

With UV template in hand, I imported the model into NWN2, only to find that it still used the original vanilla bottle texture. I checked the MDB in MDB Cloner to make sure it was pointing to the right textures, and it was. I had encountered a similar problem with a vanilla plane that I retextured, and also with an earlier (now fixed) version of Xaltar's new heads, and I surmised that this had something to do with a name that MDB Cloner can't read. I located the texture name in Gmax, and indeed it was still pointing to the old texture, which somehow overrode the one specified in MDB Cloner, so I changed it and exported again. This time it worked. Yay for new bottle.

 

Bolstered, I turned my attention to the 3rd of the alchemical potion bottles I mentioned earlier whose UV map was unusable. Again, the task was tricky, since I was doing something different with this one (I wanted to double up the texture on opposite sides, rather than have 4 identical sides as in the then-current UV map), but I gradually got the hang of the peculiar procedures that Gmax requires in order to simply select a subset of faces, and I successfully remapped, rescaled, and exported this bottle, too.

 

Of course, with this tool, I'm not limited to retexturing as I was before, but I can resculpt objects or create new ones. This is good. Now if I need some new geometry, I have the tools I need to create it. I don't anticipate needing any more for this project, though.

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u2LRVB5ZwII/UMQyLsH9jVI/AAAAAAAAEz4/t4BTPvlAF1s/s400/bcocc+potions.jpg

 

After putting the non-alchemical bottle next to the others, I found that it was asymmetrical, and not in an appealing way. (It's the pink bottles on the right in the picture, which I've rotated to have their best faces forward.) They might have been trying for a more organic or even whimsical feel with these early props, which I would have probably preferred over the rather straight art style they ended up with, but I don't think it fits well with the others here. It wouldn't hurt to have one or two off in the background, though.

 

I'll finish up the apothecary shop next. After that, there's only one more interior to create, and it'll be full of monsters.