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

[Tchos]

Wizards Apprentice has potions of relearning spells. Maybe something in its scripting would be useful.

It's easy enough to relearn all spells via a ForceRest(). I've even got a complex bit of scripting that restores 'lost' spells in charisma-based casters due to unequipping and re-requipping a nymph cloak (in order to mount a horse). That script uses ForceRest() followed by a loop that decrements spells back to a stored state. However ForceRest() also heals you and restores all per-day feats and item properties, which would be a bit much for just sitting down and reading for a while. I'd only consider having it restore cantrips at the most, if that were possible.

Wizard's Apprentice's approach to relearning spells was very simple. Record current hitpoints, then force Rest. On rest end, damage the player back to the hitpoints they had before resting. It would not restore spells in any intuitive "Graded" fashion. All or nothing.

I'm playing assassin's creed at the moment and you could use seating areas for listening (overhear a treasure location), pickpocketing or hiding/ blending in with the crowd when you've done something wrong like they do in that.

 

Eavesdropping on a conversation is indeed a good quest objective. Don't know about blending in with a crowd, though, since I've never seen even a fraction of the number of NPCs they have walking around town in Assassin's Creed show up in NWN2.

[Tchos]

That's by design. Kamal and I have placed massive crowds in an area, for me 50 plus.

 

You could always have one of those Kirk/Spock conversations with an NPC...

 

"Please.... sit down!"

 

Something else that would be creative: Sitting in a chair opens a secret door (that you could not otherwise open) leading to a dungeon or some such. It's a bit "Temple of Doom".

 

You could also use it for a big meeting. Sitting down at a table to discuss important events. Sitting in the chair could initiate a cut-scene. That would be fun.

 

I can see a lot of uses for this. I might have to investigate some sittable chairs myself.

 

The secret door could only remain open while someone is sitting in the chair. That would mean temporarily sacrificing a companion who would have to remain behind to ensure the door stays open.

 

Another use for sitting could be to trigger a custom GUI for a minigame.

 

Sitting, especially in a crowded room or along a busy thoroughfare like Tsongo was thinking, would be great for triggering ambient NPC actions. If the player is just running through the area, you don't want to side track them, but if they decide to sit down for a pint at a street stall, then you can have your NPCs act out something interesting while the player is settled and paying attention.

 

It could be something simple like overhearing chatter (barkstrings), or something more involved like street urchins pickpocketing passersby. Even if it's just town guards stopping to inspect a wagon, or a mysterious figure ducking into a back alley, it might be enough to give the player some crucial insight about the town.

 

Maybe a random NPC approaches the PC with a request (instead of chatting up every NPC, the player just sits at the bar and the side quest comes to them, a once anonymous NPC gets a name so the PC can find them at the tavern later).

 

In short, sitting is the player's way of letting the game know that they're not doing anything in particular, and would like to see something interesting. And a useable chair is the builder's way of letting the player know that something interesting is right there to be seen, if the player is willing to stop and sit for a moment.

 

I think you all attatch too much importance to parking your duff. How is a player possibly supposed to know something like that would set off all of the above? Using it to open a secret door is one thing but you can't expect a player to instinctively sit on a chair in public and wait for a parade of activity to slowly march by. They have places to be!

 

I for one enjoy unexpected results from in-game experiments. I can't think of anything more boring than playing a game for the first time and knowing exactly what to expect.

 

Certainly in the module I'm currently working on, there are all sorts of new features that I won't be documenting. Some people will discover them, some won't. None of them are essential to completing the module, so it doesn't matter either way.

 

You can't have too many non-plot-related 'easter eggs' as far as I'm concerned.

 

Some players naturally use any useable item. If you have a useable chair, the curious player would naturally use it; and, if the act of sitting fires off an NPC event, he'll quickly learn that sitting for a few seconds can have its uses.

 

This reminded me of a Heroes 3 map, don't remember the author but it was called Unleashing The Bloodthirsty. The map itself was extremely tough to beat, but also filled with so many secrets and eastern eggs. Items hidden behind mountains, behind volcano fumes, into the woods. In places that you normally don't walk. But he placed the trees, mountains etc in such a way, that the items are hidden and you still can reach them.

Different topic of course, but it just reminded me of that. Because I still find that map as a milestone for building. Balance, difficulty, humor... everything is in there .

 

Better late than never? I finally got around to testing out the SoZ clock for the GUI and its impact on performance. When I tested, I saw no drop in FPS or no subjective "hiccups" on heartbeat; everything seems to work pretty well!

 

Anyway, sorry for the incredibly long delay in getting back to you.

 

Don't worry. Less than two months isn't really "incredibly long" in the context of this project. Good to hear of the results. I never saw any heartbeat hiccups from using the GUI clock, either, so that idea can probably be laid to rest.

 

All the discussion about uses for sitting in modules has been very interesting to follow, BTW.

[Tchos]

A week of work with the companion interjections, and it was nearly released with a bug that would have caused about a quarter of them to go always-unseen, because on about half of the triggers, I forgot to actually assign them their identifying nodes! I had meticulously catalogued the nodes and coordinated seven dialogue files that referred to them, and some of the triggers themselves (mostly the ones I had done first, before I got into the habit) weren't using them. I fixed them, and while testing I also found another error that prevented some of the bard's location-specific dialogue to show up, due to my having written an erroneous area tag in my documentation. I checked the area's actual tag, and corrected the documentation, and fixed the actual dialogue reference.

 

A few times when I've gone back to older areas to fix a little bug here or there I find things that I did wrong or unnecessarily, or in some cases where I used prefab elements that did things incorrectly. I believe I've corrected all of the prefab lights that had their shadow intensity set to 1, as well I should have noticed by now in my tests, since I have point lights on all the time for better visuals, unless I'm playing a module that had lights set to a shadow intensity of 1.

 

Sometimes I find placeables that should have been environmental objects, which is most of them, but especially things such as chandeliers and rugs, which remained as placeables, but had their "walkable" flag set to "true" so that they wouldn't interfere with the walkmesh. In general, I prefer to keep things as placeables only if I think I might want to do something with them via script, or if I want them to block line of sight, or not disappear when you pass the camera behind them, such as for walls.

 

Anyway, with all that out of the way, I think it's done.

[Originally posted 20 July 2014 - 08:11 AM]

[Tchos]

It is now released. Please continue the discussion on the release thread, as the development here is now at an end.

[Thandal]

Many thanks, Tchos!

There are a few of us NWN/NWN2 players still around. :thumbsup:

 

(Locking this thread to direct players to post to the mod's official comment topic, linked above.)