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

[Tchos]

I have no idea what causes some of these toolset problems. Aside from the many crashes today, causing me to need to redo a lot of work, I'm having trouble with NPCs not showing the armour that I'm giving them, despite making sure that the boxes for "Never show helm" and "Never show armour" are not selected. As far as I can tell, these are normal vanilla game items that aren't showing up, like the Shadowdancer outfit.

 

Other items do show up, but not their tints. Or the tints appear in the armour set preview, but not on the NPC in the area. Or a new item won't show up on a placed instance until I copy the NPC and paste a new copy into the area.

 

Other annoyances: Can't copy text from text blocks with Ctrl-C, and can't paste hex colour codes into the hex area on the colour picker for tinting (have to use the RGB field in properties).

 

I discovered that Uncle FB's bartender/barmaid scripts only work in one location per game, due to the scripts looking for specific waypoints. If there's more than one bar, then there's more than one set of bar waypoints, and it doesn't just go with the nearest ones (the ones that are in the current area). Took me a while to figure out that was the reason for the strange behaviour of the barmaid in the second tavern. So after I figured it out, I set about generalising the script so that I could just set some local variables on the bartender and the barmaid, and the script would pick up the separate sets of waypoints from that. I also added a few more lines to make the NPCs face the direction of their waypoints in the rest of the instances when they should.

 

I also set up the hearthstone teleport location and the deposit box, and added another track of custom music. Now this location is done. I also went back to the first inn and added the entertainer, after modifying the texture of a piece of ACME gear for him to wear.

 

I think I'll create the town hall interior and interactions next session. It's a much simpler location than these last two.

[Tchos]

As before, I didn't write a post on my P&P day. As planned, however, I completed both the downstairs and upstairs of town hall, and placed the clerk and the mayor, whose conversations and quests I had already written.

 

I started both areas using a prefab area as a base, but I made some significant changes to each. One of them was an area from Kamal's Path of Evil Prefab collection. The other was apparently an arena entrance, but it worked pretty well as a reception hall, once I removed the martial elements and added some more civic elements, placed a conference room behind the reception desk, and added a stairwell door.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c5_rVvjPnKY/T_tU4Xh8mTI/AAAAAAAADcM/MrDATe4Y-vE/s320/bcocc%2Bmayor.jpg

 

I also corrected my mistake from earlier, about giving characters armour for which they didn't have the required classes.

 

Of course, after hooking up all the doors and waypoints to the main module and running through it, I filled up a page of my notepad with mistakes to correct. But since these were mostly not scripting mistakes, the changes didn't have me searching for answers, and were quickly resolved.

 

 

I also spent some time today away from this module, installing Fallout: New Vegas, which I've had on Steam since last X-mas, and have never gotten around to installing. As some here may know, I did some modding on Fallout 3 a few years ago, as well as Oblivion and Morrowind. There is no fear of switching my efforts from NWN2 to Fallout, however, because the Gamebryo engine games that I've modded simply can't compare to Neverwinter Nights 2 in being so perfectly suited to making party-based quest modules. However, I did spend a few hours installing mods that already existed for the game, and played a bit of it, which took some time away from my efforts here.

[Tchos]

Today's work, aside from fixing up a few more of the errors I found in town hall, was to create my temple of Sune.

 

I looked briefly at the prefab collection, but I didn't really expect to find anything I could use, because I wanted a circular interior to match the cylindrical exterior building, and such tilesets are strangely rare in NWN2. I took a look at the metatiles available in the vanilla game, and there was the King of Shadows' sanctum, which is certainly round and domed, but it is, of course, gargantuan.

 

There was a curved tile in the sunken ruins set, though, and even though it seemed intended for the curved walls to attach to larger floor sections, and it didn't seem to have any tiles with floors that would allow me to use it at its minimum size, I used some placeables to patch it up, and ended up with an interior of a sane scale, which is actually cylindrical.

 

Sune being the best goddess in the Forgotten Realms, I wanted to do her temple nicely. I've read the 3e Faiths & Pantheons, the only sourcebook to go into any detail about her temples and type of followers and worshipers, and although it doesn't include a map or drawing of a temple's interior, it does go into detail about their beauty and purpose, and one thing I can say for certain is that Sune's temples do not have hard wooden benches for people to sit on while listening to a cleric preach. Such seating would be appropriate for a god that values poverty or suffering, like Ilmater, or a god that stands for discipline or militarism, like Helm, but Sunites are aesthetes and hedonists. Thus, I'm making her temple as luxurious and pretty as I can, as well as comfortably furnished, where people can go to sit or recline in small groups or in pairs with the Sunite priestesses. As far as I can tell, Sunites do not preach their message, either, but promote their ideals of beauty, love, and romance through example and actions, so there would be no purpose for a central speaking stage.

 

I consider the diverse and fantastical temples in Baldur's Gate 2 (and certain temples in BG1) to be the model for other games to follow in terms of making temples that appropriately reflect the views and actions of individual gods and goddesses. So the temples I'm building here (Sune and Valkur) will strive for that goal, as far as the resources I have available allow it.

 

I have it lit and partially decorated, but it needs more placeables and NPCs before it's showable. I also need to look through the clothing mods and see if I can find something appropriate for the priestesses and heartwarders to wear.

[Tchos]

I continued working on my temple of Sune. One of the reasons this is important to me is that I've never seen a temple of Sune in one of these games yet, and as I was saying in another thread, being able to explore new areas is important to me.

 

My recent playing of Fallout: New Vegas reminded me of this in a big way. It began well, with a freshened setting and quests that introduced new game mechanics, but soon enough I was sent to Primm, and my first "dungeon crawl" there was exactly like every other ruined building dungeon crawl I'd experienced dozens of times in Fallout 3. Same boring loot, same rubble-filled rooms (which didn't even make sense to have in this place where no bombs hit), same locks to pick and terminals to hack with the same pointless minigames that I was sick to death of from the previous game. Shortly after that, I went to a little camp called Sloan, and one of the buildings I explored there was immediately recognisable as the Regulator HQ from FO3, except here it was empty and pointless.

 

I don't want my module to elicit that same feeling of apathy that I experienced in New Vegas. The recycled environments wouldn't have been so bad if there had been something new or interesting to do or see in them. I repeat my previous statement that in my module, each area should have something unique to see, do, read, fight, or talk to in it. Preferably several of those things at once.

 

With that in mind, perhaps I shouldn't be showing screenshots of so many of my areas, even though I'm very happy with the way my temple is looking. But, then again, seeing these places may raise interest to play it where otherwise people would not have cared to try it.

 

As I was populating the temple, I decided I would have to include at least some of the Kemo animations after all, because it's just perfect for what I envision here. I think I can get away with using just a small subset of the files, since primarily humans and half-elves worship Sune (full elves go with her elven counterpart, Hanali Celanil), so it won't add 80 MB to the module as the full package would.

[Cluas]

Great suff, Tchos

 

Very helpful to beginners like myself :biggrin:

[Tchos]

Glad to hear it. That's one of the purposes of this diary -- to document the problems someone new to the toolset can experience, and how to solve them. :)

[Tchos]

There aren't enough statues in this game. Not a wide enough variety, at any rate. So I have to learn to make an NPC into a statue, without making her look like she was hewn from asphalt with a blunt instrument. I seem to recall the ancient Greeks and Romans had a pretty good handle on sculpting smooth surfaces and fine detail in their statues with mundane tools, so I expect nothing less from our magical fantasy setting. The Iron Body spell effect looks pretty good.

 

I imported some of Aleanne's clothing and armour, some of which look appropriate enough for Sune's priestesses and heartwarders. I had to do some retexturing on them, though, since one of them uses Torio Claven's dress as a base, and I had to get rid of that ugly patchwork quilt pattern on the skirt, and replace the tint maps, because the included ones include complete copies of the diffuse map, making tinting unpredictable and cumbersome.

 

Well, I tried out some statue code, and it works okay, though I couldn't actually get the animation frozen into a decent artistic pose. The problem is that I couldn't get the statue up on a pedestal, because it destroyed the walkmesh. I needed to use a walkmesh helper to get this room walkable in the middle, and it seems to create terrible conflicts when I also want a spot in the middle where a statue can stand. So I had to go with the closest statue that exists in the toolset (a gold one), which doesn't need a walkable area for it to stay where I place it. I spend more time fighting with walkmeshes than anything else in this toolset.

 

Next problem -- Aleanne's clothes aren't appearing on the NPCs in-game! And this time it's not a matter of armour proficiency, because these are cloth items with no item properties specifying any restrictions. They appear fine in the toolset, but not in the game. And I checked and double-checked to make sure I had the MDBs, UTIs, and DDSes in the proper locations, and did it without anything in my override. They also don't appear on my character, if I put them in the game world for myself to wear. Just the default "underwear".

 

Okay, after investigating the problem enough, I determined that one of the missing outfits was due to me copying the elf version of the MDB instead of the human version. I'm not sure what caused the other outfit's problem, since it's a different MDB, but in fixing the first, I also fixed the other. Now they're properly attired. Quite a relief, considering I spent many hours retexturing them and creating the new tint maps!

 

I experimented with the statue script, testing it with different delay values. The idea is that it starts by playing an animation, and then applies the freeze effect after a short delay, corresponding to the part of the animation I want to use as the statue's pose. So I copied the statue NPC several times and put different delay times into it. When I ran it in the game, there was no difference between any of the copies, so the animation was clearly not playing at all before the NPC was frozen.

 

I switched the script to run on area enter instead of on spawn for the NPC, and that worked. It just seems I won't be able to put it on a pedestal.

 

This is what some of the temples from BG2 look like, by the way (Helm and Lathander, respectively). They're animated, as well, with atmospheric sounds.

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--hwYcDb_Gdc/T_9HSGCdsTI/AAAAAAAADcc/jvj45467bLI/s320/helm%2Btemple.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hsKRuflvGbw/T_9HSg8tZ_I/AAAAAAAADco/WipSiazUa20/s320/lathander%2Btemple.jpg

[Tchos]

Apparently Steam summer sales just began, and almost all of the games on my rather long wish list that are between 50-75% off, like Portal 2 and Trine 2. I'm extremely tempted. But though it almost hurts to do so, I think I'll refrain from buying anything during this sale. It's not like I don't already have enough games to play. It's just that I know I'd love those games too, and many others. I don't think I've had such a strong conflicted feeling in many years. But my choice is to save my money for later.

 

I tried modifying the statue code to include a "while GetIsObjectValid" command to cycle through all of the NPCs with the tag "statue" to apply the freezing effect to all of them, but doing that broke the code, apparently, because none of them froze, where before a single copy of them froze (presumably the first one the "GetObjectByTag" command selected. This is the code in its entirety. Though I think I'm just wasting time here with this whole statue thing, and I should just use a static statue and finish the bloody temple and move on. Or, if there were a copy of this model available with the two statues separated, that would work well. As provided, the two statues are in a single mesh. At any rate, not important. I can see how things like this temple can become a black hole that grinds progress to a halt.

 

object oNPC;

void MakeStatue ()
{
effect eFreeze = SupernaturalEffect (EffectVisualEffect (VFX_DUR_FREEZE_ANIMATION ));
ApplyEffectToObject (DURATION_TYPE_PERMANENT, eFreeze, oNPC);
SetBumpState (oNPC, BUMPSTATE_UNBUMPABLE);
SetIsDestroyable( FALSE, FALSE, FALSE );
	ApplyEffectToObject( DURATION_TYPE_PERMANENT, EffectDeath(), oNPC  );   // Make sure the NPC isn't set to "plot", or this won't do  anything.
}

void main ()
{
int iCopy = 0;	
while( GetIsObjectValid(oNPC) )
{
	oNPC = GetObjectByTag("statue", iCopy);
	string sDebugMe = ObjectToString(oNPC);
	SendMessageToPC(GetFirstPC(), sDebugMe);
	ClearAllActions(TRUE);
	PlayCustomAnimation (oNPC, "dance02", 1, 1.0f);
	DelayCommand (12.0, MakeStatue());
	iCopy++;
}	
}

 

In other news, I imported a handful of animated poses from Kemo to apply to the NPCs in this temple, and wrote a little generic script to allow me to apply a looping idle to any NPC with the name of the animation file as a variable. I tested one pose out on an artist's model NPC, and it works fine.

 

I decided that the NPC statue would still be in the temple, but it's not the one on the central pedestal. It'll be in the section of the temple where the Sunites instruct their faithful in the creation of beautiful works of art, as is part of their creed, which in this case is painting and sculpture.

 

I imported a small subset of the Item Placeables pack. I see it contains the beer stein as a placeable, incidentally. It includes all these items in multiple orientations. The beer stein I checked was the one that's lying on its side. Useful for a messy bar, no doubt. I expect the upright one will rest flat on the countertop, unlike the SFX version.

 

The placeables.2da file conflicts with BCK 1, though. It occupies numbers 5000 to almost 6000. I renumbered them to use the 8000s. I of course had to fix all of the blueprints that I wanted to use, restoring their missing appearances, which were probably broken by the renumbering.

 

I finished the design and decoration of the temple earlier. I've almost finished populating it with clergy and faithful. All that's left now is to put in the temple services and the questgiver. It'll be finished tomorrow, by hook or by crook. I think I'll make this the only temple in town, actually. A second one is unnecessary, and I've taken too long on this one.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Tchos

[Tchos]

As before, P&P day skipped.

 

I finished the temple by adding the questgiver and temple services provider. I also made a new placeable using Sune's symbol as it appears in the Faiths & Pantheons book. I use it inside and outside the temple. The quest includes a lot of special dialogue depending on the player's deity, stats, and skills, and it's one of two side quests that take place outside the town, so that still needs work.

 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M4mscVk1qQ4/UANvn6sfo0I/AAAAAAAADc4/OXa9jkd0XBk/s200/bcocc%2Bsune%2Bin.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NeS6w2FsEGk/UANvoKd9wNI/AAAAAAAADdE/6y23SKdV8zU/s200/bcocc%2Bsune%2Bout.jpg

 

I'm trying not to show much of the temple, because I want it to be new when you enter. I'm pleased with the way it turned out.

[Tchos]

Today I worked on the heartwarder's quest, and a lot of that time was spent on the rewards. One thing that still gives me trouble is determining the proper amount of XP and treasure to give for non-combat quests. Going by what the Dungeon Master's Guide says, a 10th-level party should receive 5800 gp and 3000 XP per encounter of their own level. This is for a party of four. Since in NWN2 the XP is shared by the whole party, I'm thinking I should divide the XP by 4 (making it 750 XP), but since you're still equipping a whole party with gear, I probably shouldn't also divide the gold amount.

 

This is assuming that it's appropriate to count a non-combat side quest as an "encounter". I'm thinking it is, because the DMG is pretty flexible (or "vague") about awarding "story XP", saying it requires a lot of ad hoc ruling by the DM. And I divide up the amount of XP and treasure into several "parts" of the side quest, as well, so it's not a windfall all at once.

 

Additionally, one of the purposes of these side quests is to give the player a source of income for some expenditures that will be necessary during the module, and I'm balancing it by the DMG's "expected wealth by level" table. Overall, the party should end my module with more gold and better gear than they had when they began it, but not so much that it unbalances future modules that they may play with those characters imported.

 

If I balance the encounters so that they should have enough XP to gain one or two levels, then I should try to make it possible for them to have acquired the expected wealth for the ending level according to the table.

 

I reveal how much treasure and XP a player can expect to receive in the quest text. I do this because I, as an adventurer, would not likely go out on a mission without knowing what it will pay. In these listings, I only list what will be directly awarded by the questgiver. The rest, which would complete the XP/treasure amount by encounter level, is obtained via combat/drops while the player is out on the quest.

 

Since I've been making a lot of special items, I made myself a generic item with common properties that I can copy as a template for my items. I had wanted to use Sin's Item Lab plugin, but for unknown reasons, it isn't working for me. Whether I create a new item from scratch or edit an existing item, it doesn't save most of the properties. This is unfortunate, since I really liked the interface, which is cleaner for the purpose than the usual object properties window.

 

One concern I have, though it's a small one, is that since I'm using a lot of custom icons in my module (both from Bonus Blueprints and my own imports), and since this requires a custom nwn2_icons.2da file, that means that any items that players may take with them when they import their characters from this module into other modules will end up with missing icons. Is there no avoiding that, beyond using nothing but standard icons? I think custom icons to create a richer experience within the module is worth missing icons outside of the module. But then, can this be fixed after the fact by the end user? Can a custom item saved in an exported character be edited to change its icon to a standard one? There are some such items that I'd like to fix from modules I've played.

 

Another placeable that seems to be missing is a single page of paper, to use as a note, or letter. An envelope would be nice to have, too. All I've found are scrolls and books, and in some of the book piles there are loose pages of paper amongst them, which would be very nice to have separate.

 

While looking to see if I could find such a thing, I found that the Trinity placeables pack includes a collection of tableware, including that beer stein, and those goblets that otherwise only exist in a group.

 

I also found that Amraphael has a placeables pack which uses the 8000-8999 range in the 2da, which is where I had moved the Item Placeables collection. That won't be a problem for this module, but I thought I should mention it here. Also, he has a nice placeable window in that pack, though it doesn't appear to be illuminated like mine.

 

If necessary, I can just make a placeable piece of paper/parchment if I can find an existing placeable that's a flat plane on the ground of a small enough size that it wouldn't need to be shrunk down too much every time one is placed.

 

This quest I'm working on involves interacting with some placeables, so I wrote a generic script to attach to any placeable that will check some variables on the placeable, and do things depending on what you specify in the variables, like create an item on the PC, destroy the placeable, update your journal, and/or run additional custom scripts. That'll make it useful for various situations.

 

Also wrote a quest-specific script, but it's time to stop, and I haven't had time to test it yet.