Conversations, Companions and the Summer

After a quiet month I figured it was about time for an update post. I have spent a bunch of time writing conversations, which is admittedly my weakest point. Over the past few weeks I have written a little shy of 10,000 words but it seems to be a faction of what I need. I have been working on a large plot area with a number of NPC as well as companion dialect specific to this area. This part has turned into a bit of a chore unfortunately but I continue to plug away, if nothing else I at least open the toolset most days and read through the most current conversation correcting grammar and adding lines here and there.

In between working the conversations I have been working on the companions as well. They have turned into a bit of a drug for me. I really enjoy creating them and their personalities. For this campaign I have a total of 8 companions all of which are optional, excluding a small 2 level cave area were one companion is forced. They are found throughout the game and only 2 of them will approach every player. One of my early post talked about companions and using them as a tool to tell the story. Each companion has a in depth back story and will offer something unique to the party. That something varies between the companions, some will have access to special abilities, open different parts of the game or directly effect the plot. Most of the companions will need to either be in the party at specific times or have certain levels of influence with the player to unlock these bonuses.

My addiction to companions has made my conversations that much more difficult. They will often jump into conversation offering their opinion to either the player or the NPC that is being talked to. Many of these interjections are random. In some instances a specific companion will talk but in most one of the companions will randomly be chosen to speak. Now there are eight companions but some will have different responses based on their influence with the player or if their unique ability/or whatever has been unlocked. So eight quickly multiplies especially when companions will also have banter with each other with multiple lines based on inter-party relationships. So it quickly becomes a spiderweb of conversation lines.

On a different note when I should have been writing conversations I was working on a spell that a necromancer companion will have. The end result of the spell is a powerful zombie in advanced rot. Looking through the models available I didn't want to use the zombie appearance as it just seemed too mundane. I have already used the ghast for several creatures so I was left with little other choices. I have been looking at the drowned since I got SoZ and trying to figure out what I could do with it. For most of my custom monsters I have modified visual effects or created glow/tint maps but the lack of feet cause me to look at the diffuse map. With a little copy and paste I was able to take his arm texture and add it to his missing legs and feet. Below is a screen shot of that creation.

I have been considering giving him a visual effect of a green cloud him as he is off gassing. A brownish green cloud just a little bigger then the cloud with the mummy dust effect.

This will likely be my last post for the next several months, but since I am on a once every month or so schedule it may not make much difference. I will be breaking out my old tool belt and doing a remodel on my kitchen and dinning room (the dinning room also happens to hold the computer). So instead of working on Risen Hero I will be banging nails for the first half of summer.

So there it is, my update. And to anyone reading this have a good summer.

WHAT?! Why is this broken now?

Play testing. . .

With the completion of 3 out of 4 modules I had begun play testing. Had to start from the beginning again to check everything with SOZ. I Added and changed some things and wanted to make sure everything was still working right.

Most everything seemed to be going how it should until it came to leveling up my companions. I sat their confused when I discovered that I could not use their custom packages and they were all set as either a bard or a monk. After two days of changing, resetting and double checking I came across an post in the archives on Keadrin's site. Apparently the game only reads up to line 255 and mine started at 300, which I assumed would work since Keadrin's start his packages at line 407. So a quick 2da change, update several blueprints and scripts and I was back on track.

I continued on till the screen turned black the died when entering a new area. Originally it was a area transition to a speak trigger but had already been upgraded to an on client enter. I spent way too time picking apart the script then the conversation, assuming that it had to be the problem. I was stuck on the conversation because there were two ways into the area the first triggered the conversation and crashed the second had no conversation and worked fine. It was finally this morning I discovered that the conversation had nothing to do with the crash it was a bad custom visual effect. At a certain distance to the effect the game crashed it just happened that the first entrance was close enough to crash while the second was not.

Using Lance's patch HAK I was able to export the corrected area as a erf then with NWN2Packer I took the area information from the erf and stuck it into the patch HAK and the area worked perfectly with no crashes! When the time comes to release this I will definitely be including the patch hak.

Just a Bit of Blood and Gore

I have been working on one of my interior areas and have started creating a makeshift infirmary for a handful of refugees. They are severely to mortally injured and are being cared for in their last few hours of life. Thanks to Camb's Placed FX Factory the floor is covered in the blood of the injured and dead. When I went to place the NPC I was very disappointed. They looked healthy, happy and no where near dying. So. . .



My initial attempt was to create some type of visual effect to make the NPC bloddy. After spending way too much time I have discovered while I can change or combined effects, creating them is something entirely different. So cutting my loses and ditching what I had been working on I took another approach. The next thing to try would be making MDB. I would have less options then with the visual effect but I felt confident that I could pull this one off. I took the player heads #1 for the male and female model and the cloth armor #2 for both sexes. I made copies of the MDBs and their associated diffuse textures to modify. Using MoTB blood placeable DDS I was able to create a horrific set of blood splattered MDBs. Placing the blood took several attempts, the biggest issue, especially with the faces, was to avoid too much blood near or along the center line because it created a perfectly symmetrical blood splatter that just looked wrong.

During play testing I was happy with the look. By using the player heads I was able to give each NPC a different hair so I didn't have a massacred group of twins and triplets. For the hair I used a base of dark red to create the look that it was matted down with blood. I am very happy with the proneb animation. The breathing while I assume was done for a sleeping looks to be agonal breathing as the NPC lays there covered in blood. For sound sets I could not use the usual choices so I created a male and female set. Clicking on one and their greeting is "Don't have much time left. . ." and the other is "I've life in me yet. . .I think." The rest of the sounds are all pain grunts and groans.

Here are several of the screen shots.







Another thing that I did unintentionally was that since I copied a player MDB the bloodied heads are available at character creation. Initially I was going to look into changing them but who am I to say you can't play with a beat up and bloodied hero if you want to.

The making of a sword

I am working on one of the three final areas that I need to complete. Below I have a blacksmith who will be an important NPC to the story. What started out as a simple walkpath turned into a something a bit more. I wanted to show the smith creating a weapon and have him actually moving the weapon through the process where the player could see the NPC moving from step to step with the appropriate animation with sounds happened at each step. The final part of the process was adding the sword. I had three placeable swords, one for the fire being heated, one for the anvil and the final being cooled in water. I also had two swords in the blacksmiths inventory, one with a heated blade and the other cooled. The blacksmith equips the appropriate blade as he walks between the waypoints then a the sword placeable appears and disappears at each waypoint. So between the five swords only one is visible at a time.

For the placeable swords I was hoping for a function similar SetScriptHidden() for placeables but that doesn't exist. So after several different tries I set local locations on the area and used those to create the swords on and then would destroy them. First I was using an on client enter to set the local location but then I was concerned that walk paths may run even when the area was not loaded like heartbeats so at the start of the walkpoint script I identified the three swords objects, if the object was valid I had the script assign the location to the area as alocal location.

Here is the start with the blade heating in the fire

While the blade is heating the smith shovels more coal to feed the fire

The heated blade is removed from the heat and carried to the anvil

Time for some hammering. The smith equips a light hammer for this.

The sword is removed from the anvil and the still hot blade is move to the water basin

The sword appears in the water basin in the upper corner with some nice hissing sounds

The cooled blade is carried back to start over again.

Just a Saturday Morning

Storm of Zehir is complete.

While it was a fun game it is definitely light on story and interactions but I am not going to repeat my last post. I have moved my party to Indira's Trial and Terror and bumped up their levels and upgraded their gear. My first attempt was just with my level 18 party with out improvements and I quickly proceeded to have my party ripped apart in one horrific moment.

Spent a better part of a day and a couple of pots of coffee while I updated all the 2das for Risen Hero to work with SoZ and Kaedrin's PrC. For the most part I have very few conflicting lines and was able to copy and paste. The placeables and packages where the only two 2das that I had to change the lines. Changed all my on enter scripts to on client enter. Removed all speak triggers that the player would have jumped into on a new area and used on client enter to start the conversations. Updated the handful of placeables that lost their 2da line number to SOZ content and my companion package change scripts.

I will still be forcing certain classes on the companions and not allowing the player to choose how to advance them. In trying to create companions with more personality I want them to be their own character and mostly control their class progression. With influence and how some events are handled within the game additional class options will be opened. I don't know how this choice of mine will be received but I think it is best for what I am trying to create. prehaps I will create a poll to get some feedback.

The death system was surprisingly easy to implement, just a check True/False. I do need to come up with some type of rasie dead item that will make sense with the story.

I have been also been working on load screens changing and editing them in paint.net. Belowing I have two finalized area. The first may be recognized from an earlier post when I was fooling around with the sepia setting.





This final group of screen shots are from the work in progress Tentacled Horror. The wraith body has been dropped and changed to the yaun-ti guardian tinted dark purple/blue. It has gained a more fluid movement with the yaun-ti and no longer does the big spin in circle attack that the wraith would use.

Slithering through the door way.

This is how most of the test go with my would be adventurer being ripped apart.

I have also been working on my design document in attempts to get just a bit more organized.

At 80 pages I have only three more areas to write up. What I thought would be an easy task of really just collected and consolidating a bunch of stuff has turned into a rather large project. Between plots, side quest, NPCs area descriptions and a bunch of other things I have cranked out massive document. It's length is a bit exagerated as it has embedded spread sheets and uses at lot of bullet point outlines that eatup space.

The last kid on the block

Storm of Zehir

Spent most of the first day installing, updating then downloading plugins and what not. Discovered a number of plugins that I didn't even know I had and never used. When loading up the toolset I received two nasty error messages about the non-updated plugins. I decided that since I had no clue when or why I got them that I could probably do with out them.

I won't spend too much time talking about my opinion of the game since I am a month late and a number have already written up their thoughts and the debates on the vault and such. But I can say that I found some parts very interesting and others disappointing.

The biggest short fall for me is the conversations. With the right characters in the party I can pretty much do everything or at least have the option to with the first play through. I find the conversations to be shallow and unbelievable. The interjections could be nice in some areas but being able to have the main conversation with every character is difficult for me. I guess I would prefer some check on the main conversation nodes so that only the party leader could move the conversation forward and the party members could jump in with their skills/race/class/etc to help the party leader. I also miss the cutscene views with the lips flapping and the flamboyant arms waving around. The cohorts are also disappointing with their conversations. I have a dinosaur druid guy who could have been used to introduce a bit more of the land, lore and all that stuff since this is a new location but instead I can tell him to either leave or never mind. All the cohorts have this two line option and offer you very little information about their back story, history of the land or the story in general.

The overland map is fun but a little overwhelming. After a few hours of play I decided to download E.C. Patterson's SoZ Overland Encounter Reducer (BETA). I have been going with the 50% now that I am up to the Sword Coast I think I may drop down to 33%. I do like the idea of the overland map and how it is implemented, the skill checks and movement speeds changes. I see a lot of potential for the community with additions and modifications. Some of the areas off of the world map seemed slightly pointless and very small. Other then bragging points for beating the snot out of a dozen odd monster there isn't much that these areas add to the game. Most of them have no story behind them and have little effect that I have seen on the story in general. Slightly different point but why do all the jungle town's all have the same common room in their inns? I know that it saves time to duplicate an area but that little effort is definitely noticed in game play.

Some changes I have been think about while wandering the overland map are adding more factions to the wandering monsters and linking the random locations to the wandering monsters. Right now the monsters only attack the player's party and the guards walking the roads. I think it would be interesting to add in some food chain and territory battles between the monsters. Giant spiders would probably be just as happy to eat a group of kobolds as a group of adventurers. The random areas could also be linked to the monsters. If the player wipes out a couple of goblin caves there should be a noticeable decrease in the number of goblin encounters on the world map. So as you take out more bases you make the map safer to explore. While an area is still untouched by the player there should be a higher chance for that monster in the perimeter around the base. Those encounters would also protect their territory from wander monster that could be deemed a threat.

So there are some of my thoughts. I am sure that some of this could be done but honestly I haven't even looked at any of this in the toolset or any of the scripts that handle this system. I am just trying to explain why I am wiping out all these random caves and ruins while trying to provide some benefit other then just experience and some loot.

What about Risen Hero?

It will not be using the party conversation and it will remain a single character game, the additional party members will all be companions that are created for the game with hefty conversations. The world map will not be implemented in the current work but there is always the option in future stuff.

I don't have a screen shot but I have been playing with the Tentacled Horror, replacing the wraith with a tinted black/purple yuan-ti guardian. So far I have only done it in the toolset but I like the look and will need to run a in game test at some point. Once that is done I will share the results and screen shots here.

I have been slowly working on the wrapping up the conversations on the third module while trying not to get too much into the area design for the fourth module. For my news years resolution I have decided that I need to get a bit more organized with my modding, I don't want to end up like one of the Lost that appeared in my Halloween module. The week before Christmas I started to gather all my notes, spread sheets, diagrams, multiple word documents and random thoughts I haven't written down and consolidate them together. So far I have a 19 page document that is steadily growing but having everything in one place will definitely help wrap this up. If everything goes as planned play-testing should start in the summer some time, which will be about the two year mark. But there is a lot of work to do before I even get back into the toolset. I need to begin the process of updating all my 2das with SOZ and Kaedrin's PrC pack. At some point I also need to start creating HAK packs, up until now I have been using the override with multiple folders to organize everything to make updating and adding material easier. I also want to look at the death and bleeding system and possibly implement that, but I will need to check the balancing and adding raise dead stuff for the starting characters.

Well there it is my epic post.

Taunts and Tentacles

Not much of an update as I have been working on conversations and such. The last cutscene for module #3 is about halfway done with the conversation script completed for it.

The Taunt-like feats have also been scripted and add to the spells and feat 2das. Still need testing and what not. There are six feats total each with their own modified icon (tinting, contrast and other tweaks). They all use a will check, many use a combination of taunt skill with another skill then each has unique effects.
The penalties and duration will be based on the taunt skill. With every 5 ranks in taunt the penalties will inflict another -1 and add +1 rounds to the duration.

Lineage Mockery:The ever infuriating insult to heritage, ancestry or anything that the varied races of the FR hold dear.
Taunt skill
Penalties: AC, to Hit, Concentration

Desecrate Corpse: A horrid and vivid description of what will be done to the enemies corpse after the battle trying more to instill fear then enrage the target.
Taunt and Intimidate Skill
Penalties: to Hit, Saving Throws, Skill Checks
Chance to instill fear into the target

Sarcastic Spellcasting Mimicry: The taunter does an amusing imitation of spell casting. The real trick to this taunt is the taunters ability to take the incantation of spells and twist them into horribly insulting or obscene rhyme that the spell caster can't get out of their mind while casting.
Taunt and Listening Skills (need to hear the incantations before you can make fun of them.)
Penalties: Concentration, Spell failure 10+taunt rank%

Belittling Cat-Call: Useful against both the opposite and same sex, no one likes unwanted suggestive comments from an ugly half-orc (except maybe another ugly half-orc).
Taunt and Spot Skills (Spot used to see the physical attributes and the reaction to the comments)
Penalties: Same as mockery
Makes target switch to melee weapon and charge taunter. Good to pull attackers off of weaker companions or bring archers and spell casters into battle.

Absurd Accusation: This is a bluff and taunt skill and deals more with confusing the target then enraging them. A comic version of this would be the Frenchmen in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
Taunt and Bluff Skills
Penalties: AC, Saving Throws, Spell Resistance
Chance to daze the target as they try to figure out what you just accused them of.

Obscene Taunt: This will be a group taunt, with either an AOE around the target or a cone area from the taunter. The words and actions of the taunter are so insulting to most anyone or anything they all attack in a blind rage.
Taunt Skill
Penalties: Same as mockery only a group affect

Below are some screen shots of the tentacled horror from the last post. The exterior area it was shown in for testing just didn't fit the creature.When I finally get SOZ I will likely try the yaun-ti aberration in place of the wraith.