Hey Look....Screen Shots

Distractions: 

     War...War Never Changes... 

A little over a year ago I picked up a bundle of the three original Fallout games on steam. I had played the first 2 when they came out, but this is my first time playing Tactics. Leaving behind my longsword and taking up a Desert Eagle I have been conquering the post-apocalyptic waste, leaving a trail of carnage. Even for older games these are fun and have a great story behind them. One of the first things I noticed was the difference in the interface from many of the new games I've played. Nothing I could interact with glowed, flashed or had neon arrows pointing at them. As the player I had to look around the environment and try my skills or inventory items on things to see if I could learn anything. Most often I just got the floating text -Nothing Happens-, but if I wanted to try using my crowbar on the pre-war computer I could. So in between designing areas and writing scripts I have been killing raiders and mutants, or it may be the other way around.

The Helmites Camp:

     A Page Borrowed from Path of Evil-

This is a small little side area attached with the quest to kill off the inhabitants of the camp. The quest is given to the player from one of their more malevolent acquaintances. Receiving this quest is not alignment based and most every player will get this quest unless they try to completely ignore and shun the quest  givers (which will be rather difficult).

To avoid every player having to do a hack 'n slash through the good guy camp, the player has also been charged with framing the deaths on another group. Neither the player nor the acquaintances what to have the church of Helm searching for them trying to bring them to justice.

I have created four ways of completing this quest. The first and the easiest is the good way. While there are rewards for completing the quest this way, all the Helmites live and you will upset your acquaintances, which may be your goal. There are three ways to kill the Helmites: 1) With pure power and strength you cut them all down and some quick thinking at the end turns the blame. 2)You may be able to convince someone else to kill them for you. 3) And finally some guile and trickery can kill them all off.

The Helmites take advantage of the ACME Full Metal HAK. The camp is composed of three classes. There are the fighters, clerics and paladins. While all the amour is similar, each group has a slightly different set. The fighters and clerics all wear helmets to hide the fact that there are a number of clones despite there bing male and female models. There are four paladins; each one is unique with different armor, helmet, weapons and appearance.

The entrance of the camp and the guard that will question you upon entering.

The mess hall at the center of the camp. In the upper left, a dwarven paladin hangs out by himself.

A number of the troops. Male and female fighters and clerics gather around the campfires.

The edge of the camp and the start of a swamp

Another section of the camp, in the upper left a paladin carrying a shield walks through the camp inspecting the troops.

This is the commander's tent with the paladin commander inside and a halberd wielding guard outside.

An Exciting Month

I would like to take this post to thank the players and other builders in this community. May & June has been an exciting couple of months for Risen Hero. Your encouragement and feedback has been huge over the years!

On the vault it was raised to the Hall of Fame and on Nexus it was awarded the #1 spot for the File of the Month.

I would again like to thank the custom creators (see the growing lists to the right) who helped make it a unique experience.

I am glad that my project was enjoyed by the community and I will continue working away to bring this story to its conclusion.

Demons & Beer

Well, that is quite the title isn't it.

-If you found this by a google(or whatever search engine you use) be ready for a NWN2 / dungeon and dragon post.-

So onto topic # 1:

DEMONS:

I have started wrapping up the demon shop keepers conversations, they were original mentioned in this post: (it describes their brief history and some of their wares.)

http://risenheronwn2.blogspot.com/2011/01/demonic-merchants-and-their-wares.html

I usually complain about conversations due to their conplexity, but I have been having fun with this group. It has turned into a web of deception and contempt. All the merchant hate each other and have their own schemes, except for the smith. He is a cursed mortal who sold his soul and can't stop swinging his smithing hammer or suffer unimaginable pain.

Originally these merchants were going to have fairly generic merchant conversations, but all that changed oOnce I took into account their back stories and fiendish heritage. One merchant wishes to eat another merchant and steal his wares. While another two, a succubus and a Litilu, scheme against each other and want to involve the PC. Finally the Keeper of Artifacts, a rat like demon, will trade information about the other merchants for specific items. He will present a player with a riddle and they must guess an mundane item to place in his basket. If they give him the right item he will given them some bit of information they can use against the other merchants. This bit of information will  give the player a 10 percent discount at that specific demon's store.

There is also a quest for female characters with greater than 12 charisma. Spell effects and potions can be used to increase the CHA and access this quest. The Keeper will "sell" this information to a female character if they do not find the quest or don't have the charisma to unlock it. At the conclusion of the quest 3 of the merchants will  look to gain the prize.
   -#1: The quest giver who wants the item
   -#2: An enemy of the quest giver that wants to cause distress to the quest giver
   -#3: A third party who will auction the item between the two to gain the most profit.

So demon merchants will not only be trying to take advantage of the PC but also want gain some advantage over each other. None of them will give the PC any information about themselves, but will be more then willing to talk trash about another merchant. That trash talk will all be opinion, some of it will be true while other bits of information will be be lies. Luckily for the PC these demon's are barred from trading for his/her soul.

I have tried to make each demon greedy  power hungry

And now topic #2

BEER:

After spending the day working in my garden I am reminded of a character I cut from chapter 1, the Brew Master.

-Q: How does gardening remind me of this?
-A: I am working on my hops garden, which I will be using this fall to brew an incredible IPA!.

This NPC was mentioned before and dropped from the monastery, but will be included in a fictional ocean side village  south of Balder's Gate & Candle Keep.  This NPC will discuss the ale brewing process and advocate good, strong, bitter beers; unlike that stuff that is pushed by the mass produced beer companies.

I am not at that area yet in my building process, I can guarantee that chapter 2 will have the brew-master.


In conlusion chapter 2 will include scheming demons and references to delicious beers.

Making Items More Interesting

One of my goals during creation was to avoid having boring items scattered around. Instead I have tried to create unique and hopefully interesting items. They need to have an description that fits the item and backs up the properties. I started with having both positive and negative attributes on the items then I moved onto item tag based scripts. Items were given numerous abilities as well as new conditions to wielding them. A dwarf won't wear a hide armor made from tanned dwarf skin. Any nonevil character who wears the armor of the fallen paladin will have their alignment shifted to evil since only evil people can wear it. This makes it so a character with a high use magic item skill won't be able to use every item. While in theory they can use the item, their ability does not remove the item's corrupting or cleansing ability.

My last two items went beyond tag scripts and I have now started using spell hooking to help improve and diversify the items found in chapte2 2.  

Spell Hooking:
This all started when I wanted to create an item called a skin cloak. It is the flayed skin of a dead necromancer, found in the The Tomb of Terror. In that book a necromancy can compel this creature to become its familiar. Working within the scope of the toolset this wasn't going to work. So I decided that the cloak could be worn by necromancers, a thing that you can't quite define with the stock functions. This led to a bit of discussion on the bioware forums as to what made a necromancer. A player could choose either the necromancy school specialty (can't get this in script) or the levelup package necromancer. But even with these a wizard could go on to play the game and never cast a necromancy spell. With suggestions from the community several different things were check but the biggest factor is the use of necromancy spells.

I created a spell hook that keeps tracks of all spells cast by players. It has the total number of spells and the count of spells from each spell school. Once a player has cast 250 spells they can then have a specialty. If 40% of their spells come from the same spell school then that is their specialty. They can only have 1 specialty at a time and are awarded a history feat. It doesn't give a bonus, but like with the skin cloak it will be recognized for little bonuses and I'll likely work it into some conversations as well. Right now it is completely untested for function. Once play testing starts I'll have to see how the total spell count and percentage works best. I'm hoping 40% will be high enough but not too high that no one gets it. AT the same time if it is too low a player could have about 40% in 2 different school and their specialty will keep jumping back and forth. So I'll have to see what happens there.

The second item that uses the spell hooking is a pair of gauntlets. On my first release I forgot all about monks and there was nothing for them and I had to go back and sprinkle in some monk specific items with my first update. Since then I have been adding those items in with the same frequency as other items. While these gloves will likely be utilized by any non-evil monk it isn't limited just to monks. It is a good item and any evil character who tries to use them with burn their hands with divine energy taking 1 point of damage and unequiping the item. The holy water grenade spell is hooked for these gauntlets. They contain a reservoir and the holy water can be used on them and it will set several variables that will be used on the on hit script. If they have holy water in the reservoir they will do bonus damage to undead depending on the strength of the holy water and there is a chance to utterly destroy the undead. The DC is again set by the strength of the holy water and the undead adds their turn resistance to their save roll. Most of the time undead are immune to critical hits but with this weapon I decided that a well placed punch could do extra damage to the undead, so a roll is done on damage to to check for a critical hit. The critical hit feats for unarmed attacks are part of that roll so a player won't be cheated.  

On a separate note:
With the creation of the new Nexus NWN page I have uploaded my content there in addition to the vault. Being inspired by this new site I have made available two creatures appearance that I have used in Risen Hero. The bloated zombie, this is a reskin of the drowned appearance that has legs. The other creature is a tintable ice mephit, I used this for a quasit. I have also released the script system and ooze blueprints that I used. Lance Botelle made some great improvements to the scripts and the slime zombies use a zombie skin that Chaos Wielder released. This does require the RWS creature conversion to work.

Finally I have been working on a small override that would let a player use the half-celestial and half-fiend as playable races. I create the back bone of this system for Jezebell, the half-find companion. It grants racial abilities on every odd level. I have modified a number of 2das to correct the feat allocation and create a number of the spell-like abilities. In the past if the Half-Celestial race from MotB was turned into a playable race, a level 1 character would have a number of powerful abilities like resurrection and summon planetar. Those are now given at level 17 and 19. For a full list of the character abilities and stuff look here on the bioware pages: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/167/index/9794521

 Right now this override can be used with the OC, MotB, SOZ and any community module that doesn't alter any 2das. It currently is incompatible with kaedrin and will not be part of Risen Hero (expect for the half-fiend companion).

---Something Clever Should Go Here---

No screen shots this time...Maybe next time. Progress has been slow over the past two months, though I keep the toolset open and chip away where I can. Mostly I have been working on wrapping up the conversations for the ogre tribe and polishing up the demonic merchant's conversations. I just added a new feat today, its part of scope creep. It doesn't do or offer the player anything other than maybe make them laugh. I still need to make an icon, if I'm feeling generous I'll post a screen shot of it completed on the next update. Conversations. I won't complain too much here. Anyone who has followed my blog knows that conversations are the most difficult part of modding for me. They are what make a game, adding depth and diversity to it. A short plot conversation for me is 2000+ words and only a 1/4, if even that, will be seen in any one play through. An example will be the most recent ogre conversation I have been working on. If is purely a optional branch that will add to the main plot line, but won't take anything away if it is not done. You can ask the ogres to help you after a lengthy intro. During the intro 1 out of 7 of the companions will randomly interject. The player will then have a chance to ask the ogres for help. There will be 4 skill based nodes that will only appear if the player has a high enough rank then 2 other opinions. One of the opinions is a slightly evil response that has no skill checks the last if an auto fail, but if the right companions are in the party, 1 out of 5 will interject with a success to move the conversation on. I have recently been playing Fallout 3, and the conversations have been bothering me. They are all very static with little to no change as the game progresses. The one that irritated me the most was the conversation for Gob, a ghoul in Megaton. I found his aunt later in the game and she told me say hi to him. So the next time I was in town I talked to him and nothing. I can't say "Hey I found your aunt" with either a compliment or insult added to it. This little thing, while it adds nothing to the plot takes away from the immersion and game play. I don't know if Bethesda improved their conversations with Fallout Las Vegas or Skyrim, I'll likely find out at some point. So to wrap it up, conversations are important. and I'm working like hell to make sure mine are interesting and have dynamic parts that add to game play. Screen shots next time.

Ogres of the Bone Eater Tribe

So I have taken a break from conversation writing and moved into a small area within the Sunset Mountains.

Just a point of warning, there will be some minor spoilers from chapter 1 here but nothing too important, so read on.


After returning to the monastery, the player will have the oportunity to return to the mountains after hearing reports of an encampment of creatures. For those who played chapter 1 and chose the talking path through Dor'Gallon's fort, the green ogre mage below should be familiar. He is the new leader of the ogre tribe, The Bone Eaters. The player killed the old leader, the Ogre Crone in Dor'Gallon's Hall, the final battle for chapter 1.

I have been working on some type of inner turmoil for the ogre tribe. I need a reason why they won't kill you in revenge for the crone's death. Right now I have been looking at religion. What better way to cause turmoil? The ogre tribe follows Vaprak, the ogre deity. Under the Crone's leadership, she forced them to follow some other evil, non-giant deity, maybe like Malar. Since you killed her and freed them from her leadership, the ogres will at least talk to you before trying to eat you.

The ogres will offer some assistance with a plot quest given to the player. However, their help will come at a moral cost of sort. A player will be presented with the problem and a choice must be made, and either side of the decision will have positive and negative aspects. This will be far from an evil path and may even be beneficial to a good aligned player. I hope this will be a point in the game where the line between good and evil will be blurred a bit.

Now some information about the area itself. The area is set in a small valley with a flooded, slow moving river. The valley is a flood plane and will eventually be completely underwater (this is implied and will not happen during game play). There are a lot of grasses and ferns but no bushed or small trees. Some flood resistance trees are around as well as numerous dead trees. The land is fairly flat as layers of silt are left behind after each flooding. Also there are no rocks as they are either burried in the silt or washed away.
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For the simple fortification I used a similar designs to Dor'Gallon's fort, since they came from there. The entrance is protected by large berms of dirt with sharpened spikes. Some ruined trebuchets are also in the camp, likely plundered from Dor'Gallon before the ogres left.

Below are the screen shots. Currently the area is nearly complete, I just need to add lighting and a few more effects. The useable objects still need descriptions and all that, and there are a few floating trees and objects that need to be anchored down.

The green ogre mage. The two guards use the A2 playable ogre model so they have unique faces and armor.

The back of the camp and the water fall that feeds the river with mountain water. I still need to finish populating the camp with ogres.

Looking into the camp from the entrance.

Another picture of the camp, this one probably should have been before the last....

 

The river from the edge of the camp. That is a small island in the middle of the river.

Isn't there suppose to be a second chapter?

Is there an expected release date? No.

I am hoping to start focusing a bit more time on modding soon, in all likelihood I expect building to increase again in the fall. There are just too many things happening in the summer with family, work and all those water related activities, its hard to commit the time to building.

Chapter 1 Update:

I have posted what should be the final update for chapter 1. The patch.hak may have a couple of files added if players encounter weird stuff, but I don't see any issues arising. Several changes to the fog of war was made, in particular it was changed to passive so the fog will always clear. I like the clear feat and the idea of mapping (as the system was designed by Lance Botelle ), but due to player feedback as well as my testing it didn't necessarily fit my campaign. The update also includes improved ooze scripts, they use some code that Lance Botell provided to to weaken weapons and armor before destroying them. So instead of having the +2 mace destroyed it will turn into a non enchanted mace then precede to drop in penalties, at -5 the weapon/armor will be destroyed.

The Community Project:

I have contributed 2 quest areas to the community project. Both have gone through beta testing and just need some minor updating that will happen later once the project gets closer to consolidating the individual modules. They were both a fun side project and helped the development of Risen Hero. Chapter 2 will include a larger ooze dungeon, which will be different from the community project, but this allowed to test the ooze design, scripts and challenge. The other community area was more an experiment with scripting and creating non-combat puzzles. While the same puzzle will not be present in chapter 2 some of the general ideas or scripting base codes may be reused.

So what is the status of chapter 2?

Plot:

• The 2 hub areas, or base of operations, have been completed
• The general plot line has been completed, a couple of holes still need to be completed.
• Side quest: Several side quest for the swamp area have been created and completed. A couple of side quest have been designed but need to be created in the toolset. Horgath is one of these sidequest, he was introduced in the Halloween Project and appears in both the SOZ expansion and the Community Project, the side quest in Risen Hero will conclude his story. Additional side quest are also added during area and conversation creation, somehow this just happen mysteriously when sitting at the toolset.
• Currently I am working on the plot NPC conversations in these hub areas. This is a large undertaking, especially since chapter 2 be a more open play style. In short order the player could engage the final boss, most likely with disastrous results.

Area Design:

• There will be 4 area groups: The hub areas, western areas, eastern areas and a swamp area.
• Currently hub areas are mostly completed, tweaking will continue throughout design
• The weastern areas are in the same geographic area as chapter 1. Players will be able to return to some areas like the waste to complete the side quest there. The ruined village is also accessible and the dead bodies have turned to skeletons or scattered bones. The buildings are a bit more ruined and collapsed. About 4 to 5 areas are in the plans that haven't been created yet.
• The swamp area is nearly completed. This will use an overland map to explore the swamp and add to it size while making it manageable to both design and explore. A vendor will be at the entrance to sell items to help survive the swamp and offer a quest about a giant alligator terrorizing the area. Just waiting for the alligator model, right now I have a eight legged alligator using the basilisk model. 
• The eastern area is only a concept at this point and nothing has been done in the toolset. This area will include the end battle area, which should provide a unique ending.

Design Delays?

I have recently download Fallout 3 from steam and I've been spending too many night fighting the horrors of a apocalyptic wasteland. To make matters worse I have found the Fallout 3 nexus and all sorts of mods for the game.

So that is what is happening. Chapter 2 is going forward, it is about a 1/4 completed (maybe, very rough estimate). Once the main hub conversations are done (or mostly done) I will be back to area design.

Back to Risen Hero, Update first then Chapter 2

I have just about wrapped up my 2 areas I am working on for the community project.
See here: NWN2 Community Project

I have opened the toolset and started working on the big update I mentioned a month ago. The most recent kaedrin, 1.41.3, has been downloaded and I need to start going through that. I have pulled in all the improvements I made to the oozes in the community project and applied them to RH.

Over the next 2 weeks I expect to have the update just about wrapped up and will run some testing.

Then.....back to Chapter 2 - The Powers of Chaos -

Fog of War and other Updates

Risen Hero has been updated to include the Fog of War, there were a few issues with its original implementation. Not all the correct files were uploaded to the vault. But, everything is up there now.

During  June I am hoping to do the last update on Chapter 1.  This final update will make Risen Hero compatible with the most recent Kaedrin, currently that is 1.41.3. Right now RH is at 1.40. I will also update the oozes and their scripts. I offered my ooze blueprint and scripts to Lance Botelle for his project and he made a number of suggestions that I plan on adding.  Also with this update I am looking to move some content around. Scripts that conflict with kaedrin's unalter content will be moved to a HAK, so they will override his content should a player choose to drop a different version of his content in the override opposed to the one included with the RH download. I will also move the conflicting 2das to the HAK to do the same. Right now that should be all that needs to be done, I have a few other things I want to look at to smooth out and improve play. I just need to be careful, as I have found improving something that already works often breaks two other things.

With this final update I am hoping to get some feedback on the Fog of War system created by Lance Botelle. Risen Hero uses his default active mapping, the area map has to be open to remove the fog and it can not be removed in combat. I have also included the expert mapping feat that will change it from the active to the passive mapping, the fog is removed with the map closed. The feat is available at level 3 and a companion will meet all the conditions for the feat. So, as a player if you do not like the active mapping, you will only need to complete 1 1/2 areas before the feat is available. If you like the mapping you can choose not to get the feat and all is good.

As a player what do you think of the fog? Currently there is very little available content with the fog. I have created a poll that I will use to help make some decisions on the FoW for this final update. Please complete it and provide any comments. Thanks, Shaughn.

Temporarily: Risen Hero on Hold

For the past month I have put Risen hero on hold and  it will likely be for the next moth or so. I am hoping this break will re-energize me once I get back to building, much like the break between chapters 1 and 2.

I have started work on the community campaign, which is shaping up to be one hell of a game! I will be contributing 2 quest to this game. One of the quest will involve Horgath, seen in previous community campaigns (Halloween and SOZ expansion). I am hoping to develop a bit more of his back story, the conclusion to his story will be in the Risen Hero campaign (part of chapter 2, the next release).

I don't want to give away any spoilers of the community game, but I look forward to it; there are a number of very talented community members working on it.

On a separate note.
I have broke out my old HeroQuest board game by MB, and I have been playing it with my two boys (6 & 8). It is a fun run down memory lane and a great experience with my kids. It is fun watching their reactions as I describe the room they enter or seeing the fun in their faces as they slaughter goblins and orcs.



 

Who are all these NPC and why do they think they get to talk?

So apparently Chapter 2 needs to have a bunch of dialog.

The swamp is mostly complete, with 75% of the sub areas completed. Still trying to decide if I want to add goodies, which will need to be completely reworked.

I have recently left the swamp and moved back into the plot areas. While making non-plot areas is fun, it does nothing to bring the story closer to it's end. They also tend to be a bit lighter in conversation and a chance to try new and different things with scripting.  The main two area that are currently being put together are the Monastery and a second base of operations that will be located within the swamp.

The monastery is nice since the area is complete and polished, and most of the NPCs are created. They will be getting all new conversations that go with the second chapter, and that is where I am now. I have about three complete at this time and several others in various states. Some for the minor NPCs will have conversations rather similar to their chapter 1 conversation, with only the major conflict information changed. I have also added several more NPCs to the monastery that were met throughout the first chapter. The new area will have less NPCs and more that fall into a minor role. Currently only 2 will have more in depth conversation that tend to take forever to write.

Once I get these conversations and associated journal entries completed, I will be leaving the plot areas and will start work on the Horgath's side quest. He was originally introduced in the Halloween Community Project, then his fall was part of the SOZ holiday expansion. With the completion of that side quest, the player will be able to end his story and maybe offer him redemption.

Working On Big Update

Getting ready to sit down and do a large update to chapter 1.

I decided to do a few play through of chapter 1 again for two reasons. First is I am starting to test different plot areas that are mostly complete. It is easier to use a character that has completed the game and has the items, bonuses and consumables opposed to trying to levelup and equip a new character.
The second reason for the play through is I have reached a dialog heavy part of design. I need to start working on all the dialog for the monastery as well as the second new base of operations. These will fill the player in with the plot and direction while starting to answer the questions from the conclusion of chapter 1. I found it more helpful to read the conversations of the companions and the NPCs in game opposed to opening the toolset and reading them there.

I was surprised how many little things weren't working quite right that were during playtesting. Fortunately I only found one large issue that has already been uploaded in the patch.hak. So I have a list of things to go and add or modify. While I am going through those items I have also gone and created two new scripts that need to be added throughout the campaign. The party will now receive experience for disarming traps. I have gone through all the base traps and created a CR based on damage, number of targets or radius effect, magical effects and saves. That CR is further modified by the traps DC to detect and disarm. The script will also check for a local variable so custom traps or the dart and arrow traps can be given a set CR since they do not use a trap_base_type. This is also the first scripts that I have written that pulls information out of a 2da.  I am using the experience 2da, by finding the character level and the trap CR I pull out the appropriate experience to be awarded. The second script will give a single character experience for picking a lock. The experience is based on the difference of the lock DC verse the characters open lock skill rank including all bonuses. In regards to experience I have also modified the sneak script. I have discovered it is only giving the character who is player controlled the experience for sneaking past encounters. This throws off the experience levels, as the party would gain the experience for fighting the encounter so they should gain the experience for avoiding it.

With this update I am also looking at adding Lance's For of War. http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/2011/02/area-map-fog-of-war.html
I am still deciding whether to use the original or the passive system. I like the original, but know that most of the feedback on the bioware forum and vault prefer the passive system. But for now I can set the waypoint for maps not effect by the fog. The only area that will likely take advantage of the map unavailable will be lost in the mountains, as I designed the area in a way that made the area map mostly useless.

So I am off to the toolset to find all the traps and locks.

OOZE GALORE

Oozes and slimes. I have been going back to these creatures for my swamp area. Some players may have found them during chapter 1, if they snuck through Dor'Gallon's fort, but even then they were completely avoidable. The 3 oozes that made it into chapter 1 will be in the game plus a number of other oozes, jellies, slimes and cubes.

In chapter 2 they will be 1 of the three factions that wander the swamps, the other two are undead and lizardfolks. When wandering the swamps, in the southern portion, oozes will pop up up as wandering monsters.

Oozes have acids that can destroy both armor and weapons. Whenever an ooze is attacked there is a reflex save to destroy the attacker's weapon, main hand first then off hand. When oozes attack there is a reflex save to prevent armor from being destroyed, shield first then armor. If the reflex save fails the individual item also has a save before getting destroyed. I figured magical items should be more resilient then mundane items. For the items save it rolls a d20 plus a bonus. The bonus is figured by first counting all the item properties, then using the price of an item to assign a multiplier, (<18,000 x1, 18,000 - 42,000 x2, 4,2000 - 130,000 x3, etc). The DC is taken from the ooze, the bigger and nastier the ooze the higher the DC, the DC is then increased by the number of times the weapon has been exposed to ooze acid.  Roll = d20 +(# properties * cost multiplier) vs Ooze DC + times exposed. At some point I will need to set up a script for a blacksmith to restore your weapons and armors or an item to restore them. There will be an Ooze resistant ointment that can be used on armor and weapons and will provide a immunity to the ooze for 6 rounds. during that time the exposure numbers will not go up. The oozes will not dissolve plot items or other items marked immune with a local variable.

On damage the oozes will also split if attacked with a slashing weapon. This is for weapons only and will not split if slashing damage is done with a spell. The oozes will decrease in size by 50% with each split and their hitpoints will decrease by 1/2. The ooze will go no smaller than 25% it's default appearance size. When fighting oozes if the wrong weapons are used the player will quickly be surrounded by a swarm. Even low level oozes can be difficult with bad tactics.

Recently, I discovered an error in my scripting. Weapons were being destroyed when oozes where damaged by spells or eldritch blast. The Fred solved the issue and everything is working fine. I need to get that updated script into chapter 1, so far no one has reported it. So either they are close enough to the oozes that they think it is suppose to happen or their weapons are either ranged or just good at making the ooze saves.

I have also created a script system for oozes to be on the ceiling. I originally started using the acid blob traps in my swamp ooze area, but didn't like how it worked. A player shouldn't be able disarm an ooze over their head and traps are immune to damage. So I made a few blueprints and a number of scripts. In the toolset an ipoint is place where the acid blobs will hang out, they are immobile on the ceiling. At the first heartbeat they spawn in the actual ooze placeable and destroy themselves. I do this because the ooze placeable uses the citymblock appearance and it is invisible in the toolset. The ipoint makes it easy to the place the oozes but I was unable to mouse over and target it during testing. Initially the item is unusable and just hangs out hidden. There is a search radius around the ooze that the player may discover it and there is an attack radius. If the ooze is not found and the player is within the attack radius, it will "drop" down onto the character doing 2 d4 of acid damage and spawn in an acid blob. If the ooze is discovered the placeable changes to usable and has a green glowing ball floating in the area marking the ooze location. The ooze may then be safely targeted from a distance. If the ooze is killed the player gets xp on a scale based on their level, if it isn't killed the placeable item is destroyed and an acid blob is spawned. What is nice about this as well is, if the player has the feeling that some evil designer decided to pepper a corridor with ceiling oozes they can launch several aoe spells and try to wipe out a bunch. Those that are not killed outright will drop down and attack.

I am still working out a few things with this system, but I feel at this point it is nearly complete. The only thing I really need to do is modify the newly spawned acid blob to reflect any damage it received on the ceiling before dropping.

Another ooze related addition for this area is slime zombies. Base on the olive slime zombies from the Tome of Horror source book. While there are no olive slimes, I thought having the zombies would be a nice touch for this dungeon crawl area.

Here is a list of the oozes: (no screen shots, even though I've been testing like mad)

Simple oozes. Will split and destroy non magical items (item has no properties)
Acid Blob CR2
Grey Ooze CR4

Dangerous Oozes, will destroy magical items.
Black Pudding CR7
Living Muck CR9

With the oozes I have been setting up most encounters to have small number of the difficult oozes with a large number of the simple oozes. That way some items will be left after the fight. Certain points will have much more of the dangerous oozes and the party will either need to rely on spell and ranged damage or have the immunity ointment.

Jellies: Will not destroy items but will still split.
Ochre Jelly CR 5
Mustard jelly CR7 -Has a slow aura surrounding it.

Gelatinous Cubes: Do not split and do not dissolve items. Have damage resistance /magic
Normal cube CR3
Large Cube CR9
Huge Cube CR19

For the slime zombies their CR is between 1-3, depending on their source creature. Right now I have humans and lizardfolks, but some other swamp creatures may become slime zombies. I have been using Derek H's zombie skins, zombie_egg for these creatures.

For a large slime area I figured that there needed to be some kind of slime cult or worshipers. So there will be pockets of slime clerics and wizards that will attack from behind the hoards of oozes and slimes. I still need to go through and customize their spells to reflect their love of oozes and acids. I still haven't descided what the end boss will be for this area. I have the spot figured out and a little puzzle to get into that spot. I will need to come up with something that is mostly ooze like but has some form of intelligence, and be of monsterous size.

Demonic Merchants and Their Wares

I have been working on a group of demon merchants that have been summoned to trade with the player. The player holds no power over them and they are only interested in gaining money and power with no real interest in the player's success or failure.

Once the merchants were fleshed out a bit and given a bit of history they needed wares worthy of demons. They will not generally sell items found at standard merchants. Instead the majority of their stock will be unique items. I have gotten a lot of suggestions and great ideas from the community.

 http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/167/index/5499332

Below I have included a screenshot of the merchant and some of the new unique items and custom content. With these item I have started to edit some of the item property 2das. Allowing for additional feats to be added to items as well as custom spells so that not every item has a unique ability on use. The areas below are partially finished. Lighting both placed and area have not been touched as well as a few more visual effects may be added. The first three merchants all have usable and working crafting stations: smith, magical, alchemy.

The Damned Smith

Cursed to an eternity of crafting arms and armors for the Blood War this smith hammers away day and night with now rest.
Right now I have been playing with a animated suit of armor to actually sell and buy things from the player, figuring the smith is unable to leave his hammer and anvil. The suit may stay or be thrown away allowing the player to interact directly with the smith. He will carry a variety of items but nothing made from cold iron. Like all demons he is paranoid, he likely has a stash somewhere for both his own protection and to earn him favor with more powerful demons, but it is not for sale.

Items: (not all)

-There are ten Celestial Killing items, eight melee and 2 range. These are all adamantine, +2/3 attack to good. About half have a plus 1 enchantment and they all have a damage property that celestial aren't immune to or have a high resistance to.

-There are also ten Devil Slaying items, eight melee and 2 ranged. These items are all alchemical silver and and a +2/3 attack vs lawful evil. These also have additional damage that will maximize damage to devils. Depending on the items power it may or may not have a +1 enchantment.

The above twenty items will not have a enchantment greater than +1, as they are considered specialized items against certain foes. The global on equip script has also been modified so there is a 25% chance that the user's alignment will adjust towards evil due to the corruption forged into this weapons.

-Abysmal Battle Axe.

This axe is shroud in flame causing additional fire damage. The red glow of the axe will light the area similar to a touch but hiding will be near to impossible.

-Cursed Kama of Envy.

Once owned by a jealous dwarven monk who sought to be better than every other monk in his monastery. When confronted by his superior the dwarf struck him down in anger. The dwarf's god sentence him to an eternity in the weapon that he used. On hit this kama will select one ability and shift the wielder's ability towards the opponent ability score. Each consecutive hit that the same random ability is chosen will increase the shift and the duration of the shift.

-Dagger of Unrelenting Attacks.

This +3 dagger allows the wielder to attack again and again against any opponent. They will not back down or become filled with fear. While they may not realize the danger to themselves due to the intelligence and wisdom penalties they will have both haste and barbarian rage to aid them in their attacks.

-Dire Claws (kamas using sunlee's claws) main hand and off hand.

These +2 claws will cause slashing bonus damage with one hand and bonus piercing with the other, while allowing for an increased parry ability. While these blades are sold separately there is no special bonus for equipping both of them other than just looking cool.

-Festering Disease

Disease and death were crafted into this long sword by the Damned Smith. While it is an unenchanted blade, it offers a +3 attack bonus and will infect the opponent with filth fever with a very high DC to resist. Unfortunately the blade does not spare the wielder from it's disease process and they suffer both a constitution and charisma decrease.

-Gluttonous Blood Drinker

This club feast on the blood of it's opponent. Upon inspection it appears to have no magical abilities, but once it hits an opponent it starts to grow in damage. Each consecutive hit against the same opponent will add an addition 1d4 of damage. At each 5th hit the player movement rate slows by an increasing percentage as they become bloated and full. Starving the weapon and time will remove the slowing effect.

-Soul Taster

This +2 scimitar actually steals fragments of the soul and give them to the user as vampiric regeneration. There is also a 20% chance that the wearer will shift in alignment towards their target.

-Wing Ripper

This scythe was created for fighting winged opponents. For simplicity it attacks racial groups that generally have wings. Dragons, feys and outsiders as well as any NPC with the wing feat. The weapon itself is only a +1 weapon with bonus to hit the above racial groups. On hit the opponent must make a reflex save to keep their wings or be permanently slowed.

-Plate of the Fallen paladin

This +2 full plate belonged to a fallen paladin. Due to the loses of the paladin's divine abilities the armor grants the wearer the abilities of a level 2 blackguard. Dark Blessing, Smite Evil and Bull Strength once per day. The armor is only usable by evil characters, but it won't restrict anyone from putting it on. Once wore it will enforce the alignment by shifting the wearer to an evil alignment.

-Zombie Hide Armor

This +1 studded armor provides the wearer with darkvision and a +4 AC vs undead, if they don't mind the charisma drop.

-Wright Hide Small Shield

This +2 small shield allows the player to bash their opponent once per round doing 1d4 of bludgeoning damage as well as the chance to paralysis the opponent. While bashing the player will suffer a -3 shield AC penalty for 1 round.

-Devil Hide Mask

The tanned face of a devil is worn as a mask. Granting the player an outworlder's vision. They gain an AC bonus and true seeing while suffering a charisma penalty.

 

Forsaken Desire

This succubus who turned down the advances of a powerful demonlord was cursed with aging. Though she may be immortal everyday her wrinkles deepen and her body weakens.

This demon will sell magical items to the player. She will carry scrolls for the player to increase their spellbook, note they will not be friendly spells. There will be no heroism, haste, globes of invulnerability. Instead fear, disintegrate, crushing despair, feeblemind and such.

Items:

-Hanged Crinimal's Head

This mummified head belonged to an executed criminal. dried bat wings have been crudely sown to the side of the head. The head is a single use item and once thrown into the air becomes reanimated and acts as a summoned creature until the spell ends, when it falls lifeless to the ground if not killed first.

-Crown of the Damned

Only usable by warlocks this crown offers them ability focus feats to improve their eldritch blast. (feats in kaedrin's pack)

-Flute of Control  ***Updated***

This flute is crafted from a dead god's rib bone. Each use requires a sacrifice from the user and the results differ.
One each use there is a 1% chance of death. Otherwise the player must make a will save (death type save), the DC for the save decreases with higher perform skills. If the save fails the player takes 1 of 15 random effects. The duration of the effects are decreased with a higher spellcraft skill. Penalties: disease, poison, blind, slow, ability decrease, natural AC decrease, attack bonus decrease, silence, spell failure 100%, negative level. The target must make a will save, again the perform skill effects difficulty of the save. The  target then has 8 effects. -4 to AC & attack bonus, charmed, frightened, paralyzed, confused, insane, dominated, death. Higher skill in perform tilts the random choice towards the end of the list.
-Profane Ring

Created through dark rituals using a ring of a good Deity. This ring offers a +3 bonus to saves, and the ability to cast darkness 3 times a day.

-The Lyre of  Orpheus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFb8AoiwmDw&feature=related

Twice per day the player can use the lyre. The target must make a will save or be killed, on success the Target takes damage. The damage and will save is based on the players perform skill. There is a 5% chance that the players strumming the lyre will anger the gods and they will be struck dead with no save.

-The belt of Unenduring Speed.

The wearer is under a effect similar to the spell haste, however they are unable to keep up with their increased thirst and hunger and also suffer the effects of fatigue.

-Wand of Darkness

50 charges of darkness, what more could you ask for.

Mistress of Passion

This Lilitu (from the Fiendish Codex I) acts as both the alchemy merchant and the divine merchant. Don't let her name or first appearance fool you. She would be more likely to kill in cold blood then to grant you your desire and passions.

Items:

-Belly of Blades

This sand like potion will rip through the drinkers stomach after drinking and surround them with blades similar to the blade barrier spell.

-Demonic Berserker Potion

Causes the the drinker to go into a battle rage similar to the frenzy berserker.

-Fleshing Gauntlets

These gauntlets act as a +1 spiked gauntlet doing 1d4 of piercing damage. Three times a day they can be activated for a duration of 2 rounds. During that time they will rend the flesh from their opponents causing and addition 1d6 slashing damage and a 1d4 decrease to constitution and charisma. A fortitude save will decrease the damage by half with no ability decreases.

-Hell's Fire

This potion will surround the player in a ball of fire similar to flame strike.

-Potion of Detect Undead

-Potion of Negative energy Protection

Will cause the drinker to ignore the first 5 point of negative energy damage for two hours. During that time they have a 10% vulnerability to positive energy damage.

-Potion of Remove Magic

Same affect a dispel magic

-Potion of Stoneskin

-Potion of True Seeing

-Taste of Demon

This potion will transform the drinker into a herzou for three rounds.

-Vial of Demonic Blood

This potion will give the effects of Spell Protection
-Poison Tooth  ***Updated***
This fake tooth fits into the mouth of a character and allows them to make a touch attack once per round, unlimited uses. The player must have a vile of poison in their inventory to use the tooth and a random vile will be used with each bite. There is no check to apply poison to the tooth and a successful bite will cause 1d4 of piercing damage and apply the type of poison vile used. Should the attack miss the player must make a check equal to the apply poison check to avoid poisoning themselves. Certain races immune to the poison bite, constructs, elementals, undead and oozes. if the player chooses to bite them then several things can happen. When biting constructs and earth elementals there is a chance to break the tooth, destroying it. biting oozes causes acid damage to the biter, and fire damage for biting fire elementals. Biting an undead will infect the player with a random disease.

The Lord of Kiste

This fury little demon is filled with greed and is actually a very poor merchant. He doesn't want to part with his loot and would rather pay high to avoid losing an item in a drawn out haggle.

Still playing with the walkmesh helper but eventually he will be standing on the crate he is currently in front of looking the player in the eyes. I am also looking at creating a script for when his store closes, it will have him try to steal a consumable from the player and add it to his hoard.

Items:

-Box of Holding

Not nearly as convenient as a bag of holding

-Enchanted Lockpick

Grants the carrier bonuses to thieving skills

-Everlasting Inkwell

Originally made for scribes this vial and can exploited. Two times a day it contents dumped on the ground creating an effect similar to the spell grease.

-Face Paint, Camouflage

Provides effects similar to camouflage spell

-Face Paint, War

Provides effects similar to the spell heroism

-Mirror of vanity

Grants the user a charisma bonus due to their over grooming and can cast hold person once per day.

-Robes of the Madman

Trapped within these robes, that were once +2 Robes of the Shining Hand, is a genius madman. Now the influence of the madman will effect all who wear these robes. The weaer will be granted bonuses due to massive intelligence the madman had in life, but they suffer both penalties to their charisma and wisdom. aAn additional effect of the robe will cause the wearer to often shout out random phrases as they adventure through the land. Phrases are either based on their current actions, attacking, sneaking or searching, or the areas types they are in (interior, underground, exterior, etc).

-Rod of Dragon's Breath

This rod hold 3 charges and each time it will unleash a powerful black dragon's breath attack.

-Bag of Greed

Work in progress may be dropped due to mechanics. Looking to make a bag that will have a chance to either duplicate an item within itself or destroy an item.

The Keeper of Artifacts

This rat-like demon shroud in purple fire has one of the largest collections of artifacts within the abyss. All manners of creatures seek him out to make deals and trade with. He will not accept gold, but wants items of interest and power and will offer unique rewards for them. The demon is short tempered and will only make an offer once allowing the player no time to consider the consequences of the deals.

This merchant has no store but will instead dig through the players items offer vague rewards for the items. The more powerful the item the better the reward. The player may be granted ability and skill changes, bonus feats and other unique items.

Several examples of items he may take. (Not going to give you too many because I don't want to spoil the surprises.) He will take the vial of life, for it was created in the upper planes and holds much power and could be horribly devastating if corrupted by evil. He will also take either Loroshin's Rage or Redemption, a long sword found in chapter 1.

Lots of the items above where created base on community members ideas and suggestion as well as from various dnd source books.

Planescape Chant

Progress on Risen Hero has slowed down to a crawl over the last month and will definitely be slow for the next few weeks. Several reasons for this: First and most obvious is the holidays. The season of shopping and weekend parties is here. The second new time sink of mine is the game Left for Dead 2. Normally I have minimal interest in 1st person shooter games, but this one is like crack. So my nights are often spent shooting zombies instead of working in the toolset. Finally Kamal has released an updated Path of Evil to playtest. He has modified a bunch of stuff and added a number of new areas that I am looking forward to playing.

With RH I have been kicking around the idea of adding another companion, because apparently I like to torture myself with massive conversations that have too many branches. I have been mulling this over for a bit and knew if I was going to add this companion I needed to do it very early in the creation of chapter 2. The second chapter will open up and come away from the linear play of chapter 1. If I wait too long to add the companion, updating conversations would be a massive task to include them correctly.

That idea has come to pass but instead of one companion I am adding 2. In a moment of pure genius I figured how to limit conversations, one of them is a mute. He will still have a base conversation and interjections into NPC conversations with probing stares and dramatic fist shaking. The two new companions will be found together and will be using the relationship system. Their relationship will be between level 1 and 2, so they will join with individual bonuses if they are both in the party.

As I started writing their intro conversation, their history and personalities started to emerge. About half way through the conversations I discovered that they were not native to Faerun, but instead came from the Hive in the city of Sigil. This called for a immediate rewrite or modification of the first half of the convo. As I needed to work a bit of chant into the conversation. So now the new companion gets to call people fun things like Berks, Bashers and Cutters. She also gets to tell people to shut their bone-box, or pay up some jink, all while avoiding being added to the dead book.

The key as a research chant is having her conversation lines remain understable. It would be very easy to turn her conversation lines into complete gibberish very fast. Luckily not being overly familiar with the dialect helps, as I need to be able to read and understand what I am writing. For the most part just a word or short phrase is replaced with the chant. These are often easily figured out using the content of the conversation. So my approach will be little pieces here and there and the phrases and words used will be fairly consistent. If she uses a phrase she will generally use it for that saying instead of switching back and forth between common and the chant. I have included several lines with a lot of chant and those will be difficult to understand. But with the PC responses if the player has a high enough lore skill they will translate the line (and earn a small xp bonus) or they can either ask a companion or just say what and have the line translated. These will be very limited. Right now I have two such lines. One is a side-quest opener and the second is how the player discovers where they come from and kind of why they left. "We lived in the Hive half a turn back, but a cony-catcher peeled us into some slippery business and we had to bolt from the Anthill."

At some point I will put together some decent screen shots of the areas I have been working on to break up these rambling posts.

No Screen Shots?????

The overland map is just about done.
-I need to work on the goodies. I am planning to create swamp specific placeables and not use the SOZ goodies. Most likely I will be using something similar to wyrin's foraging system.
-I changed the lighting a bit. I received a comment about another green swamp, so I have taken it and changed it to more of a brown area. The lighting I originaly used was the default swamp lighting from the OC, which is very green. I tweaked the colors making everything more grey and brown, generally making more of a drab area. The area fogs have also been changed from green and yellow to tan and grey. It is a darker lighting, but I do think it looks nicer. I did leave the water a darker green, but I figure there is just a high algae count.
-The wandering monsters are all set. I have created three areas within the swamp and each area has a specific creature. Slime, lizardfolk and undead. There will be an sub-area for each main creature type with a boss. Once the boss has been defeated that group of creatures will be gone. This next part I haven't started looking at too much but will give it a try if it possible with the system. I would like to go and if 1 of the groups' boss is killed then they will no longer spawn. But the balance of the swamp has been thrown off and I would like to increase the chance for spawning creatures in the other areas. Kill of the lizard folk and their chieftain and they will no longer have war parties to protect their territory and hunt the undead so the undead numbers will increase and cause the player more trouble. Once all three of the groups have been killed the chance of encounter will greatly decrease and mostly be natural predators: alligators, snakes and such.
-The final thing I need to complete is the area transitions from the swamp to the sub-areas. The placeables are all in the swamp so they won't be spawning like SOZ. I looked at the spawning in but with the true .5 scale I didn't like the look and I don't want all these big blue glowing placeables either. I am either looking at making a trigger that will start a conversation if the location has been spotted. With the spot an area transition VFX will be placed in the trigger location. The other option I am considering is using the SOZ system but instead of spawning in the location placeable spawn in a marker. So all the locations will have the marker outside them to start the conversation to enter. This is most likely what i will be doing, just need to come up with a nice looking placeable to mark these locations.

I have been working on 3 of the sub areas so far. 1 is 100% complete. A smaller cave complex filled with myconids (thanks to RWS). My 5 year old drew up the plans and populated the mushroom caves. I did have to redirect his original plot as it was complete and epic story in itself. The 2nd area is nearly completed. It needs a few conversations and loot. It is for much later in the game as the CR is well beyond what a starting player would be at in chapter 2. The final area is a set of ruins that is populated by a demon cult all it needs is to have loot added and lighting/sounds.

At this time modding has been going very well. I have only try a few areas in game so far. Most likely I will try to get the swamp area mostly complete then go through it tweaking and improving. So it will be a while to I put up a bunch of screen shots.

I would like to thank everyone who has played through chapter 1. The feedback has been great and I have been keeping up on the little bugs here and there that are found. Checking that page is definitely a great way to gain some motivated before jumping into the toolset!

Swamp Overland

Since the last post, I have been working on the swamp overlandmap. At this point I think I have most of the area design all set. May need to reduce a few VFXs to lower some of the memory usage, maybe too many interior tan fogs over the mucky water. I borrowed the OC swamp day/night cycle and just increased the fog and decreased the daytime light intensity.

For the area I tried to maintain a true 1/2 scale, unlike SOZ that uses 1/2 scale for visibility but isn't a true scale. As for creating a swamp it was a true challenge figuring out how to create the land with a workable walkmesh and have minimum dips and bumps. I found what would be nice rolling countryside in a normal area turned into massive hills and holes. After a few different attempts to on how to create the random walkpaths through the swamp I discovered a fairly easy way to do it. I had created all the major points within the swamp first and just had to connect them. I flattened the ground so it was .1 higher then the water, with with a massive brush I used the noise feature at 100%. That created the random low and high points then it was a matter of raising and lowering the terrain to connect the low spots and smooth out the high spots. For doing that I used a inner of 3 and outer of 4 at around 15%. The water is all unwalkable for a couple of reason. The first is there are alligators in there and the second was trying to maintain a walkable height so characters wouldn't disappear just wasn't going to happen.

So now onto the terrain triggers, spawning 2das and whatnot.

Does anyone know of a good overland map tutorial. I search the vault and come up with very little. The official one is garbage and barely tells you anything. Right now I am going through the global scripts and poking through both SOZ and WPM to figure this out.

Below are some screen shots:

Chapter 2. Back to the toolset

I have mostly wrapped up play-testing kamal's Path of Evil. It was a fun game and should definitely make every one's to-play list. He did a great job creating an evil game. Until this game I always was never able to complete a game playing evil. I definitely plan to use some of his approaches to evilness when creating evil routes in Risen Hero.

Below is a screen shot from Path of Evil. It is the general area from Risen Hero. In the upper left corner you have the Trielta Hills where the Ruined Village was. Then off to the right is the Sunset Mountains, where the monastery and Dor'Gallon's fortifications were. What took a whole game to cross, my character in POE was able to do in 1 to 2 seconds. But then again that guy was a hell of a runner. When I found the scale in the bottom cornor he could run 120 miles in like 4 seconds.





So building Chapter 2.



I made a bit more of a suspense or suprise ending to chapter 1 than I originally planned for. But it seemed to fit best in that spot and trying to place it into the beginning of chapter 2 wouldn't have worked as well.



For chapter 2 I am trying to grab the player and bring them right back into the game with the start. You get to return to a familiar area, had to do just a little updating to show the passage of time. The bigger twist I withheld for the beginning of this chapter. I won't give it away, but it was something that was very hard to do and I've been thinking about it for quite a while. I've been trying to see if I could avoid it or change it, but for the story demands it so it is happening whether I like it or not. But enough of that.



First day back and I updated an area, spent a bit of time in the visual effect editor, wrote and scripted 2 cutscenes (still need to do static cameras), created a new club with a on-hit script and a bunch of other stuff. So it was probably one of the more productive times I've had with the toolset. Maybe being away for a month just having this stuff rattle around might have helped.



With chapter 2 I plan on opening up the play, breaking free of the linear play of chapter 1. The player is now more powerful and the marauding army has been broken. The player has more allies and is no longer running for survival. To create a bit more of this free play I am working on a wold map. Yes, a world map, I don't really like overland maps. Too much walking and waiting. You have to load the overland map then trek across it then load the area you trying to go to. If there are wandering monsters you need to load the battle area then reload the overland map. So I will use the world map, click and go.



I do plan on using the overland map but more for individual area. I have a swamp that the player will be mucking through. For that area I am looking at using the overland map. There will be the plot area they are looking for and numerous other areas of interest they can look into. I am hoping to create more of a vast feeling to the area and offer more side quests. The swamp will be similar to the Waste area in chapter 1. A bunch of non-plot areas to gain experience, develop the character and just do and find neat stuff.



An another thing I have been thinking about (but no plans yet) is using the overland map to create a city. It will decrease the time needed to develop the city and reduce resources need to run a full busy city with wandering NPCs yelling out speak strings and such. In the overland map I could see some guards, or other NPCs wandering around to interact with. Then the individual areas accessed through the overland map could be a single street, alley, park or building interior. I think creating a single vibrant street would be much easier and a better experience for the player then trying to create a block or two that have maybe 1 or 2 points of interest and the rest is fluff. I hope to cut down on the 3 dozen NPCs either that don't talk or all use the same random talk tree.

So there it is. Chapter 2 is in the works.

Update done just need to pack it and upload it.

Risen hero has been out for two weeks and over two hundred downloads. I am also very excited that the majority of feed back has been very positive. Fortunatley there appears to only been three larger bugs all of which have been corrected.
I managed to break an appearance slimming down the model hak pack
Left out a condition check for a companion that caused a plot conversation to fail. A fair amount of people decided to kill the half-orc barbarian thug.
And for some reason one script didn't fire based on int checks. Added a redundant journal check and everything went fine.

Spent the last day cleaning up some grammar, punctuation and bag spell check choices. Kamal created a great list of things to cleanup.

I have also added a few weapons and suits of armor in my ooze cave so a player isn't left swordless right before the end battle. The items were fun to create. I didn't want to drop mundane items in there but i also didn't want to reward the player for having their armor disolved by a bklack pudding. So a player can now walk away with a suit of dented plate mail, some modly leather armor, a rusty long sword and a bent mace. The moldy armor is by far the ugliest thing I think I every made. I tried to keep every color slightly different and it is a big mesh of clashing greens and browns.

I should have the update up in the next day or so.

I have been playtesting kamal's Path of Evil. This is a great game and does a really good job of making an evil game. Most of the time the evil path choices in other games are just random, meaningless and rather boring.

Release!!

Chapter 1 has been released and is up on the vault. So I figure I will have a short break then get back to work on the second chapter

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=458