Back to Risen Hero

The Community Halloween Campaign is out and getting a lot of good feedback. That was an incredible accomplishment by all involved. I am definitely glad I was able to be a part of it. It was also my first mod release on the vault and a very encouraging experience. I do have to admit that so far I have only made it through about a third of the houses but I'm making some slow progress on the rest.

I am back to work on Risen Hero and the last month has been very productive after the summer slump.

The campaign is now fully compatible with Kaedrin's PrC Pack v1.33. I will have to update with future releases as they come out and yes I am already behind with release v1.34 but it will get done. Fortunately none of my custom content was in conflict so it was fairly easy to combine the 2das. The added classes and feats are a lot of fun. The final release will include this material as well as Tony_K's AI.

The conversations (The most dread part of modding) and most of the larger cutscenes for mod three are completed. Only 2 move larger cutscenes need to be put togther then several small converstions scattered throughout need to be completed.

A new companion will has also been added. Originally he was just going to be a henchman to help out in a battle heavy area, however, as I developed his character he was just too much fun to have only in one area. He is a half-orc barbarian/thug (taking advantage of Kaerdrin's new base class). My plan is that he will be far from a cliche tank. He will be a powerful fighter but will be an expert taunter. He is be that obnoxious guy who as the talent to enrage just about everyone he meets. He is able to throw insults and say it with just the right inflection and sarcasm to set anybody over the edge. While in the party he will have no problem interjecting in a conversation dashing any chance you may have had of talking your way out of the fight. The taunt skill is hard coded so he will receive special ability feats that will have taunt like abilities to use in combat. These will be given to him either when he is in the party at a specific time or encounter or some will be influence based and given during conversations with him. These taunts will increase in ability and have additional effects other than the standard taunt penalties.

I have gotten some great feedback about this on the bioware forums.
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/myviewtopic.html?topic=654922&forum=111

Following the tutorial put together by Shagret's A Texture Tutorial, By (Semi)Popular Demand. I have created some visual effects for some of my custom monsters so they aren't just scale and tint jobs.
So far I have created one glow map for a flesh golem. I was trying to give it more of a freshly pieced together corpse with blood and oozing through the stitchings and connections. In addition to the glow map I took the mummy dust and made it a nice dark red and slowed it down to have a nice blood dripping effect.







By having the dripping attached to the hands it gives a nice splatter effect during the attack.

Here is the description from d20srd.org.


Once I started playing with the visual effect editor and gaining more confidence with it I went on to create this next aberration. It has tentacles attached to both it's hands and the spirit eater to it's back. The black cloud on it's body is mainly there to help hide/smooth the added effects but with during attacks and damage some of the tentacles will appear to be floating in mid-air. This creature comes from the converted monsters on enworld.com

This is how my level 5 fighter fared against it.

The third module is about half way complete with the bulk of the remaining work being conversation and starting to script custom taunt abilities (once I decide on what execptly they will all be). It is nice now that I can definately say I am on the down slope and the end is getting closer.

Done

The Halloween module has been completed!

It's been turned over to Bouncyrock for them to work their magic and create the neighborhood.

Before I truly return to working on Risen Hero I am playing through The Subtlety of Thay. I just finish replaying chapter 1 and I'm starting the new chapter. I am using Kaedrin's PRC pack with this play through and there is just a crap load of options for character development.

I started the introduction conversation for my third module, it is a companion interjection after a narrow escape. It will be a short conversation but is fairly important one for setting direction and mood. It has turned into a large undertaking in Patience and mapping. There a five possible companions and non are required. Interjections for this conversation will be random, who starts it and their responses will be different depending on influence (positive, neutral and negative) Then other companions will interject their opinions depending on how their relationship is with the initial companion and influence to the player. So what will liking be seen as four maybe five lines of conversation (not including the PC responses) will actually be a huge conversation. But first I must finish my battle with Thay.

The All Consuming Halloween Module

So since joining the Community Halloween Project I have done little to nothing with Risen Hero.
I have found some time for a little more play testing over the past week with another page of little updates and changes. It is nice so far nothing game stopping more of little changes, tightening up cutscene or little preference changes that the player most likely won't notice one way or the other. I have two characters working through the first two modules one evil and one good. I want to see exactly where they are before I start populating the third module to maintain balancing.

The Halloween Module is a medium size interior of my basement. No combat or skill use so a player of level 1 or 30 can come in and have the same experience. Playing a lot with the sounds and lighting, Oneofmany's voice set is great for random spooky sounds. The game itself will be more of exploring, small puzzles, a mini scavenger hunt type thing and fun visual stuff with a fair amount of humor thrown in.

I believe that as of last night I have most of it completed. The areas are all put together. Conversations and scripts are written. Now I just need to work on play testing to make sure everything is doing what I intend.

Here is one screen shot of the starting area. Being that it is only one area I want to keep most of it a surprise so you'll have to wait till Halloween to see more.



Community Content:
Cobwebs by Hellcow/Spajk
A Cloud of Bats by Amraphael
Lip Flappers v1.0 by Rogue Dao
RWS Deep Hall Tileset http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2HakpaksOriginal.Detail&id=119651&id=327

An August Update

So the goblin side track was fun but nothing really came from it. I have a campaign and hak all setup and ready to go but nothing else.

Nothing too exciting happening with Risen Hero. I have been going back to the start and tweaking the areas. It is nice to have the sound and light spheres working as well, surprisingly I had to do only a little adjusting with my guesses being fairly close to correct.

Playing a little bit more with area lighting and bloom in some areas and adding creatures to the creature cache, not quite sure while I ignored these originally should of figured they would eventually be fixed.

Downloaded Wyrin's Foraging system and while I'm tweaking the areas I have been adding a few plants and mushrooms here and there. This is a great system that he put together and I'm trying to place the plants in partially hidden areas so you won't be able see them all by pressing the "z" key, instead you need to do a bit of looking.

Also downloaded Companion and Monster AI by Tony_K and was very impressed while play testing, it adds so much to the game. I no longer feel like I need to babysit my companions to keep them from killing themselves or dropping a fire ball in the center of the party wiping everyone out. The monsters also offer more of a challenge.

And finally pulled my load screens back into the photo editor and went with the sepia setting to clean them up and try to create a darker mood.

Something just a little different

The giant boulder toss Hak and override have been released on the vault http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2HakpaksOriginal.Detail&id=359

Now I should of returned to Risen Hero like a good designer but something happened.

Somewhere between searching the vault and reading the bioware forums an idea struck me. I had discovered what the game was missing . . .

It was time for a goblin module.

No more elves, dwarves or those silly half-breeds. It was time for the underdogs to have their day. No longer would they be experience providers just to get your character through those first few levels. No more will the goblins give out 7 experience points instead they will be collecting the experience points.

At character creation there is only one choice for race. Goblin.



Custom color 2da allows for a varied color scheme that matches the above description.
Unfortunately only the skin is tintable and there is only one head and one hair style.

But to make up for the lack of physical alterations there are six goblin gods to choose from. They may not all be from the Forgotten Realms but these are what my internet searches found.

The last bit of changes made gave the goblins more appropriate sound sets, they now grunt, groan and hiss. I was hoping to get into the random name generator so you could be offered a name like "Foul Toe the Rank".

Now I am not really sure what I am going to do with this since I already have little time to work on my main project, Risen Hero.

But the idea that I have floating around is a small noncombat module that is made up of various puzzles. The goblin PC will have to interact with other humoniod and giant races either helping them or getting around them; what chances will a goblin have against a troll? This would be the type of module where you wander around collecting all those bizarre items because you may need them all for different quest and puzzles. Something that is fun with a different challenge (opposed to the usual kill your enemies) and has a bunch of humor thrown in.

But there is the time issues, and this may never come to be.

There be boulders in the air!

Duck and cover!


A whole new element has been added when battling giants. Sure you have a helmet but don't expect it to help too much. Just ignore the ringing in your ears and get ready for the next volley. What is a good adventure without a few concussions and some traumatic brain injuries.

This is also the introduction for the ever popular hill giant. He has returned to the game after being left out from the NWN2 release. He's big and ugly with s huge club and yes he does look vaguely like a half-orc.




Now onto the boulders. . .

First is the hill giant

He lifts

He throws

You find your yourself standing in a pile of rubble

The fire giants animation sucks so he does't have a lot of screen shots. For whatever reason he was never given a casting animation, but 2 out of three giants works for me.

The frost giant doesn't even need to do the overhead hurl, he just holds the boulder at his chest then sends it flying at you.

I sure hope the this guy has a good reflex save . . .

So there it is the Risen Hero boulder throw.

Thanks to:

Tony K for pointing me in the right direction at the start

Dirywick and his post on user defined events on the BouncyRock forum

Little Baron and his Cowtapult! LB's Ballista projectile demonstration

I have a little more testing to do but right now everything seems up to par. Once it is complete I plan on releasing a erf for other builders. It will contain the three scripts: Boulder throw, the giant on spawn and giant user defined events. Three blueprints of the giants with their scripts and variables assigned (yes you get a copy of my outstanding Hill Giant). And spells.2da. It is used for the animation of the projectile. I was unable to find a way to have the boulder fly through the air without referencing a custom boulder spell. The script does work without the 2da, it is used only for the animation CastFakeSpellatLocation.

Lost in the Mountains

Well summer is here, and I have been trying to take advantage of the weather to get stuff done outside and enjoy myself. I continue to work on the toolset but not nearly as often.

I have been moving my campaign into a more mountainous region. This is proving to be quite a project working with the camera controls. With the large incline of the terrain at the bottom of the screen will be clipping to blue as I am trying to place objects and such. A little bit of rotation and I find myself inside the mountain side looking through the ground at tree bases. But the over areas are shipping up.

The main idea to this mountain area is the PC and their party are lost trying to find their way I kind of stole the idea from that swamp in IWD II. I have one large main area that makes up the bulk of the mountains. I have taken it and divided it into 9 separate sub areas. Each of the sub areas has two area transitions, one is right and will move the party to the next subarea and the other one is wrong leading to badness. If the player goes the wrong way they have a chance of a random encounter and then will be placed randomly in one the subareas that they have already visited.

To help the player and not make this a total act of frustration trying to navigate the mountain side each sub area will have a conversation. Companions will give hints and PC skills will be used to find the right way. But just to make things fun some of these hints will conflict, this will be the exception though. I have no intention of have the player have to guess which way to go at every turn, that would be tedious and just generally obnoxious.

A river fortress that the player will need to find a way through. Still working on the conversations but I hope to have numerous ways of getting through for multiple skills, classes and alignments. Fighting your way through will hopefully be a last resort.
The banners were made using Cloaks of Faerun (pk2) by Wild Bill

The subareas in the mountain are defined but a slightly different texture on the walkable path. Then boulders, trees and dense grass set up the boarders. The subareas are placed so that they don't line up; so there isn't a linear progression through the area and the area map will not be the cheat sheet to navigate through the mountain.

Beware which path you choose certain death could be waiting for you and your party, or maybe just a bunch of filthy goblins and such.

I couldn't help myself with this one. One wrong turn in the mountains will lead to a wandering monster screen. 6 deactivated encounters are here and one will randomly be activated each time a player finds themselves very lost.

One of the encounters will be hill giants, but don't get your hopes up too much though. I don't have the same talent as other community members and my custom monsters are just tinting and scale jobs. I don't currently have a screen shot but I have used a half-orc made them really tall and gave then very broad shoulders (for throwing boulders).

Giants will be throwing boulders in Risen Hero. Each giant should have three boulders to toss at adventurers. I found the script used in NWN1 and tweaked it quiet a bit. The giants will use a range touch attack and the PC will be given a reflex save to dodge and reduce damage should the giant hit them. The main script is working but I am still working on the User Defined script which will fire the main script.

Bioware forum post

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/myviewtopic.html?topic=638602&forum=114

Bouncy Rock Forum Post

http://forum.bouncyrock.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=127&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10

I did try to create a custom ranged weapon for giants but due to hard coding you are unable to link new ranged weapons to ammunition and the throwing boulders will show out of ammunition when they were used in battle.

So that is where Risen Hero is at now.