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More debugging and adding detail
April 30, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
More debugging and adding detail. This morning I started work on another area, laying the groundwork for the events that happen there. I continued to debug a somewhat tricky cutscene, making sure everyone moves about in an expected way. I'm almost ready to get to add in the mirror puzzle and some of the associated puzzles.
Slowly making progress.
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I put in a huge amount of work yesterday
April 29, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I put in a huge amount of work yesterday. The entrance level feels like an actual place now. For the players that like reading through things to pick up back story and hints, there's plenty of that. I've been creating lots of little custom content things, such as these portraits and documents hanging in a certain room.
I continue to work on testing, finding little bugs that shouldn't be there. I've also started in on a particularly tricky cutscene, adding a new dialog and making note of all the terrible ways it breaks.
I think I'm going to start putting music into the prototype fairly soon. The musicians have created some nice ambient music that I've been dying to hear in the actual game.
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I debugged until I couldn't debug any more, l...
April 28, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I debugged until I couldn't debug any more, last night and early this morning. On the bright side, getting the bugs out early means that the debug sessions when we release the real thing will be much shorter.
I also put some more time extending the module, hiding equipment in various places for the player to find. I'm also starting to realize just how much writing I need to fill in certain areas. No rest for the weary.
Update: I've posted a portrait that one of the artists has been working on. There's a nice range of skills on the team and it's a treat to see so much creative talent bubbling forth.
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I sunk in a huge amount of work yesterday
April 27, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
I sunk in a huge amount of work yesterday. The initial level is slowly coming to life with endless little details. I keep changing the tileset and adding placeables, something that may return to haunt me when we have to recreate it for the actual game. Still, I like having a semi-polished prototype. It seems to keep the enthusiasm up to reasonable levels.
The team continues to crank out all sorts of goodies, from scripting systems to 3D models to 2D art. I think we're now over 20 team members as another voice actor volunteered just the other day.
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Sunjammer is finishing up a couple of puzzles...
April 26, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Sunjammer is finishing up a couple of puzzles, getting them ready for QA. I've continued working on the prototype, going a little crazy with scripting and the creation of custom content. The cable car is in the game, along with the hand locks I'd worked on previously. They don't look nearly as cool without normal maps, but I keep reminding myself that it's merely a prototype.
There are endless details to work on for the first level of the game: doors that open via complex scripts, special lights that turn on only after power is restored, creatures that turn to statues when they spawn, and so on. Busy, busy.
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Sometimes I get a little side tracked
April 25, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 Sometimes I get a little side tracked. Yesterday I sunk some time on creating candles, which the story called for. Emitter work is always tricky, but I finally managed to get the candle flame working properly. Of course, at the end I had to remind myself that it's only a prototype and I shouldn't spend that much time polishing up something that won't be used.
I've also admittedly been hiding from the discussion boards in hopes of getting work done. I suspect they've been working away during my self-imposed solitude and I've got some catching up to do today.
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Progress continues
April 24, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 Progress continues. I whipped up a couple more placeables this morning and continued gluing all the parts together. I'm nearly at the point where the player can begin to roam freely about the place. The story calls for them to be holding dim candles, so that's another piece of custom content I'll soon need to put together. Shouldn't be too hard, though.
So far I'm fairly happy with the progress I've been making. It's nice to be able to actually play through something.
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I've been quite busy lately
April 23, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I've been quite busy lately. Yesterday I layed out one of the main levels, trying to adapt what I'd scribbled on paper to making something with the toolset. I couldn't help myself and made a few minor modifications to the Dwarven Halls tileset, making a couple new tiles and fixing the environment map in the SET file.
I also had to do some polymorph.2da work this morning to support one of the flashbacks. Some early QA work uncovered some dialog in need of editing. I've been cleaning up bugs as I find them.
Well, enough typing. It's back to work fiddling with scripts that glue all of this together . . .
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Progress continues
April 22, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Progress continues. I think I'm officially through the first act of the first module. It's essentially a long series of dialogs, setting the back stories of the main characters. Hopefully it's a forgiveable indulgence on my part since you're stuck with them for such a long time.
There were a fair number of bugs along the way, but I think it's to the point where I might actually hand it over to QA for their thoughts. There's still plenty of places to break things. I've yet to wrap it all up in a cutscene, for example.
I have one more short cutscene to write at the beginning of the second act, and then I'll start in on the main dungeon and more traditional adventuring.
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Yet more progress
April 21, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 Yet more progress. I decided to use a slightly reskinned Dwarven Halls tileset for the prototype. It has most of the terrain I need, though I may end up gluing in a few basic room tiles just to get the layout right. I have to keep reminding myself that it's just a prototype and may not be used in the final game.
I cleaned up and added more to the prologue. The party is to the point where they enter the first module's main dungeon, hence my need for the new tileset. I'll likely be able to finish the main scripting for the prologue today. My next step is to do some polishing before I turn it over to QA folks, along with beginning work on the interior areas. Great fun.
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I put my nose to the grindstone last night an...
April 20, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I put my nose to the grindstone last night and the story now progresses to just outside the big door. The various cutscenes are somewhat buggy, such as people not sitting properly when they talk. There's lots of placeholder custom content, such as the pillars outside of the big door. I'd love to add some custom animation as well, though it's a bit premature for that.
Still, it feels good to make progress. Soon enough I'll need to decide how to best model the interior sections. I may go with the Dwarven Halls tileset, which has the main terrain that I want. It doesn't have some of the standard basic rooms that the castle interior has, but then again these are all just prototypes.
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I stayed up late last night, working on my QA...
April 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
I stayed up late last night, working on my QA gizmo. I sunk some time into it, adapting the Demon Card game's menu system so that I could dynamically build a menu of all the various plot points the player can jump to. Right now I have two, but I'm sure I'll have dozens by the end of development. It also lets you restart the module quickly after a change has been made, rather than having to get out to the main menu and reselect the module and character. That alone should speed things up for me.
I also got my hands on some of the new ship models, turning a couple into NWN placeables that could be thrown into the prototype. It's still a bit early. They need to be textured for starters, which is a fair bit of work.
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Well, I skipped a day posting and then posted...
April 19, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Well, I skipped a day posting and then posted today's progress report quite late. Needless to say, life has been quite busy.
The prototype didn't quite get to the point where I hoped, but it's slowly approaching the completion of the prologue. Basically there's lots and lots of dialog and moving NPCs around. It's tedious scripting work, but hopefully people will enjoy it.
Since it's the beginning of a fairly long campaign, I don't feel too bad having all the back story on the characters. Still, I'm going to chicken out and add a "skip prototype" link in the first dialog. I'm also working on a QA item that can be used to bounce around to the different parts of the game. Keeping your QA staff happy is very important.
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All sorts of progress is getting made
April 16, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 All sorts of progress is getting made. I've turned over the fan puzzle to Sunjammer to work his scripting magic. Scripting and custom content creation often go hand-in-hand, so we're making some tweaks to the models to meet his scripting needs. Razvan has whipped up a new gizmo, though I'm torn between using it as a generator and a pump. There's lots of Victorian-style mechanical devices We need to sprinkle around the first module.
The new writer, Rapid.Hazards, continues to engage the team with what's turning into a fun little island filled with dwarves. I had initally planned it as simply a trading post, but it's turning into a fairly elaborate place with things to do in nearly every module.
I'm busy debugging the prologue prototype, fixing typos and such. The most amusing bug of the day is one of the NPCs shows up without clothes. Odds are I dressed him in something with a restriction on its use. Oops.
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Yesterday I started in on the journal entries...
April 15, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Yesterday I started in on the journal entries for the main quest. The team is recommending that I keep them funny and interesting, so I'm trying to take the advice to heart.
I also continued work on the main prototype. You can play through most of the first act of the module so far. With luck I can get it wrapped up and off to testers fairly soon.
The team continues to come up with all sorts of great ideas. The latest is sea shanties in the local tavern, dropping clues to aspects of the game. I feel very luck to have such talented people on board.
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More progress yesterday
April 14, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
More progress yesterday. I finished up the fan puzzle dialog, along with a related one. It ended up being much longer than I had planned, mostly so I could have more interaction between the party members. Hopefully the voice actors don't hate me.
The full prototype is sneaking along slowly. I did the coding to move the player 20 meters and fire up another conversation. After that, there's a series of bouncing around with more NPC back stories. More and more I'm leaning towards a "Skip Prologue" option at the very beginnning of the game.
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I paid the price for not getting much sleep t...
April 13, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
I paid the price for not getting much sleep the night before, though I did manage a bit more work before I collapsed. The prototype of the first part of the story continues to come along. Mostly I'm tying all the dialog together with scripts and such, trying to get a feel for how it plays out. I'm still nervous that the first fifteen minutes of the game is a lot of reading and setting the background, but hopefully it'll pick up from there.
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Writing, writing, writing
April 12, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Writing, writing, writing. I stayed up far too late last night working on a single dialog. It's a key one, and needed to be put into place. It has a dash of seriousness and a bit of humor. Hopefully people like the mix.
I've also been starting work with the new writers, going back and forth on some of the proposed side quests. It's sort of fun, though I'm always nervous about criticising people's ideas. I suppose that's my job as project lead, trying to keep the overall direction of the story generally the same. The fun part is hearing the proposals, most of which are quite good.
I still have more writing to sneak in today, in particular the ones surrounding the fan puzzle. I also want to start working on the main prototype, as my eventual goal is to have the entire game in playable form with NWN. I find that people might think something's a good idea, but until they can actually play it, it's hard to know for sure.
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Okay, I think I'm done with the electrical th...
April 11, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 Okay, I think I'm done with the electrical thingie that's used in the fan puzzle. It's good enough to prototype the scripting, anyway. I still need to make the fan itself, but hopefully that's not too much extra work. I also need to write the dialog to do the puzzle, though I suspect Sunjammer is going to do the scripting parts for me.
Some of the writers are starting to do their thing, coming up with the various plot and dialog required for certain parts of the game. The member list for the discussion boards is up to 20 now, though that includes myself and a test account.
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I put some more work into the fan puzzle, get...
April 10, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I put some more work into the fan puzzle, getting the new placeable into NWN for prototyping. I'm still not done with it. Already I have a new version of the gauge texture. I'm also going to fiddle with the location of the emitters. I'm opting for vertical rather than horizontal.
I have endless writing to do. A year doesn't seem quite as long when I think about all the work there is to do.
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I've turned my hand to modeling again, though...
April 09, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I've turned my hand to modeling again, though I'm not as happy with the results as I hoped I'd be. I'm working on another puzzle related placeable. This one's fairly complicated, involving switching out items, rotating dials, and so on. There's some assumed requirements as well - the dials must be flat so that I can rotate the dials via scripting.
The upper area with the cylinders needs some extra work, I think. I want them to be filled with beam emitters to get a flashy electrical effect. I find modeling to be both fun and frustrating at the same time.
The team continues to generate all sorts of goodies, some of which surprise me. Sunjammer, our scripter, ended up composing a guitar piece and will likely write some words to it. Another writer/qa person came aboard yesterday, bringing the team total up to 19.
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Sunjammer's been putting the finishing touche...
April 07, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
Sunjammer's been putting the finishing touches on the mirror puzzle. No longer can you push mirrors into other objects. Hopefully people will appreciate all the effort sunk into this one puzzle as it's amazing how much work went into it. I do believe that things like this are what will set the module apart from others.
The team keeps growing and growing. Another artist came on board a couple days ago, and a writer/musician/voice actor came aboard today. Great fun.
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I managed to get all my written notes typed u...
April 06, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
I managed to get all my written notes typed up and put into the dialog or passed along to the scripters. Sunjammer discovered the wonders of 3D modeling yesterday, though hopefully he won't be sucked away from scripting too much. The siren's call of modeling is hard to resist sometimes.
The team is nearly 20 people these days. Hard to imagine.
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It turns out the generator was a bit too fat ...
April 05, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 It turns out the generator was a bit too fat and beams of light would sometimes pass through it's outer areas without the "absorb" test working properly. I made it a bit thinner which hopefully minimizes the issue. I also played around with the beams, even though I know it'll all change with the next generation of games. I think I like the orange light without the lighting a bit better.
I was called to jury duty this morning but fortunately managed to get out of it. It gave me several luxurious hours to write dialog. One was for Daniel's comments and offers of assistance during the mirror puzzle. The other was the absolutely last scene of the module which I've been dying to write for awhile.
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With some further fiddling, I got the generat...
April 04, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 With some further fiddling, I got the generator into the NWN game. I'm never sure how much trouble it's worth to do these sort of things, but I suppose it helps visualize the final product even more.
I'm also continuing work on the prototype for the first part of the game. It's slow but steady work, tying together all the dialogs with fades and jumping characters from place to place. I'm looking forward to being able to put something in front of the team and asking them to play it through, as I think the feedback will be better than simply reading text descriptions of what will happen.
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I decided to do some work myself for a change...
April 02, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
 I decided to do some work myself for a change, working on a generator for use in the mirror puzzle among other things. It's coming along, though I want to add more details to it. I'm expanding my allowed polygons quite a bit, though I'm still not sure what the official limits will be.
I'm also mulling over how best to handle flintlock pistols. I like the idea of them being powerful but limited, good for a single blast then having to wait until after combat to reload (or being able to have a fair amount of uninterrupted time during combat).
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I had some good conversations with the team l...
April 01, 2005 by Adam in NWN2
I had some good conversations with the team last night and it seems like we're finalizing the plot and main characters. I'm really enjoying the complexity of the main NPCs, especially the "villian". I'm trying hard to give the player a number of difficult moral choices, where good and evil aren't always clearly defined. It also looks like there's going to be two very different endings, depending on the choices the player made in previous modules.
The brainstorming for the ship-to-ship combat system continues. Issues such as boarding, multiplayer, and limiting the player's freedom early in the game are all getting discussed. The modelers are also working on texturing some of our new shiny ships.
I've still got some more writing to do, further clarifying the story arc. I also want to start dividing up the work and setting some writing guidelines. Plenty to do.
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About Me
I've won multiple awards for my Neverwinter Nights modules, which I've been working on since the year 2000.
In the real world, I'm a web developer for a healthcare organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
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