Since I didn't have a screenshot for yesterda...

May 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from most of my bug fixing yes...

May 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I took a break from most of my bug fixing yesterday and spent some time to attach all the dialog that people have recorded so far. It was a rare treat, getting it all together. I want to see if I can generate some lipsynch files today and put together a little movie of it all in action.

Other than that, it's mostly working on the various main quests. I discovered Chronomancer was missing a lot of key things, so I imported more dialogs and am working on getting the front door to work properly. Busy, busy.

I always feel insanely busy right after getti...

May 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I always feel insanely busy right after getting back from a weekend. I'm still working on catching up on e-mail, mostly to start coordinating voice actors in a more serious way. The second act has seemingly endless dialog, written in the previous couple years while making the prototype. I don't think all of it will get voiced, but hopefully a big chunk can be. I actually recorded a bit myself over the weekend, for a parrot of all things.

Yesterday I sunk a few hours into debugging and cleanup. I think the Dominator quest can actually be played through, though I haven't made the final verification. The Woodhaven quest is broken in a key spot. I can't even start the Chronomancer quest. Firestarter is broken somewhat, though better than the others.


In any case, I cleaned up what I could. I also snuck in a new ship for High Seas, a tiny fishing boat that has the main benefit of being really cheap. Slowly getting there.

Work continues at a good clip

May 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Work continues at a good clip. I spent way too much time yesterday getting the firework effects working properly. For the longest time, they simply shot downward when in-game, even though they looked great in the VFX editor. I finally ended up modifying the fireball VFX extensively to make it look good.

At this point, the entire first series of cutscenes is completely playable. The second act has very few of them in comparison to the first, which is a good thing in my opinion. Which ones there are, I want to have look good.

I'm trying to get the QA item working properly. It mostly works at this point, though I'm still investigating a few issues. The change from henchmen to companions and the switch from a single module to multiples makes a pretty big difference in how certain things work. Slowly getting there.

Late into the night and again early this morn...

May 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Late into the night and again early this morning, I spent countless hours working on the Dominator quest. I nearly got it working this morning, making it to the very end of the thing. Sadly, the psionic power I was granted was the wrong one. I had to take out my telekinetic frustration on a nearby foe.

Things are coming along nicely. I keep adding more and more polish to the game and it's starting to show. I spent a frustrating half an hour trying to figure out why the game would crash in a certain area. It turns out I just forgot to bake it, and telling an NPC to move somewhere confused the game to death.

Hopefully today I can get the Dominator quest working and I can move on to Woodhaven, Firestarter, or Chronomancer. Then there's the endless side quests that I have to work on too. Busy, busy.

I made it through one of the main quests this...

May 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made it through one of the main quests this morning, though admittedly there were lots of bugs along the way. I think this is a portent of things to come, basically fixing the most horribly broken issues so that QA can actually get through the game to the end.

There were also tons of little things I've added and tweaked, mostly scripting issues and adjusting more things to the way NWN2 works.

I also finally made it through e-mail and was happily surprised at some of the great work the voice actors have been coming up with. I haven't been rallying the troops much lately, so it's a treat to see them so motivated already. I can't wait to have people hear Captain Drake in particular, a wonderfully drunken, evil scoundrel.

The insanity continued yesterday, and all I m...

May 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The insanity continued yesterday, and all I managed was to copy over the journal entries into the new module. Fortunately I woke up early today and spent some time getting the Dominator quest put together. It's one of the few quests that makes use of a privy in a clever and satisfying way.

The most frustrating debugging involved getting a conversation to pop up when clicking on a door. As my DW1 experiences showed me, locking it and attaching a script to the "failed to open" script doesn't work well. Players might not try to open a knowingly locked door. Plus, if they have lock picking skills, you have to wait to have the attempt fail. I switched to an invisible object approach, which I think works better, though it still has a few issues to work out.

All-in-all, it does feel like a game is slowly coming together.

Man, my life is busy

May 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Man, my life is busy. I still managed a bit of work yesterday, getting the henchmen dialog put together, the psionic scripts cleaned up, and trying to fix a few other things. This morning I managed a bit of debugging, enough to generate a new list of things to work on.

Today I have a new list, with lots of things to work on. Journal entries need to be transferred, broken door conversations need to be fixed, remembrance areas need to be completely rescripted. Busy, busy.

Progress continues, in fits and starts

May 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues, in fits and starts. I got the digging animation working again, guards and commoners spawn correctly, and you get in trouble stealing things from shop crates. Two levitating buildings are now safely back to earth. A number of other miscellaneous problems should now be fixed.

Probably the most fun I had was getting a pesky parrot to fly about in an amusing fashion. He now properly squawks and returns to his roost when players have left him alone.

The game still isn't ready for testing. There's all sorts of known bugs and things preventing QA for testing very much. I have companion dialog to implement, Death dialog to write, and endless bugs to fix. Still, I'm pretty happy with progress. In only a couple months I've managed to get the second act roughly pulled together. My guess is that it'll take another month before it's ready for QA. Then we'll spend another 2-3 months debugging, fixing music, and getting the dialog together. Even then, that seems faster than I thought it would be.

It's almost funny going through the game at t...

May 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's almost funny going through the game at this point. You can start it and sort of move to different points. Half the stuff is broken in weird ways, sometimes looking hysterically funny. For some weird reason, for example, some of the ships are partially submerged, their masts poking out as they move around.

It looks like the beta for the 1.06 NWN2 patch is out. It includes some wanted trap functions and an OnClick event for placeables. Sadly, it looks like the store inventory bug was pushed back to 1.07, so High Seas will remain partially broken for awhile. Still, there's lots to test for the main quests. I'll see if I can do a bit of cleanup today and get the QA stuff in place.

I'm also horribly behind on e-mail again. Bad, bad me.

The second act of Dark Waters is massive

May 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The second act of Dark Waters is massive. There are so many places to go and things to do. QAing such a monstrosity is going to take awhile.

On the up side, I got the polymorph issue sorted out. It turns out I had both a module and campaign version of a key script, which messed things up until I deleted one of them. I now properly transform into a Junk as planned (for testing purposes anyway).

I ended up wandering around the world for awhile, stumbling into the Woodhaven module for the first time. It was fun, though only about half of things worked properly. I ended up getting stuck in a conversation with myself, which wasn't too fun.

Still, I'm starting to generate bug lists. At this point, I want to see if I can get things roughly working and the QA infrastructure is in place (e.g. the Game Options widget that lets you teleport around). I don't even think you can get to most areas. Still, it feels like things continue to move forward nicely. Slowly getting there.

Well, I finished all the areas yesterday

May 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, I finished all the areas yesterday. It's a fairly big milestone, though quite a bit remains to do. Still, it felt good to get that out of the way and now I can focus in on other things.

This morning I decided to spend some time on the High Seas mini-game. There's huge amounts of things that are broken at this point. The most notable is that the player doesn't polymorph into a ship when going to the map. It seemed to happen all of a sudden and I'm still trying to sort out why.

I'm slowly getting through the last of the areas

May 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting through the last of the areas. Catspaw still needs a bit of work, but I started in on one of the Remembrance areas this morning. It's weird spending the time on an outdoor area that will only be seen for a few seconds, and even then it's just an optional area the player might never see. Still, I suppose if thousands play, it's worthwhile.

Ideally, I'll finish up the areas today. We'll see if I can pull it off.

I finally got the Junk into the game

May 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got the Junk into the game. It's the third ship that you can use in High Seas. I felt it was one of those "gotta have" models so I hunkered down and did the texturing myself. It turned out reasonably well, especially on the world map which is fairly zoomed-out.

The High Seas module does have some problems. For whatever weird reason, my PC model isn't polymorphing properly to a ship. I'm also noticing some AI problems, probably due to the bug in the store-specific inventory scripts. Hopefully that'll get fixed in the upcoming 1.06 NWN2 patch.

In terms of the rest of the game, I'm slowly working on Catspaw Isle. I retextured a creature to make it fit more appropriately. I need to polish up the areas some more. Still, it feels like progress.

I got busy yesterday, and skipped a post

May 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got busy yesterday, and skipped a post. That's a rarity for me.

On Monday I finished up Woodhaven, at least from an area building perspective. The one interior is finished and I think I've imported all the necessary scripts, items, and creatures.

For whatever weird reason, I spent much of yesterday texturing Razvan's Chinese junk. It's slow but steady work. At this point I have most everything textured with something, but I'd like to go back and add some more distinctive touches. I'm quite excited to see how it turns out. I'll have to get Schazzwozzer's Samurai outfits for some pirate versus ninja action.

This morning I worked on the last of the islands, Catspaw Isle. The exterior, which is small, got finished very quickly. I have one interior partially done and another I need to start. Small outdoor areas are loads of fun to put together since you can get something that looks great relatively quickly. I also find I don't have to be as careful with tree placement and use of textures.

As for today, I'd like to finish the Junk and work on Catspaw some more. I've also got some creatures I'd like to slightly retexture. Fun stuff.

This weekend was all about the Woodhaven area

May 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

This weekend was all about the Woodhaven area. It's one of the biggest outdoor areas, with rolling hills and lots of trees. I could probably spend even more time today laying down shrubbery and foliage, though it's looking reasonably complete at the moment. In NWN, it was multiple areas, but under NWN2 I opted for one large outdoor area and a single interior. I was worried about performance, but it seemed okay during testing. If the need arises, I can chop it up further.

As for today, I'm hoping to get some of the scripting in place so that the quests could be attempted. I also have the one interior to do. If I somehow finish that early, perhaps I can start in on the final two modules (the cutscene one and Catspaw Isle). Fun, fun.

I finally packaged up and uploaded the 1

May 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally packaged up and uploaded the 1.04 beta patch. It's on Megaupload, which is sometimes slow, but it's hard to beat free. I haven't fully tested the patch, but the changes are fairly straightforward. If someone could run through it and e-mail me, that would be great. Here's the list of fixes:

* Changed the way the "touch the gems" line in the End of Days cutscene worked to make it more robust.
* Changed the "shadowy woman" psionic trap in the labs so the dialog is more robust.
* Made secret door on Level 4 unpickable.
* When Heather or Daniel join the PC, always set their XP to the player's.
* Fixed an incorrect tile in the Maintenance area.

In terms of the second release, I set up the basics for the three final modules, two islands and an all purpose cutscene module. Currently I'm working on the elven home of Woodhaven, which is going to take a bit of work. Large outdoor areas require a lot of effort to make look nice. My guess is that it'll take a few days to get looking right.

I was up at 4:30 this morning and spent two s...

May 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was up at 4:30 this morning and spent two solid hours finishing up the ship cabin. I decided to turn it into a real tileset, learning some things along the way. It turns out you can have lots of different meshes in a tile, not just the three they have in the official campaign.

I suppose I could make the tile a bit more flexible, such as giving it the ability to attach to other tilesets. There's also some odd camera issues, depending on the camera angle. Still, after two hours, I may just call it good enough.

Yesterday I did a bit of scripting work, trying to make the different modules in the campaign work well together. My old method for moving characters around involved a holding area that I'd jump NPCs in and out of. Now that it's broken into different modules, I have to create the object from a list of campaign creatures. It's a bit of a hassle, but having a single module for everything would make testing nearly impossible (as load times would be ten minutes or more).

I'm heading up to Portland to visit family this weekend, so maybe I can work on some writing. Death in particular needs some more dialog. I have a bit written already, but I'd like to get the comedic elements finely honed. Death turned out to be a popular character and I'd like to continue using him in the future.

Sometime late last night I finished the last ...

May 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sometime late last night I finished the last of the interiors for Port Brighton. I might polish a bit more, but they all seem good enough for now. It looks like I have at least two more islands to do, one of which is for a main quest. I also have several "Remembrance" areas to work on. Those are tricky, as potentially players could trigger them when in any of the Act 2 modules. I'll need to find a way to teleport them to the Remembrance module and then jump back to where they were when it's complete. I have a plan, but it's not tested yet.

One other area is for a ship cabin. I'm looking at a NWN tile that should be adequate. Hopefully I can get a functioning tile without too much trouble.

As for today, I might start working on exterior areas. There's also some scripting things to work on, as well as adding journal entries and the like. Busy, busy.

I continue to pull out my hair, maniacally fi...

May 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to pull out my hair, maniacally finishing interiors. I think I have one more remaining in Port Brighton and then I get to work on some exteriors for a change. As always, I'm behind on e-mail and still haven't made a new installer for the patch. Having a single-minded focus can be both a blessing and a curse.

On the plus side, I've incidentally tested out some of the quests almost by accident. They generally seem to work okay, though there's bound to be some rough spots. At some point I need to go through every Port Brighton quest and do my normal QA. For now, I'm just making sure areas look okay, things are linked together, and there's no horribly obvious flaws.

I finally finished the Manor area today, feel...

May 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally finished the Manor area today, feeling like I've been playing with an adult version of a doll house. Well, a doll house where Barbie and Ken carried Great axes. That probably would have made it more appealing to me as a kid.

I've got one more manor that I'm working on today, two more interiors, and then I think I'm done with Port Brighton. After that I've got a couple more islands and accompanying quests to go. It's amazing just how big this second Act is. I thought the first module was big, but this one is pretty massive.

Once I get the areas built, I've got to assist in getting the voices in the game, debug quests, update scripts, and so on. It's fun watching it all come together, though. Slowly getting there.

On occasion, I'm amazed at how long area crea...

May 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

On occasion, I'm amazed at how long area creation takes in NWN2. Interiors seem to be the trickiest, putting down tiles, adding lights, and then the countless placeables that make a place feel homey. This morning I started in on a large manor, importing from the prototype, and after a couple hours got a bare-bones, no placeable interior that's ready to go. It'll probably take a few more hours to pretty up the place.

Yesterday I worked on little things, such as doing basic debugging of the Port Brighton area. Some area transitions didn't work, item icons were missing, and the commoners looked weird. I also got the "burning building" mini-quest working for the most part. I think I need to make it more dangerous, as it's mostly a cake-walk now.

As for my fixes to the first module, I think I've given up on finding the time for a full walkthrough. I think I'll whip up a beta patch today and post it, assuming I can find the time for that. My e-mail inbox has filled right up again, and need to find the time for that too. Busy, busy.

I had way too much fun yesterday making one o...

May 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had way too much fun yesterday making one of the Port Brighton shops. After yesterday's Armory fun, I decided that the mysterious Doctor Fenril needed to have a little ambiance as well. He'll mix potions, cast spells, and generally look like he's busy doing things in his shop. It's sort of mesmerizing just watching him.

I also got some placeable hats into the game to spruce up the Mad Hatter, a skull for Doctor Fenril, and Razvan's printing press for the Port Authority area. There's still countless details to sort through yet. I have another area to finish, lots of items to give icons to, and basic testing to see if I can actually get into all these different shops.

For a change, I actually made some good progr...

May 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

For a change, I actually made some good progress yesterday. I finished a couple more interiors for the second module, Lord Brighton's Manor and Brighton Armory. The armory has been fun to work on, as the blacksmith has a little "ambiance" script that has him moving around and doing interesting things. One of the nice things about NWN2 is that there's a greater range of animations, such as working a forge.

I finally got caught up with e-mail as well. There were quite a few bug reports, though many were due to older patches. I did find a couple more issues I'd like to fix in an upcoming patch. One of the things I'm discovering is that there's no guarantee that scripts will fire in a timely manner. NPCs moved into the area may take one second or more, depending on the person's computer. Action queues sometimes clear out. Hopefully the new fixes will take these issues into account. Of course, now I have to put together a new build and make sure I didn't break anything. Maybe I can do that this weekend.

I'm also hearing some grumbling about the new deity system. Essentially you either pick "God" or nothing. It's difficult to explain without spoiling too much, but the matter is fairly key to the campaign. If it's any consolation, more deities will be available as the campaign progresses, including a number of familiar Forgotten Realms deities.

In any case, it feels good to make progress again. Slowly getting there.

After nearly two weeks, I cracked open my e-m...

May 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After nearly two weeks, I cracked open my e-mail InBox, filtered out the spam, and am down to 25 messages. Hopefully I can tackle those this morning. My apologies if I've taken forever to get back to you.

Yesterday was incredibly busy, as it often gets. I did manage to sink some time into the Brighton Authority Cells area. Many players will end up there during the course of the game, depending on how sneaky or law-abiding you are. Area creation takes a long time in NWN2, but the end result is much nicer. Flickering torchlight really gives the place a dank and creepy feel.

I'm back home, though I didn't get too much t...

May 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm back home, though I didn't get too much time to work on things since I left. I managed a bit of writing on the plane back, and this morning I moved over the last of the graveyard headstones. I still have a number of Port Brighton interiors to work on, but the list continues to shrink.

I've still not cracked open e-mail, which probably has grown to mammoth sizes. There's still some issues needing to be fixed with the first module, which I need to get to. As I work on the second Act, I find myself making a lot of changes to the campaign scripts. Hopefully that will go smoothly when people want to transfer their saved game from the first module to the second. I'm trying really hard to make it all compatible.

Busy, busy.

Well, this business trip hasn't been the pana...

May 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Well, this business trip hasn't been the panacea of time that I'd hoped it to be. Yesterday I spent mind-numbing hours going from airport to airport without doing any writing. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime, I managed a fair amount of work on the earring system. The hardest part was getting the earring to look reasonable on the head of every race and gender. I covered the main ones and most heads should look okay with them. Basically I created a custom model for each combination, coupled with a custom VFX. The scripting piece was relatively easy by comparison.

It's starting to feel that the huge Port Brighton area is coming together. I've had some worrisome crashes that I don't fully understand. I'm also finding that some of the custom hats aren't showing up properly in the game. Hopefully I can track down the cause of those things, assuming it's not an issue with the 1.05 patch.