Dark Waters Album Released

July 24, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

Rob and Eshinee Veith just released the full Dark Waters album, complete with new songs that never made it into the game. You can find it here. I'd like to thank Rob for all his help over the years. Eshinee did a wonderful job playing Heather, and Rob spent many hours chopping up dialog and getting the music ready for the game.

I leave for England tomorrow, which should be a wonderful adventure for my son and I. Hopefully all the castles, Roman ruins, and jousting tournaments will inspire me. I'm bringing along a notebook in case I get an urge to write dialog for Dreamer.

I continue to get bug reports and am dutifully keeping track of them all. After I return, I'll try and go through the list and come up with a patch for the game.

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Every End is a Beginning

July 20, 2009 by Adam in Dragon Age

Though Dark Waters is finally considered done and released, the bug reports have already started to trickle in. So far, most of them are familiar. Sometimes modules get corrupted for no particular reason. Occasionally there are issues with Robert not appearing in DW1 in the right place. Fortunately there are workarounds for both.

I'm starting a list of other bugs, and hopefully will get some time to investigate further. The timing of release is a little crazy, as I'm leaving the country for England this Saturday. Maybe I can find some time after my return.

Like with all endings, it also marks the migration of my hobby time to Dragon Age. I'm still under NDA and can't talk about the toolset itself, but I can talk about some of my activities around it.

The plot for Dreamer continues to come together and I spent some time this weekend writing dialog. As usual, I'm shooting for a mix of funny and clever, though I don't always succeed with either. I'm also starting to hear the characters' accents when I write the lines, which hopefully isn't a sign I'm becoming imbalanced.

When I'm off on my trip to England, hopefully I can draw inspiration from the place. I'll certainly have long plane rides to get some writing done.

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Finally Live

July 16, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

And it looks like we're finally live on the Vault. You can read a short interview as well. Here's the fancy YouTube preview, just for fun.

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Posting Soon

July 13, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

The game should be posted in the next day or two. I'm busy doing all the last minute details. I feel strangely calm, though I know things always get a little crazy after release.

I've started more serious work on my Dragon Age project. Way too much scripting, yet again. When will I ever learn?

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All Systems Go

July 09, 2009 by Adam in Dragon Age

Just to be sure, I tested both the Isle of Insanity and Drake's voiced lines myself this morning. They both seem good enough, so I think we're ready to go.

I still have a few gripes with the Isle of Insanity. The GUI doesn't close, which is minor. On a more major note, you can't lose any more. It looks like in the last NWN2 patch, the OnDamaged event stopped firing when a creature is killed. Because of this, the sanity you're supposed to be defending can never actually die, the attackers will just keep coming until you kill them all, and you don't have to restart from the beginning.

While this wasn't my intended version, it's still fun and more importantly, it works. I'm fine sticking with it for now.

At this point, I think I'm waiting to hear from the Vault admin with a list of questions. I have a preview video ready to upload, and I think we're in the final days before release.

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Fallback Plan and RC2

July 08, 2009 by Adam in Dragon Age

I continued to fiddle with the Isle of Insanity code and decided I had messed things up so badly that it was time to revert to a previously working version. It didn't seem worthwhile to continue to try and fix all the secondary problems I created when originally trying to fix something that was mostly cosmetic.

Here's the new release candidate:
Dark Waters - Full (567 MB)

The two changes are going back to a previous version of the Isle of Insanity module and new Drake dialog. This means the GUI can't be closed until you leave the island, which is vaguely annoying. Also, most of Drake's lines for the Vault should be voiced now.

If someone has some free time, it would be wonderful if they could use the game options item to teleport to the Isle of Insanity and the Vault to make sure they seem to work okay. It's unlikely I broke anything with the dialog, but stranger things have happened.

Below are the alternative downloads. I'm currently uploading the Mac version and I'll post it once it's ready.

Dark Waters - Lite (227 MB)

Mac version (600 MB)

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Worst Fears Realized, Hopefully Fixed

July 07, 2009 by Adam in Dragon Age

My worst fear at this point in the development cycle is that I put in a simple fix which ends up horribly breaking things. Sure enough, I got a report from Todd that the Isle of Insanity was horribly broken. It turns out that my simple fix to allow the GUI to properly close ended up causing a subtle error where a repeating function was called over and over until it eventually caused the game to crash.

I furiously tried to fix it last night, and have a new build that theoretically fixes the issue. I still want to do some testing tonight to prove to myself that it really works.

I also got the last of Drake's dialog, so I'll be working on getting that into the game. I also have a response from the Vault folks that I need to respond to. Things are picking up again, hopefully a sign that the end is finally here.

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Slowly Wrapping Things Up

July 06, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

I sent out an e-mail to the folks at Neverwinter Vault, which I think means I've passed the point of no return. I'm still nervous and I've had a few more bug reports. I think most of the remaining ones fall into the "NWN2 doing weird things for unexplained reasons" category. Hopefully the issues won't be too widespread.

I continue to experiment with Dragon Age custom content, playing around with different looks. I love the free-form "playing" part of game design. It's way more fun that grinding through bug fixing.

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Back to the Real World

July 02, 2009 by Adam in NWN2

This week has been insanely busy at work and home, leaving me only a few brief moments to collapse asleep and start again the next day. I think things are improving, fortunately.

This morning I was up at 4:30 and managed to process and attach a bunch of new lines Derek sent my way. As usual, his work is amazingly cool and I couldn't resist posting a few short clips. Hopefully they're not too spoilery.

I did get a note about show-stopping bugs, but I think it may be one that's out of my control. For some reason, some people get stuck at the "loading area" screen, which is very frustring.

In any case, I need to putter around some more and send an e-mail to the Vault folks. Hopefully I can get the last of Drake's lines recorded and send it in.

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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.