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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Beta Is Still Up
I was in a hurry yesterday, still continuing my playthrough but getting to a point where the DL would be available sooner rather than later over the weekend, and I not only screwed up the links, but neglected to mention it's on a different server. So my fault, here are the corrected links:
My email: oldirtywick@aol.com
Bouncy Rock
The Citadel
Also, a known and corrected for future/final release versions issue is the enter scripts sometimes fail to fire if you enter an area with a companion. So if you're playing 3.0 try and enter all areas with the PC character and not a companion or weirdness may result (in which case you can probably exit/reenter using the PC).
It's fixed though, so no worries.
Anyway, I've been meaning to write a more substantial blog entery for quite a while, so here are my overall impression of my own mod, after playing through it with a Warlock from Ch 1 and a Druid from Ch 2:
The combat isn't really easy at many points, and pretty difficult at others even for the guy who made it, but never impossible; most notably the beetles in the catacombs, a certain thieves ambush, Deadwood, the city attack, and the final siege. The warlock had a harder time than the druid combat wise even though the druid was noticebly more poorly equipped just using a character builder, but the lack of speech skills makes avoiding/getting desired non combat results from quests more difficult. Elephant hide is almost as overpowered as Chilling Tentacles, one you can get from like level 6 and the other at like 11 though. People who don't like difficult combat are not going to like this mod at points. Hopefully the rest will make up for that for them, otherwise it is what it is.
It took me 22 hours to finish Chapter 2, and I know the most efficient routes for doing quests and my warlock had Flee the Scene in the city and Warlock Buddy. But I'm also a bit OCD about inventory management and hot buttons and all that, I like to have everything just so, so I adjust things frequently. So it's really long either way. Also there's a slew of other quests if you do things differently. How much content? I have no idea, probably at least 25 hours for the average guy on one play through for Ch 2 and at least 8 for Ch 1. That's over 30 for the whole campaign, easily.
I think if you just follow the flow of the quests starting with the House Locke quests you can get most of the sidequests. Some of them maybe not, but they're mostly marked with map pins and it's a matter of tracking down the right NPC or saying the right thing, there's nothing really hidden except for the easter egg item hunt; I put 15 items in the mod that are essentially worthless unless you find the right NPC who wanst them. You'll have to look for them. I wanted to do more but it's pretty tiresome actually.
There's a lot of loot, you'll probably be decked out. Thing is, a lot of it is situational and not super good. You won't be wearing +3 of much, there's maybe three +3 items and you can't get them all (I think a +3 STR belt, a +3 heavy shield, and a +3 chainmail is all). The rest is +1-+2 with some special powers or bonuses, there's also a lot of scrolls and wands to find. There's also a huge variety of items in the random loot and stores, so you probably won't be able to afford everything you want; also because of the combat challenge your companions will need some gear as well, hand me downs probably won't cut it for the most part. I'm going to exploit this, as most of the items are X/day or X/charges per use, so in Ch 3 there will be almost no stores and you'll need that stuff to get from one point to the next.
I went from level 8-11 in both play throughs. So the starting level for Ch 2 will be 7-9 and ending 10-12. That's not a bad spread, you get to spend a lot of time on levels where your character has a lot of options.
Alright, so that's what I got out of it, biased towards awesome as I am.
My email: oldirtywick@aol.com
Bouncy Rock
The Citadel
Also, a known and corrected for future/final release versions issue is the enter scripts sometimes fail to fire if you enter an area with a companion. So if you're playing 3.0 try and enter all areas with the PC character and not a companion or weirdness may result (in which case you can probably exit/reenter using the PC).
It's fixed though, so no worries.
Anyway, I've been meaning to write a more substantial blog entery for quite a while, so here are my overall impression of my own mod, after playing through it with a Warlock from Ch 1 and a Druid from Ch 2:
The combat isn't really easy at many points, and pretty difficult at others even for the guy who made it, but never impossible; most notably the beetles in the catacombs, a certain thieves ambush, Deadwood, the city attack, and the final siege. The warlock had a harder time than the druid combat wise even though the druid was noticebly more poorly equipped just using a character builder, but the lack of speech skills makes avoiding/getting desired non combat results from quests more difficult. Elephant hide is almost as overpowered as Chilling Tentacles, one you can get from like level 6 and the other at like 11 though. People who don't like difficult combat are not going to like this mod at points. Hopefully the rest will make up for that for them, otherwise it is what it is.
It took me 22 hours to finish Chapter 2, and I know the most efficient routes for doing quests and my warlock had Flee the Scene in the city and Warlock Buddy. But I'm also a bit OCD about inventory management and hot buttons and all that, I like to have everything just so, so I adjust things frequently. So it's really long either way. Also there's a slew of other quests if you do things differently. How much content? I have no idea, probably at least 25 hours for the average guy on one play through for Ch 2 and at least 8 for Ch 1. That's over 30 for the whole campaign, easily.
I think if you just follow the flow of the quests starting with the House Locke quests you can get most of the sidequests. Some of them maybe not, but they're mostly marked with map pins and it's a matter of tracking down the right NPC or saying the right thing, there's nothing really hidden except for the easter egg item hunt; I put 15 items in the mod that are essentially worthless unless you find the right NPC who wanst them. You'll have to look for them. I wanted to do more but it's pretty tiresome actually.
There's a lot of loot, you'll probably be decked out. Thing is, a lot of it is situational and not super good. You won't be wearing +3 of much, there's maybe three +3 items and you can't get them all (I think a +3 STR belt, a +3 heavy shield, and a +3 chainmail is all). The rest is +1-+2 with some special powers or bonuses, there's also a lot of scrolls and wands to find. There's also a huge variety of items in the random loot and stores, so you probably won't be able to afford everything you want; also because of the combat challenge your companions will need some gear as well, hand me downs probably won't cut it for the most part. I'm going to exploit this, as most of the items are X/day or X/charges per use, so in Ch 3 there will be almost no stores and you'll need that stuff to get from one point to the next.
I went from level 8-11 in both play throughs. So the starting level for Ch 2 will be 7-9 and ending 10-12. That's not a bad spread, you get to spend a lot of time on levels where your character has a lot of options.
Alright, so that's what I got out of it, biased towards awesome as I am.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Beta Is Up
Though I haven't finished my two ongoing play throughs, figure it's a weekend and what the hell. The full beta is now up. Contact me at one of three places if you want in:
My email: oldirtywick@aol.com
Bouncy Rock
The Citadel
From there I'll supply you a link and you're off. Of course, by downloading said you file you're implicitly agreeing to actually provide feedback and not just burn your weekend. If you want to do that, may I recommend frisbee golf?
Thanks everyone.
My email: oldirtywick@aol.com
Bouncy Rock
The Citadel
From there I'll supply you a link and you're off. Of course, by downloading said you file you're implicitly agreeing to actually provide feedback and not just burn your weekend. If you want to do that, may I recommend frisbee golf?
Thanks everyone.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Ingdal's Arm Siege
Alright, so basically where I stand now fifty scripts later is the siege mechanics done and working, and the balance is getting there (it's really not easy!). The area is almost complete, meaning I have placeholder conversations and cutscenes but the texturing/placeables/whatnot is done and the bad guys after yelling "Test!" come to get you, then their boss's henchmen, then the boss himself. That's a huge bulk of it finished, and it was a phenomenal pain in the ass. That said, check out some screens:
I expect to have this last little bit done by tomorrow or Monday; it's just a few bark convos and a handful of cutscenes; frankly after how taxing scripting the damn thing was this will be easy. After which time I'll take a test run to make sure everything is working, upload it for testing and post the link liberally, and work on the finish touches (custom load screens are sounding like a huge hassle I really don't want to deal with right now, but that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about when I say finishing touches) as the bug reports roll in. Maybe it'll be on the Vault as early as next week. How exciting is that?
I had a comment from last blog (you guys don't like screenshots? Almost nobody said nothing! If a picture is worth 1000 words, I wrote 13000 words last blog!) from jameso asking me if after my break the mod got any bigger. I'm not really sure what s/he meant by bigger (what, like in file size? scope? which break?) but I'm going to guess in scope, so here's the deal:
When I plotted this joint out last year, I had it loosely planned out by chapter. Considering I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, it was all loose guesses and I stuck with it as well as I could. The first chapter, though shoddy and weak in comparison in my opinion to this second one, I broke where I wanted to. Here, however, it's another story. It was supposed to be longer than it is now as far as the storyline, but I went a little (lot) overboard with the sidequests in the city; there's just a ton to do there. It kind of ate up my energy and was taking way too long (and there's a lot left to do), and so I cut it short.
Then I was set to cut it off at the end of the city, but that was a bad ending to the mod so I tacked this siege battle on at the end instead. I decided to do that after my last vacation; so yeah, it's bigger than it is but smaller than what it is, if you follow me. This extra siege will probably take 30-45 minutes and I doubt anyone will get it on their first try, because it'll probably kick your ass. But you probably won't find anything like it in a single player mod for a while (hopefully, got to have something, right?), so I think it was worth the effort.
I don't know if that answers your question or not. If it was about file size, yeah it's another 50MB. There's about 600MB worth of mod, cleaned up the item override to about 600MB and the hak is 800MB. Once it's all zipped up and whatnot it's like a 300MB download, which is big but this mod is like 30-40 hours long; there's like 70 areas. Haven't timed it yet, but it's around there.
So, there you go. Thanks for giving me something to ramble about.
Alright, then, ah, keep an eye out for the final beta within the next week or so.
I expect to have this last little bit done by tomorrow or Monday; it's just a few bark convos and a handful of cutscenes; frankly after how taxing scripting the damn thing was this will be easy. After which time I'll take a test run to make sure everything is working, upload it for testing and post the link liberally, and work on the finish touches (custom load screens are sounding like a huge hassle I really don't want to deal with right now, but that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about when I say finishing touches) as the bug reports roll in. Maybe it'll be on the Vault as early as next week. How exciting is that?
I had a comment from last blog (you guys don't like screenshots? Almost nobody said nothing! If a picture is worth 1000 words, I wrote 13000 words last blog!) from jameso asking me if after my break the mod got any bigger. I'm not really sure what s/he meant by bigger (what, like in file size? scope? which break?) but I'm going to guess in scope, so here's the deal:
When I plotted this joint out last year, I had it loosely planned out by chapter. Considering I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, it was all loose guesses and I stuck with it as well as I could. The first chapter, though shoddy and weak in comparison in my opinion to this second one, I broke where I wanted to. Here, however, it's another story. It was supposed to be longer than it is now as far as the storyline, but I went a little (lot) overboard with the sidequests in the city; there's just a ton to do there. It kind of ate up my energy and was taking way too long (and there's a lot left to do), and so I cut it short.
Then I was set to cut it off at the end of the city, but that was a bad ending to the mod so I tacked this siege battle on at the end instead. I decided to do that after my last vacation; so yeah, it's bigger than it is but smaller than what it is, if you follow me. This extra siege will probably take 30-45 minutes and I doubt anyone will get it on their first try, because it'll probably kick your ass. But you probably won't find anything like it in a single player mod for a while (hopefully, got to have something, right?), so I think it was worth the effort.
I don't know if that answers your question or not. If it was about file size, yeah it's another 50MB. There's about 600MB worth of mod, cleaned up the item override to about 600MB and the hak is 800MB. Once it's all zipped up and whatnot it's like a 300MB download, which is big but this mod is like 30-40 hours long; there's like 70 areas. Haven't timed it yet, but it's around there.
So, there you go. Thanks for giving me something to ramble about.
Alright, then, ah, keep an eye out for the final beta within the next week or so.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tick, tock
Hmmm, where do I begin today? It's been a very busy NWN2 related week. I guess chronologically? Why not.
Those are a few screens from the "evil ending" area. It's basically serving as a cutscene area. Pick the evil path, do it, go there, game over. So the evil ending is completely finished, and go me.
So, we need a "good ending" a.k.a. continue the mod. So I've begun that. Basically I'm going for a go to this area and defend a fort from a horde of demons and such. So in order to do that, I needed formations, arrow towers, catapult towers, etc. and an AI that chooses targets and attacks the towers and defenders. Basically what's going to happen is the assault is going to come in waves of 5, I don't know, squads at a time around the fort, and try and kill the commander. You have to defend the commander and suvive the waves...then something else you'll have to do that I haven't decided yet. Then the mod ends after a suitably epic battle.
Yeah, sounds like a big project, right? Well, it is. But I've made a lot of progress, highlighted in these screens:
Look, they move as a unit, see? They're in a "loose" formation there, but their formations change as they progress through the fort.
Oh, look, they knocked down the gate. Cool. See, they'll react accordingly based upon what's around them. If a gate blocks their path, they'll knock it down. If they're being fired upon by an archer's tower, they'll try to destroy it. If they see a defender, they'll try and kill it. All as a unit. Until the leader is killed, then they gain their own AI and act as individuals.
You can also see the catapult firing in the distance.
A dead archer's tower. There's three types of towers, archer, scorpion, and catapult. The catapults fire arrows at nearby enemies, and long range catapult shots at locations and they take a while to get there, but pack a punch, but they can't shoot things with catapult shots that are too close. The catapult shots are indiscriminate, though, so don't get too close. The scorpion chooses a single target at a pretty far range and fires a bunch of extremely accurate arrows. The archer tower chooses up to three targets and fires arrows at each.
Just an arrow/catapult shot, and a shot of the guys assaulting a tent. There's arrows flying everywhere when this sequence is running.
Tents serve as respawn points for the defenders (since you don't want too many objects fighting at once, you see. Kind of lame but the lag is a real issue.), spawing troops as they die. Those are targetted also by the attackers. There's several throughout the camp, so you'll want to defend those so they can distract the attackers from taking down the towers. Once those are gone, it's a leisurely stroll up to the commander.
Finally, I'm helping a bit with Misery Stone, found here. You know those fancy new models? The awesome looking areas? Custom music? I'm not doing any of that. I'm scripting a single encounter that needs a special AI.
That's it.
Those are a few screens from the "evil ending" area. It's basically serving as a cutscene area. Pick the evil path, do it, go there, game over. So the evil ending is completely finished, and go me.
So, we need a "good ending" a.k.a. continue the mod. So I've begun that. Basically I'm going for a go to this area and defend a fort from a horde of demons and such. So in order to do that, I needed formations, arrow towers, catapult towers, etc. and an AI that chooses targets and attacks the towers and defenders. Basically what's going to happen is the assault is going to come in waves of 5, I don't know, squads at a time around the fort, and try and kill the commander. You have to defend the commander and suvive the waves...then something else you'll have to do that I haven't decided yet. Then the mod ends after a suitably epic battle.
Yeah, sounds like a big project, right? Well, it is. But I've made a lot of progress, highlighted in these screens:
Look, they move as a unit, see? They're in a "loose" formation there, but their formations change as they progress through the fort.
Oh, look, they knocked down the gate. Cool. See, they'll react accordingly based upon what's around them. If a gate blocks their path, they'll knock it down. If they're being fired upon by an archer's tower, they'll try to destroy it. If they see a defender, they'll try and kill it. All as a unit. Until the leader is killed, then they gain their own AI and act as individuals.
You can also see the catapult firing in the distance.
A dead archer's tower. There's three types of towers, archer, scorpion, and catapult. The catapults fire arrows at nearby enemies, and long range catapult shots at locations and they take a while to get there, but pack a punch, but they can't shoot things with catapult shots that are too close. The catapult shots are indiscriminate, though, so don't get too close. The scorpion chooses a single target at a pretty far range and fires a bunch of extremely accurate arrows. The archer tower chooses up to three targets and fires arrows at each.
Just an arrow/catapult shot, and a shot of the guys assaulting a tent. There's arrows flying everywhere when this sequence is running.
Tents serve as respawn points for the defenders (since you don't want too many objects fighting at once, you see. Kind of lame but the lag is a real issue.), spawing troops as they die. Those are targetted also by the attackers. There's several throughout the camp, so you'll want to defend those so they can distract the attackers from taking down the towers. Once those are gone, it's a leisurely stroll up to the commander.
Finally, I'm helping a bit with Misery Stone, found here. You know those fancy new models? The awesome looking areas? Custom music? I'm not doing any of that. I'm scripting a single encounter that needs a special AI.
That's it.
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