Check it out
More on that later.
First thing's first, far as Subtlety of Thay is concerned. Originally I meant to have a new build up for testing by this weekend...not looking good at this point for that because I took a few days to work on the beholder (which was totally worth the time). However, by tomorrow night is looking much better. I'll have to bust my butt today and some of tomorrow (I also have to mow my football field sized yard though!) but it's definately an attainable goal.
And when you're working on a large project, little steps like that are important.
But anyway, on to the beholder. This is the part you can tune out because it's not terribly interesting.
Anyway, the AI on the beholder is really a cool system. Basically it has 12 spells, the 10 eye rays, it's antimagic eye, and an AI spell that tells it which rays to shoot and at what. So basically what happens is at the end of each combat round it runs an AI script that tells it which action is the best to take. For instance, if it's hit points are low it may decide it's best to retreat a distance back (I changed this so it will shoot it's rays THEN retreat, hopefully inflicting movement hampering statuses) or, if you're using the waypoint, to it's levitation waypoint (from HotU, I don't really know what this is all about but I left the function to do it in there), or which target to physically attack or to use it's rays. I changed a few things so it almost always uses it's ray attacks, but it will physically attack characters that have the anti-magic status because the rays won't work.
It gets interesting once it decides to use it's rays, though. It casts this AI spell on a creature. Because a beholder can only bear three rays against any single target, it also chooses two additional targets if there are any within range. Once it does that it prioritizes which target is the primary one, which the secondary, and which the tertiary based on a number of factors, with the first being the most threatening, etc. The AI could really be tweaked here to choose the absolute best target in a variety of circumstances, I added a few checks because it didn't really have much there from NWN1. In any case, then it chooses how best to attack these targets by seeing how many targets there are and then somewhat randomly which rays to use against which targets; there are several routines, but it won't dynamically choose which rays against which targets, they are predetermined. Such as the primary target gets the strongest rays like disintegrate and death, and the secondary and third targets get the charm and petrify to disable them. The trick to that was to assign how it picks targets. It has most of it's fortitude saving throw rays on it's primary attacks, and chooses classes with low fort saves first, for instance.
Anyway, once it's done that it runs it's antimagic eye script, which again goes through some checks as to whether or not it's a good idea to open the eye. I changed things there again because I thought it was set up to be at a disadvantage against a single target because it can't use it's own rays on a target that has anti-magic status, so it won't use it against a single target except if a few circumstances, but it will now use them to eliminate buff spells first and then close the anti-magic eye and use it's rays, and use it against higher level casters than it was set to originally.
Anyway, I thought it was a pretty unique AI set up. And since neither my wife, my daughter, nor my mother care, I thought I'd share it here!
Well anyway, back to work.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Taxes, Sea Monkies, and Remember the Titans
Well for this post I have good news, bad news, an update, and something incredibly stupid and probably offensive.
So let's start with the stupid!
I don't know if you all have realized it by this point, perhaps some of you long time readers, but I'm a huge idiot. Therefore it should come as no surprise that I love this program because it lets me impersonate Stephen Hawking to friends and relatives over the phone. I also like to pretend to be the guy that got crippled in Remember the Titans, even though he didn't have a vocoder or whatever that thing is. I don't know why but that's been a running joke in my household for years ever since I found that program that will make your computer talk what you type and I say "Remember the Titans, always Remember the Titans!"
Well anyway, now for the update:
Click the link
Not much new there since I wrote that yesterday. I got all of the ambient NPCs, the key NPCs, a small shrine to Sharess in one of the houses (I've got a lot of shrines to various Gods around the city, if you worship that one you get a better blessing, if you have a similar alignment you get a blessing both of which are long duration buffs, if not nothing)(and where Sharess goes...), and all of the basic conversations done. I should be done with the quests relating to these areas over the next few days and a new build up for testing afterwards.
Kind of makes me question the decision about putting half finished stuff up for testing, though. I'll add two quests, both non-combat because I listen to the polls!, and it'll probably take an hour or two to finish them (shorter if you know where you're going, but part of the quest is to figure that out...since you're not fighting anything) and then it'll be another few weeks/month for the next batch. Should I have waited until it was all finished? I don't know, it's a massive project to test that much material and when game breakers happen it slows down everything, so it's nice in my opinion to test in pieces. But then people get sick of waiting or playing the same things over and over too...I don't know. That's life.
Well anyway, the bad news: I got in a huge fight with my wife over sea monkies. Basically she bought some for our daughter, I said they were stupid and just little pieces of crap that float in the water and not actually anything...the box came without a lid and the cat drank all the water in the little tank that came along...and well you know how women can be, somehow I'm the bad guy. But anyway, it raised an interesting question: Are sea monkies little pieces of crap?
The answer was, unfortunately, no. They are actually tiny brine shrimp, the same stuff whales eat. So my bad baby, I'll know you'll read this later. I told you I'd apologize if it turned out that they weren't little pieces of crap but actually alive and a public apology is better than a private one any day of the week!
Finally, the good news: I filed my tax return. You know, I used to think taxes are really, really stupid. You know what I'm saying, why don't they just take out what I owe and not make me go through these hoops and create all this extra work? Well it turns out that sometimes they give you a lot more money than what you paid in. With the government rapidly gaining debt as it is, I can't see how this is a good idea either, but I'm not going to turn down a bunch of free money so this year I became of fan of taxes.
In any case, because I got this gigantic ass return, I'm going to buy a new graphics card. So does anyone that reads this use a 8800 GTX? Any problems with NWN2? The last thing I want is to get a better card and have it be worse for the game I'm spending most of my time working with.
OK, that's all I've got.
So let's start with the stupid!
I don't know if you all have realized it by this point, perhaps some of you long time readers, but I'm a huge idiot. Therefore it should come as no surprise that I love this program because it lets me impersonate Stephen Hawking to friends and relatives over the phone. I also like to pretend to be the guy that got crippled in Remember the Titans, even though he didn't have a vocoder or whatever that thing is. I don't know why but that's been a running joke in my household for years ever since I found that program that will make your computer talk what you type and I say "Remember the Titans, always Remember the Titans!"
Well anyway, now for the update:
Click the link
Not much new there since I wrote that yesterday. I got all of the ambient NPCs, the key NPCs, a small shrine to Sharess in one of the houses (I've got a lot of shrines to various Gods around the city, if you worship that one you get a better blessing, if you have a similar alignment you get a blessing both of which are long duration buffs, if not nothing)(and where Sharess goes...), and all of the basic conversations done. I should be done with the quests relating to these areas over the next few days and a new build up for testing afterwards.
Kind of makes me question the decision about putting half finished stuff up for testing, though. I'll add two quests, both non-combat because I listen to the polls!, and it'll probably take an hour or two to finish them (shorter if you know where you're going, but part of the quest is to figure that out...since you're not fighting anything) and then it'll be another few weeks/month for the next batch. Should I have waited until it was all finished? I don't know, it's a massive project to test that much material and when game breakers happen it slows down everything, so it's nice in my opinion to test in pieces. But then people get sick of waiting or playing the same things over and over too...I don't know. That's life.
Well anyway, the bad news: I got in a huge fight with my wife over sea monkies. Basically she bought some for our daughter, I said they were stupid and just little pieces of crap that float in the water and not actually anything...the box came without a lid and the cat drank all the water in the little tank that came along...and well you know how women can be, somehow I'm the bad guy. But anyway, it raised an interesting question: Are sea monkies little pieces of crap?
The answer was, unfortunately, no. They are actually tiny brine shrimp, the same stuff whales eat. So my bad baby, I'll know you'll read this later. I told you I'd apologize if it turned out that they weren't little pieces of crap but actually alive and a public apology is better than a private one any day of the week!
Finally, the good news: I filed my tax return. You know, I used to think taxes are really, really stupid. You know what I'm saying, why don't they just take out what I owe and not make me go through these hoops and create all this extra work? Well it turns out that sometimes they give you a lot more money than what you paid in. With the government rapidly gaining debt as it is, I can't see how this is a good idea either, but I'm not going to turn down a bunch of free money so this year I became of fan of taxes.
In any case, because I got this gigantic ass return, I'm going to buy a new graphics card. So does anyone that reads this use a 8800 GTX? Any problems with NWN2? The last thing I want is to get a better card and have it be worse for the game I'm spending most of my time working with.
OK, that's all I've got.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
You know when you hit that "remember me" check box it doesn't ever remember you?
Seriously, like every time I want to leave a comment or post a new post I need to sign in. The thing just doesn't remember you.
Alright, well anyway here's the latest screen shots:
These are from the Great Library I was talking about last time. I've since added scholar NPCs to sit around and a librabrian doing things in the area. But I've spent the greater part of this week typing out books to appear in the library. Basically they're NWN1 style conversations where you walk up to a bookshelf and click it, and choose to read a random book out of the shelf and you get a 3-7 line excerpt on the topic. Here's an example of what the type of stuff is in the books, probably my personal favorite, the entry on necromancy:
Necromancy is often misjudged! I swear to you, your honor! The prosecution demands me reveal the inner workings of my field for the layman, only to twist the words into more than they are.
I will admit, as I did when these charges were first brough before me, that I did indeed raise some zombies and a few skeletons for my own purposes.
But! But, it's been long determined, by this very court mind you, that the soul leaves the body the instant of death!
Therefore, how can I be defiling the bodies of the Jones family if those bodies I used gathered from the graveyard were no longer considered the Jones family?
I put it before this court that bodies in the graveyard are not property of any one person, but abandoned by their owners and property of the public for our own personal use!
Furthermore, these charges must be dropped as public property is, indeed, public, and...
So far I've got 11 of these "books" on various topics, with between 6-20 entries each with about 1000 to 4500 words each. So that's a lot of writing, and it doesn't feel like I got a whole lot done in the last few days for some reason. I'm going to do 4 more books for an even 15 and call it a day on all that, then move forward with the rest of the quest I built the library for.
I'm still undecided on the pick pocket system. Early in the poll it didn't seem to be important, then a bunch of google spiders came and voted up the importance...so I'll either end up doing something or feeling really bad about not doing it.
Somebody's going to get disappointed is all I know.
Alright, well anyway here's the latest screen shots:
These are from the Great Library I was talking about last time. I've since added scholar NPCs to sit around and a librabrian doing things in the area. But I've spent the greater part of this week typing out books to appear in the library. Basically they're NWN1 style conversations where you walk up to a bookshelf and click it, and choose to read a random book out of the shelf and you get a 3-7 line excerpt on the topic. Here's an example of what the type of stuff is in the books, probably my personal favorite, the entry on necromancy:
Necromancy is often misjudged! I swear to you, your honor! The prosecution demands me reveal the inner workings of my field for the layman, only to twist the words into more than they are.
I will admit, as I did when these charges were first brough before me, that I did indeed raise some zombies and a few skeletons for my own purposes.
But! But, it's been long determined, by this very court mind you, that the soul leaves the body the instant of death!
Therefore, how can I be defiling the bodies of the Jones family if those bodies I used gathered from the graveyard were no longer considered the Jones family?
I put it before this court that bodies in the graveyard are not property of any one person, but abandoned by their owners and property of the public for our own personal use!
Furthermore, these charges must be dropped as public property is, indeed, public, and...
So far I've got 11 of these "books" on various topics, with between 6-20 entries each with about 1000 to 4500 words each. So that's a lot of writing, and it doesn't feel like I got a whole lot done in the last few days for some reason. I'm going to do 4 more books for an even 15 and call it a day on all that, then move forward with the rest of the quest I built the library for.
I'm still undecided on the pick pocket system. Early in the poll it didn't seem to be important, then a bunch of google spiders came and voted up the importance...so I'll either end up doing something or feeling really bad about not doing it.
Somebody's going to get disappointed is all I know.
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Dentist is No Jest!
Man, I've been playing the Witcher lately, and these old ladies say "Old age is no jest" once in a while, and for some reason I think it's just hilarious.
But today I think a lot of things are hilarious, because I'm on Tylenol III with codiene. Yeah man, I had to go to the dentist today to get crowns, that's no jest! Those things hurt, and you're mad sore when it's done. I mean, I'm no stranger to the dentist chair. Honestly, I could probably be driving a Navigator or something for what I've paid to have my mouth fixed over the last few years, but a crown is up there with the worst dental procedure an average person has to go through, and I've been through most of them. Worst part is they're like $800 per crown, and I need to get seven of them.
But today I had to have three of them done, and I'm glad it's over. Well not quite, they need to take these temps out and put in permanent ones, but I think all of the drilling is over!
So I thought I'd drop this post before I start getting all light headed and need to take a nap. So obviously I won't be modding much this weekend, unless I'm feeling better tomorrow or something. Just want to wallow in my own self pity, thank you very much.
In any case, last few days I finished up a cut scene that came out more awesome than I thought it would and started working on the Great Library, which will either be a quick area or a monster of an area depending on what I do with it. I made the bookshelves out of the new MotB estate tileset ones, those are nice but a pain to line them up. I just need to do the little reading areas and tables with stacks of books and some candles and whatever, so there's not much left to do. Well, plus the NPCs and whatever, but that's not a big deal. But I said that about the Inn too and look what happened! But I doubt I'll be putting in dancing NPCs in the libarary. Well give me a few more of these Tylenols and we'll see though.
Once this area is done I can finish up the sidequest chain I'm working on and throw up the new build for those that still have it in them to test further. It will add two additional quest chains and five new areas. The city is getting nearer and nearer to completion, then it's on to the somewhat linear and therefore faster final mod and not far after, release.
OK, but back to the library, my original plan is to add random book dialogues to the bookshelves in there. I did a similar thing in the Museum in Chapter 1 if you've played it, so I can reuse some of that. But let me ask you guys, do you think I should take a week or so out to type up a ton of these for the library? It's a cool way to add a ton of lore about FR in there, but it's also a phenomenal amount of writing. If you'll recall from earlier I put one in the temple to the Triad, and that was about 7000 words. A dozen or so of those is a pretty big project. Would you be interested in reading that? Let me know what you think.
Oh, by the way, I was interviewed by the NWN Podcast crew two days ago. Be on the lookout for that, link's on your left.
But today I think a lot of things are hilarious, because I'm on Tylenol III with codiene. Yeah man, I had to go to the dentist today to get crowns, that's no jest! Those things hurt, and you're mad sore when it's done. I mean, I'm no stranger to the dentist chair. Honestly, I could probably be driving a Navigator or something for what I've paid to have my mouth fixed over the last few years, but a crown is up there with the worst dental procedure an average person has to go through, and I've been through most of them. Worst part is they're like $800 per crown, and I need to get seven of them.
But today I had to have three of them done, and I'm glad it's over. Well not quite, they need to take these temps out and put in permanent ones, but I think all of the drilling is over!
So I thought I'd drop this post before I start getting all light headed and need to take a nap. So obviously I won't be modding much this weekend, unless I'm feeling better tomorrow or something. Just want to wallow in my own self pity, thank you very much.
In any case, last few days I finished up a cut scene that came out more awesome than I thought it would and started working on the Great Library, which will either be a quick area or a monster of an area depending on what I do with it. I made the bookshelves out of the new MotB estate tileset ones, those are nice but a pain to line them up. I just need to do the little reading areas and tables with stacks of books and some candles and whatever, so there's not much left to do. Well, plus the NPCs and whatever, but that's not a big deal. But I said that about the Inn too and look what happened! But I doubt I'll be putting in dancing NPCs in the libarary. Well give me a few more of these Tylenols and we'll see though.
Once this area is done I can finish up the sidequest chain I'm working on and throw up the new build for those that still have it in them to test further. It will add two additional quest chains and five new areas. The city is getting nearer and nearer to completion, then it's on to the somewhat linear and therefore faster final mod and not far after, release.
OK, but back to the library, my original plan is to add random book dialogues to the bookshelves in there. I did a similar thing in the Museum in Chapter 1 if you've played it, so I can reuse some of that. But let me ask you guys, do you think I should take a week or so out to type up a ton of these for the library? It's a cool way to add a ton of lore about FR in there, but it's also a phenomenal amount of writing. If you'll recall from earlier I put one in the temple to the Triad, and that was about 7000 words. A dozen or so of those is a pretty big project. Would you be interested in reading that? Let me know what you think.
Oh, by the way, I was interviewed by the NWN Podcast crew two days ago. Be on the lookout for that, link's on your left.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
This turned into a project!
Back in 2003 I was in Afghanistan. I'd like to say I was doing heroic things or whatever, but the truth is I was a generator mechanic who got sent to a communications section. They had a few generators, but technically they were owned by the civilian contractors so I wasn't responsible for, more appropriately allowed to do, any work on them. So I was doing the physical labor of the communications, which really boiled down to running internet cable, while everyone else did the thinking man's work.
But I liked that job. I've always been good at doing work.
Anyway, one of the key points I picked up is this old saying, "The lazy man is the smart man, because he only wants to do thngs once." Matter of fact, we had this bulletin board where the boss of the shop used to put up these inspirational messages. I'm a bit dubious on the effects of those messages; I always thought inspiration is kind of for women because your feeling or whatever shouldn't be stopping you from doing your job. That said, I liked that message (didn't inspire me, though, I swear!) because I'm the type of guy that likes to do things right the first time.
You're probably wondering what this has to do with anything at this point. Well, the first step in your understanding is to look at these screens:
That's the Inn I was working on, and it turned into quite a project where I had to go back and redo things many times until it was right. Of course, that didn't require any fancy pants words on paper to motivate me to do it. Anyway, I modified my random spawning system to check if there is a creature at the spawn point, and choose a new spawn point if so to randomly fill the area with a variety of NPCs. Some sit in chairs, others stand, some dance on the dance floor, some are waitresses. It's more crowded at night than during the day. They all have several animation cycles they go through randomly depending on what they're doing. The band sings songs where I took lyrics from recognizable songs and changed them into parodies.
So it's a cool area if you ask me, which you didn't but I need something to talk about, right?
On a completely different note, the Module of the Year contest is going on now. Personally, I'm abstaining as my mod is on the list and I don't really hinge what I consider a success or failure by winning awards. However, as this award represents what you all, the players, think about the modules made for NWN2, this is the award I respect.
Alright, I don't have anything else to talk about right now.
-edit-
Almost forgot:
Since I'm spending a lot more time than originally intended on the city itself, how important is a theft system for pick pockets? There is currently nothing, and would be a bit of a project, probably like a week's worth of work, to do something reasonable in that regard. But as a player you'll be in that city for hours doing various quests and what have you, so how important is a realistic pick pocket system? Keep in mind it'll add quite a bit of overhead! Is it worth it?
But I liked that job. I've always been good at doing work.
Anyway, one of the key points I picked up is this old saying, "The lazy man is the smart man, because he only wants to do thngs once." Matter of fact, we had this bulletin board where the boss of the shop used to put up these inspirational messages. I'm a bit dubious on the effects of those messages; I always thought inspiration is kind of for women because your feeling or whatever shouldn't be stopping you from doing your job. That said, I liked that message (didn't inspire me, though, I swear!) because I'm the type of guy that likes to do things right the first time.
You're probably wondering what this has to do with anything at this point. Well, the first step in your understanding is to look at these screens:
That's the Inn I was working on, and it turned into quite a project where I had to go back and redo things many times until it was right. Of course, that didn't require any fancy pants words on paper to motivate me to do it. Anyway, I modified my random spawning system to check if there is a creature at the spawn point, and choose a new spawn point if so to randomly fill the area with a variety of NPCs. Some sit in chairs, others stand, some dance on the dance floor, some are waitresses. It's more crowded at night than during the day. They all have several animation cycles they go through randomly depending on what they're doing. The band sings songs where I took lyrics from recognizable songs and changed them into parodies.
So it's a cool area if you ask me, which you didn't but I need something to talk about, right?
On a completely different note, the Module of the Year contest is going on now. Personally, I'm abstaining as my mod is on the list and I don't really hinge what I consider a success or failure by winning awards. However, as this award represents what you all, the players, think about the modules made for NWN2, this is the award I respect.
Alright, I don't have anything else to talk about right now.
-edit-
Almost forgot:
Since I'm spending a lot more time than originally intended on the city itself, how important is a theft system for pick pockets? There is currently nothing, and would be a bit of a project, probably like a week's worth of work, to do something reasonable in that regard. But as a player you'll be in that city for hours doing various quests and what have you, so how important is a realistic pick pocket system? Keep in mind it'll add quite a bit of overhead! Is it worth it?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Still Chilling
I did a little work on a new area, fixed a few bugs, but I've got some things I need to do this week so not much is going to get done, hence the boring and short post here.
I'll be back later, maybe this weekend I can get back to cracking.
I'll be back later, maybe this weekend I can get back to cracking.
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