Insane testing

Wow. I spent so long testing yesterday, it's ridiculous. I took a bunch of screenshots too, but none of them are worth sharing. :P In any event, I think I FINALLY sorted out all the issues I encountered by the time I turned in for bed...I still have four sidequests to test and the latter half of the main quest, and I think I have about five to six hours of playtime thus far...so Chapter 1 should hopefully weigh in around 10+? We shall see. :)

About to head back in-game for some more testing, and hopefully for some screenshot-taking too!

More Testing, More Fixing, More Screenshots.

Well, I spent ALL DAY (apart from a quick run) playtesting a second sidequest and a good chunk of the main quest for Moonshadows. At this point everything on my list is "checked off", so it'll be onward and upward (literally--into the Star Mounts ;) ) tomorrow. A few more screenies for your enjoyment...

I personally am a big fan of both of these screenshots. I think they do a good job of conveying some nice action scenes/visuals of the mod.

Anyhow, that's it for today! More to come tomorrow. :)

New Logo by joriandrake

So I just got an email from community member joriandrake who generously took it upon himself to design a new logo for Moonshadows! At first I was wary to replace my little brother's but then jorian scrapped his original and adapted my brother's instead, so no feelings were hurt--I didn't want to trod on family toes, yaknow? ;) So, the new logo now features prominently on the header of this blog, and will replace other instances of the old logo as well...as I find them, heh.

In the meantime, I've updated the photo gallery after some testing/screenshot-taking today. Check it out! Also, I should mention that I played through one of the sidequests, almost all the way to the end (a door wasn't working, meaning I couldn't make it back to the reward giver), but that one sidequest alone, played with a cleric7/fighter1, took exactly 2 hours. That's no main quest, and none of the other...um...7 sidequests in the game. So it should be quite a doozy of a game time-wise once all's said and done! And that's just chapter 1! So I hope when everything is assembled, it'll be a monster. ;)


I must say, after encountering quite a few bugs in previous playthroughs, the game is beginning to feel a lot neater. Bugs are being squashed, tweaks are being made, combats are becoming well-balanced, and loot is...well, loot is still a bit uber-common, so I may have to adjust that. But that shouldn't be too hard.

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So, that's it for this eye-candy-filled update! I'll be heading back in-game now to do some more testing. :)

Development day

So today was definitely a development day; I wrote several thousand words of dialogue and did some area design. I also drove around a ton, from hanging out with friends (45 mins away) to chauffeuring my brother EVERYWHERE a bazillion times. No screenshot today, since I was in the toolset working on Chapter 2 the whole time. Hopefully I'll do some testing on Chap 1 tomorrow...

Testing, Fixing, Developing--Rinse, Lather, Repeat.

The title says it all. Today was a testing day for Moonshadows, during which I found a bunch of issues (several of them show-stoppers); I'm in the process of fixing them right now, as well as designing new content for Chapter 2! :) Here are a few screenies for your enjoyment.

Ossian Work

So this past day was Ossian work all day long; I was literally busy from 9 in the morning until 9 at night, with breaks to eat and run. It was brilliant. :) No Moonshadows news to report.

Development...

Yesterday was a busy day as far as real life goes, so not much got done in the testing department (ie I didn't fire up NWN2). However, I did get some good development on the main quest done--I'm being bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) and pushing ahead into the main plot so the players aren't left on a total (almost literal ;) ) cliffhanger. I'm struggling once again with the idea of releasing as a single chapter as opposed to polishing it while I work on the next installments. I think Tiberius209 is doing something similar, where he's releasing his entire "Maimed God's Saga" in one package; this is what I saw myself doing at the beginning of development, and it's what I find myself leaning towards once again.

Here's my thought process. In the past, I've done only standalone modules; ToM 1 was never really intended to have a sequel. When I started on ToM 2, some of you might remember that it involved a major revamping of ToM 1, particularly with the ending and the beginning--I added a Prelude module to Chapter 1, and the end cutscene, which is what segways into Chapter 2.

In this case, I would be for the first time releasing with the knowledge that I'm not done--in other words, that I have a responsibility to players to deliver the next part of the story on a timely basis. With college starting up in a week, I know that real life is going to become much more time consuming from a social and academic point of view...it may be a month or so before I have the chance to settle down and seriously crack open the toolset again, meaning Chapter 2 could be a long time coming. At the same time, there's no way Chapter 1 will be ready in a week. So, I'm thinking that my best bet is to not jump the gun--I'll stick by my original vision of one colossal campaign released all at once. And so, I have officially begun Chapter 2 (while Chapter 1 will continue to be tested). I designed almost the entire opening sequence, which is pure central plot; I did the writing, the scripting, the area design--everything except for a few blueprints. I added Chapter 2 to the campaign and wrote the quick transition script from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2. So basically I did a bit of work on Chapter 2, and made the decision to keep Moonshadows 1 under wraps until the time is right.

Productive day

Today was a productive day not just in the NWN2 department--got a haircut, took care of a bunch of mail now that I'm back home, went shopping for some clothes before college starts (yay for comfy jeans)...it was a good time. I also went running, and managed to get a whole lot of work on Moonshadows done, though it was development, not testing.

How did I do that, you might ask, considering I said it was "done"? The answer is, I realized there was something key missing from the game, something that would make lots of people very angry. I will not even bother to say what this thing was, because if I do, people will lose respect for me. ;) Well, I had to think of a way to include it so that it fit with the setting and such and had a logical backstory...which I did...then the backstory evolved into a bright idea--a quest! And guess what I did today? I designed the ENTIRE quest from scratch. It's done. Completely. And it's the most complex sidequest in the game in terms of possible endings, which is why it took me all day...it involved a bit of area work (editing an existing one), a lot of scripting/"making things work", and about 2000 words of dialogue all things told. I also designed all the blueprints, wrote all the journal entries (those 2000 were from convos only--there are a lot of journal entries too, long ones!), and generally kicked royal buttock. I was on a roll!

So yeah, now I can get back to testing. It sounds like Ossian might involve some work in the next few days, which may mean a temporary break from betatesting Moonshadows, but I don't mind that, of course. :) It's really close to being done now...I can just feel that it's going to be smooth sailing through the rest of testing, now...

Testinggggggg...and a few new screenies

A long morning and afternoon of testing--all issues encountered (and there were plenty, especially related to a few troublesome doors with scripts...) have been resolved, except for one "note to self" that I plan on adding tomorrow morning; it's more of an "improvement"/feature addition than a fix, but I think it's pretty necessary. Anyhow, I'm enjoying myself despite the handful of bugs! The combat is hard, but that's just because I'm not very good and my builds need work. ;) Oh, and I don't use potions. Yeah....about that. I'll probably disable the pesky death script I have in place...did I mention that there is no respawn in Moonshadows? Yeah, well, there isn't. You die, you're dead. At least for the moment. I may make a last-minute change to implement a sort of deity-specific system for appropriate classes (clerics, paladins, druids, etc.), but that is unlikely at this point; I rather like the harshness of my death script. ;) Anyhow, a few screenshots for your amusement!

Testing, fixing, frisbeeing

Today I spent a bunch of time doing a first round of testing with the "finished" game; let's just say lots of the stuff I hadn't tried before was...rough. But I have two columns of notes ("bugs" and "suggested improvements") which have all been crossed off, so everything I encountered should theoretically be taken care of at this point. Tomorrow I'll probably jump right into testing and see how far I get this time around. Oh, also, I took a few screenshots in-game of some not-yet-seen areas; this one is the one I like best:


For anyone who's interested, I was playing with my level 8 dwarven fighter today, and while some of the combat was easy, other fights were exceedingly difficult...it's easy to get mobbed as a single melee man. Characters able to take on multiple enemies at once more effectively, like casters, may end up having a significantly easier time in this module...I'll have to see. In any event, it certainly looks like my starting level prediction of 7-8 is going to be the final word; you'll have a chance to adjust your character's level to 8 at the start of the module if you don't bring in an appropriately-experienced character.

IT'S OFFICIAL

The module is done. Chapter 1 of Moonshadows is officially 100% content-complete, meaning no more additions will be made unless they are related to a bugs, balance issues, etc. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited; it's been almost exactly a year since my last major module release way back on the 12th of September, 2006, when Perchance to Dream was uploaded to the Vault. Since then, of course, I've done a great deal of work on The Lynncairen Saga, for which there exists on my hard drive a pretty excellent almost-completed first chapter which will probably never see the light of day :'( , and, duh, Moonshadows.

So now testing begins. I'm gonna let loose and try to mess this thing up bad. :) I've decided not to employ beta testers for the time being simply because I'm stubborn that way and the idea of this being a real solo job appeals to me--apologies to anyone I may have spoken to about possibly beta-testing, but look on the bright side, you'll get to play the finished product and not already know the spoilers and be tired of it like you would be otherwise. ;)

I mentioned it's a solo job, but I guess this isn't exactly true; I'll take a minute now to list out a few things Moonshadows makes use of which I did not make:

-Custom Music; I didn't do any of the composing. It's all from David Arkenstone, Kitaro, and a couple other sources I don't remember but have written down somewhere. The musical score for this module sounds fantastic, if I may say so myself; I really love it.

-Custom Artwork; my little brother made the lovely Moonshadows logo which is at the top of this blog.

-Custom VFX's; while I made a dozen or so custom vfx's on my own for Moonshadows, I also made use of several plucked from Ashura's lovely VFX pack. Not many, but a few, and they're great.

-Custom placeables; Arphrazon's cave roof placeables made a few of my cavern areas...roofier?

And...that's it. I tried to use as little outside stuff as possible, since so much is possible to do on one's own with the new toolset. So anyways, tomorrow (or later today, since it's past midnight, heh), after I get a good night's sleep, I'll get to testing this bear. It's been a long day, full of (as you can imagine) tons of Moonshadows last-minute development stuff, and I also ran a 5k race in a nearby town with my old XC buddies from high school who are at coach's place for preseason, only 35 minutes away from me up in VT. :) So I'm rather emotionally and physically drained. WOOHOO.

Another busy day!

Once again, I was on a roll today! I did LOADS of design work--decorations, lighting tweaks, conversation writing, cutscene scripting/designing, and most of all, doing tedious little scripts to make the game work. :) One of the two remaining areas is now completely done; all that remains is to finish the second one, which I started decorating this evening and which is looking good so far, and then to finish one conversation and begin testing "for real"!

Another busy development day

No screenshots to show today, but that's not for lack of Moonshadows effort on my part! I spent the majority of the day designing the two new areas and decorating the first of the two, as well as creating all the item and creature blueprints for those areas. I then decorated another already-made area that needed some finishing touches--tomorrow I'll finish area decoration, add the blueprints I made, and begin on the last few convos/cutscenes left in the module! I'm almost there...!!! :)

Let the testing begin!

Well, it's just about that time! I was a total machine yesterday (mostly because of lack of internet access to distract me ;) )--I designed and completed 2 of the 4 remaining areas from scratch, I designed and implemented two huge campaign-wide quests (which work in parallel) mostly from scratch, and I started testing, taking a few screenshots along the way!

It was admittedly pretty rough for the first, oh, 2 or 3 attempted run-throughs; I came away with about a page of bugs, and I encountered showstoppers for every quest (side and main) I tried. However, after a few hours of chipping away, I've gotten rid of all bugs I hit so far, and I have only a couple of "suggested improvements to self" left to implement today. Of course, I also have this one quest to finish--the quest-giver's dialogue isn't done and two areas still need to be made from scratch and enemies need to be added to one already-made area, but otherwise it's looking good.


After that I'll have to write the "ending" movie and I'll be done apart from additional bugfixing, writing up a readme, and writing up a walkthrough that contains listings for all custom items and tips/solutions for all quests in the game. After that it's a few more polish things--placing water sounds, making sure animations are working correctly, etc.--and I'm DONE.


Oh, I forgot to mention, I also took out a handy-dandy pencil and paper and plotted out those 2 areas left to create, complete with sub-plot info, notes about which enemies go where--basically doing a blueprint of the areas so that when I make them today, everything goes nice and smoothly. I'm really happy with some of the "subplot" ideas I had doing this last night--this quest will hopefully be a lot of fun.


Another thing to note is that up until now I had been playing with a level 7 dwarven barbarian, and combat was fairly well-balanced; yesterday, however, I used a human cleric 7/fighter 1, and combat was just as fair! I'm not very good at NWN2's intricacies as far as playing it goes, but I'm pretty pleased with the difficulty level thus far. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was enjoying myself overall playing through Moonshadows--I honestly wasn't expecting to be entertained since I made the thing, but I found myself having a genuinely good time! This, I suspect, is a very good sign. :) Alrighty, off to make those 2 last areas...!

Lotsa work on Moonshadows

Today was another jam-packed day as far as work on Moonshadows goes. I went through all areas to make sure names and tags were correct, I did some area design, and I went through and fixed some scripts that were broken and causing crashes. Yes, that's right, crashes--meaning I actually went and tested stuff in-game! Meaning, of course, that testing has begun. :) I still have a chunk of work to do on that last sidequest before I can call it a true beta, but it's really getting there now! But yeah, today was a tweak/fix day--broken doors, annoying lighting, under-powered monsters, overpowered monsters, that sort of thing.

Ok, boring part done! Now for the part you've all been waiting for--a screenshot of an as-of-yet unseen High Forest area!

Lots more screenshots!

A picture tells a thousand words, so I'll keep this short and cut straight to the eye-candy; today was an area-design and blueprint-creation day, and I spent the evening going through various areas taking screenshots. The gallery has been updated with the ones I felt came out best, and I've posted 4 of those ones here (each from a different area) for your viewing pleasure. See all the new additions at the gallery!

More Moonshadows work

I made good progress on Moonshadows today; did a bunch of convo editting and writing, and I designed an entire new sidequest from scratch. Journal entries for it are done, about half the blueprints are designed, and the exteriors for it are made. This is the last quest I had planned to do, though I didn't know exactly what kind of quest it was going to turn out to be (yesterday and today I brainstormed the nature of the quest itself). I think this should just about round out the first module of Moonshadows...after it's done, it'll just be testing and some polish stuff (intro movie/tga's, loadscreens, loadhints) before it's ready for release! I wonder how long it will be...it's certainly taken me awhile to make, but I really have no sense of how much time it'll take to play through.

Back from weekend on the cape, 2 new screenshots

So I spent the weekend on the Cape with some friends from high school--it was a blast, and I am rather tanner than before. :) After returning to Vermont today, I did some area work then went in-game to take a few screenshots. It's not finalized yet--no creatures, and still a bit bare in the placeable department--but it's getting there. Enjoy.

More Screenshots & Progress

Today I designed an entire exterior area from start to finish; it was the last exterior I intended on remaking, and it has turned out pretty dang nicely if I may say so myself! I don't have any screenshots of that one in particular, but I do have 5 new ones that I've added to the gallery that are from other recently-revamped forest areas. Enjoy!

Another screenshot

So after some "touching up," I've got another screenshot to share:

It's another High Forest shot, as you may have been able to guess, from a different neck of the woods. :)

Some Screenshots and a bunch more progress

For the first time in probably about a month I have updated HugieGames.com's Moonshadow pages to reflect the changes that have been to the campaign; the homepage features a new module description, the screenshot gallery has been completely wiped clean (since none of the areas pictured there are still in the game--they've all been completely remade from scratch!), and four new screenshots from one of the newer areas have been added. I'll post them here as well; they're taken from one of the many High Forest areas in the game, and they involve a battle with some orcs:

You may or may not remember what older screenshots looked like from various forest areas, but here's a summary of my newer strategy; many more overlapping textures, more judicious uses of grass and large trees, more undergrowth (shrubs & plants), more "mapped out" areas on which you have a real path to follow rather than being able to cut through any which way, and overall, much smaller areas as well, which has reduces the campaign size by almost half! Basically, better in every way imagineable...particularly since, in my opinion at least, they look SO much better than the older ones!

I'll have more screenshots later on today and tomorrow from other new forest areas as I clean them up and get to them in-game.

Busy!

I did some stuff for Ossian today, as well as a TON of work on Moonshadows. I decided that my exterior forest areas were pieces of crap and that I could do way better, so ever since coming back from England I've been remaking those forest areas from scratch--tonight I finished the area design, completely. :) Well, I mean, I have a bit of creature placement to do, and I have to worry about surface mesh, but the actual terrain/texture/water/grass/trees/placeable work is done, and that's the bulk of the work. :) I'll have screens of these 4-5 new areas soon, I promise!

Let's see...I also did some custom VFX work, some scripting, and some dialogue work. So overall I was pretty productive! I also got back into running, I played some football catch, and played wiffleball. Wshew! Tomorrow I'll start with surface mesh, move to creature placement, then I'll just tinker around a bit to see if there's anything that needs doing...in existing content before moving on into new territory! In case anyone was wondering, the game is currently "complete" (I think) up to the point where I originally planned to release Chapter 1. Of course, I've pushed the end of the chapter further into the story now, so it's not done yet...but still, I'm getting closer! And the nice thing is that the rest of development will be all main quest, and will in fact consist solely of interior area design, a few fun cutscenes, and a handful of reasonably-long dialogues...no sidequests, exteriors, or combat, which tend to be the most time-consuming things to handle.

TONS of area work

I did LOADS of area design work today; I'm redesigning the outdoor forest areas of the module now that I've figured out certain ways to make things prettier and overall better. I basically did 2 areas from scratch today, though I still have grass to add in one of them.

Home!

Well, I'm home at last, but my brain is fried from jetlag so I'll keep this one short; Europe was lovely. :) I probably won't post pictures after all...too much catching up to do, and WAY too many pictures to choose from. ;)