Moonshadows 2 screens coming soon!

Classes are getting going again, so free time is becoming a bit more scarce. The courses I'm going to be taking are shaping up to be quite fascinating this semester, though, so I'll be busy in a good way. I did have some time to work a little bit on Moonshadows 2 yesterday: I did a bit of blueprint work, as well as some brushing up on a major outdoor area. Additionally, I placed several static cameras for use in a cutscene that I haven't had time to script yet--that'll be next.

On another note, I'm about a hundred pages into Dune, which I'm enjoying immensely. I'm finding the plot and characters very similar to The Wheel of Time...with the obvious difference, of course, that this is sci-fi where WoT is fantasy. But yeah, I'm really liking it so far!

Tea

In honor of A Serious Problem...Seriously receiving its 1000th download, I played through the mod again and took this screenshot. Enjoy.

Oh, also, hahahaha

...my first contribution to the vault for NWN2, "A Serious Problem...Seriously" got its 1000th download today. Seriously.

Writing, writing, more writing!

In case the message didn't come across in this entry's title, I've been doing gobs of writing over the past few days. It makes me feel productive, and it's also a lot of fun...so yeah. Also went running today for the first time in about 2 weeks, which felt very good. I think I'll finally take a break from writing/BioShock/The Witcher to go visit my old high school again tomorrow...we shall see. :)

Academy of Modding Excellence Blogroll

If you run a blog dedicated to NWN1/NWN2, you should check out the Academy of Modding Excellence's new Blogroll listing on their site, http://ame.nwvault.ign.com . Basically, they've made it so that non-members can have their blogs listed there provided the blogger has a link to the AME site on their own blog and that the blog features appropriate and pertinent content. Take a peek!

In other news, Raith Veldrin's Sands of Solvheil I: The Ruins of Kazatharis had an official Vault review posted up today, and Moonshadows - Chapter One hit 9000 downloads. W00t!

The Witcher = Teh Awesome

I shan't mince words: The Witcher is shaping up to be my new favorite game of all-time, and I'm only now leaving Kaer Morhen. It's perfect. It's the game I've been waiting for since my first RPG, Summoner. Summoner had a chain-attack system where basically you could link your attacks indefinitely if you clicked at the right time during your attack sequence; it was simple, but it made fighting a matter of skill and timing rather than just relying on dice rolls, and I loved it. Since then, I haven't found a single other game that used a chain-attack system (even Summoner 2 ditched it!)...until The Witcher. Add to this the fact that it will soon have a toolset available, that the graphics are the best I've seen ever, and that it uses a pregenerated character (I'm a big fan of pregens), and you've got a winner. It's basically Summoner on steroids...lots of steroids. And this makes me very, very happy. :)

My MotB Photojournal (HEAVY SPOILERS)

Well, I finished Mask of the Betrayer last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by the last 5-ish hours of it. Loose ends were tied up nicely, everything came full-circle, and (omzgogz) the final boss fight was extremely well-balanced! Kudos to Obsidian.

Now, for my photojournal! Enjoy! :)

Academy of Modding Excellence: new site, 2007 awards cycle

AME's New Site

As you may have noticed, I've been adding a few links under the "NWN2 Blogroll" sidebar over the course of the past week or so as I discover other community members' development journals (JClef's Ravenloft blog, Raith Veldrin with Sands of Solvheil, LadyElvenStar with A Time to Die, GamingParentsStudio with NHiN2 [among other things], etc.). My most recent addition to the list, though, is a link to the new website for the Academy of Modding Excellence, an organization dedicated to handing out Oscar-like awards for NWN and NWN2 content.

I was fortunate enough to net one of their awards last year with Perchance to Dream (Best Action 06), and so, as an awards' whore, I'm keenly interested in the way the 2007 NWN2 awards cycle will play out. :) The organization's new site, hosted by the NWVault, looks fantastic, and they've got some shiny new forums that I know I'll certainly be checking fairly regularly!

Moonshadows 2

I was able to get some really solid area design work done yesterday, as well as quite a bit of writing (not all of it for Moonshadows, but still). Today will consist mostly of studying for my only final exam in multivariable calculus, which I have tomorrow, but I'm already feeling decently comfortable with the material. Still, I'll probably spend today studying, because after tomorrow's test, I'm home free! Wheeeee! :)

Awards List on Vault now (sort of) working

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the Award's column of the NWN2 modules Top Rated list wasn't working until quite recently; it was showing only Hall of Fame badges, not other awards (like the Reviewers' Award that Moonshadows and Mask of the Betrayer won). Now, the Reviewers' Awards are showing up...as are some other random Golden Dragon ones on seemingly-random peoples' mods. :P I'm sure Maximus'll sort things out soon.

(Edit: Seems to be fixed! :) )

Progress on Moonshadows

I've been making great progress on Moonshadows - Chapter Two! Specifically, I've been doing some area design, which (in addition to fiddling around with the custom VFX editor) has become probably my favorite part of mod design (though it's definitely not what I'm best at!). Anyways, the area I've been making is the first I've designed using the new MotB terrain, texture, grass, and other toolset content, and I think it looks wicked cool. I'm particularly pleased with the new placed effects available from MotB, and I'm using a bunch of them to spice this area up. I'll see about some screenshots at some point soon. :)

More Screens from Chapter 2

Well, I've spent the past few days working almost non-stop on my final project for my computer science class (designing a website for the satire magazine I'm part of, including submission forms for articles, headlines, fake personal ads, and a bunch of page templates which load information from databases dynamically--it's fun!). I've been working on it for a long time, and my demo of it is tomorrow, and I just finished making the last few features "work"--there'll be time to fancy things up later, after I've showed people that it all at least works. :)

In addition to working on the website and doing a good bit of running, I've tried out BioShock, and I'm completely hooked. It's fantastic! I'm not one for shooters, usually, but this is just outstanding. In the first 5 minutes of the game, I gasped aloud in awe for the first time in my gaming career!

And, in all the rest of my free time ( :P ), I've even done a little bit of work on Moonshadows. I've put a few new(ish) screenshots up, so enjoy the eye-candy.

Moonshadows - Chapter One hits HoF!

Hooooooorayyyyyyyyy! :) :) :) :) :) :)

Badge has been added to page, but not to my custom nametag yet. Still, hooray!

Away all weekend

Away--Not much progress

So I spent all day yesterday (and will be spending all day today, and most of tomorrow) re-visiting my old stomping grounds--my high school, Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. This means, of course, I won't be making progress on Moonshadows 2...but that's alright, as I'm in no hurry, and with MoW's release imminent, there's no lack of upcoming content for the community to sink their teeth into.

Now, I'm fairly certain I haven't announced this yet, but allow me to do so now: Moonshadows 2 will feature a fork in the road early on which will allow for a "good" path and an "evil" path, so to speak. Each path will be approximately the same length, due to the pseudo-mirror-image nature of the story, but will of course be for the most part completely unique and apart from one another (though they do overlap in several places). This should add to both the replayability and the roleplaying in Chapter Two, which were the two aspects I wanted to focus on improving. Thus far, I'm very pleased with the attention I've given to conversation options, and I'm optimistic that players will be, too.

Awards...!?!?

The wait is killing me. I keep checking the Vault to see if the January Hall of Fame inductions have been made........and they haven't. AHHHH. :) Of course, no word on either the AME or MotY either (the latter of which is what I think is probably distracting Maximus from whipping together the HoF, ironically). Whatevvvv.

Screens from Chapter Two!

I made great progress on Moonshadows - Chapter Two after writing yesterday's blog entry. It was a painstaking process, because it was basically all cutscene work, but I think it was worth it. This is, after all, basically one of the single most important cutscenes in the entire Moonshadows campaign...check out the screens, and you may (probably will) recognize the event, and hopefully agree with me that it looks wicked cool. :)

Happy 2008!

Well, the holidays have come and gone, and 2007 is now officially history! Let's see...first things first:

NWN2 OC

I finished the OC a few days back, after Christmas--I haven't uploaded my last batch of (~100 more) screenshots, but I will when I'm on a better connection. I must say, I was completely blown away by the quality of this game. After so many people trashed on it on the forums early on, I guess I had low expectations...but even had I not had lower expectations, I'm fairly certain I would have been extremely impressed. The companions were, hands-down, fantastic. The economic balance was terrific, apart from the loot in the final dungeon, which was sort of overkill if you ask me (with every corpse all around the dungeon usable and containing mundane loot). Combat was super-well-balanced with a Favored Soul, and even though I found the final battle a bit anti-climactic story-wise, I found it quite well balanced. After I finished the OC, I jumped right into...

MotB

Ok, let me just say, this game is not my style at all. I am a big fan of good ol' fashioned magical items, and I despise the presence of hundreds upon hundreds of stupid essences on every single creature's corpse. I mean, honestly? That's laziness, not a cool feature. Loot is very important to me in keeping the game interesting, and from an in-game logic standpoint, how often should a regular adventurer be expected to make their own weapon instead of, oh, finding one, or buying one, or stealing one? Crafting is for the legendary dwarven smiths with their magical forges, not for the average player to be expected to use. The essences in lieu of normal loot is gripe number one.

Gripe number two is that the combat is simply sort of ridiculous. I understand that once I've descended into the lower level of the Death God's Vault, things are supposed to get really, really deadly...that's totally fine. I sort of raised an eyebrow when my party descended some stairs only to be wiped out by a lich king, two vampire ancients, two death lords, and two hoary mummified priests. Still, I re-loaded, prepared better, and ultimately took care of them. Then, I backtracked to better search the ruins once I hit the Betrayer's Gate, and upon cleaning out that first central room--the one with the cursed urns--I bashed one of the two heavily-locked doors. I begin to buff my party to move forward. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, five--FIVE--vampire ancients appear and start wreaking havoc on my party. I do not know where they came from, but they came from behind, and there was nowhere to come from behind my party. They killed everyone, then started to kill me, and I was forced to cheat to get through the encounter because I hadn't saved post-lich-king fight and I didn't want to lose that progress. After I dueled mano-a-mano with ALL FIVE vampire ancients with my pitiful greatsword +5 in god mode, I stopped, saved, and quit. We'll see if I start playing again, I'm not sure I will. I mean, I think I've already guessed the entire plotline--that Akachi was the Betrayer, and that his big secret punishment that Myrkhul bestowed upon him was *gasp* the spirit-eater, the very curse you're afflicted with! And that I'll probably end up having to either confront Myrkhul or Akachi's ghost or something in order to rid myself of the curse.

On that note, the spirit eater doesn't bother me--in fact, I think it's totally cool. It not only adds valuable, meaningful roleplaying opportunities to the game, but it's also honestly not all that important to deal with. It's kind of like an extra companion who needs checking up on once in awhile. Anyhow, on to other things.

New Games

Two Worlds, BioShock, and The Witcher--w00t! :) I already tried Two Worlds, though, and was somewhat disappointed. The graphics are all well and good, and gameplay is fine, but it reminds me a lot of Gothic 3, which I thought was going to be really good, but which ended up just being kinda meh. BioShock and The Witcher I haven't tried, yet, but I suspect those are going to be better. I'm especially looking forward to BioShock at this point, as I've heard the Witcher's translation can be lacking at points, which I suspect is going to detract a bit from the experience. But yeah, Two Worlds is great if you like Gothic 3 and vice versa. I'll keep you updated on my thoughts vis-a-vis BioShock and The Witcher as I start them.

Moonshadows - Chapter Two

It's been awhile, but I actually started back into developing this after finishing the NWN2 OC and dropping MotB for the time-being, and I've made superb progress. The NWN2 OC has taught me a lot about what I should and should not do in a conversation--for instance, that some descriptive text is fine, but that what I was doing before can get overkill very quickly--including that I should definitely be offering more dialogue options in conversations. I think you'll find the roleplaying much more satisfactory and substantial in Chapter Two, particularly after Chapter One's complete dirth of them. But yes, progress has been actually really good, from a writing, design, and cutscene standpoint. Soon I'll be done with the opening sequence of cutscenes and will be able to move on to actual playable content! I definitely have the builder's bug back--the NWN2 OC must have done it. :)

Awards (HoF, MotY)

It's that time of year! The Module of the Year 2007 contest is going to be kicking off sometime soon, and I'm really excited to see how the contest goes this year. I'm hopeful that Moonshadows - Chapter One will be a contender for something...not really expecting to beat the heavy-hitters like Night Howls in Nestlehaven or Harp & Chrysanthemum, but I'm hopeful that I might be able to edge out a few of the older favorites like Dark Water 1 and Tragedy in Tragidor--basically, I'm hoping for the Top Rated list to speak for itself, and expecting the non-modules like romance modifications and character creators to fall away. We shall see! Then there's the matter of Moonshadows - Chapter One making Hall of Fame for NWN2, which should happen any day now depending on when Maximus does the next batch of inaugurations for January. Maybe that'll boost visibility a bit in preparation for the MotY voting...the spot amongst the Top 5 HoF modules sidebar list should certainly help! :) Finally, on this topic, the Academy of Modding Excellence will probably be getting going on their own 2007 Golden Dragon Award-worthy content search. No idea what their timetable is, but it's another thing to look forward to.

FR Source Books

I managed to get my hands on a few of the Forgotten Realms/D&D sourcebooks yesterday, and I skimmed through them, paying special attention to the chapter on Netheril in Lost Empires of Faerun. I was thrilled to 1) actually see an official reference to the spell Ioulaum's Longevity (for you Moonshadows players), and 2) see that I had interpreted it correctly. ;) I'm now looking to get a hand on some source material on epic spells, or spells that existed that were level 10 or above (before Mystra's ban on magic was imposed). If anyone can tell me which sourcebook or source I could use to find info like that, I'd much appreciate it.

Coming Up Soon

Well, I go back to school soon for finals, but because Harvard does things funny and my own schedule works out that way, I only have one exam, and it's (I think) the 17th. In the meantime, I have no classes, and while I have one 10-page paper to make revisions on (1 day of work prior to the 7th) and a website to put the finishing touches on (a few days of tinkering), I'm going to have a lot of free time before I have to buckle down and study for my math final. This is perfect, because it means I should be able to get LOTS of work done on Chapter Two, and other miscellaneous activities that need my attention at this time. Finally, look forward to my boatload of upcoming screenshots from my NWN2 OC playthrough...I tried to capture a whole lot of fun, memorable moments in the game, and I think I did a fairly good job of it.

Until next time!