I've been enjoying more of City of Melnibone the past few days -- I'm level 6, very close to level 7, and I'm starting to come into my own as an adventurer (ie. I'm starting to get the good abilities and I'm about to be able to afford my first really good weapon; been dual-wielding shortswords through now). I'm really enjoying it, and Sir Elric tells me there are 600+ areas to explore, so I'll be sticking around for quite some time. :)
In other news, AME had an IRC chat with the 2007 NWN1 Golden Dragon nominees; I dropped in late, just at the end of the "official" portion of the chat. Present were, among others, QSW (admin/former admin of a bunch of stuff), BenWH (Wyvern Crown of Cormyr), Andarian (Sanctum of the Archmage), Fester Pot (Almraiven and, soon, Shadewood!!!), Starlight (Overlooked & Romance module lists), Lord Rosenkrantz (tilesets & models galore), AxeMurderer (script guru), and Brian Chung, the self-declared talentless hack/"tree artist" from BioWare. ;) So, needless to say, it was a nice bunch to chat with: I think the AME folks were pleased with the turnout.
Finally, I'm pleased to report that I have completed the first area of my new NWN1 module. More on that soon, maybe.... :)
So, as per my title, this will be a rather long update! Hmm, where to begin...
First off, let's start with a plug: Gregory Wilson, author of The Third Sign (the novel I'm converting to NWN2), has a new website up and running! So, before you do anything else, go check out his new site. More on this over at the TTS blog, soon.
Let's see, what's next...let's start with NWN 1 stuff. So, as my last post (which prompted several emails :) ) recounted, I reinstalled NWN 1 a few days ago, along with both expansions and the CEP. I re-downloaded all of my modules, along with all the required haks, music files, etc. Now, should anyone ever ask to see my work, I can't sheepishly shrug and tell them to go download it themselves. :)
Now, of more interest to readers, I suspect, is WHY I reinstalled NWN1. The fact of the matter is that with TTS development happening in NWN2, I'm finding it a bit draining to juggle two NWN2 projects at the same time. Moonshadows just isn't inspiring me right now. I got a neat little (er, big, actually) campaign idea written up, but I don't think now is the time or the place to talk about it, as I don't think I'll be doing anything with it in NWN1 or NWN2 (I'll save it for later). It's set in Lynncair, so I can probably combine it with TLS and continue to say that one day, my Lynncairen Saga masterpiece will become a reality...in some form or another (novel??).
So, if I'm not currently doing Moonshadows and I'm not doing this new Lynncair plot, what am I doing? I hinted at a sequel of some sort in my last post, which I've reconsidered somewhat since then. The truth is, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to build, yet. But I know it's going to be NWN1, and it's going to be low-mid level (I'm thinking 6-8), and it's going to deal more with character development than my past works have. Oh, and it will be hak-heavy (but CEP-free; CEP gives me headaches these days) so as to ensure beauteous surroundings -- you can thank WoRm for that. ;) I'm thinking it's going to be a mix of city and wilderness adventure...honestly, not sure I should say any more, as I really don't know exactly what I'm doing yet. I just know the feel I want to go for -- thinking up fun and engaging plots has never been a problem. I just haven't started brainstorming one yet. ;) I don't even know if it's going to be Forgotten Realms (probably not) or Lynncair or what. It'll probably be Lynncair. I feel like the more concrete work I do with the setting, the better my end result will be once I actually go for a larger-scale Lynncairen adventure. So, I'll probably start small-Lynncair.
Hmmm, what else...I think that's about it on the NWN1 building front, for now at least. Stay tuned for more, of course. The other thing I wanted to talk about was that I tried my very first NWN1 PW yesterday with a friend from high school, and had a complete and utter blast! I spent 5 hours on City of Melnibone, created & run by my Ossian buddy Sir Elric, and it was terrific! I'll probably be spending more time there this summer; if you feel so inclined, log on and party up!
So, that's about it. NWN1 musing, NWN1 plalying, The Third Sign website...oh, right. One amusing screenshot from my experience in Melnibone. There's a story to this one: it involves me, a foolishly impatient solo escapade into the sewers, a particularly pesky dire rat, and a not-quite-successful attempt at fleeing to draw the rat back into the city so the guards could help me. Luckily, two of my party members came over and revived my elven arse just moments after this picture was taken.
PS: yes, the rat is dead, too, and yes, I killed it, and no, I don't have any idea how it killed me too.
First of all, hurray for July! Ah, how time flies. A few miscellaneous things to get out of the way: life has been busy with my job (as per last post), but I'm hoping to be able to do some NWN-related stuff soonish. It's only a 4-week gig anyways, so I'll be free soon enough! Bwahaha! Also, my frisbee team got our first win yesterday, so hip-hip -- hurray! for us. Finally, I disabled comments on the blog because I was getting too many random attempts to post p0rn links, which would force me to manually go into the database to delete them. Not fun. :-P So, for now, feel free to email any comments about anything here to alex AT hugon DOT com.
So, on to the interesting part. I re-installed NWN1 on my PC. Just, you know. Re-installing it. Innocently. And subtly implying that Moonshadows II might have to wait a bit to come back into the spotlight, in favor of a certain other sequel that it occurred to me today would be a blast to make. :)
Sorry for the lack of updates -- I have no time to work on Moonshadows at the moment because of my job at Harvard Summer Session (TF for an intensive introductory computer science course). It is, as you might guess, intense. Lots of grading & preparation + long classes to attend & teach. Fun stuff!
The only game work I'll be doing (when I have time) will be working on The Third Sign. I'll post here again if/when progress becomes a possibility. :) Because, see, I also started brainstorming a new idea and am kind of liking it a lot...but I'm not thinking of it so much as a game as I am thinking it would make a nice novel. We shall see.
First: I beat Oblivion with my character, who, by the time I decided enough was enough (level 19), was Champion of Cyrodiil, Archmage of the Mages Guild, and Arena Grand Champion. Sweet. I've started to replay as a thiefish character -- I've joined both the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, and I'm chugging along through those organizations at a healthy pace. After I've done both of those, I'll probably shelf the game and get back to hardcore modding. :)
In other news, I seem to have won the Academy of Modding Excellence's Best Action Module of 2007 for Neverwinter Nights 2 with Moonshadows! Sweeeeeeeeet. :)
I've officially lost my first NWN2 area to corruption -- why, I do not know. No autosave, I was working in directory mode, everything about the area is valid, etc. And yes, it was the big exterior I've been working on for about a month now. And while I do have a backup, it's 2 days of lost work...and I did a LOT of stuff in those 2 days. This is not what I needed right now.
I'm getting very close to finishing the big exterior I've been working on these past weeks. Once it's done, Moonshadows development can truly proceed full-speed-ahead. There's still a lot of ground to cover, but I'm liking what I've got thus far. :)
Tomoachan, 16k for Moonshadows, and lots of development! 6/10/08
Well, I guess yesterday was a busy day on all counts! First of all, I spent a lot of time on the forums for NWN2: Storm of Zehir, Obsidian's new expansion pack. What I've read so far sounds cool-ish...I like everything I'm hearing except for the plot premise. It sounds like it focuses heavily on an economic simulation of sorts, and I'm frankly not such a fan of simulation-style games, especially when masquerading as an RPG. I mean, I'll definitely buy it to check it out and profit from the new content, but I'm definitely not "sold" yet.
The forum-surfing was, of course, in between heavy bouts of modding. I spent gobs of time working on a big exterior yesterday (same one), and while it's getting closer, it's still not done -- nor will it be for some time, I'm beginning to realize. Still, it's sort of a HUB of the mod, so nothing can really proceed until it's completed. Plus, I'm enjoying the process, and I'd like to do a very good job, so I really don't mind spending so much time on one area.
Finally, I got tired of modding a bit yesterday, so, in a rare moment of NWN2-nostalgia, I downloaded my first -- well, second, I suppose, but the first was not good enough to merit mention -- NWN2 community module! It was, of course, ENoa4's adaptation mod, Tomoachan. I wasn't sure what to expect going in -- since it was my first community mod that I'd ever played, I had only my own work to gauge it against.
Long story short, I really enjoyed it! I finished it in a few hours -- probably 3-4 -- and I'm fairly sure I saw everything in the mod. I played a Druid5/Fighter1 (slightly overpowered for the mod, though I did die a few times), and the balance of having access to buffs, healing, a focus in melee, and call lightning for big mobs was very nice.
As far as the module itself goes, I found the exteriors excellent, the interiors solid (yet unremarkable), the dialogue mostly good but with a substantial number of spelling/grammatical errors, the characters and companion-banter great, the roleplaying great, and the overall adventure fun. The sub-plots inside the Shrine were a little random and I felt that apart from "escape from the shrine" there was something lacking from a plot/backstory point of view...I feel like more could have been done with developing the history of the place and the people in it, especially in an adaptation module (rather than a straight conversion). Still, it was a satisfying mix of roleplay & hack'n'slash overall! There were a few cool custom things that really made it good: the loadscreens and music were great, and there were some nifty scripting tricks that I hadn't seen/thought of before either. Great job, Ernie -- and thanks for sharing!
As a final addendum, Moonshadows hit 16,000 downloads today! w000000t! :D
I spent some time yesterday coding the opening cutscene for TTS. It's not quite finished yet, but it's definitely getting there. I also watched the USA/Argentina friendly and the Celtics/Lakers game II, both of which were fun to watch.
Today, it's been watching soccer (France/Romania) and working on Moonshadows. I'm still chipping away on the big exterior area I've alluded to a few times in the past -- it's getting there, but not quite done.
In addition to an intense ultimate frisbee practice in 90+ degree heat today, I did some work on The Third Sign. I'm basically going to be switching back and forth between my various projects, alternating to work on whatever seems the most inspiring on any given day.
Also, I was going to submit a plot for The Witcher adventure contest, but it appears I missed the deadline. I'm crying on the inside. :p
EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention that this blog has officially been viewed over 30,000 times! Ub3r-w00t.
Between the 2nd and the 5th, I was in Disney World (Orlando) with one of my roommates -- hence the lack of updates of late. I'm back now, though, and I'm ready to get back modding on Chapter Two and TTS.
While I was gone, a technician from Dell came over and fixed my old laptop. This is good because a) my laptop is fixed and b) I can recover all the files that were there, including all my Ossian stuff, my Morrowind savegames, my old schoolwork, and...that's all I can think of right now, but I'm pretty sure there were a few other things I wasn't able to rescue before the motherboard failure. Oh, I remember now: a few things for the evil path of Chapter Two that I hadn't backed up are still on my old laptop, and I was too lazy to re-make them on my new laptop. So I'll be able to recover those things (blueprints, mostly) too.
I did extensive work on the big exterior I'm currently making -- it's actually starting to look rather funky. I haven't gotten around to taking screenshots of it in-game yet (though I did do a brief in-game stint to take some pics of an interior that's finished -- the good ones have been added to the "use to accompany miscellaneous posts" queue), but when I do, you'll get to see some sweet (I think :) ) uses of Nytir's Builder's Construction Set II (which is totally sweet) as well as some fun new visual effects that I made in the VFX editor this morning. All in all, things are looking good!
First, some non-NWN2-related news: yesterday I joined the Harvard summer ultimate frisbee team, which meets once or twice a week for games through early August. Since I hope to play on the (nationally-ranked) club team next year, this should be great practice in addition to my daily runs to stay in shape.
Now, back to the good stuff. I did some area design yesterday for one of the most significant locales in the campaign: it's a really big exterior and it's city-ish, meaning I can't revert to my usual grass+stone+trees+underbrush strategies for making places look good. ;) This means the area may take a bit longer than usual, since I frankly have never made a city- or even town-like area thus far. Still, I'm optimistic that I'll be able to pull it off.
I also would really like to get going on the areas for The Third Sign in the next day or so -- I'll let you know once I have anything to show on that front (over on the TTS Blog).
Ah-HAH! I have, after countless hours of pulling my hair and gnashing my teeth, discovered and resolved the display issues plaguing my site and blog(s). To anyone who previously viewed this site in Internet Explorer, things should appear no different; for you Firefoxians and Safarites, though, it should be a *world* better!
Basically, the issue was that Firefox, being a complete piece of trash, does not support the "rgb()" html function. So, since I was specifying the vast majority of my colors on all pages using this rgb command, stuff just wasn't showing up correctly in the Firefox browser, yet IE (which I proudly use) displayed it all perfectly.
Once I discovered that this was the issue (which occurred when I launched the TTS blog and noticed that it was COMPLETELY black and white in Firefox -- the only two colors I specified by name rather than by RGB -- I went through both sites and converted all RGB instances with the hexadecimal equivalents. Tedious? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.
Moral of the story? Well, there are two, actually. First, and most obviously, Internet Explorer's superiority over Firefox has been demonstrated once and for all. Second, always use either names such as "silver" and "black" and "white" or the hexadecimal values when specifying colors in html. For any web designers out there who have fallen pray to this nasty issue, or who just want a quick'n'dirty way to convert RGB to hex, I stumbled upon this handy little web application that helped to speed up the process of fixing my site. Also, this may prove useful.
I myself wrote several thousand words of dialogue yesterday, in addition to doing a lot of scripting and area work. But that's boring! What's important are releases, and there are two big ones to annoounce:
Dark Avenger 2, by Wyrin, and Seekers by Akkei of old NWN1 "Orcs" fame. Definitely give them both a look!
Well, the time has come! Without further ado, allow me to unveil HugieGames' spiffy new sub-site dedicated to my new project, a novel-to-NWN2-module conversion. The novel in question is titled "The Third Sign" (henceforth 'TTS') -- it's a fantasy novel written by Greg Wilson, scheduled to be published next June (2009). Between now and then, I will be working closely with Greg to convert the novel into a NWN2 module -- the idea is that the game will be used to promote the book (and vice versa, to some extent -- though maximizing book sales are much more important than garnering more downloads, in this case).
I'm very excited about this project: TTS is a great book, and I think it has the potential to make a really fun NWN2 campaign as well. Featuring voice acting, a full custom soundtrack composed specifically for the module, new artwork (both 2d and 3d) and much more, I can confidently say that the final product will be of extremely high-quality. Also, in case anyone was wondering, the module will be available for free; it is, after all, a promotional item.
I'll be working on TTS in addition to my Ossian Studios and Moonshadows stuff. Moonshadows may be forced onto the backburner occasionally in favor of the other two projects, but (especially since it's summertime now!) I don't anticipate delays being *too* significant. Plus, delays for Moonshadows just means more work on other high quality NWN2 stuff, so it's all good. :)
Anyhow, please do head over to (and bookmark/favorite/link-to) the new site, which is where Greg and I will be documenting progress on the TTS game conversion. Discussion of Moonshadows-related progress will remain here; TTS stuff will be there.
Well, the last two real hurdles between me and a fully-functional blog have been overcome in one fell swoop! For one thing, there were still some formatting issues in the text of my blogs; I fixed the issue for comments, but I couldn't figure out why the same fix wasn't working for blog posts themselves. Turned out one mis-named php variable was messing things up, so things look a little cleaner on my posts now.
Hurdle number two was that I couldn't for the life of me get the editing of posts working. I had everything being loaded into my editing form correctly, but for some reason nothing was actually being changed. Turns out that, as a safety feature, I made it so that I couldn't edit the ID's of posts -- so I marked the input field of ID as disabled. Turns out that passing a field that is flagged as "disabled" doesn't actually work in PHP for some reason, so once I un-disabled it, everything worked like a charm! So I can now edit posts no problem. :)
Finally, I completed an ENTIRE new blog using my existing templates. I won't unveil it quite yet, because the time isn't quite right, but as soon as one last thing has been done (not by me), I'll make the announcement and post the link here (as well as in all my signatures and such). Keep an eye out -- I expect to have made the announcement by this evening/tonight!
Well, I'm officially a sophomore (which, of course, makes any subsequent sophomoric puns entirely justified). I'm completely moved out of my dorm and am back at home, in the midst of unpacking and settling back into my summer groove of eat/sleep/run/read/mod. :)
Today's plan is to do some web design; I hope to make that announcement I alluded to a few posts ago later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Last final is in just over 2 hours...I'm off to breakfast. Wish me luck, and think linearly-algebraic thoughts! It'll likely be my last math assignment of all time...! :D
The last few days have been rough, and the going is only now about to get rougher. I'm done by Friday, but in the meantime I have two extremely hard exams coming up (one in about 3 hours) which I'm dreading.
Luckily, after Friday, I'm *freeeee!* and everything starts looking up again. I'll have plenty of time to be working on my various projects; expect more information on that front soon, since I have a pretty neat announcement to make about something I'll be doing in parallel to Ossian and Moonshadows work over the course of the next year.
I've spent some time today creating and placing some NPC's -- I haven't written their conversations yet, but I know exactly what my plans for them are, so I should have them written by the end of the day. Progress is fun!
Moonshadows has hit a pretty significant milestone: 15,000 downloads! I'm very pumped. :)
In other news, the winners of the Obsidian Area design contest were announced over on Neverwinter Nights Podcast, so definitely check that out and congrats to the winners. Additionally, there was recently a Mysteries of Westgate press event at the Avalon hotel in Beverly Hills, CA, which both Alan Miranda and Russ Davis (Tiberius) attended. The game seems to have been very well-received, so that's good news! I personally hope that there's another one over on the East coast; then maybe Leonard (Challseus) and I could show up! :)
I spent the last couple of days tinkering with the VFX editor, though I've ultimately been unable to create what it is I wanted. Normal VFX-stuff I can do; but once I started tinkering with models and textures and actual .dds files, things just go out of my reach. I'm no 3D-artist. :(
Anyhow, today I'll go back to working on Moonshadows itself. I plan on creating a few NPC's and writing their conversations, as well as possibly writing some core path stuff. My first final exame is also on Monday, so I'll be setting aside a substantial amount of time for that -- also, luckily, it's raining outside, so I probably won't be distracted by the outdoors and all of its temptations (sunlight, frisbee, running, etc.). Off to be a productive little boy!
I did some interior decoration today; the area I'm currently working on is coming along quite nicely, so I may have some screenshots of it up soon. I didn't spend too much time working, though, as it's absolutely gorgeous outside and the frisbee gods were calling to me. ;)
Well, in addition to a bit of miscellaneous testing/scripting/item-blueprint-ing, I fully-implemented companions today! They're functional and cool and all is well.
Well, after last post's re-vamp of the Moonshadows screenshot gallery, I decided to go ahead and do what I've been meaning to do for awhile: give HugieGames a big facelift. The homepage, NWN1 content and NWN2 content pages have all been (re-)created from scratch, so they're worth a look...as is this additional screenshot!
Some area design + screenshot-taking session 5/9/08
I was able to finish a large portion of an interior area today, one which I started from scratch this morning. Then, after doing a whole bunch of non-building stuff, I created a test character for myself (a spirit shaman -- those dudes are almost as sweet as favored souls! ;) ) and, my companions by my side, battled through one of my completed areas. I came away with twelve nice screenshots in total from the escapade, so, if I pace myself in a disciplined manner, that should last me quite awhile (1 screenshots/post, anyone?).
I did some area design tweaking yesterday -- mostly lighting/fog adjustments, with some placed-effect work as well. Additionally, I designed a new custom creature that I think came out pretty neat, and which should spice things up combat-wise. Perhaps I'll post some screenshots soon -- stay tuned!
In a hurry to make it to an intramural frisbee match (which we won!), I accidentally parked in a handicapped spot. Hurrah for $100 fines. I was having such a good day, too...
On a related-but-not-really note, I'm going to open a paypal donation link thingy. If any of you happen to be unfortunate enough to have more money than you know what to do with, feel free to contribute to the HugieFund. ;)
EDIT: It turns out receiving funds via PayPal costs money. Screw that! :D If you want to give me free money, send me an email and I'll give you my address! ;)
The Academy of Modding Excellence hosted an IRC chat earlier this morning that I was invited to attend. It was a lot of fun -- we had between 20 and 25 people there for the most part, and there was some really interesting discussion going on. I also was able to chat privately with a few folks that I think may be able to help me out with personal projects. On that note, off to send out a few emails -- then, to the toolset!
The Academy of Modding Excellence has released their second batch of nominations for the 2007 NWN2 Golden Dragon Awards, and Moonshadows has been nominated for Best Action Module! I'm thrilled and really excited to see how the final voting turns out. My competition is 'Tragedy in Tragidor' by Phoenixus and 'Corruption of Kiahoro' by human_male, so not really sure how the dice will fall...
The commenting feature on the blog was working, but I noticed after posting one that it was spitting out the comments for a given post in a random order instead of in the order the comments were submitted! I whipped together a fix in the php code this morning, and all seems to be good in blogsville once again. :)
I've got a few more screenshots from the area I built yesterday; I went back and used the terrain "color" tool to get some sweet shadowing effects on the cliffs and edges of the area. Enjoy!
As you can see, I've added commenting functionality to the blog. All seems to be in working order, so feel free to leave me one so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor! :) Also, I'm currently working on making editing function correctly...we'll see if I can figure it out.Cheers!
I spent some time today creating a new area. It's still pretty "bare-bones" -- no music or sounds and minimal work with terrain and texturing -- but the mood is already there in part, and I actually think it looks pretty neat. You be the judge!
Academy of Modding Excellence announces 2007 NWN2 nominations! 4/24/08
The Academy of Modding Excellence (AME) has at long last announced the first round of nominations for the 2007 NWN2 Golden Dragon awards! Accompanying the announcement was a slick video highlighting the various nominations:
Apparently, module-category awards will be released soon. Keep an eye out on the site...and cross your fingers! ;)
Well, that was quick -- I'm up to 300 votes! Also, I've been tinkering with the blogging code all morning to ensure that when I manually delete a post from the database, it doesn't mess up my display algorithms. It's all working now after about an hour and a half of work (or, at least, it worked if you can see this post! ;) ), so that's pretty cool!
Moonshadows hit 14,000 downloads yesterday! I know it's not a particularly big occasion, but I like to keep a tab on downloads so I don't miss the big 20k when that comes around. I'm also at 299 votes right now, so 300 shouldn't be too far away...
Also, good news! My old laptop was under warranty after all, so it appears I'll be getting the motherboard replaced for free! Also, assuming it's only the motherboard that was screwed up, I shouldn't have lost anything on the hard drive. Sweet!
So, my new baby is a 17" Dell Inspiron 1720. It has 2.5 GHz processor, 3582MB of RAM, and a freaking boatload of hard drive space (250GB's). It runs like a dream both in-game and out; Vista just seems to operate WAY smoother than XP ever did, so that's awesome too.
My videocard is an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 1 GB of memory on it. Needless to say, running NWN2 poses no problems. ;) I'm curious to see how The Witcher performs -- hopefully post patch 1.3 and with this new laptop, it'll run faster and smoother than before. On that note, I've downloaded the D'jinni adventure editor and I intend to take a look at that (along with some tutorials) sometime soon-ish. I have enough projects on my plate right now that I won't be diving in to anything too substantial, but you never know...
Also, an important note for you readers: for some reason, Firefox refuses to recognize certain valid html commands/functions which work perfectly on Internet Explorer (which I use and love). If you're a loser who for some reason uses Firefox, what you see is potentially not what you would be seeing were you surfing with IE. So use IE -- it's the only browser I'm currently supporting with this blog. Thank you. ;)
Welcome to my new blog! As you may have read on my last post over at blogger.com, my old computer's motherboard bit the dust the Friday before last. This was a major pain in the butt for me for several reasons, not least among them that modding and working on getting this new blog going were both brought to an abrupt halt. Luckily, my new machine has arrived, and I was able to salvage a bunch of stuff thanks to backups. What I haven't been able to recover yet should be mine once again soon, after I do the whole hard-drive recovery thing over the course of the next week.
So, modding should start again now that I have my machine and this blogging software up and running! I'm going to be adding a comment feature soon -- for now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new look/feel. Send me an email at alex AT hugon DOT com and let me know what you think!
Anyhow, off to class -- I'll update you with my recent activity soon, as well as tell you all about my new baby (computer). ;)
