I'm penning this hasty update from the Zurich airport -- I arrive home from my 2+ months in Europe later tonight, so development will pick back up, as will updates! It's been a fun summer, but I'm ready to buckle down and get some Moonshadows 2 development done in the next month. We'll see about that self-imposed September 1 deadline... heh.
If you'd like to see what I was up to all summer, check out Digital Dore!
I've been surprisingly inspired these past few days with regards to Moonshadows 2 development -- in addition to writing about 5000 words of dialogue, I've designed a sweet-looking (see below screenshots) area in its entirety, made several NPC's & coded a dozen or so short scripts. The central plot is shaping up rather nicely, and while there remains much to be done, I'm starting to get a sense of what the game will look and feel like, which is exciting.
Again, this may be the last update for awhile -- but even if you don't hear from me, I'll be making progress. My new goal is to finish Moonshadows 2 by the time school starts next fall... so, that's about two years after the release of Moonshadows 1, in early September. We shall see.
In other news, I've been taking another look at my revised notes for The Lynncairen Saga, my planned campaign for Dragon Age, in the wake of a recently-released trailer which looks freaking awesome. I really can't wait for that game to come out...
Well, Mysteries of Westgate is out, school is out, and my second Digital Dore entry is up! I'm headed to Italy to do Dante research/work in about a week, so I likely won't be able to update the blog much 'til August. In addition to working on Digital Dore, I've been plugging away on Moonshadows 2 a bit, which has been fun. No major updates to make on that front. Digital Dore is where all the new and shiny is at!
I'm using the NWN2 toolset for something slightly different (more artistic, less game-y) that I thought I would share. I'm doing an independent study/project of sorts at Harvard in which I'm re-imagining Gustav Dore's engravings of Dante's Divine Comedy and "porting" them to the 21st century via NWN2. I'll be researching Dante in Italy this summer, so I hope to have perpetual updates over at my Digital Dore gallery. If you're interested in the project, that's where you can stay tuned!
NWN 2 Patch 1.22 has gone live as of yesterday! Mysteries of Westgate is now going through its final (very quick) round of testing to make certain that the final version of the patch hasn't messed anything up -- but, given that we've been testing it with the internal non-final version of 1.22 while the patch was in development, no great surprises are expected. I'll post again once MoW is released!!! :)
It has been a ridiculous wait, but Mysteries of Westgate looks like it's finally going to be released, VERY soon. I've received official word from Alan Miranda that this is the case. We can't give you the date, but there is one, and it is soon -- and that is incredibly exciting for me. :) At long last, after all this hype, and all the delaying, you guys will all get to play the game Ossian worked so hard on. Hurray! I'll announce more info as it becomes available.
In other news, school is ridiculously busy, so I've not been able to do any development since my last post. It will likely be summertime before I can sneak in any serious development work on Moonshadows. As for The Third Sign, it's ready to go -- just waiting on patch 1.22 so that I can test it and make sure everything's working.
I'm now back on campus, so it's really starting to feel like break is over. Still, this has been the most productive vacation I've had vis-a-vis NWN2 for a looonggggg time. I not only finished The Third Sign, but also made fantastic progress with Moonshadows 2, a project I had thought I was totally done with. Today I designed a bunch of quest item blueprints, wrote about a thousand words of dialog, and wrote probably a thousand more in journal entries; I also did some scripting and created a placed a few NPC's. Progress is good, and my To-Do list is looking better by the day.
Still, for the next month, modding is going to take a back seat. I have two weeks of "reading period" (ie. endless studying), followed by a week of exams for fall semester classes. After that I have another week or so of break before second semester starts...but I'll be spending that with friends, so I likely won't have much time to work on Moonshadows 2.
Stay tuned for updates come early February, though! And wish me luck on my theory of computation & complexity exam. :)
Thanks to community member joriandrake (who helped design the sweet Moonshadows logo you see tossed around here so often), I've found some excellent music that I hope to use in Moonshadows 2. The music is good in general, not just for videogames; give it a listen! The one that I know I'll be using for sure is "Tremble," though I'm not done listening to them all yet. So, thanks joriandrake, thanks MilkMan-Dan, and enjoy the tunes!
In more game-related news, I got a bunch of stuff done yesterday in regards to blueprint (creature & item) creation. I also went in-game and snapped a bunch of screenshots, so I should be able to accompany each post with one for some time. Finally, on a website-note, I was able to implement some new code where the default view for this blog is the 6 most recent posts instead of ALL of them dating back to last year. There's now a link at the top and bottom of this page to View All posts, but otherwise the page should load much faster now. :)
Happy new year, everyone! Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable night, and that 2009 will bring great things for all!
Above is a screenshot taken from another new (as-of-yet unpopulated) area of Moonshadows 2. I laid down the foundations for 3-4 areas in the past 2 days, and I've mapped out a bunch of blueprints and dialogues and various other things to put on my Moonshadows To-Do list. Stay tuned!
Well, this may be a bit out of the blue, but I'd like to take this opportunity to revive the Moonshadows campaign. That's right, folks: I'm restarting work on Chapter Two. I was rereading the design document I had for the second part of the campaign, and it made me feel very nostalgic and sad that the project wasn't going to see the light of day.
Now, that said, I'm eliminating the Evil Path in order to finish in a more timely manner and so that I can focus my efforts on making the Good Path as good (hah, pun?) as it can be. I'm excited about this. :)
UPDATE:
After working all day, I have a sweet new area to show for it. I started with this area, which some of you may remember from before I canceled Moonshadows 2:
Here's what it looks like after the blizzard hit... ;)
Note that it was way more than a simple reskin: I replaced all the trees and placeables, re-did the textures and grass, AND I re-terrained the entire area to eliminate the awkward boulder placeables and make the area look more natural. Let me know what you think!
If you're a modder, there's some cash-moneys to be made. I, along with several other community members (like Wyrin, for example), was recently contacted by a graduate student from a Singaporean technical university; she and her colleagues are conducting a series of interviews of amateur game modders and modifiers. The interview is conducted over Skype (no webcam necessary), and mine lasted about 2 hours. It's for a research paper/thesis, and there's a stipend of about $45 USD for participating. I can confirm that this is a fun and interesting opportunity: you get to talk about modding, share your views with someone who's researching the field, and get paid for it. What's not to like?!
If you want to be contacted by the researchers, drop me a line at alex AT hugiegames.com and I'll put you in touch.
Happy holidays from an old friend... 12/25/08 |Comments (2)
First of all, an old friend would like to wish you a happy holidays...
If you don't recognize him, you obviously aren't an avid enough NWN2 player. ;)
The only real development from today's festivities that may be of interest to this blog's readers is that I now have a 22" LCD monitor to use in addition to my laptop's 17" screen...so, suddenly, NWN2 development is a dream. In other news, lots of chocolate.
Hey all! First off, Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and happy non-denominational holidays to all others -- may your end-of-08's be restful and enjoyable.
I took a break from my work on The Third Sign today to download and begin playing Asphyxia, one of the higher-rated modules on the NWN2 Vault. I had heard good things about it, and I've not been disappointed thus far; apart from a few typos, it has been really fantastic. I even tweaked a few of my NWN2 settings (turning off all shadows, disable normal-mapping) and have it running fairly smoothly camera-wise, too (ie. higher frame rate)...so, good fun so far!
Playing through an adventure so similar in spirit to the old classic RPG's is rekindling the urge to build such a game in me; I've been having some fun ideas of late, so perhaps I'm not so done with amateur NWN2-modding as I thought. I guess time will tell. In the meantime, TTS is what's up.
Ossian mate Alex Wagner, aka EvilShade/Dark, has recently launched the forums for his German NWN2 PW "Baldur's Gate: Unsung Legends." I've been privy to some screenshots from the world throughout the development process, and I must say that it's very clear from his work on BG: UL why he's an area designer for Ossian -- this place is gorgeous. Check it out
It's been far, far too long since I updated this! The last few weeks have been crunch time in terms of final problem sets and papers and such being due, so I've been totally swamped with work. That said, I got a chance to do some stuff in TTS (building areas), as well as running through some earlier sections of it. That's when I encountered this jolly OnEnter bug Obsidian so kindly introduced in their last patch...way to go, guys.
Anyways, OnEnter woes aside, my marathon to finish the first part of TTS begins this today, then on Sunday/Monday I need to study for and take an Italian midterm, then I'm free for 10 days 'til Christmas and another handful after that until school starts up again. It's CRUNCH TIME BABY!!! Screenshots soon.
Yeah, I may or may not have played Summoner literally all day today. I, uh, played a lot. It's fun! Anyways, that's all I have to report. Tomorrow I'll be taking a break to do some reading of Dante's Paradiso and to get some design on TTS done.
Hmm, I seem to be losing my blogging touch. Life is good, but busy. I got home two days ago from school to spend Thanksgiving with the family, which was lovely -- I hope everyone else's Thanksgivings have been fun and relaxing.
Regarding gaming, I've made some excellent progress on TTS stuff...the end of the first segment (which is my main responsibility) is in sight. Of course, I also took this opportunity (being home, that is) to retrieve the Oblivion CD and reinstall Summoner. Believe it or not, I was even able to find the multiplayer-enabling patch on Fileplanet, so now I can play Summoner with my little brother again. I'm replaying through the Solo Campaign right now, and it is just fantastic. Everything about the game is perfect for me: pace, scope, characters, combat, sidequests, balance, loot, lore, hidden items, sound/music, and story are all simply great. I think it's definitely my favorite game of all time. The only issue is graphics...the characters and environments are very blocky/polygonal, which can occasionally be distracting, but that's really it.
Anyhow, once I've stopped procrastinating by playing Summoner, I'll endeavor to get some homework done and finish up TTS. Until then!
It's been awhile since my last entry here, but I'm still alive and kickin'. Life is busy with various academic and athletic endeavors. I'm still plugging away on the first part of The Third Sign in my free modding time. Unfortunately, school is preventing me from getting things done as fast as I would like to. Thanksgiving and winter break aren't far away, though, so I should have ample opportunities to make more significant headway in the relatively-near future. Stay tuned, I suppose!
As I've alluded to in a few of my past entries, I had the honor of being flown to Edmonton last week to chill with the biggest names in the community while we all got to play with the Dragon Age toolset. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience, and we all walked away with new insights into BioWare's plans for the community, bazillions of project ideas for Dragon Age, and lots of BioWare swag. :) Oh, and bruises from the nerf ambushes. Srsly.
Many of my first impressions can be found in the most recent World Builders' Newsletter, as well as on this forum thread. It's a worthwhile read, I think.
Anyhow, the community has a lot to look forward to with Dragon Age, both in terms of the game itself, which we saw some of, and the toolset, which is mind-blowingly awesome. There are some areas of the toolset that we're not allowed to talk about yet -- however, silence does not always mean bad news is being withheld. Allow me to announce that my next big project, The Lynncairen Saga, is to be a Dragon Age campaign. Woohoo!
That's not the only big news for today, though -- I woke up this morning to find Moonshadows' download counter at exactly 20,000! It's my first mod to reach the 20k mark, and I'm very pumped. I really appreciate the warm reception the mod has received from the community since September of last year; it's been very gratifying to see so many people play and enjoy the game.
On the subject of NWN2, Greg and I have some big news over on the TTS blog, too. Turns out I'm no longer going it alone on the conversion! Click here to see who has just joined the TTS development team!
To those of you linked here from ciViLiZed's post on the BioWare forums, I was indeed lucky enough to spend 3+ days with BioWare in Edmonton this past week. More to come soon!
I depart early tomorrow morning for the airport -- as I said in an earlier blog entry, I (among others) am being flown to the secret lair of a well-known videogame development company where I'll be checking out an upcoming game of theirs until Saturday afternoon. I'm super excited. Unfortunately, I can't say more than that -- and I probably won't be able to say any more than that until the powers that be reveal everything. :)
Time to get bundled up -- it's gonna be c-c-c-c-cold.
I miraculously managed to fix NWN2 today! Ever since patch 1.13, my installations have been plagued by various abnormalities; a fresh install-and-patch yielded a toolset that wouldn't launch, and a reinstall "sans patch" (so keeping it at 1.10) resulted in a working toolset but a game that wouldn't run ("Neverwinter Nights 2 has encountered a problem and needs to close" upon clicking "Play"). I've always had DX 10 (built in to my laptop) so I really had no idea what could have gone wrong. I tried updating my video drivers and ran into weird error messages upon trying to install, wherein I would be informed that either the setup couldn't detect any video card with applicable drivers to update or that the package I had downloaded was for Vista 32 bit (or 64 bit) and that I didn't have that (though I do indeed have 32-bit).
So, finally, after some poking around today on the interblags, I discovered laptopvideo2go.com. This site explained to me why I couldn't find any drivers for my video card (that the download for my laptop wasn't available from the nVidia site, but instead should be done from dell.com). But checking dell.com yielded no results; they had stuff for a lot of similar models, but nothing exactly for mine (GeForce 8600M GT). Luckily, laptopvideo2go came 2 the rescue again -- they explained why my driver downloads from before were failing, and they provide (at the above link) downloads with a "modded INF" file that apparently allows installation to occur when such messages prevent the normal means (ie, downloading directly from dell or nVidida) doesn't work.
So, I decided to give it a shot and follow their instructions. I downloaded driver 178.13, which seemed to be the most recent driver update that supported my video card, and voila: installation worked like a charm. One restart later, I decided to try to update NWN2 to 1.13 to see what would happen.
That's when the fun/weirdness started. I clicked update, and the screen came up. It ran a few commands, then informed me that the game needed to be run at least once before trying to execute. So I groan, thinking it's about to try to launch nwn2.exe, which has been causing crashes. But I click "OK" anyways, and, to my astonishment, the screen goes black and the NWN2 intro movie takes over! NWN2 works again!!!
So I'm still not updated further than 1.10, but now both toolset and game are stable and working as intended. I'm going to stay just like that until I absolutely have to update, and I'll only do that if I know this fiasco won't repeat itself.
In any event, now everything's good again. I posted up a screenshot on the TTS blog; I'll post it here, too:
Let me know what you think! And I hope the above findings may be useful for anyone else experiencing NWN2 weirdness in the wake of the recent patch.
After several painful uninstall/reinstall/patch sequences, I discovered that patch 1.13 has absolutely broken the NWN2 toolset (due to some Vista update, I think). So, after a wasted weekend and two corrupt/lost exteriors, I'm finally back up and running...at version 1.10. I've started back in at v2 of one of the lost areas, though, and it's frankly already much better than v1 was. :) Screens soon!
It's been pretty quiet here for awhile, mostly because school is back in full swing. During the week I can't do anything -- the weekend is working on TTS and playing Harvest Moon. I also similarly experienced a rather nasty bug in the NWN2 toolset involving my update to patch 1.13 -- hopefully that'll be resolved at some point soon.
In other news, my classes are all fun. I'm taking Theory of Computation & Complexity (CS), a class on Dante's Divine Comedy (which I love), a survey course on the History of Art and Architecture in the West post-Renaissance, and intro Italian just for kicks. Mi chiamo Alessandro Hugonari! ;) I'm also serving as a teaching fellow for the intro CS class I took last fall, which involves office hours, grading, attending lectures and leading sections. Good fun!
On a more videogame-oriented note, allow me to quote an entry from Adam Miller's blog which applies to me as well: "A well-known game developer offered to fly me to their secret lair and show off their upcoming game." Initiate happy dance! Can't say more than that, unfortunately, but it promises to be a lot of fun.
Oh, and fyi, the above screenshots are from Harvest Moon. I'm so addicted.
Moonshadows translated to Spanish! 9/15/08 |Comments (3)
As per the entry's title, Clan DLAN has released the Spanish version of Moonshadows on the Vault! I can hardly understand a word of it, having only taken middle-school Spanish, but I'm pumped. Thanks Qkrch and DLAN!!
IRC Chat with 2007 NWN2 Golden Dragon Winners Today! 9/13/08 |Comments (0)
In about an hour (if I did my math right), the AME IRC chat with the 2007 GDA winners from NWN2 will kick-off! If you're interested in stopping in, surf on over to ame.nwvault.ign.com and follow the corresponding link for the front-page announcement for this event. It promises to be a jolly good time!
The last few days have been hectic what with being back at school (moving in, getting settled, seeing people again, frisbee tryouts starting, TF meetings, etc.), so I haven't been able to do much work on TTS (though I did sneak in some HM playing over the weekend).
I am pretty close to hitting the game's first milestone, though...a day or two of work should do it. I won't have much free time until Friday due to TF-training sessions, but Friday and the weekend will be TTS days.
Yeeeeesh the summer has flown by. I move back in to school on the 6th -- I realized this morning that I had only 3-4 days of freedom left, and vowed to go into crunch-time-mode on TTS development to see if I could get a lot done before leaving home.
I made excellent progress today; I built an entire interior, added another sidequest to Klune Anor, wrote some conversations, designed a few blueprints, and scripted two cutscenes. Tomorrow I hope to create some blueprints and write three major plot-furthering conversations, as well as *hopefully* start on the next big exterior. Then Thursday I intend to spend all day finishing the exterior I'll have started tomorrow. That'll put me in really, really good shape for finishing the first major chunk of TTS by relatively early in the school year -- like, first month or so, I hope. It'll also leave me at a good stopping point for enjoying Harvest Moon this weekend; I had an absolute blast this past weekend, and I'm looking forward to becoming a "regular" on the server. One of my characters in particular is really fun to play, and he has a neat backstory that I'm looking forward to further developing online. I'm thinking he may be companion material in some future work, FR or not. Keep an eye out for Harendas Cha'kol. ;)
Hmm...on the subject of Harvest Moon, I put up a gallery of screenshots I've taken in my first two weekends there. The world is pretty well built from a visual standpoint: WoRm's flawless seasonal forest is put to good use, as is the gorgeous elven city tileset. Combat is well balanced, too. The real strength, though, is the players and (in particular) the staff/DM's, who are on often and are very, ver good at what they do. Being able to actually develop a character and interact in-character with other people who will react to things you do is very cool and very different for someone who's used to the fairly- 1-dimensional world of SP mod conversation options. Anyhow, the gallery link is here for anyone interested. Keep an eye out here and on the TTS Blog for updates on various stuffs. :)
Sorry for the recent silence -- I've been busy with various things. Apart from working on The Third Sign, I've been playing loads of City of Melnibone and -- when it's up, at least, starting Thursday midnight through Sunday midnight -- Harvest Moon, a heavy-RP server (whereas City of Melnibone is basically "adventuring", meaning it's mostly killing stuff and doing quests, with roleplay optional depending on whether or not you're solo'ing or in a party). Harvest Moon is a huge blast, so I'll definitely be heading back in when it re-opens tonight.
I have a ton of screenshots from my NWN1 playing experiences; I'll be sure to post some up at some point. :) More interesting, I think, are my NWN2 screenshots from TTS -- go check those out at the blog.
Dragon Age Toolset Confirmed! 8/15/08 |Comments (1)
It's official: Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare's next big thing, will ship with a toolset! This is huge. I personally doubt that areas will be able to be created from within the toolset, but even that may not be *too* bad, assuming the main campaign has a diverse bunch of landscapes to work with.
Additionally, what BioWare programmer Scott Meadows has said is that the engine has not been prohibitively hard-coded: that rules for combat, for example, can be heavily changed via scripting. This opens up a HUGE range of possibilities, and is especially good news for me and my Lynncairen Saga aspirations, with its different magic systems and the like. I'm pumped.
Oh, and also, it seems that arrays are now part of the toolset scripting language -- three cheers for BioWare! I <3 arrays. I'm really, really pumped for this game. I'm not only eager to get my hands on the toolset: I'm also just excited to play the campaign they've created!
Edit: Also, I forgot to mention that I added another page to HugieGames.com: the Interviews page, where you can find all the text and spoken interviews I've had since entering the NWN community way back with Tale of a Mage. :) Ah, good memories. And speaking of interviews -- in addition to my golden dragon interview being posted up (see previous post), my NWNPodcast Interview about The Third Sign is up!
Golden Dragon Interview: Moonshadows 8/14/08 |Comments (0)
You can read my recently-published Golden Dragon Interview carried out by the fine folks at the Academy of Modding Excellence. The podcast interview should be up in a couple of days, too, so you can cringe at the sound of my telephone-altered voice while basking in the glory of Greg's awesome one.
Podcast Interview, among other things 8/10/08 |Comments (0)
I had a very productive day today -- this morning was my joint (with Greg) NWNPodcast Interview on The Third Sign, which was a lot of fun. I also got some work done on the TTS module, wrote two college recommendations for two students in my section from the summer session course I TF'ed, and I finished a book called "Hey Idiot!", which is basically a compendium of ridiculous stories and quotes and such collected from various sources. Needless to say, it was rather amusing.
Olympics, lots of "8", and various other shenanigans 8/8/08 |Comments (0)
Apologies for the lack of updates -- I've been rather busy, as well as away for a few days at the Cape. A few things to touch on:
Today is 08/08/08, which rocks pretty hard. Also, there's that olympics thing getting started, which should be fun to watch (I believe it's already done in "real life" but that they'll be showing it at 7:30 EST -- that's what I'll be watching tonight!).
As far as videogames go, things have been interesting behind the scenes of late. There's a lot going on on several different fronts. All I'll say is I'm optimistic about the future. :) I've been very busy working on TTS -- with the opening sequence done, I'm working on the first major playable portion of the game, which takes place in a city (something new for me). I'll have screens up soon over at the TTS blog, so make sure to check there once in awhile! I think I did a nice job at creating a good city from a structural standpoint: breathing life into it is the really hard part, but I'm fairly confident that I'm on the right track.
In addition to plugging away on TTS, I've also continued to be distracted by Sir Elric's NWN1 PW, City of Melnibone. It rocks. So, I've left my monk be for now (he's still level 7) but I now have a kick-@$$ fighter 6, soon to be weaponmaster (he has all the requirements) with a sweet katana, a very high AC which makes him hard to hit (relatively-speaking, for the server), and a lot of HP's. At level 5 he was having an easier time than my other two characters with some fights (with them at 8 and 7). Now he's really starting to be fun to play with. I figure I'll get to WM7 and then see what I want to be doing -- fighters get more feats and all the epic fighter stuff, so I'll probably only do 7 levels of WM and then continue with fighter. We shall see. What I'm sure of is that it will be really nice to have x3 with 17-20 crits on my katana. :)
So, the past days have been eventful indeed! I'm now in Vermont, swimming and frisbee'ing and doing A LOT of development, most of it on TTS. I also took a one day break when it was rainy and I started and beat the entire Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack. In one day. I played a paladin, started at level 1, and took Dorna along until Deekin became available. It was a lot of fun! I finished at around level 13. SoU is actually a pretty decent game starting about half-way through; a lot of the early stuff just seems very random and cliche (J'Nah the fey'ri?! WTF?!? Where did that come from? Ah well, just kill her.), but I liked the whole Heurodis plot. I really enjoyed the Kel-Garas episode, as well as the ending scenario in the ancient Netherese city with the Arcanists' Tower, the Great Library, and the Crypt. Kel-Garas was probably my favorite section of the game, though; there was just something about the setup that seemed really neat. And it was all extremely well-tailored to a paladin, which probably helped; when a strange voice beckoned me down a side passage (which was cleared after having been blocked by debris in an explosion of holy light) and I was forced to "prove my worth" by fighting some undead monks, after which I was rewarded with a Holy Avenger (YESSSS), I was very excited. Paladins are fun. :)
I've also been playing on City of Melnibone, but the lag is a bit bad because of my internet connection up here. My previous character (level 9: rngr1/rogue5/3fighter) suffered from incredibly bad class choices early on (ranger was completely unnecessary), which resulted in a BAD xp penalty. So, I restarted as a monk, and I'm not level 6, have circle-kick, improved knockdown, and two attacks (ie. I'm becoming decent). Next level I'll be able to heal, which will be nice in the ultra-low-magic world.
Alright, that's about all I've got! I'll post back with more progress updates as I dive into TTS.
Melnibone, AME chat, and mod stuff 7/14/08 |Comments (0)
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 |Comments (4)
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!
Frisbee and some area design 5/29/08 |Comments (0)
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!
Announcement - The Third Sign 5/25/08 |Comments (1)
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 |Comments (0)
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! ;)
Academy of Modding Excellence IRC Chat 5/3/08 |Comments (0)
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. :)
More screens from Chapter Two 4/28/08 |Comments (4)
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!
Area design and new screenshot 4/27/08 |Comments (2)
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 |Comments (0)
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). ;)
