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Quick Hits:

Module of the Year 2007

Voting for MotY 2007 for both NWN1 and NWN2 closes on Saturday, so make sure to vote for your favorite module for each game!


Academy of Modding Excellence

The AME has announced that the nominations phase for the 2007 Golden Dragon awards is closing, meaning that the finalists for all this year's categories (for NWN2, at least) should be released soon! Keep an eye out on their site for more details.


Cowface at it Again

My brother was kind enough to make me a logo for Chapter Two of Moonshadows--let's just say that there is lots of symbolic meaning in this image that will be more obvious once one has played the game:



Miscellaneous Ramblings

While I have my second midterm for linear algebra coming up on Tuesday, I still should be able to do some good development work this weekend, particularly since I'm now finished with my second paper for political theory. I'm in one of those "modding moods"--I'll take advantage of this and make sure to get writing, as it seems I drift towards area design every time I open the toolset. :)

New screenshots from Chapter Two!

I spent all day yesterday creating the largest exterior area I've made thus far for NWN2, and I actually think I did a pretty darn good job! I was going for an overcast, gloomy/foreboding mood in a ravine/mountainous setting, and I think I nailed it. I'll be tweaking lighting, clouds and water color, but the structure, textures, grass, trees and placeables are all done. Now it's just a matter of adding sound and it'll be done! I can't believe I did it all in one day. :)

Oh, I also created a large interior from scratch and took care of the wall/floor textures and tinting therein. However, I haven't actually gotten around to decorating that one quite yet. In any event, enjoy the screenshots from the ravine.

Oh, and before I forget, don't you forget to vote in the 2007 Module of the Year contest before it ends on April 5th! Also, keep an eye on the Academy of Modding Excellence site over the course of the next few weeks, as they've announced that the finalists for the Golden Dragon Awards for 2007 -- or, at least the NWN2 ones -- will be announced within April.

Interview Posted!

My Golden Dragon Award Interview has been posted up on the Academy of Modding Excellence website; check it out here! Funnily enough, I was never asked to discuss Perchance to Dream at all...whatevs.

Also, I went and made a bunch of changes to the cutscene I cited in my last entry...it's starting to look a bit better. :)

Cutscene work

I did some work on a cutscene yesterday--the sequence is now functional, but not of particularly good quality. I'll need to edit the dialogue and adjust the timing for some of the nodes before I move on to bigger and better things. ;)

Also, I filled out a set of interview questions from the Academy of Modding Excellence this morning, and I suspect that'll be posted up on either the Vault or on their forums at some point soon; I'll link to it when I see it.

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!

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! :) )

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.

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!

More AME Intrigue

If you want a detailed post on my views on the AME, see the "comments" section of the previous blog entry. I was writing in response to dirtywick's comment there, so read his too. :)

Some Moonshadows

In the aftermath of finishing up my history paper, I've been able to do a little bit of work on Moonshadows today. It's mostly been creature creation and placement, as well as a little bit of "busy work" scripts to make the game function correctly. I have a feeling all the combat in the game is going to be exceedingly difficult in this first round of testing, so I may have to tone things down or allow for a higher starting level for the player (whichever one ultimately makes more sense). I have a feeling it may end up being the latter due to the nature of the story...but don't take my word on it, yet.

Also, it seems there's been a rather long thread over on the Modules Forum in response to my blog entry highlighting the AME. Personally, I thought the entire thread was ridiculous. The AME hasn't even done anything yet, and already it's being treated as some huge evil empire of an organization that going to...well...commit a vast array of unspeakably corrupt deeds which haven't yet been quite pinpointed. Consider this: it's made up of individuals who are highly respected (as individuals) in the community. There's absolutely no reason to think that, once a bunch of well-respected individuals gather for some purpose, their actions as an organization will suddenly become corrupt; on the contrary, the whole point (in my view) is that this is a group dedicated to rewarding content creators by having a panel of people whose opinions are respected and valued doling out the awards. And here's the best part: if you don't respect the opinions of the committee members, IGNORE THEM! Sheesh. It's pointless, ignorant arguments like these (which, I've noticed, frequently attract the attention and participation of several specific individuals) that have made me start avoiding the forums more and more.

The Academy of Modding Excellence

I figured I would give a callout to an organization that appears to be forming up--it's called the Academy of Modding Excellence. The AME seems to be an Oscar's of sorts for NWN1 and NWN2 community content, where winners for various categories are selected by a committee of "respected" community members rather than by popular vote. What is the award, you ask? It's called the Golden Dragon (ooh, aah! ;) ). I personally think this is a great idea, and that it may breathe some much-needed life into both the NWN1 and NWN2 builder communities.

Check it out here: http://nwvault.ign.com/reviews/index.php?board=23.0