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.

2 new screenshots

Well, I polished and completed the entire interlude today, which included running through it a bunch of times, fixing all the bugs that cropped up, tweaking things, and building two interior areas from scratch. I also created the two modules that I'll be working on from now on, since the interlude is now done, and I added those each to the campaign. Finally, I wrote a bit of dialogue. Tomorrow will likely be a dialogue and area-design day, possibly with some blueprint creation tossed in.

I've got two new screenshots for ya:

Back!

Just got back from Florida--now it's time to get down to business. And by business I mean modding and homework, of course.

Wowzers.

Moonshadows - Chapter One passed Tale of a Mage, Chapter 1 - The Uvudry Threat, my first ever module release for NWN1, in downloads today! If this doesn't demonstrate to those few nay-sayers how much more vibrant the NWN2 playing community is than NWN1's, I don't know what does. :)

In other news, Moonshadows is faring well in the Mod of the Year contest--it's in 3rd, just 1 vote behind Pool of Radiance, at the time of this writing. Thanks to all of you who have voted, and if you haven't yet, please do, regardless of which mod you vote for!

Also, I put the finishing touches on the dual-storyline design doc (which I hand-wrote ;) ) for Moonshadows 2, which, now that I know exactly where I'm going with it, I can start working more on in earnest!

Cutscene done(???)

After finishing my gov paper yesterday, I was able to sneak in a few hours of work on a cutscene I've been building over the past week or so, and I think it should be just about finished now. Of course, I haven't tested the thing...but I've gotten pretty used to this whole "development" thing, so I'm hoping that there won't be many (any?) issues once I fire up NWN2 and give it a shot. ;) I'll see if I can snap a screenshot or two once I have it working.

For those of you who are interested, this cutscene wraps up what you could term is the "interlude" between Chapters One and Two; at the end of this cutscene (which is the last of a series of cutscenes), the dual paths of the central plot finally split, which is kind of exciting... :)

A few things to bring to your attention: Hall of Fame and Golden Dragon Award-winning NWN1 module author Berra has started a blog on blogspot, which I've linked to on the left sidebar. Additionally, NWN2 mod author Raith Veldrin of Solvheil fame has released the second installment in his Sands of Solvheil series, Beneath the Hearleforne, which you can find and download here. Congrats to Raith on release! Finally, MotY voting starts tomorrow.................. *winkety wink nudgety nudge*

Busy weekend coming up

I was able to do a solid amount of cutscene work this week, but for the next three days I doubt I'll be touching the toolset: 5 page gov paper + math midterm on Tuesday are basically going to devour my weekend & Monday. Luckily, this means I'll be busy and distracted from the MotY voting which begins on Monday. :)

VOTE MOONSHADOWS!

;)

Editing

So I did a bunch of editing on the opening sequence of Chapter Two of Moonshadows; basically, I had someone play through it, and I realized there was way, way too much expositional information that was being force-fed to the player. Basically, the pacing was off: things should have been moving faster.

Long story short, now they are. ;) Back to making progress!

2007 Module of the Year kicking off!

It's finally here--the voting for the 2007 Module of the Year contest on the NWVault is going to kick off starting February 25th, after the entries have been finalized. You can read the announcement here, on the VN Boards...at the time of this post, the Vault hasn't yet been updated, but I'm assuming that announcement is forthcoming. :)

Also, I've been making progress on Chapter Two of Moonshadows, including blueprint design, cutscene creation, scripting and custom vfx work. Here's a screenshot for your troubles:

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.

Moonshadows 2 screens coming soon!

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

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

September!

It's September, and Moonshadows Chapter 1 is looking great. :) Yesterday I spent all day testing, and I'm now done testing High Forest quests. One of them went really smoothly--the other had some complicated scripts (a "listener", for example, for those scripters among you--though that part I actually had working on my first try! :) ) in place. You know, it's happened to me a few times, but I almost feel like I'm playing Morrowind when I play this game. There's something about the inventory screen/icons, the looks of the environments (though Morrowind's graphics were better and crisper)...they just remind me of that Elder Scrolls masterpiece, which is a good thing.

In any event, I spent yesterday testing and fixing a whole slew of bugs, from writing to scripting, to combat balance to loot balance. I still have to rename a few placeables and finish going through this last High Forest sidequest before I can truly move on into the Star Mounts...but it's definitely looking good.

Oh, another thing. I decided at around 11:30 last night that I didn't like the way The Sisters looked compared to the rest of my module. See, it looked nice...it was an area I made before I got good with textures and terrain and stuff, but it was good enough that I didn't scrap it when I re-did all my other areas...but at this point, I knew I could do SO much better. And so, I did. :) The Sisters now truly lives up to its reputation as one of the prettiest, lushest, most scenic/picturesque locations in the Realms, I think. :) It makes much better use of trees, grass, and placeables, as well as changes in elevation and even water! Overall I think it's a huge improvement, and I'm glad I took the time to redo it. I'll have to update The Sisters' screenshots (I believe there's one in the gallery right now from the old area)...

Anyhow, today I'm going to go on a run in the morning and then come back and finish testing this last quest. Then I'll either run through all the High Forest quests or jump into the Star Mounts. Regardless of what I choose to do, hopefully this (see picture above) won't happen all that often... ;)

More Testing, More Fixing, More Screenshots.

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

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

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

Development day

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

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

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

Development...

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

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

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

Productive day

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

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

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

Testinggggggg...and a few new screenies

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

Testing, fixing, frisbeeing

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


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

IT'S OFFICIAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another busy day!

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

Another busy development day

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

Let the testing begin!

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

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


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


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


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

Lotsa work on Moonshadows

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

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

Lots more screenshots!

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

More Moonshadows work

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

Oodles of progress

As the title of this post suggests, progress has been good over the past few days on The Star Mounts. I designed two new exterior areas, and decorated them fully; one of them still needs to be populated, of course, but still, it's good progress nevertheless.

I'll be posting up like 20 screenshots tomorrow, after I've saved them as smaller-sized images. Get excited!

Busy again

Had another busy day homework-wise...I got some writing done, but not much else. I hope to do some serious area design tomorrow though, so perhaps I'll have some fun screenshots to show of that. :)

A little bit of scripting...

After finishing all my work (at around 9:45), I fiddled around in the toolset for another 45 minutes or so, mostly doing scripting and some VFX experimentation. I must say that scripting, while easy, is not the part of the job I enjoy most. :P

Even more screenies...

I did a bit of decoration work and added some nice special effects/scripts to the area. And I got pi'tures to prove it! ;) Also did a bit of area design and decoration for The Lynncairen Saga, but didn't take any screenies of that. After doing the area design, I did a ton of writing for The Star Mounts and other stuff; I think that some of the Star Mounts writing I did may be some of my best writing to date. It's just descriptive text, but I just think it really captures the mood from the screenies below... :)

More screenshots & development

I made solid progress today on The Star Mounts--build an entire outdoor area (albeit a small one) and tested the first sequence, which now is completely working the way I want it to. I added sounds & music & lighting & other such stuff to the new area, so it's basically done. I took a few screenshots for your enjoyment as well.

Hectic...

Today was another completely hectic, non-stop day. After classes, I wrote the 2nd page of my 10 page history paper due Tuesday before deciding to go play a game of pickup Ultimate with my friends at 2:30. That turned into a full-fledged game, which was followed by a speed/workout run of (for me) 2 miles, an entire ab workout, and 40 pushups. My whole body hurts. :) Then, I came home and sat down at around 7:00 to keep doing history. I wrote basically at a rate of 2 pages per hour; by 10:00 I had the 9+ pages required for the assignment, and it's good writing too. So I'm excited...that's what I was worried was going to eat up my weekend, but now it's out of the way!

Anyhow, I ran a test of the static camera work I did, and aside from a little twitching between nodes (which I think I know how to fix), everything worked nicely. I took another screenshot, which I've posted here for you enjoyment. I don't plan on doing a lot tonight on TSM--perhaps a teeny bit of conversation writing and fixing that static camera bug. I'll probably go to bed early.

EDIT: It's 1:00am tomorrow, but I just finished fooling around with some more VFX's that are new to NWN2 and I just wanted to post here to say that they're AWESOME! If nothing else, rest assured that you'll be treated to plenty of eye-candy in TSM. ;)

Static camera work

Today, I learned how static cameras work (again, with some preliminary pointers from Challseus) and I implemented a few into my two latest conversation/cutscenes. I also edited some flavor text to make it a little more descriptive/flavorful. ;)

I've got a few screenshots lined up which I've added here at the end of the post which I hope you'll enjoy--a few of NWN2's nice new vfx's feature in them, so enjoy!

Before the battle...

After the battle...

Stuff happens part 1...

Stuff happens part 2...

Stuff happens part 3... (personal fav)

Stuff happens part 4... ;)

Fun with the Visual Effects Editor Plugin

Thanks to a tip-off from my friend Challseus, I set up and played around with the built-in VFX editor/previewer in the NWN2 toolset for about an hour today. One of the things about NWN2 that I wasn't so keen on was the fact they left all the old VFX constants in the scripting language (so as to not mess up previous scripts imported from NWN1)--of course, this doesn't really matter, since the vast majority of the constants aren't hooked up to an actual VFX anyways!

So, the process of trial and error to see if certain VFX's still worked was getting aggravating...then Challseus saved the day. Now, I'm using the new method EffectSpecialNWN2EffectFile() which allows me to specify one of NWN2's new VFX constants...so, eye-candy lovers are saved, and you can bet that TSM is going to be filled with it!

The VFX plugin allows you to preview the built-in NWN2 effects in a toolset-like environment (like all other windows, this one can be minimized and allows for awesome versatility in the toolset between scripts, convos, and the plugin itself). So, I looked through like 50 to see what they did, and I came away with a few real winners. :) I didn't post screenshots, but I will in-game when I see them firing "for real" for the first time (I've got them in certain in-game scripts, now, so they should be working...).

Those scripts, by the way, are new ones I wrote today; I did some scripting, as well as a teeny bit of NPC design and conversation writing. Overall, good day, especially for one during which I had homework to finish as well.

The Lynncairen Saga gets a little love

I did a bit more development today on The Lynncairen Saga--mostly bug-fixing and cutscene testing from the little bit of it I played. I must admit that its graphics are pretty darn spiffy, even compared to NWN2. Not as detailed, admittedly, as the areas I've been able to make in TSM, but still really nice looking relative to other NWN1 mods. Enjoy the pics I took of the new areas! Most of them are in the Beldar Peaks, though a few are from a cutscene that occurs elsewhere during the player's eventful trek to Kranomyrr, Lynncair's capital...