Sunday, November 1, 2009

Chugging Along...

I've spent a lot of time (too much probably) just buried in tutorials, and trying to figure a few things out. Today I felt like I was getting snowed over, and just said screw it and started chucking more dialog in there. The dialog trees don't branch properly, and sometimes offer options that 'shouldn't be available yet', but I can always go in there and adjust that later. For now it was important to start just fleshing out the flow of the narratives.

Larisa in the PPI and Tobold in his house on the rise, plus Hatch right outside of town, all have some basic things happening. Hatch walks off towards the bar at the end of his spiel (but never makes it inside), Larisa offers the beginning of a quest that activates your quest log (that you can talk to Tobold to begin completing) as well as gives you a room key if desired (just playing with issuing items based on certain criteria), and Tobold begins to hint at some less than perfect solutions to the problem being faced. Ah, and you can kill Gevlon! Hooray!

Again, these are rough, but this is what I said I was going to be putting up here... the entire process from rough to final. The area itself is more shaped, if not fully textured, and across the river is the scorched remains of the town that Spinks set fire to. There are more trees in general, but I need to stop trying to put down finishing touches in some areas (trees, grass), when others have less than beginnings. It's REALLY hard to be doing everything yourself. I feel an itch to fill a certain niche, and just do one part, but I realize that I've been dicking around with the journal entry system wasy too long, and need to write more dialog, etc etc etc.

I'm finding more ways to cram more people in here, as well. Jong and Megan are going to be our farmers over by the orchard (I have Jong referenced in a quest, but haven't renamed the actual NPC yet), and Melf and Crimson Starfire are the 'new victims' that Tobold mentions could be ... handled ... to solve the problem in a simple manner. They were in contact with Tesh while his son was sick (unbeknownst at the time), and represent the new threat to Lorren itself. They even have kind of strange names, which Tobold chalks up to them running the local alchemy / magic shop, and saying that they thought the names made them sound more mysterious.

Favorite lines of dialog so far:

Tobold: My brother, Syncaine, has a boat over in Pinole Harbor. He makes his living by shuttling tourists here and there.
Ixobelle: Wow, tourists?
Tobold: That's right, anyway... blah blah blah...

wow tourists, lololol!1!!1. This is going to be horrible when it's done. I love it.


Link: http://notaddicted.com/images/isobelle/NwN2_ixo_11012009.mod

11 comments:

HP said...

you're making a game from scratch? O.o

That's going to be A LOT of work! wow, good luck =X

Jong and Megan as farmers lol!

Syncaine, Tobold references =X

Hope you tell us more about it!

Klepsacovic said...

This sounds like a great combination of fun, silly, and srs bns learning. It reminds me of writing plug-ins for an old series of Mac games.

Stabs said...

Well he's also doing exactly what Blizzard told him to do when he applied there.

I kinda suspect when this thing is up some people from Blizzard HQ might be killing Gevlon in their lunch breaks.

Sounds fabulous Izzy and you have my respect for landing on both feet in a situation that would have knocked others on their arse.

Kyir said...

HP, I'm pretty sure he's modding NWN2.

Rhii said...

I might never forgive you for sending me to view that link. His kind of anger gives me an ulcer. :(

The project sounds like it's going extremely well though!

Mordiceius said...

I laughed much too hard at the dialog about Syncaine's tourists.

Anonymous said...

So you're making an NWN2 mod?

You're wasting your time! You can't make anything new with the strict limitations imposed by the aurora toolset. There's too much garbage to sort through in that scripting language and the final result will be clunky and malformed.

If you want to make a game from scratch, make a freakin game from scratch! Start somewhere simple - like Flash ActionScript or XNA C# - or leap into C++ if you have the patience to spend a month learning the language.



Mods just aren't that great for expressing innovative ideas.

Unless your goal *isn't* to make anything creative... in which case, if you really do see a point in it, carry on with the mod and continue to make more of the same sameyness that we've come to expect from this over-saturated market.

Kromus said...

I love the way your going at this mate, really intresting to see how your doing this, and how you progress.

All the best mate.

Wish I could give you advice but seems you're going at it the right way, so I'll just give you this small advice;

Don't eat yellow snow!

Rich said...

@anon:

i'm not trying to show I can write an engine from the ground up, I'm trying to show that I can grab a toolset and use it.

Hopefully, the stuff I turn out won't be the same as everything else, but I guess only time will tell. ..?

I've actually got Dragon Age, with the new toolset due to be released tomorrow morning, so I may be starting over again with a more recent set of tools.

:P

Tesh said...

Torchlight has some modding tools, too. It might be worth a peek.

Anonymous said...

Dragon Age might be an excellent switch to make. It seems like its a comprehensive toolset which allows you to do, well, alot, to be blunt.

Who knows, if you make work you do available, you may earn "fame" amongst that community, which tends to get you noticed by those game companies who know talent can be found amongst the modding community.

Maybe Bioware themselves? Next best thing to Blizzard, I suppose! Probably being over optomistic on your behalf, but always pleasant to do that sometimes.

(Oh my, an Anonymous being nice, the world shall tremble.)