Populating the Caves of Chaos
I am continuing to plug along nicely. I have populated the keep and wilderness areas, and I am now populating the dungeon, 'The Caves of Chaos'. In the original paper and pencil module the caves are labeled A through K. I am working on them in order and I am nearly done with C.
When they are populated, I need to make sure all of my journal entries close at the appropriate points.
I also need to beef up the NPCs back at the keep with a bit more dialog and most important I would like to give the companions more to say. I had planned to use the 'speaktrigger' extensively to fire up conversations with companions, but using this trigger corrupts areas if the target of the conversation is not in the area. So I'll probably have a ton of one liners, and try to prompt the player to initiate the conversation with the companion. I'm disappointed about this, but what can you do.
The ending? I'm not sure what I'll do. I don't have a 'big ending' to this module and I've been thinking about it.
This was intended as a warm up project, a quick conversion of an old hack and slash PnP classic, but now that I'm so far into it I am realizing this will probably be my only NWN2 project. If I had known that I probably would have used one of the one or original ideas I have partially outlined. Oh well...
I'm glad it's progressing but also very anxious to be done and finished.
When they are populated, I need to make sure all of my journal entries close at the appropriate points.
I also need to beef up the NPCs back at the keep with a bit more dialog and most important I would like to give the companions more to say. I had planned to use the 'speaktrigger' extensively to fire up conversations with companions, but using this trigger corrupts areas if the target of the conversation is not in the area. So I'll probably have a ton of one liners, and try to prompt the player to initiate the conversation with the companion. I'm disappointed about this, but what can you do.
The ending? I'm not sure what I'll do. I don't have a 'big ending' to this module and I've been thinking about it.
This was intended as a warm up project, a quick conversion of an old hack and slash PnP classic, but now that I'm so far into it I am realizing this will probably be my only NWN2 project. If I had known that I probably would have used one of the one or original ideas I have partially outlined. Oh well...
I'm glad it's progressing but also very anxious to be done and finished.
I have an area saved with such a speaktrigger, and it hasn't corrupted yet. I wonder what we're doing differently?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but I lost a lot of time a few weeks ago tracking it down and I've found some posts on biowares forums.
ReplyDeleteI read quite a bit about editing integer values in the string field, each variable can be defined multiple times, but the type is also specified. I think I may have done this at one point and it is what I found most of the documentation on.
I have found them to be cantankerous. Basically after I set up the speak trigger I don't touch it. I just delete and rebuild it (which isn't much time). I also export the area I'm working on before I touch the speak trigger, I've lost to much time already.
The big problem is with companions. Say I've got a companion named bob. You meet him in the inn. I could use a speak trigger there no sweat, as he is in the area. If I use a speak trigger which will cause him to speak in the bandit camp it corrupts the area. If the target of the speak trigger is invalid it seems to bomb pretty badly on me.
This really sucks, because I had hoped to make extensive use of the speak trigger.
Oh well. Perhaps if you've had better luck you can fill me in on what I am missing.
I've found the speaktriggers finnicky too, but they've never corrupted an area on me--though I've definitely had trouble because of the string/integer corruption bug with other triggers. Because of this, I'm leery of messing around with variables every time I make a new trigger, so I tend to export sets of variables that work.
ReplyDeleteI use two variable sets for my speaktriggers, one a multiuse one that can be triggered repeatedly, and one that fires only once. All I do is import the one I need, change the name of the NPC speaker and the conversation, and voila. I've used this in an area where the companion who is supposed to trigger the conversation does not exist, and have had no problems. (Crossing my fingers.)
If you're interested, I can send you the two xml files I use and you can test them out. PM me on the forums and I'll give you my e-mail address.
Also, what patch version are you using?
I'm using 1.4. Yeah, if you'd like to shoot over the files that would be great. I suppose I could just bang them out myself pretty quick too.
ReplyDeleteHave you had problems running speak trigger with companions?