Early Testing
I finally reached that mental milestone of constructing all of the required areas for the module, and as noted I have a fair amount of dialog done as well. I gave the module a test run and I am able to walk through the module from beginning to end. The conversations I have in place function, and all area transitions are working after a bit of testing and debugging.
The two toughest things to track down were a failing transition triggered during some dialog. The target area was not baked (duh). The other bug it took time to find was a conversation that failed to fire, which worked fine in early testing. Turned out the tag of someone listening and speaking in the conversation was wrong. I have a few copies of this speaker and the wrong one (with the wrong tag) was present.
So, with my very early testing out of the way it's back to building, and it looks like some very fun stuff is ahead. I'm going to pull over a few scripts from my NWN1 version of Tomoachan and polish them up a bit. The NWN1 version of the module was my first public version and I have a few more tricks up my sleeves these days, and NWN2 has new tools to offer too!
I have also taken a few afternoons and evenings off, and will probably continue to take breaks when I can discipline myself to do so. Hopefully I'll stave off burnout. The end of this project is still pretty far away but I can mentally get my head around what's left. The end is a distant light in the tunnel and that's got me pretty excited.
The two toughest things to track down were a failing transition triggered during some dialog. The target area was not baked (duh). The other bug it took time to find was a conversation that failed to fire, which worked fine in early testing. Turned out the tag of someone listening and speaking in the conversation was wrong. I have a few copies of this speaker and the wrong one (with the wrong tag) was present.
So, with my very early testing out of the way it's back to building, and it looks like some very fun stuff is ahead. I'm going to pull over a few scripts from my NWN1 version of Tomoachan and polish them up a bit. The NWN1 version of the module was my first public version and I have a few more tricks up my sleeves these days, and NWN2 has new tools to offer too!
I have also taken a few afternoons and evenings off, and will probably continue to take breaks when I can discipline myself to do so. Hopefully I'll stave off burnout. The end of this project is still pretty far away but I can mentally get my head around what's left. The end is a distant light in the tunnel and that's got me pretty excited.
Still happy to hear about progress on this! One question: Do you find on this second effort that the rate of development is increasing?
ReplyDeleteThose of us feeling our way through our first effort need encouragement!
Yes, the biggest lessons I learned the first time around were.
ReplyDelete1) Make a dated back up copy at least once ever time you work on the mod. I have backups for every day between early July and now.
2) Don't use 'speaktrigger'
What have I learned while working with 1.0.6.
1) Don't turn external lighting off, water and grass become invisible.
2) Using undo/redo removes painted water.
3) Verify module is my friend.
It is faster this time.
ENoa4
That's great to hear! Both that you can see there's an end to the project (I hope I'll be there myself in a week or two) and that you've raised to the upper part of the toolset learning curve. I'm so curious about this module because of it's theme! I didn't play the PnP version all and played the NWN1-version very long ago and don't remember more than that I liked the setting.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I've updated from 1.05 to 1.06 and are not all happy with it, but as usual I learn to like and live with both new features and bugs. That probably because my aligment are Lawfull Stupid...
The water bug in 1.0.6 is annoying but it's balanced out and in my opinion worth it for the undo - redo feature. That was sorely needed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've got a ways to go, but there is a light in the distance.
I may be more familiar with the toolset now, but your custom content rocks. Impressive stuff.