Ernie Noa's RPG Blog

I'm inching my way through dialog. I was ok with my first effort and am not satisfied with my current work. It feels rather flat and I'm afraid it's not terribly interesting. I'm unusually busy professionally and it's hard to find the motivation to mod at the moment but I will continue to inch forward. :-)

WOO HOO!!!! Tomoachan wins for PnP converstion. Visit AME here. Or listen to NWPodcast Community Contribution Award Community Contribution Award: Grinning Fool From beta testing until today, Grinning Fool has continued to support the community and NWN2 tirelessly. He has worked as a Community Rep on the toolset, answering questions and gathering up bugs on behalf of the community and making sure they reach the ears and eyes of Obsidian Entertainment. He’s also enhanced and added to the toolset’s features through a number of very useful plugins. Veteran Award Veteran Author Award: Adam Miller Adam Miller wins the Veteran Author Golden Dragon Award for his consistenly top quality modules, produced across both NWN and NWN2. With the Dark Waters campaign, he continues to innovate and stretch the engine to the very limits. Debut Author Award Debut Author Award: Zach Holbrook Zach Holbrook (aka Maerduin) produced one of the defining modules of 2007 with Harp & Chrysanthemum. His attenti...

It's been 11 days since my last post. I've been away on vacation and then got the stomach flu (or something like it) shortly thereafter. In the 11 days since my last post I customized the appearance of one NPC. Let's hear it for progress!!! At this rate I should be complete on July 7th, 2059. The summer is busy with both fun and work so I'm not sure how much work I'll really get done. I've thought about taking a break to play some games too. We'll see.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir hearkens back to the days of the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale franchises by including full party customization, dungeon crawling, and free exploration of a non-linear game world via an Overland Map. The gripping storyline foreshadows the events that will take place in the Forgotten Realms with the coming of release this June of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game. In the aftermath of the defeat of the King of Shadows, the Sword Coast is in the midst of an uneasy economic recovery. Trade syndicates have sprung up to exploit the post-war confusion for their own ends. The players’ party will wade into this uncertain environment; in order to increase their own fortunes, they can either ally with a syndicate to create a trade empire, or cut their own path through Faerûn by preying upon caravans and selling the goods on the black market. As they attempt to extend their influence, players will become aware of a new faction work...

I spend most of the day preparing load screens then a few hours trying to figure out why the related HAK file was causing the game to lock while loading. Eventually I realized the HAK file and load screens are fine, it's the fact that I am loading the module as a campaign. I'm not sure what I've got fouled up but I am curious. I'll have to read up on campaigns when I have time. I'm going to noodle with the load screens and confirm they are working then stop for the night. Everything loads fine in the editor. Very odd. * UPDATE #1 * Looks like the load screens are not working either. They don't cause the module to fail, but they don't work either. Very odd. I'll post some of the 2da file here and would be happy to e-mail it to someone for a peak if they'd like. * Update #2 * Found this on Wendersanven.com * http://www.wendersnaven.com/resource/44 There's only one way I managed to solve the unpacking module hang when starting a new campaig...

I am building NPCs and witting dialog for Hythum. My time has been limited so I have not made too much progress but I am moving forward. I've decided to re-write dialog as I go rather than import it. I can improve upon what I have written and the scripting options are much more robust in NWN2. So far I'm enjoying it but don't expect as many screen shots for a while. I have some fun personal obligations over the next few weeks so there will probably be a work slow down ahead. Tomoachan is nearing 5000 downloads and has an overall rating of 8.72. It should make the hall of fame when I cross the 5000 mark which is pretty cool. Downloads are coming in at a trickle so it will be interesting to see if I make it in June or July. Keep on the Borderlands has 13000+ downloads but I think Tomoachan is a better mod. Rather curious, but it was out first, it supports multiplayer and was out very early driving more people to it. I've been playing quite a big of Lego Star War...

I'm at a bit of a crossroads from a modding standpoint. I had planned to do the area design first. My modding partner Darmok has an area to finish. He was going to do another 6-12 areas of various sizes beyond the one he is working on now. After talking to Darmok it sounds like I will probably take on some of the remaining areas. I've gathered screen shots of everything that's done to use as the basis for load screens. I've exported all the dialog from Hythum for NWN1 and taken a peak. (yuck... what a mess) I've even documented all of the resources I have used thus far for the readme file. What's next? What should I do next? I'm tempted to work on major NPCs and dialog. If so I'm tempted to re-write a lot if not all of the dialog. I could start testing and debugging the transitions and major plot points without many bad guys in place. Or... I could plow ahead with more area design. I'm just not sure what I want to do next. I do feel like I ha...

I was grabbing load screen images for Hythum. There are MANY areas in this module. I'll post a semi-final count in a week or two. At any rate I was rather taken with the screen shot I will use for the in transit load screen displayed many times when traveling by airship. Most of the credit goes to Amraphael for the airship model. Here it is.

I'm working on an interior area. The initial draft is done. I tried a few experiments and I'm not completely happy with the result. The screen shots don't quite do it justice, but they give you the idea. I've got an underground lake, and tried to give an underwater effect walk into the lake and lower the camera. I used a blue light that's only visible under the water to give a blue tint and used the steam geyser to produce air bubbles and a distortion. This effect is not required or essential but I thought it would be kind of neat if I could pull it off. The first two pictures are the lake surface in a dark cavern. The next two are shots from underneath the surface of the water. It's not great, I've seen good underwater areas build but usually the whole area is underwater, not just a few tiles within the area. I'm not completely satisfied with how this turned out either but I thought I'd post it anyway. More of that red lighting I've been ...