Dragon Age

NWN 2

NWN 1

Progress continues

December 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Progress continues. My family went to the beach without me for a couple days, giving me quite a bit of free time to tie up odds and ends. Yesterday I recorded and chopped up four different dialogs in the Woodhaven area. There's a larger version of the movie here.

I now have the greatest respect for real voice actors. The ability to speak in a variety of different voices and still convey emotion is a tricky skill. The arena keeper turned out the best, in my opinion. I ended up using a very deep and gravely voice, then moving the pitch way up. It reminds me vaguely of a disgruntled elf from a Christmas special.

I'm still working the bug list and hope to seriously get into that today. They keep pouring in, though fortunately the module itself appears to be completeable. The testers are doing a great job, and this module wouldn't have been possible without all their help.

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I was a good boy this morning and started in ...

December 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was a good boy this morning and started in with the debugging again. It's nice to see the list of issues getting so small (at least in comparison to the early days). I even found a bug of my own - there was a dialog where the import process from NWN1 had dropped off the "e" from "Touché".

I continue to give the alphabet assault game my love and attention. Yesterday I worked on a second level and this morning I fiddled with some custom content. It's fun.

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I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have...

December 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I realize I should be fixing bugs, but I have a touch of a cold and couldn't manage to drag myself to the bug list this morning.

Instead, I decided to inject a little more awesomeness into the Alphabet Assault game. I started a second level of the dungeon (it needs at least three or four, but currently has only one) and added a new feature. There are certain weapons in the dungeon that if you're using it and you spell a word with a key letter, it'll give the weapon a temporary boost. For example, if you have the Axe of B and spell the word "grab", your axe will do massive electrical damage for the next 60 seconds. It's a fun additional feature, guaranteeing that this mini-game will likely be my favorite in the whole module.

I also worked on a timesaver for the sound files. I worked up a new technique that ditches copying and pasting into Excel to create lipsynch animation. Now I copy the wav files into one folder, run a batch file, and the compressed version and fxe file appears in another.

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After several days of taking it easy, work ha...

December 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

After several days of taking it easy, work has returned like an unwanted itch. I've been very busy the last couple days. I did manage some time to add additional polish to the Sanity Defense game. I'm hopeful I got rid of the most recent bugs, though it likely needs to have the balance adjusted a little more.

Our brave testers have been hard at work and I've been dutifully flagging e-mails to follow up with later. The list of issues continues to shrink, but it would be nice to take care of the remaining ones.

Also in the last few days I put together an improved method for moving files around. Basically I plug in an external drive and run a batch file. I run another batch file to create a full set of installers. It's pretty handy and should hopefully save me time and minimize bugs in the future.

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The brains were flying left and right while h...

December 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The brains were flying left and right while hordes of enemies attacked. It's a typical morning in the Miller household, with me slowly finishing up this particular mini-game. It's coming along nicely, with a proper sequence of events and all of the enemies and defenses in the game.

I still need to whip up some dialog, fix some bugs, and balance things, but hopefully that won't take too long.

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Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Min...

December 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing says Merry Christmas like zapping Mindflayers with floating brains. The main guts of my Sanity Defense game are working nicely. The map updates with the position of the player, enemies, and active portals. It's not as smooth as the real map, but it gets the job done. The only thing I might fiddle with is showing off the direction the player is facing, as I found myself getting turned around a few times.

The game itself is fairly fun. I need to add a few more enemies, suitably bizarre, of course. I've already got the dialog planned out, though I've yet to write it.

It's really fun getting back to module building after the long weeks of QA work. I really like the way these D&D versions of popular online games are turning out. I've been eyeing "Elite Beat Agents" lately. With my new GUI skills, I think I can pull it off. Hmm.

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Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled...

December 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Even though it's Christmas Eve, I was huddled at my computer this morning while everyone slept, freezing away in my in-laws' breezeway. Despite my camaraderie with Tiny Tim, I managed to whip up a fairly cool GUI for the little mini-game that goes along with the bizarre area I created yesterday.

Even though there's not an actual game behind it yet, I really like the way it's turning out. The GUI lets you pick a defense (the assorted brain icons) and click on a map of the area to place it. The are 400 invisible buttons above the map, in a 20x20 grid, which translate into x and y coordinates. The appropriate defense is summoned, ready to fight off enemies. You can see one of them on the left, hovering above the meteor-pocked landscape.

I've started making some of the enemies, which I'm trying hard to make look suitably bizarre. Currently I have a fleshy-looking thing with giant eyeballs floating above it. Needless to say, I want more of those things.

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I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up t...

December 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I came up with a crazy idea on the drive up to Portland. At the core, it's Desktop Defense, a flash mini-game that's fairly popular. The theme is "insanity", which makes for some fun placeables and terrain. I also need to whip up a GUI that lets you place your defenses and keep an eye on the various waves of attacks that come after you.

I sketched out the scripts that I'll need to make it work, which don't seem too tricky. The custom content is a bit more challenging, but it's frankly really fun to do. How can you not love floating brains fighting off hordes of mindflayers?

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I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought ...

December 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm getting ready for my trip, but I thought I'd show off a little of what I did yesterday. The Clockwork Man quest is coming along nicely, though I still have a lot of area building and conversion to do. Some of the automata already have voices, synthesized, of course. If I get time at my in-law's, I'd like to continue and maybe even test it.

In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd pass along an appropriate holiday video, made for our kind of people.

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I stayed up a little too late last night, wor...

December 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I stayed up a little too late last night, working on getting the end of the module to a workable state. The most challenging bug was amusingly the drinking part, especially getting the steins to appear in the party's hand. Initially they were drinking their weapons, then they'd drink from invisible cups, and finally the requisite stein. There were some other odd issues, such as the game not checking your alliances properly. I think it's finally all sorted out and I'm eager to get the latest build into the testers' hands.

I actually got some time to work on other things yesterday. I started in on the Mechanist quest. It turns out I hadn't entirely finished some of the dialogs. There's also several areas that need to be built out. I'll see if I can do some more work with that today. It's a fun change of pace after all the bug fixing.

I'm packing up my computer tomorrow and we're headed to Portland for holiday festivities. Fortunately my in-laws have a fast Internet connection, so I should be able to stay mostly connected.

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I went through the final moments of the game ...

December 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the final moments of the game and it turns out it's pretty messy. Heather teleports away, Daniel starts up a conversation, and then proceeds to drink his sword repeatedly. Amusing, of course, but not exactly what I'd planned.

I just finished recoding the script, adding in the missing items, and putting in some debug scripts in case things fail. I'll test it out tonight and hopefully get things to a state where it's worthy to send to the brave QA crew.

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Nothing too exciting today

December 19, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Nothing too exciting today. I've gone through the list of the most critical bugs and am hoping to make new builds for the testers tomorrow. The holiday madness is starting up and I'll be out of town for this upcoming weekend (though I'm bringing my computer along).

I got my external hard drive yesterday, which I'm hoping can minimize some of my "oops, I lost a file" issues I've had in the past. Ideally I'd set up some sort of versioning system. In a pinch, though, I can always just copy files over with a simple batch file.

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I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things

December 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things. I have a new tester who ran through the first module again and came up with all sorts of funny issues. Your soldiers in the Remembrance: War area no longer have Dwarf as their racial type.

The second act is getting attention as well. PJJ pointed out that while all of a person's possessions were supposedly going to be given to the player, the NPC was actually dirt poor. I fixed that, and gave them little treasure chests the player can freely loot. I have some journal entries to fix and other little things to fiddle with today.

Still, the issues I'm taking care of now are much more simpler than the ones I was fixing a few weeks ago. Progress feels good.

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Crazy busy today

December 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Crazy busy today. I scribbled down some notes about how I'd technically accomplish "Lute Hero", but otherwise did very little.

My favorite bug report of the day was that the newly added fish make cat noises. While the reality is that I used a cat creature as a base and changed the appearance, I'd love to just decare them "catfish" and leave them in. Maybe not.

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Okay, I was a bad boy this morning

December 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I was a bad boy this morning. I didn't look at my list of debug notes once so far.

Instead, I had this crazy dream of doing Lute Hero within Neverwinter Nights. Players would pound on their keyboards as the camera panned around them. Hordes of demonic fans would be cheering the player on as flames flew from their fingertips. In the end, the devil himself would nod begrudgingly, admitting defeat.

Well, it turns out there's a huge number of technical issues trying to implement this. By default, you can't have a custom GUI accept keystrokes. I ended up using a NWN1-style dialog (seen here, partially removed) and modifying the GUI. I think I can throw up my own GUI and let the player press the keystrokes to play chords. The main drawback is that only one key can be pressed at a time and keys can't be held.

I also looked into camera controls, as it's not Lute Hero without a slow circle around the player. It turns out Gestalt's camera system still mostly works for NWN2. With a little fiddling, I think I can make it work.

So, I think the basics are there. We'll see how enthusiastic I get later on.

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Periodically, I have to publicly admit the ex...

December 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, I have to publicly admit the extent of my lameness. This would be one of those times. Months ago, Rob and Eshinee sent me Heather's dialog, along with a bunch of songs for the tavern. I was knee-deep in debugging mode at the time, focusing on getting the game to a playable state. I didn't really listen to the songs, but stuck them in a folder to deal with later.

I finally had a chance to listen to them yesterday and have to say that the songs they put together are simply awesome. Eshinee has a beautiful singing voice, the lyrics tie directly to the story, and the tunes got stuck in my head as soon as I heard them.

I created a jukebox system for the Black Spot. Each time you enter, you'll hear a different song. If you wait around, the songs will cycle through. You can also talk to the singer and have her switch to the next one if you like.

I have bugs to fix as well, but I'm so glad I had a chance to put these in the game.

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I went through the last of the bugs yesterday...

December 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went through the last of the bugs yesterday, fixing a little here and polishing a little there. I have a bunch of new builds I need to upload and pass along to the QA folks. Just one more step on the way to a public beta.

The big fix was that an entire side quest is now playable. It has an underwater area, which I had previously done by covering it with deep water. Unfortunately there are a ton of bugs when doing that, the biggest being that you can't actually see your character or any placeables. I got rid of that and put in a wavy blurring effect that when coupled with fog looks somewhat realistic.

Things still seemed somewhat sparse, so I added some cute little fishies. To make them more interesting, they also have some fish-like behavior. They'll move away from the player, follow nearby fish, and wander around on occasion. Silly, I know, but ambiance matters.

Update: I just got a note from PJJ that Dark Waters 2 can actually be completed. That's a first and a pretty big milestone on our way to release. There's still bugs to work though, but we're pretty close. It's also nice to hear that he thinks DW2 is better than DW1. Hopefully everyone else will too.

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I did some odds and ends work yesterday

December 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did some odds and ends work yesterday. I had fixed some issues with flintlocks the other day (monk melee feats gave them a bonus and bolt properties were applied to flintlocks). I straightened out the 2da file, but was left with flintlocks shooting a rather large rock out the end. It took awhile, but I tracked down which model it used and replaced it with a small version of the cannonball I used in the first module. It looks much better if you freeze the action (especially if you dramatically move the camera). The only downside is that bullets always bounce off after impact, which looks a little odd.

I also improved the look of the Turtle Rock ruins. I fixed a recurring issue with feats turning invisible. Now they're fine, but the psionic feats aren't showing up. I guess I'm okay with that, as players basically use the feat item for the effect anyway. Just a little odd.

I have a new batch of debug things to work on tonight, thanks to PJJ. I've fixed a few and some are new. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a new build to everyone for the weekend. Slowly getting there.

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I finally got Daniel's romance working properly

December 12, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I finally got Daniel's romance working properly. It's fairly smooth now, with a gentle reminder from Daniel and the option to jump right to the relevant NPC and back again. I also discovered that the voice clips my sister recorded hadn't been hooked up to the dialog, so hopefully that's in place now too.

The sheer number of other bugs I fixed is pretty lengthy. The biggest was probably the Turtle Rock side quest, which you should actually be able to complete now. It turns out a light above the door was actually blocking it, so you couldn't go in. I'd like to spend some time working on populating the area with placeables as well, as it looks a little sparse in some areas.

I'm also hopeful I have the flintlock bugs fixed. The Shores of Haldun PW integrated them recently and reported some odd behavior. After fiddling with the 2da file, it should be working better. I had to test it out by making some brimstone ball and powder and set things on fire. Worked like a charm. I do notice that there's a large rock showing up when I attack things. I think I can replace it with something more ball-looking.

I also made a "DW2Lite" installer. It looks like the no-music, sound, and transition screen version clocks in at 78 MB in size, while the full version is around 180 MB. That probably reflects the overall size of this module. There's a ton of new areas and content, probably my biggest release yet.

Oh, and I typed up some dialog for what I'm calling the Alphabet Assault area. It's fairly tongue-in-cheek, but hopefully I'm walking that fine line between amusing adventure and outright parody.

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I set sail for Woodhaven this morning

December 11, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I set sail for Woodhaven this morning. Daniel's possible romance with one of the elves isn't working properly. I think I knew it had a problem, but I was pretending otherwise. In the NWN prototype, it was pretty easy to move people around areas and start up conversations, as everyone was in the same area already. With NWN2, I have multiple modules, so when you show up on the Woodhaven docks, I need to start up Daniel's "Can I visit X?" dialog, then transition, then switch control to Daniel, hide the PCs, and start up the NPC conversation. When it's done, I need to move everyone back to the previous module in the right place. Much trickier.

Still, I think I have it nearly done. Everything works except when the NPC dialog fires, it almost immediately ends and jumps back to the High Seas module. I'm pretty sure it's the typical "you can't really talk to an NPC unless they're in the same area" problem I know and love. Hopefully it's not too hard to fix.

I have a long list of more bugs to fix today. Should keep me busy.

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Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet A...

December 10, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Okay, I've fallen in love with the Alphabet Assault game. It's very simple, but elegant. The coding took only a few days to put together. At this point, the basic mechanism feels pretty solid and all that's left is to flesh out the dungeon and add some quest-related dialog.

I made some general changes. You get letters when damaging your opponent, not just killing them. Depending on the damage you deal or hit dice of the killed creature, you might get bronze, silver, or gold letters. These give increasing bonuses to the word's power. If I have a power of 5 and the word has the letter N, it'll give a negative level to nearby foes. If the word also had the letter Z, a ray will zap your opponents for 10 points of damage. If the power of the word were increased to 25, the word would drain 5 levels and do 50 points of damage.

It all sounds complicated, but during testing I started to forget about the mechanics and started just spelling long words. Depending on the situation, I might want to save certain letters for later, or play my gold U to get a massive undead right away. Pretty soon pretty spell effects are flashing everywhere and melee combat is relegated to refilling my supply of letters.

I'm whipping up some dialog for the area, making it hopefully more than a dungeon crawl and spelling bee combination. So far I'm quite happy with the result.

The testing from the weekend has started pouring in. I'm still struggling to find a good file hosting site for me to upload files to regularly. Filefront, my favorite, strangely stopped working for me. Hopefully I can get that resolved soon.

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I've been really busy fixing bugs last night ...

December 09, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been really busy fixing bugs last night and this morning. The first module got some extra polish, fixing up some odd camera motion in some of the cutscenes. Robert gets his old head back, which I'm hoping my previous appearances.2da fiddling fixed. I had some missing lipsynch animation which should be fixed now. For the second module, I recorded some new speech as testers kept wanting a certain action at the end of the first module to be noticed (which I completely understand).

I have a workaround for the summoning bug in place, which hopefully will do the trick. Scenes where companions were invisible should now have them visible again. The biggest problem was my own fault, which let old 2da files slip into a hak pack and cause issues. That should be fixed as well.

I feel pretty good about sending along a new build to everyone tomorrow. Maybe I can find some time today to work on my spelling area. I'm starting to get some silly ideas about how I want it to turn out. Should be fun.

As a total aside, my sister ran into a couple people who were fans of my games. It always strikes me as funny when that happens. For some reason I think that only imaginary people on the Internet play my games. Certainly no one in the real world.

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I've been working on debugging this morning

December 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've been working on debugging this morning. I think I have a workaround for the summoning bug that showed up in the last NWN2 patch. Basically Daniel will unsummon his animal companion, and then be fully rested to summon it again after the transition. This is a bit of an extra advantage he has over the other party members, as he regains spells and hit points, so I might take it out once the bug gets fixed in a patch.

I've also been going back and fixing issues from the first module. Heather and Daniel were supposed to drop hints about a locked door in the maintenance level. Now they do. I've also fixed a couple cutscenes and improved the camera. I'm going to see if I can do that for another one some time today.

I've also reverted Robert back to his old head, hoping that my changes to the hak pack fixed the "Frankenstein Robert" bug that happens with MotB players. There's some other head-related bugs I've fixed. I'm tempted to make Heather's head go back to the way it was, as I like it more, but there do seem to be some hat issues that can only be fixed by using a "normal" human head.

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No pretty picture today

December 07, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

No pretty picture today. Just imagine I'm posting about an old school text adventure or something.

I debugged the alphabet game yesterday, which continues to amuse me. Little pop-up text over the letters say things like "A is for Armor" and "B is for Blindness". When you spell a word with those letters, that effect happens. I've only got a quarter of the way through the alphabet, so things like Z don't do anything exciting yet. You can also spell words such as "Sword" that in addition to the letter-based effects, also make the party do maximum damage with melee weapons for the duration. I'd like to add more of these to reward the thoughtful wordsmith.

I also did basic area building, making the level actually look like a real place. It's amazing how much time it takes to create a single level, placing lights, placeables, and so on. I'm going for a straight dungeon-crawl feel, which is actually pretty different from most of the areas I have in the game. Today I'd like to work on getting creatures to "drop" new letters, with more powerful creatures giving out bronze, silver, or gold letters which give a more dramatic effect.

I had problems uploading the latest build to FileFront yesterday, so I couldn't pass things out to the testers. I'm going to try again today, and switch over to several other file sharing servers if it fails.

Update: I just noticed that there was a new developer post on Obsidian's blog today. Looking at their plans for the 1.12 patch, it appears their #1 item is:
Eliminate the errors caused by transitioning with familiars summoned.

So, it looks like it's not my fault. In my next build, I'll see if I can unsummon Daniel's companion before each area transition. It's a bit silly, but should work.

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Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for th...

December 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Here's a peek at one of my crazy ideas for the next module. On the left is a "Letter Fountain" where you can fill up on letters. They show up on a GUI to the right where you can click on them to spell words.

The plan is that every letter causes a certain type of effect. For example, maybe "A" is for armor, which increases your party's AC. Perhaps "B" is for Blindness, which temporarily blinds your foes. Some of the more challenging to use letters, such as Z, would have more powerful effects (e.g. "Z" is for zap, a lighting bolt against your foes). Coupled with this, longer words produce more powerful effects, so you want to spell words using as many letters as possible.

You can gain more letters at fountains like this, or when killing opponents in the dungeon. I'd like tougher foes to drop letters with a certain bonus, say bronze letters that are worth twice normal letters, silver for three times, and gold for five times. It might also be fun to have traps or opponents that steal your letters.

I also have this concept where you can spell certain words for even more effect. For example, spelling "rest" or "sleep" would cause the whole party to rest and heal (the dungeon is otherwise no rest). Spelling "big" causes the player to get enlarged. Should be fun.

There's lots of polish to add, such as showing when you've clicked a letter (and can't reuse it), and actually making the effects happen. I did get to impliment a binary search against my dictionary 2da file. I can usually tell if a word is in the dictionary with only a dozen or so reads to the file, so it's quite fast. I was pretty proud of myself, as I don't usually do that sort of programming any more.

I think we're finally figuring out what's been causing the crashes. The panther in MotB uses the same 2da lines as in Dark Waters. I found a way to get rid of my appearances.2da file from my hak. It turns out I was only using it to reskin a creature, which can be done via a special effect. I'm going to get a new build to testers today in hopes that fixes the issue entirely.

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Debugging continues

December 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Debugging continues. I fixed my GUI problems I ran into yesterday. It was also pointed out that the infamous Soul Gem was missing from Doctor Fenril's. It's my favorite evil item, allowing players to be rewarded not in gold or goodness, but in the NPC's immortal soul. Anyway, it turns out the base item type was wrong, which was easy to fix.

I'm also partial just hanging out at Doctor Fenril's place. Though it takes a fair bit of time to set up, he's one of the NPCs that walks around their shop actually doing things. He'll mix up his cauldron, cast spells, and check on the customer, all the time holding a massive spoon. I can respect that sort of devotion to his craft.

The only worrisome thing is that I have several testers reporting serious crash bugs. I'm going to pass along the most recent build, in hopes that fixes the problem. I've also asked a couple folks to pass along some of the nitty-gritty debug files. With luck, the problem will magically vanish with the new build or the problem will be obvious. I spent some time this morning going between ports and couldn't recreate the problem. Isn't that just typical of those pesky bugs?

Update: One of our brave testers seems to have uncovered the issue. Crashes only happen when Daniel has a panther out. Since panthers are specific to Mask of the Betrayer, it never happened to me. My guess is that I need to update my appearances.2da file so that the panther shows up properly. Hopefully we can sort this out soon.

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I put together another GUI yesterday, which i...

December 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I put together another GUI yesterday, which is mostly working. You can see your current psionic skills and use up skill gems to increase them. The only thing that's not working is the hover text that says how many gems it costs to increase the skill. I need to fiddle a bit more and see what I'm missing, as I do this exact same thing somewhere else.

I might actually have a day to explore options for the next module. I've been hesitant to do much as I've been so focused on finishing up the current module. I ran across an odd little game called Bookworm Adventures that was strangely inspiring. There's quite a few technical challenges getting something like this working for NWN2. Most interesting is dealing with the dictionary and coming up with an intelligent search and/or indexing system. I'm not sure how fast NWN2 would be reading through 60,000 words to see if they're valid. Anyway, we'll see what wacky things I can come up with.

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Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chrono...

December 03, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sure enough, I managed to screw up the Chronomancer quest again. This time it was a campaign script that I had deleted from one of my computers, but not another, and when I copied things around, it arose like the dead to feed upon my brains. It was very easy to fix once I figured it out, though figuring it out took awhile.

The Cat's Paw problems were very easy to fix as well, a typo and some missing journal entries. There were a few more minor fixes if I recall correctly.

I'd like to put together another tab on the stats and achievements GUI screen that displays all the psionic powers you can get and their skill level. Currently it's buried a bit by using a skill gem and assigning powers, which isn't very intuitive.

As for today, I'm busy uploading a new build for the testers and I'll send it out shortly.

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It's amazing how much polish there was to do ...

December 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

It's amazing how much polish there was to do in the Woodhaven area. After making all the fights more challenging yesterday, I toned down the arena difficulty more today. I ended up losing constantly even after I had all the forms and bursts and knew what I was doing. There's also a couple ways you can cheat for players who poke around a bit more.

There were small fixes, such as making a more impressive visual effect when using your totem or knife. Bigger things involved getting the combat balanced better and dealing with some GUI problems.

Hopefully today I can get to the Catspaw bugs, which so far don't look too bad.

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I made some good progress yesterday and this ...

December 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I made some good progress yesterday and this morning, returning to Woodhaven to clean up some issues that our crack team of testers discovered. I increased the difficulty, as it was just too darn easy to make it through each battle. There were also problems with creatures not spawning properly, which should now be fixed.

Finally, it looks like a couple of my named opponents got lost in the shuffle, so I recreated them. Losing things seems to be a recurring theme, so I'm tempted to buy myself a portable hard drive and stick Visual Source Safe on it. There's more overhead, checking things in and out, but I think it's worth it.

I have another quest to debug sometime today, but hopefully I can get that finished and whip up a new build.

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I'm hoping the waves of illness that have swe...

November 30, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm hoping the waves of illness that have swept through our family are finally over. I found some time today to start digging into the bug reports. There's a few bad ones, and another batch of smaller ones. The lists I'm getting keep getting smaller, which is a good sign. Hopefully this weekend I can whip up a new build and get it to the testers.

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I was deathly ill last night, which translate...

November 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I was deathly ill last night, which translated into me being up at some weird hours. On the plus side, I was able to do a full test run of Chronomancer and I can say that it can be finished, at least with respect to the "good" ending. I did notice some unvoiced Konrad dialog lines, which I quickly recorded this morning. I also noticed some semi-bug issues where you can quickly click through dialog lines and the actions stop matching up with the words (e.g. you'll be in one place while talking about another). Still, I think it's an acceptable trade-off and it makes debugging much easier.

As for today, I'm feeling much better and am going to see if I can find the time to dig into PJJ's latest bug reports. So far it sounds like we're getting into the area of polish rather than fixing horribly broken bugs, which is a good sign of progress.

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Periodically life gets insanely busy and I ca...

November 27, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically life gets insanely busy and I can't get to the game. Sadly the last couple days have been that way, coupled with my annoying, lingering cold. Hopefully in a day or two I can dig myself out and get back to the final QA work.

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My bug fixing continues

November 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

My bug fixing continues. I actually went back to take care of something that's been lingering for a long while. There's a single room in the first module where you can play a little ball game. Sunjammer worked on the coding, but the transfer from NWN1 to NWN2 never quite worked out particularly well.

I finally took the time to get it properly working, with nice clean lines and the edges of the playing field in the right place. For the soccer fans out there, you can now whack the ball around, though admittedly there's not a very big challenge.

Of course, I also spent some time fixing some other things. It turns out that the feats got screwed up along the way somewhere. When I leveled up, they showed up completely blank. I fiddled with the 2da file and things should be much improved. While I was there, I made it so all the sling-based feats now referenced flintlocks. Since flintlocks are really slings, all the combat feats relating to them actually benefit flintlock use. For the gunslingers out there, it should now be more obvious which feats to take.

Finally, I was debugging the Lord Tyson quest and realized he didn't have any voiced lines. I put on my most evil voice, which was actually helped by my lingering cough, and got them chopped up and attached to dialog. Now I'm in the process of getting the format right and making the lipsynch files.

Still on target for a new release tomorrow. With luck, most of the big issues should be resolved. High Seas probably needs a bit more polish. I'm tempted to have an option where a first mate pops up and gives advice. Otherwise some of the problems can be a bit tricky to figure out. For example, if you're headed up wind, it would be nice to tell the player they're doing that. If their hull is damaged, that would be a good time to mention the benefits of having a carpenter on board. We'll see how it goes.

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The bug fixing continues

November 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

The bug fixing continues. I added help screens to a couple High Seas GUIs. I've also made it so you can't defeat a particular enemy by clicking on him quickly as he runs away to have his minions to attack (which starts up his final dialog). There's lots of smaller fixes, such as some completely messed up dialog I managed to record. Progress continues, and feels quite good.

There's still things I'd like to do, but I'm feeling increasingly good about the state of the game. Today and tomorrow I want to go through and polish some more things up, and get a new build to the testers on Monday.

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Today has been fortunately pretty relaxed, wh...

November 22, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Today has been fortunately pretty relaxed, which means I've had some time to seriously dig into the bug reports. The Chronomancer quest was indeed screwed up again. Part of the problem had to do with a funky piece of code that chose which dialog companions should speak, depending on which act their in. It turns out that was overriding other conversation requests, so I gutted the whole system and switched to something entirely different. The good news is that seems to have fixed the looping Chronomancer conversations, and probably others as well.

I've also added in some help text for the High Seas system and will likely add more (some in the journal and some on individual GUIs). There's a bunch of other bugs to investigate and fix, and some balance issues with High Seas.

Still, all this work gives me something to do while everyone else watches football and eats.

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Periodically, a hate computers

November 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Periodically, a hate computers.

It turns out my e-mail hasn't actually been getting sent since last Friday, which includes my message to the testers with the latest build. So it and all my other e-mails just left my computer, several days late.

In any case, I continue to cough away, though I keep hoping I'm on the mend. I spent some time this morning collecting more debug notes, though I've only just realized that they're for the previous build. Still, people are testing out parts that I haven't tinkered with yet.

I did find some time this morning to start looking into an issue with the High Seas trading system. It turns out I can buy a single item and it magically turns into two items. I can then sell them both back for a tidy profit.

Though amusing, I should probably fix that.

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From time to time, a single debug mention lea...

November 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

From time to time, a single debug mention leads to hours of testing and tweaking. Today it was a comment about the Tattoo Treasure Map quest not working right. Sure enough, there were all sorts of problems, from the quest name not having spaces, to the treasure map giving wrong directions, not to mention that NPCs weren't moving around and talking to people appropriately.

I enlisted my sick son to run through the section over and over, with me writing a little code in between. Through sheer willpower and repetition, I think we've mostly beaten the quest into shape. The only downside was that the game hung when loading Port Brighton after digging up the treasure, so I couldn't test the end.

The random crashes trouble me and are really hard to diagnose. It only shows up every once in awhile, and I've yet to record the issue in the log file. Slowly getting there.

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As usual, it turns out I'm an idiot

November 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, it turns out I'm an idiot. My previous workarounds to the CopyObject bugs that the 1.10 patch introduced didn't actually get into the last build. I redid them, among other things, and passed it off to the testers.

I also gave Chronomancer a bit more love, adding placeable decor, putting in some cameras for better shots during dialog, and so on. The Chronomancer periodically drives me crazy, as it's entirely dialog based and has serious cutscene scripting that requires lots of tweaking and adjustment. Hopefully this new version will work out relatively well.

I also recorded some more lines for Spider. At the testers' prompting, I added some dialog for completing each quest, which means more voice acting. I have a cold today, but hopefully it won't sound too weird.

I still have more bugs to investigate, though the list continues to get shorter. Busy, busy.

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One of the advantages of being sick is that I...

November 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

One of the advantages of being sick is that I strangely have a lot of free time to work on the module, in between the coughing and sneezing. I fixed some of the more dumb bugs, such as setting the variable "SpokeToSpider" instead of "SpokenToSpider" (notice the missing "n"). Others are more cryptic and harder for me to reproduce.

For example, I was able to buy and sell cargo and the like, though I'm getting reports that it's not working properly. I also didn't run into problems talking with companions, even though I got that bug report too. Ah, challenges.

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Sick as a dog today

November 15, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Sick as a dog today. The testers are feeding me a steady stream of bug reports. It turns out that Lord Brighton's new dialog is causing crashes, probably due to the lipsynch code. I'm also getting weird issues with half-Drow, which is hard to test as it's a MotB issue.

We'll see if I can work on things tonight, or perhaps just take a hot bath and curl up in bed.

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Success! My workaround for the CopyObject ...

November 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Success!

My workaround for the CopyObject seems to be working. I didn't have time to play through the entire Chronomancer quest, but the problem parts seemed to work okay. The various clones that appear were well behaved and moved around like they should.

I also added the Lord Brighton dialog that Raphael has finished so far. It always takes a bit of fiddling to get formats set right, files named, and lip synch files generated, but the outcome should add a lot of life to the character.

Gears of War arrived on my doorstep yesterday. How is this related to Neverwinter Nights 2? Well, they integrate the same lipsynch technology into their editor. So far, I haven't figured out how to generate the magical FXE files that NWN2 uses, though I found mention of it in the documentation. If I'm lucky, there may be a way to make real lipsynch animations, though I'm not going to hold my breath.

In any case, I just e-mailed out the latest build to testers. With luck we're slowly getting closer to that magical public release date.

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To quote Han Solo, "It's not my fault!" I br...

November 13, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

To quote Han Solo, "It's not my fault!" I braved the attack of the clones to try and figure out what the problem was with the Chronomancer quest. It turns out that the 1.10 patch broke the CopyObject script. While it copies the object, it doesn't return the object variable, so all subsequent calls using that variable fail horribly.

There's sort of a workaround, which is to look for the object once it's been created. I'll need some time to dig through my code looking for all the CopyObject functions. Some things may stay broken until the 1.11 patch, unfortunately. For example, I'm getting reports that you can't buy cargo, crew, and the like, which I suspect is related. It may be harder to deal with stackable copied objects, but perhaps there are ways to deal with that as well.

Finally, I had a great time in Disneyland with the family, including my life-long dream to eat at the Blue Bayou restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We all had a great time and I'm refreshed to leap back into the fray of debugging.

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As usual, I've gotten myself in a bit of trouble

November 08, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

As usual, I've gotten myself in a bit of trouble. The Chronomancer quest is amazingly broken, even after my attempted fix from yesterday. What's weird is that I swear it was working a few months ago. For whatever reason, the behavior of my player and Heather clones is really weird and unexpected. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, so I'm not giving up yet.

I also got achievements working. Some day I'll learn that computers think UIPANE and UIPane are totally different things.

I won't be able to put together a new build for testers for awhile. I'm hopping on a plane with my family to Disneyland. Perhaps I'll get inspiration from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. In any case, I'm bringing along a notebook in case I get some time to scribble down some more dialog for the third module, so my little hobby project won't be completely on hold.

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This isn't an actual achievement that you can...

November 06, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

This isn't an actual achievement that you can find in the game, but I've been working hard on the module once again and wanted to reward myself. If only I got developer achievements, maybe something like "Code Monkey" for writing ten thousand lines of code.

In any case, I managed to get achievements and stats added to the second module, though untested. You can see the DW1 achievements in DW2 on another tab, tracking your progress through the game. There's also all the various stats, from times died to how often you use your psionic powers. Hopefully it's of use to someone.

I'm starting to get the voice clips from Raphael for Lord Brighton, and they're sounding pretty good. That's one of the key voices I haven't had yet and I've been itching to get it in.

I also took a look at the latest QA reports. There's a few horribly broken things, but they're not totally unexpected (having caused me problems before). Yes, there's a lot of miscellaneous things I need to test out and fiddle with. The good news is that each bug list seems a little smaller. I don't think I've seen a typo in weeks.

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Mondays are always hard

November 05, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are always hard. I have a long list of bugs waiting for me, but sadly haven't had the time to touch them. I might find a little time later today. PJJ was reporting some good news tracking down a performance bug with the High Seas area.

I did manage a bit of time yesterday getting my stats and achievements system working for the first module. Some of the achievements are a little silly, but I suppose it's a way to show people that they're making progress and their effort is noticed.

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Friday was a good day

November 04, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Friday was a good day. I went through and fixed the majority of the reported bugs, packaged up the files, and sent a note to all the testers. I haven't checked, but hopefully by Monday I'll get a fresh batch of bug reports. Since I'm leaving for Disneyland with the kids next week, I might be hard pressed to get another version before I go. We'll see how bad the reports are.

Not being content to just sit and wait, I decided to take up one of PJJ's suggestions to give the player better feedback about things like player loyalty and so on. I really liked what I'd done with the stats and achievements for High Seas, so I'm planning on replicating the same for each Dark Waters module.

I'm currently working on the first one, reporting on things like the number of times died, how many Slithers have been killed, the number of unique focus gems found, and so on. I'm still finding glitches in some of the stats, but in general it seems to be working okay. I'm hoping I can get achievements for the second module working as well. It's a fun addition and gives important feedback to the player.

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I got a huge amount of work done yesterday an...

November 02, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I got a huge amount of work done yesterday and continue fixing bugs and adding polish today. I just finished adding a bunch of dialog so you can report back to Lord Brighton as you make progress on your various quests.

I also figured out the issues with the installer for the first module. I had to rewrite it to pull from my current game directory, but once I got the bugs sorted out it seemed to work okay.

I'm hoping I can zip through many of the bugs I've seen and upload the latest version to testers by the end of the day. Progress feels nice.

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I think I found the root cause of my problem

November 01, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I think I found the root cause of my problem. I generate installers and use that to move thousands files from place to place without too much trouble. Unfortunately it looks like the way I set up the installer on my home PC caused it to not pick up the most recent DW1 module and campaign files. Even though it worked great on my PC, the installer had old junk in it that didn't work.

I'm going to work on fixing some of the other serious bugs that were reported, and then get my installer working properly tonight. Already I've fixed a few of the problems that have been reported, such as replacing Robert's Frankenstein-like head with a more boring one.

PJJ made some neat suggestions about feats and showing companion loyalty. I'm not sure how easy they'd be to implement, but I might give it a try.

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I gathered up the first round of somewhat hor...

October 31, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I gathered up the first round of somewhat horrific bug reports, went home, and promptly got as sick as a dog. I'm much improved today and somewhere in my delirium I think I've figured out one reason things went so poorly for everyone.

I've been giving people two installers, one for the first module and another for the second. I'm betting that while I cleaned up those pesky campaign-level scripts that cause problems from the second installer, I missed the first. What that means is that there's a fair amount of garbage sneaking into the game, causing all sorts of scripting weirdness.

Of course, that doesn't fix everything. For some reason, Mask of the Betrayer makes Robert look like a Frankenstein. Combined with the High Seas area having the player Godzilla-sized, it makes for a great monster movie mash-up, but probably not a game that makes any sense.

So, I'll be fixing those issues and others today, and hopefully get a new build for the testers soon.

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I sometimes have these naive visions of being...

October 29, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I sometimes have these naive visions of being able to get things done on Mondays. Instead, I've been swamped, barely able to think about the game. Hopefully tonight I can actually spend some time with it.

PJJ has reportedly made a lengthy issue of list of issues, a few of which are somewhat critical. I've yet to peek at the details, but I'm sure they'll haunt me for the days ahead. Perhaps I can feed myself to a shark in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

I got some great response from volunteers, passing along the latest link to someone who asked on Friday. Three more came in over the weekend and I'm tempted to ask them to wait until I fix the most serious issues PJJ has reported. I try hard not to pummel my QA folks with too many runs through the game. Mere mortals can typically handle one or two full playthroughs. I think PJJ and Brad may be robots, but I'm too polite to ask.

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I spent a bunch of time working on the under ...

October 28, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I spent a bunch of time working on the under water area. It takes a huge amount of work, painting down textures, creating tipped buildings, and generally making things look underwaterish. I tried to get light patterns on the bottom of the sea floor, but couldn't quite get it right.

I finally decided to test out my work, but couldn't get the module to load. I stripped out the imported areas, leaving my new area intact. It loaded just fine this time.

Amusingly enough, all the scripts kicked in and soon enough I found myself the target of assorted enemy subs. Torpedoes started homing in on my poor little PC, explosions all around me. It's a good sign, even though this was a very preliminary test.

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I'm happy to say that through an odd combinat...

October 26, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I'm happy to say that through an odd combination of file-upload sites, I finally got the new build to the testers. I'm also putting out a call to anyone who's interested in lending a hand with testing. I'm not certain we've caught all the critical bugs, but I keep thinking we're getting close. Help is most welcome.

I'll probably turn my attention back to the third act today. Lots to do there yet.

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I've found myself in this situation more than...

October 25, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I've found myself in this situation more than once, my player standing knee-deep in the ocean, various ships plying the sea around me. I'd feel like something out of a Japanese monster movie, but everyone else seems so calm about it.

It turns out that I let some important scripts move from the module to the campaign folder, and bad scripts were overriding good scripts. Once I got rid of them, the world was a happy place once again.

Yesterday was spent cleaning up miscellaneous small issues. The Iron Mountain dock area has a little mine cart that comes out of some big doors and a dwarf pokes at it. It's just background, but I still ended up fiddling with it until it looked relatively good. The dockmaster there also sells iron ore, which he didn't before. He was also incredibly small, probably a product of earlier fiddling due to 2da changes.

As for today, I spent a big chunk of time getting a new build to the testers. Occasionally it's a headache moving 160 MB files around. I'm half tempted to throw money at the problem and just get a place to host big files. My poor little closet server might work in a pinch, but the bandwidth is pretty marginal.

With luck, I'll get endless bug reports soon, along with the inevitable sobs and head bonking against walls that come with them. I can't wait.

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I did a little more puttering with the second act

October 24, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a little more puttering with the second act. For performance reasons, all the docks from the High Seas system are actually interior areas. This means they're rather dark and dreary looking.

I ended up giving them a little more love so they didn't look completely weird. They now have a skydome with a nice sky texture. It doesn't use the official one, so there's no stars, moon, or sun. Still, it looks far better than a black fog that surrounds the docks.

I even added a little dock worker who does things in the distance, adding a small visual touch to the place. Maybe today I'll add some sharks moving around the Sweet Isle docks or mine carts in the Iron Mountain area.

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Mondays are always crazy, and I never get as ...

October 23, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

Mondays are always crazy, and I never get as much done as I'd like. I have puttered around with a couple things lately. The sub now has a spinning propeller and emits bubbles. I need to test it out at some point, as I had to do some weird things in order to get it to work right. For example, the propeller effect can't have a position other than dead center, which means the rest of the sub got shifted forward.

The torpedo is in now too, as well as portraits for the sub and existing ships. Before this latest patch, the ships showed up without a portrait and looked a little weird.

My list of things to do is huge as always. My two main testers have been quiet lately, so I haven't been fixing many bugs lately. I suppose I can virtually keel haul the scurvy dogs, but they've been so darn helpful over the months and years that I'd probably feel a little guilty. The third act is keeping me busy, mostly doing fun things like model work and painting areas. Eventually I need to stop puttering around and release the second act, though.

I was also having some crazy ideas while sitting in a bored meeting the other day. "Lute Hero" was one of them. I also pondered a dance-fight section. We'll see if the insanity ever sees the light of day.

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I went back to the burning shop area this morning

October 21, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I went back to the burning shop area this morning. As I had discovered previously, the fire didn't really spread and the player didn't have any risk at all going into the area. It turns out the problem wasn't exactly with the script, but rather issues relating to the distance between burnable objects in the store. After a bit of work, I think I have a solution I'm happy with.

I lined up crates like a fuse, leading to an explosive barrel next to the little girl. I increased the distance fire can spread and added in a longer delay for the spread to happen. Now the player has sufficient time to rescue the girl, assuming they don't dally and check out the contents of the shop crates. Plus there's an increased chance of catching on fire, which is always a bonus.

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I continue to putter around, trying to make t...

October 20, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I continue to putter around, trying to make the final act of the campaign as extraordinary as possible. One of the areas in the Clockwork Man quest is under water, which requires a fair bit of custom content. The submersible was modeled by Razvan and textured by myself. It needs more work, but doesn't look too bad. The shark is from the first Neverwinter Nights, and looks fairly good with a normal map.

Sadly I haven't been able to actually animate them properly. After many long hours with the expotron plug-in, I couldn't make even the simplest animation work. For now I decided to switch to plopping a model effect on top of an invisible human. They move around, not quite realistically, but if you squint it's not too bad.

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What fun is a city full of mechanical beings ...

October 18, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

What fun is a city full of mechanical beings without making them look like Cylons? Yes, I spent way too much time trying to get a glowing red spot move back and forth inside of a visor. I ended up making a long graphics file with a bunch of frames showing a white dot moving back and forth on a black background. That got turned into a billboard effect, which was incorporated into an effect that can be used in the game. After all that work, I ended up with this.

I continue to bring over the Clockwork Man areas from the prototype. I really only have two areas in the prototype that are finished, along with a fair amount of dialog. It's the roughest of the prototype areas, as the game came out before I could finish. I'm still a little nervous without that preparation, but I remind myself the Dreamcatcher was made completely on the fly and turned out quite well.

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I decided it was time to get back to the busi...

October 17, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I decided it was time to get back to the business of actually shipping the second act (I gotta come up with a better name - Dark Waters, Episode 2?). I tested the Trap in a Box, which worked like a charm. I knew there was also a problem with the "save the girl from the burning building" quest. Previously fires never spread, which made the quest very easy.

Well, I'm not sure if the patch changed things or I did something, but now fire engulfs the entire shop in mere seconds, followed by the death of everyone I was supposed to save. Oops.

To top it off, it turns out some key campaign scripts got replaced with older versions, so now I have to dig through my various versions and see if I can find the things. Hopefully it's a recent mistake and the last full build has the good version.

So, that's what I'll be fixing today . . .

Update: Fortunately the last build was just fine and had the right files, so reverting was painless. One of the testers was having problems getting the files, so I passed along some Megaupload links in hopes that'll help. For now, I've gone back to working on the Clockwork Man quest, converting areas and so on.

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I had some home networking issues yesterday, ...

October 16, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I had some home networking issues yesterday, so I'm doing a delayed update. Yesterday I spent way too much time working on getting an organic looking spot of goo on the ground. Eventually I figured it out, but it took a good long time.

I also threw together a little combat-focused area after making my assorted fleshy custom content. I have a tendency to make my final module in a campaign more combat focused, if only to give the player lots of opportunities to show off the equipment they've accumulated over the span of the adventure. There should still be plenty of puzzles and storytelling, though the focus tends to shift a little.

Some Swedish and German design students asked me some questions about modding for a school project today. If I take my own advice, I should be taking more risks and doing things the big publishers dare not attempt. Hmm.

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I did a little bit of modeling today, putting...

October 14, 2007 by Adam in NWN2

I did a little bit of modeling today, putting together some broken automata for a part in the third Act. Nothing too exciting.

I keep refining the story behind the final chapter in my head. Hopefully I can do something that's fun without being overwhelmingly complicated. I've found that on occasion I have a crazy idea