Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Maimed God's Saga Update

Areas and Acts and Conversations... Oh My!
I took some time over the past two days to start laying out some of the technical details of The Maimed God's Saga. There will be a total of 32 areas to be designed over three acts. Each act will be a single module in the campaign. The area breakdown is:

Area Size
Tiny Small Medium Large Total T.A.S
Indoor 5 7 3 0 15 31
Outdoor 1 7 7 2 17 59
Act 1 2 6 3 0 11 26
Act 2 3 6 1 2 12 35
Act 3 1 2 6 0 9 29

T.A.S, or 'Total Area Size,' is a way I use to figure out how big the module's going to be, so I know if there's some kind of imbalance. Originally, there were going to be two acts with the above Acts 1 and 2 combined. However, that made Act 1 over twice as big as Act 2, though, so the first act was split.

In terms of dialogue, there will be 51 conversations that I estimate will take 60,700 words to complete. I am dedicating 15,000 words each to the two companions, so they comprise 50% of the total module dialog. By comparison, my Saleron's Gambit henchmen often hit around 10,000 or so words, but many of those were functional throw-aways, by which I mean things like asking them to heal you or pick locks, etc. With the nifty NWN2 toolset allowing that to be done otherwise, all the dialog will go to characterisation and personality development.

I've also broken ground on the module itself. Above is displayed a screenshot of the male and female versions of the specially-made Tyrran armor for the module. I wish I could get a scale symbol on the front rather than the star, but we can't have everything we want I guess. The man is also the first central character in the module, and the setting is the Temple of Tyr in the small aptly-named town of Riverford, where the module opens.


I've also already created the two hotties everyone will get to cyber-romance (or not, as the case may be - I'm looking at you, Berliad!). Above left is the oh-so-manly Tancred with his devastatingly gorgeous blue eyes. Below him is Verona, a red-headed babe with devastatingly gorgeous green eyes. (See, I told you these two would be unique!)

But all this is very part time right now. Ossian is cracking the whip and forcing me to do... uh, secret things. Well, they're not exactly forcing me to do anything, but they do take priority.

1 comment:

Berliad said...

Well, I will say, if I'm going to consider having my PC romance an NPC, it sure helps if she's as attractive as that gal. :)

Heh, I just said a PC-rendered fictional character is attractive. I think it's time I go to bed. -B