Sunday, June 17, 2007

A Little Snag

Maimed God Saga Update
Well, I got my first chance this weekend to really work on The Maimed God's Saga, and I managed to put away both the map for the main floor and the cellar of The Mountain King plus I made some serious headway on another outdoor map. In fact, it's also about 90% done, so that means I now basically have eight of the eleven maps done that I need for the first part of the module.

However, I also hit my first major snag this weekend. There are no models for large cats that shipped with the toolset... I guess I never thought about it. Of course there would be large cats in NWN2, right? Well, if you thought so, you'd be wrong.

This all comes about because, as you've seen, there are a few mountain areas. I was hoping to have some mountain lions as potential adversaries. More than that, though, is that the mountain lions are pretty crucial to a certain plot point - I mean really crucial. Crucial enough for me to moan, wail, weep large tears, and gnash my teeth that they aren't present.

So the plan is to work on other things for now. I wasn't thinking I'd get the adventure out until at least Christmas. By that point, Mask of the Betrayer will be out, as will the so-called "Granny" pack that will make modeling creatures easier, and hopefully, these will enlarge the beastiary enough to have a passable mountain lion that can be retroactively inserted. If not, the "mountain lions" will have to be one of these scary creatures, and won't that just bugger all.

4 comments:

Berliad said...

The big kitty there has already been used by other modders as a replacement for a large cat. I thought the re-tinted, scaled up model worked reasonably well, except that there's no attack animation! My character just gets hit by thin air.

Maybe it's a psionic attack or something.
-B

Lariam said...

Yeah - the kitty looks very cute, at least, but it is a little disturbing that there are no attack animations.

One might imagine that having some new big cats and animations for them (and for these old models, perhaps) would be something that will be done relatively soon once the Granny tools become available. One might imagine that would be one of the things that wouldn't be *so* hard to do, and yet would be very beneficial for the community. At least one might imagine so, if one didn't know anything about modeling/creating animations.

Cheers...

Lariam said...

Hey again,

Here's a section from Shane's recent Community Update with regard to the expansion:

'Q: Are you trying to fill the monsters missing from the NWN repertoire or are you concentrating on new critters?

We tried to do both, of course! I'd say that we added more classic D&D creatures than specific ones for just NX1. We also added some general use creatures like a panther. We did add a couple special critters, too.'

So, some big cats are forthcoming, at least. And having one presumably might help the community to do some others.

Cheers...

Alex Hugon said...

Aww, wook at da pwetty widdle kiddy!!! You're a cute widdle kiddy, you know dat?! Awwww....

*screech/claw-ripping-noise*