Back in the Saddle

Yesterday, I got some work done on The Maimed God's Saga for the first time in more than a month. I tidied up a few bugs and integrated a few improvements I still had noted from my last play-through of Act III . Nothing much, but progress was made.

Next, I intend to start on the final few cutscenes. There are three big ones that happen within the last hour or so of gameplay, and each will take some time to complete. Then, a couple more play-throughs, and Act III should be able to be shelved.

After that, I'll wrap up one remaining issue from Act I, and Act II will be all that's left. Again, all the creative content for Act II is done, so it's just scripting and play-testing. It's by far the biggest act, but there aren't any cutscenes, so things should go quicker.

On another front, the 2D artist I thought I had a few posts ago, never sent over any work, so I guess I'm looking again. If anyone knows anyone good...

Halloween Mod Revealed

Warning! Spoiler Alert! Turn Back Now to Remain Spoiler-Free!
OK, so what's my mod all about? I would call it light. Heavy-hitting drama it is not, but hopefully people will find it a fun little romp.

The crux is that the player must enter a land of fiction to beat fictional villains, the greatest of which is Count Dracula, created and brought to life from the vast number of stories from the mind of the master-bard named Tiberius. Tiberius, obviously, is a good guy, so he was forced to create these monstrosities. Once in the land of fiction, the character makes his or her way up to Dracula's castle where there exists a series of puzzles that must be overcome before reaching the climactic showdown.

However, just as Tiberius created the fictional villains, so can he also create fictional heroes to aid the player, preferably heroes from his own stories. Thereafter the player can search through his manuscripts to find the following three potential companions:

Tancred of Calimport from "The Maimed God's Saga"
Yes, the intrepid ranger is temporarily taken away from Navatranaasu to aid in the battle against Dracula, and he brings his snarkiness with him!


Charissa Maernos from "Mysteries of Westgate"
Alan Miranda at Ossian was kind enough to let me use the companion I wrote for "Mysteries of Westgate," and so here comes the Tyrran priestess with an attitude. Who would have ever thought that the average NWN2 gamer would have traveled with Charissa here first!


And yes, Saleron Pymnot from "Saleron's Gambit"
OK, so I couldn't do this without the wiz, so he finally made the jump from NWN1 to part deux.


Here's a shot as the group approaches Dracula's Castle.


I took care that each companion had something to say about each puzzle. Some are helpful hints and clues, many are not. Here Tancred gives his input about the Modern Prometheus (aka the Frankenstein Monster)


And then some are just blatant excuses for more companion banter... like this exchange in Dracula's study.


So I'm not going to give away any of the jokes and/or puzzle solutions, so that's it for a preview. Hopefully, people will enjoy the 45-60 minutes it will take to complete this mod, and I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with.

Halloween Done!

I submitted my module for Bouncy Rock's Halloween project last night... several nights later than I first envisioned but still well before the October 13th deadline. It was really a case of perpetual polishing - i.e. continual rephrasing of some of my dialogs, tweaking the visual effects, adjusting tints... but I'm now tired of looking at it. Barring any unforeseen bugs, I'm done.

Stay tuned for screen shots in the next day or so... and then maybe I can get back to TMGS.

Halloween

I'm more or less finished with the essentials of my Halloween mod, and it's been pretty thoroughly play-tested. That said, there is still one slight issue I have to deal with. Essentially, I need to check at the exit to my house to verify the player doesn't have any of my companions attached and remove them if they do. There might be a slight logic /continuity issue if they start my little adventure, leave to go do some other houses, and then come back, but I think I may opt for the simplest approach and just have the player "start over" if that happens. After all, I have no idea what may happen outside my little environ.

So, there's that one little script and then I want to add some extensions to a couple of the dialogs... in essence, I want the companions to joke around a little bit more. I may then add one or two extra rooms to Dracula's Castle with a couple "script-lite" encounters. Then finally, I have 7 more play-throughs from scratch (one for each of the possible companion cominations), and I'm done. The deadline is Oct. 13th, but I don't envision working on this past next Sunday Oct. 5th.

Once I ship the final version, I'll post a much more extensive write-up of exactly what I've done.

Halloween Mod in the Crosshair!

Maimed God progress since last post = nada

Of the three projects I mentioned last time:

I'm mostly finished with the proposal and will be completely after tonight. Check that one off the list.

My pictures have been organized and identified. I still need to do some filing.

Now what the NWN community is probably more interested in. The Halloween "item" for Bouncy Rock is shaping up nicely. In general, I'll be submitting a short sidequest that begins in my "house" in the main village. There won't be much in the way of combat, although there will be some, but it will be puzzle-heavy. Unlike all the rest of my work, it will also break the so-called "fourth wall" with regularity. It will be rather light fare, hopefully with a lot of humor and inside jokes for the NWN community.

I'll post specifics later, but it will feature most of the traditional gothic villains: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, etc., and the main point will be to advance through a series of puzzles in Dracula's castle. If anyone remembers the old game "The 7th Guest," it'll be a bit like that, although nothing nearly as elaborate. Right now, there are three puzzles, though I may add more if I get all the scripting for these finished and playtested and still have some time before the Oct. 13th deadline. To aid you, there'll be three companions who may give clues to the puzlzles if you're stumped. The identities of these companions may be a bit of a surprise... but I'll save that for next time.

Quick Update

I decided that I would allow myself the Labor Day weekend to work on Maimed God as much as possible and that I would thereafter turn to other projects with more immediate deadlines. As of last Monday, when I put TMGS down, I was mostly (80%) done with the Act III scripting and had done a significant amount of playtesting on Act III as well (maybe ~40%). I've done a ton of bug-squashing on Act III, and the first two-thirds of it is pretty polished.

The last part of Act III is fairly cutscene-intense as the story comes to a close. Once those individual scenes are scripted, there won't be many bugs to hunt down. Overall, I'd say Act III is pretty close.

However, since Monday, I've turned my attention to three projects, two of them non-NWN-related, that I simply must finish before returning to Maimed God. First, I'm going to categorize, annotate, and file the 400+ pictures I took in Europe. I'll make a post with some of my favorites when that's done. Second, I have a round of proposals for my own private business due on September 28th, so I need to knuckle down on that. Third, I have agreed to submit something for Bouncy Rock's Halloween project, and that's due October 13th. My idea is set, and I've finished a fair portion of it, but I'll wait until later to provide further details.

So it doesn't look like much progress will be made on TMGS until Oct 13th (or earlier if I can finish the Bouncy Rock stuff ahead of schedule).

OK, So I'm Back

Actually, I've been back well over a week now, but I didn't want to post until I had something useful to report. First, though, a tribute to this little guy.


Those familiar with Brussels will recognize him as Manneken Pis, but I like to refer to him as The Little Pisser. The day we went to see him, they had him dressed up as a tour guide or bell hop. Hey, whatever; I traveled halfway around the world to see a 2 foot tall statue of a peeing boy dressed as a tour guide and wearing a rain coat... and I wasn't alone. There were hundreds crowded into that street.

More about my trip later when I organize all the pictures a bit more. For now, it's on to:

The Maimed God's Saga
So I was standing in St. Michael's Cathedral in Brussels on the first full day of my trip, and a strange thing happened. I began to hear in my head the main theme for The Maimed God's Saga. Some people may call that "insanity," but I prefer to call it "inspiration." I have to admit that my motivation was slipping just prior to my trip, but as I stared up at the vaulted ceilings of the gothic interior that day, I found myself rejuvenated, and I couldn't wait to go to work again on TMGS... only I still had 2+ weeks of my vacation left. Bummer... OK, not really.

So when I got home I started seriously kicking ass, and the recent advent of tropical storm Fay, which has basically hovered over my house the last two days, has meant much canceled work and lots of Maimed God time. The tasks I have completed since my last update are:

1. All Act III dialogs (~ 50,000 words total) and Campaign dialogs ( an additional 3500 words) finished
2. All Act II and Act III journals (~ 5000 words) finished
3. The map updates I discussed last time finished
4. The Act III scripting is about 35% finished

In addition to all that, I laid out a story board for the beginning and ending movies, wrote the scripts, and approached someone about drawing fifteen 2D drawings. He agreed to try one to see if everything would work. Hopefully, it will go smoothly, but I won't reveal who it is until I'm 100% sure it will. I'm a little stoked because this means for the only time in the development, there are two parts of the campaign being developed in parallel. This, of course, equated to faster progress.

Anyway, the new matrix as of right now is as follows:


I changed the journals so that they are all technically campaign journals, which explains the difference in reporting, but the important thing is that they're all done.

Three major groups of tasks remain. First, the scripting. Second, the extraneous art content (movies and music). Third, the testing. My plan is to bang out the scripting while "anonymous" works on the movie art. Whenever the 15 frames are completed, I'll do the magic to "movie-fy" them and check that off. Otherwise, I'll just script until I can do my own internal alpha-testing. Once I'm pretty good with all that, I'll send the module out for beta-testing while I nail down the music. At that point, I'll alternate music and bug fixing until both are done. Lastly, I'll do a final pass through the haks, one more round of testing, and release. With this coming weekend fairly open and next weekend a four-day holiday for me, I should have plenty of time to crank on the scripting... only football season is again approaching ominously on the horizon...

I also cruised the hak packs again and found some very interesting art content I'm going to add, but I'm going to do it in one big update to all the maps after the scripting and maybe alpha-testing is done, so I can incorporate in whatever new art content comes with Storm of Zehir. These include the vines and splatter pack, cobwebs, and mystic runes.

And that's it for the update: short, but dense.