Thursday, May 27, 2010
Not Much to Say
Hey all. Not much in terms of updates recently. For one, I've been traveling for work quite a bit recently. Second, I'm still waiting on some of the music, but I'm closing in on making the decision to just wrap the thing up anyway. One way or the other, I'm releasing in the second half of July. That decision is final.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Checklist
Playthrough - DONE
Personal Notes Addressed - DONE
Beta Feedback Received - DONE
Beta Comments Addressed - DONE
Music Received - IN PROGRESS
Music and Movie Integration - NOT STARTED
Final Playthrough - NOT STARTED
My beta testers proved quite valuable in rooting out some odd bugs resulting from a play-order I'd never think of as well as odd behavior from different machines. I've received about ten pieces of music in their final form thus far and there are at least a few left to go. I also realized that, because each of the companions has different music, I'll need to replay the campaign two more timed to make sure all of it's in place. At this point I'm not sure I'll make my May 1st goal.
Next time I'll post one of the new pieces, so stay tuned!
Personal Notes Addressed - DONE
Beta Feedback Received - DONE
Beta Comments Addressed - DONE
Music Received - IN PROGRESS
Music and Movie Integration - NOT STARTED
Final Playthrough - NOT STARTED
My beta testers proved quite valuable in rooting out some odd bugs resulting from a play-order I'd never think of as well as odd behavior from different machines. I've received about ten pieces of music in their final form thus far and there are at least a few left to go. I also realized that, because each of the companions has different music, I'll need to replay the campaign two more timed to make sure all of it's in place. At this point I'm not sure I'll make my May 1st goal.
Next time I'll post one of the new pieces, so stay tuned!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Pulling into Station
The title comes from a realization I recently had. I need to finish TMGS. I'm sure there are still going to be some small issues, but I'm to the point where the time I'm devoting to this game could be better spent elsewhere, so I'm wrapping it up. Here's the schedule.
I just finished another play-through this past weekend. Fortunately, I've been correcting most of the issues I found as I go this time, so there are only about 30 or so more to do. There will be some targeted testing with some of those items. Then I'm waiting on two more reports from beta-testers, and I'll address whatever they come up with. After that, I have to incorporate the music whenever that comes through, although I've been told it will be March. When all that's done, I will personally do one final, but thorough, play-through to convince myself it's all properly integrated, and then it's time for release. I think a conservative estimate would be about May 1st, but that's dependent on the music coming in March.
People may be wondering how I can play so many times and still come up with 150+ issues every play-through. The answer is that there are over 200,000 words of dialog in this adventure, and several tens of thousands more in the journal, item descriptions, creature descriptions, etc. Also, as in the SG series, many of my quests have multiple ways of completing them, and then there are consequences later on for if you complete a quest one way or another although some of these are so subtle that I'm probably the only one that would realistically notice. There's even differences based off which companion you have. As I've said before, the two have very different personalities and so will notice different things or give different advice in certain situations. Every time I play through I try different choices and that means that inevitably a bunch of items pop up that need more polish. This last time through, I took the personality of an aloof, uncaring protagonist who was oft-times rude to the companion, and it was the first time I had chosen most of those dialog options.
By the way, assuming about 300 words per page, 200,000 words is the equivalent of a 667 page novel, and that's without the journals, etc. And man, it feels like I've written that much! Good thing I didn't know it would come to that when I started, or I never would have. But don't worry everyone! No one will read nearly all that in a single play-through!
My Little Poll
The poll came out exactly as I thought it would: overwhelmingly in favor of the bug staying in. Someone in the comments suggested possibly removing the bugged feature, but there's a major problem with that. You see, I tried to describe the feature enough for people to understand how it would be used in the adventure so that they could vote appropriately, but not enough to spoil the surprise it's used for. Suffice it to say that if I got rid of that aspect, I'd just have to chuck the whole project in the garbage. We're talking a MAJOR plot point here, so it simply cannot be disregarded.
When I came up with the original novel-to-game conversion (recall that TMGS was supposed to be a novel at one point), I knew that we could access a character's spells via scripting because of my work on the SG series, so I kept the idea in the story and built the entire adventure around it. It was only during testing that I realized (accidentally) that getting to the Domain spells is bugged. Very annoying, but it's in now and not going to change.
I just finished another play-through this past weekend. Fortunately, I've been correcting most of the issues I found as I go this time, so there are only about 30 or so more to do. There will be some targeted testing with some of those items. Then I'm waiting on two more reports from beta-testers, and I'll address whatever they come up with. After that, I have to incorporate the music whenever that comes through, although I've been told it will be March. When all that's done, I will personally do one final, but thorough, play-through to convince myself it's all properly integrated, and then it's time for release. I think a conservative estimate would be about May 1st, but that's dependent on the music coming in March.
People may be wondering how I can play so many times and still come up with 150+ issues every play-through. The answer is that there are over 200,000 words of dialog in this adventure, and several tens of thousands more in the journal, item descriptions, creature descriptions, etc. Also, as in the SG series, many of my quests have multiple ways of completing them, and then there are consequences later on for if you complete a quest one way or another although some of these are so subtle that I'm probably the only one that would realistically notice. There's even differences based off which companion you have. As I've said before, the two have very different personalities and so will notice different things or give different advice in certain situations. Every time I play through I try different choices and that means that inevitably a bunch of items pop up that need more polish. This last time through, I took the personality of an aloof, uncaring protagonist who was oft-times rude to the companion, and it was the first time I had chosen most of those dialog options.
By the way, assuming about 300 words per page, 200,000 words is the equivalent of a 667 page novel, and that's without the journals, etc. And man, it feels like I've written that much! Good thing I didn't know it would come to that when I started, or I never would have. But don't worry everyone! No one will read nearly all that in a single play-through!
My Little Poll
The poll came out exactly as I thought it would: overwhelmingly in favor of the bug staying in. Someone in the comments suggested possibly removing the bugged feature, but there's a major problem with that. You see, I tried to describe the feature enough for people to understand how it would be used in the adventure so that they could vote appropriately, but not enough to spoil the surprise it's used for. Suffice it to say that if I got rid of that aspect, I'd just have to chuck the whole project in the garbage. We're talking a MAJOR plot point here, so it simply cannot be disregarded.
When I came up with the original novel-to-game conversion (recall that TMGS was supposed to be a novel at one point), I knew that we could access a character's spells via scripting because of my work on the SG series, so I kept the idea in the story and built the entire adventure around it. It was only during testing that I realized (accidentally) that getting to the Domain spells is bugged. Very annoying, but it's in now and not going to change.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Misery Stone
As I mentioned last time, I took a short break from TMGS and played through Bouncy Rock's Misery Stone. I was impressed to say the least.
The signature aspect of Misery Stone is, of course, that it takes place in Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread, and this leads to an unremittingly dark feel that is well-realized at every moment. The maps are mostly well-done with an eye for detail I lack (but can appreciate), and the color desaturation feature is used to great effect. Sometimes, it seems that the only non-gray that can be seen is the red of the copious amounts of blood that flow through the storyline. This world of gray and red might sound dull and it wouldn't work in most other adventures, but the Ravenloft setting means it's perfect.
The storyline and writing are also strong points. Everywhere one travels on the island, one finds only death and decay. Numerous mini-adventures all wrap up into one cohesive picture of a petty lord gone mad and terrorizing the people who live under his rule. The insane asylum is well-realized as is an extensive dwarven stronghold, both of which have now fallen into decay. And the town of Misfield with its mechanical people that literally burst apart when spoken to is dreary and depressing.
The three companions are a further strength, as each has a well-developed backstory and motivation for traveling with you. In short, you are all trapped on the island under the thrall of its dark lord, and you all have the same ticket out: namely the defeat of the lord. There has been some criticism that the companions fall a bit mute later in the game. While this is true to an extent (but by no means completely), I don't think it's particularly a failing. My opinion is that, as the climax approaches, I'm not exactly keen on philosophical discussions with my allies. Once the stage is set, I'd rather just allow the act to proceed UNLESS some kind of twist in the plot necessitates a new set-up. This isn't the case with Misery Stone.
At this point, Jonny Ree has done so much fantastic modeling work that it would be easy to just gloss over this aspect in a review, but we really shouldn't. Jonny has established himself as the preeminent 3D modeler in the NWN2 community for good reason. The new beholder, drider, and werewolf models are all as good as or better than the game's official models. I even enjoyed the retexturing of the normal horse model to make the zombie horses in Brom's barn. Really, the new creatures stood out in just about every respect.
And the new creatures are only a small part of the custom content for the module. There are new heads for the companion and main villain, several new placeables, some new effects, and a couple new feats (I think) for one of the companions. A custom cave tileset is also used, though I'm not sure if Bouncy Rock created that one, and I believe there's some retexturing of some of the existing tilesets. If this last point is not true, then the area designers did an even better job in making the game feel fresh and new than I already gave them credit for.
The game featured several new music tracks, most of which were between decent and good. Sadly, the only one I can remember is a rock theme used sparingly for battles. Most battles utilize more traditional battle music, so when the rock theme comes, it's jarring and out of place. There is a valid stylistic reason to use rock themes for battles (though it's not one I would ever make), but I think the game really should either use all rock for combat or none. As it stands now, it's just odd.
The loot, especially the Dark Warrior items acquired from the six crypts in the cemetery, was a bit overpowered and made several of the final fights, including the game's boss fight, too easy. Other than those six items and a suit of +5 plate acquired off the corpse of a death knight, however, I thought the loot was appropriate for the level.
My only other nitpick is ironic considering my last point. I chose a starting character of Fighter 6/ Weapon Master 3 with my weapon of choice being a battleaxe. The opening scene allowed me to purchase a +1 battleaxe. Then I played the whole module looking at a variety of +2 and even some +3 loot of nearly every conceivable weapon come up (quarterstaff, sling, HALBERDS). But no battleaxe, so because that was my Weapon Master's weapon of choice, I ended up completing the game with my same old trusty Battleaxe +1. But they really need to give the battleaxe some love.
BUT these are all nitpicks. Overall, Misery Stone was a triumph on every level.
You Should Vote, But I Won't
So why don't I go vote on Misery Stone? A short story will suffice.
I remember when the NWN2 campaign came out, I criticized the companions (outside Khelgar, Neeshka, and Sand) for being boring and one-dimensional. Even these three, I said, had stereotypical elements that didn't really make them stand out. I was then informed by one of the community fanboys that, "the next companion I write that's as good as Khelgar will be my first." Now, there are numerous comebacks I could (and did) make to such a vapid point, but the core idea was clear. Somehow, as a module author, I am unable to critique other work because any such critique implies to some that I'm saying I could do better. Interestingly, the original snooty fan didn't apply the same standard to himself. Did criticizing my companions imply that he could do better? Of course not.
But just because it doesn't make logical sense doesn't mean people still don't think that way, so I'll just recuse myself from the voting. BUT, I encourage everyone else who plays to let your voice be heard. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, but in this case I can live with that.
The signature aspect of Misery Stone is, of course, that it takes place in Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread, and this leads to an unremittingly dark feel that is well-realized at every moment. The maps are mostly well-done with an eye for detail I lack (but can appreciate), and the color desaturation feature is used to great effect. Sometimes, it seems that the only non-gray that can be seen is the red of the copious amounts of blood that flow through the storyline. This world of gray and red might sound dull and it wouldn't work in most other adventures, but the Ravenloft setting means it's perfect.The storyline and writing are also strong points. Everywhere one travels on the island, one finds only death and decay. Numerous mini-adventures all wrap up into one cohesive picture of a petty lord gone mad and terrorizing the people who live under his rule. The insane asylum is well-realized as is an extensive dwarven stronghold, both of which have now fallen into decay. And the town of Misfield with its mechanical people that literally burst apart when spoken to is dreary and depressing.
The three companions are a further strength, as each has a well-developed backstory and motivation for traveling with you. In short, you are all trapped on the island under the thrall of its dark lord, and you all have the same ticket out: namely the defeat of the lord. There has been some criticism that the companions fall a bit mute later in the game. While this is true to an extent (but by no means completely), I don't think it's particularly a failing. My opinion is that, as the climax approaches, I'm not exactly keen on philosophical discussions with my allies. Once the stage is set, I'd rather just allow the act to proceed UNLESS some kind of twist in the plot necessitates a new set-up. This isn't the case with Misery Stone.
At this point, Jonny Ree has done so much fantastic modeling work that it would be easy to just gloss over this aspect in a review, but we really shouldn't. Jonny has established himself as the preeminent 3D modeler in the NWN2 community for good reason. The new beholder, drider, and werewolf models are all as good as or better than the game's official models. I even enjoyed the retexturing of the normal horse model to make the zombie horses in Brom's barn. Really, the new creatures stood out in just about every respect.
And the new creatures are only a small part of the custom content for the module. There are new heads for the companion and main villain, several new placeables, some new effects, and a couple new feats (I think) for one of the companions. A custom cave tileset is also used, though I'm not sure if Bouncy Rock created that one, and I believe there's some retexturing of some of the existing tilesets. If this last point is not true, then the area designers did an even better job in making the game feel fresh and new than I already gave them credit for.
The game featured several new music tracks, most of which were between decent and good. Sadly, the only one I can remember is a rock theme used sparingly for battles. Most battles utilize more traditional battle music, so when the rock theme comes, it's jarring and out of place. There is a valid stylistic reason to use rock themes for battles (though it's not one I would ever make), but I think the game really should either use all rock for combat or none. As it stands now, it's just odd.
The loot, especially the Dark Warrior items acquired from the six crypts in the cemetery, was a bit overpowered and made several of the final fights, including the game's boss fight, too easy. Other than those six items and a suit of +5 plate acquired off the corpse of a death knight, however, I thought the loot was appropriate for the level.
My only other nitpick is ironic considering my last point. I chose a starting character of Fighter 6/ Weapon Master 3 with my weapon of choice being a battleaxe. The opening scene allowed me to purchase a +1 battleaxe. Then I played the whole module looking at a variety of +2 and even some +3 loot of nearly every conceivable weapon come up (quarterstaff, sling, HALBERDS). But no battleaxe, so because that was my Weapon Master's weapon of choice, I ended up completing the game with my same old trusty Battleaxe +1. But they really need to give the battleaxe some love.
BUT these are all nitpicks. Overall, Misery Stone was a triumph on every level.
You Should Vote, But I Won't
So why don't I go vote on Misery Stone? A short story will suffice.
I remember when the NWN2 campaign came out, I criticized the companions (outside Khelgar, Neeshka, and Sand) for being boring and one-dimensional. Even these three, I said, had stereotypical elements that didn't really make them stand out. I was then informed by one of the community fanboys that, "the next companion I write that's as good as Khelgar will be my first." Now, there are numerous comebacks I could (and did) make to such a vapid point, but the core idea was clear. Somehow, as a module author, I am unable to critique other work because any such critique implies to some that I'm saying I could do better. Interestingly, the original snooty fan didn't apply the same standard to himself. Did criticizing my companions imply that he could do better? Of course not.
But just because it doesn't make logical sense doesn't mean people still don't think that way, so I'll just recuse myself from the voting. BUT, I encourage everyone else who plays to let your voice be heard. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, but in this case I can live with that.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Limbo
I finished up my last play-through and have already addressed the 120 or so notes it generated. That's a significant improvement over the ~180 from my last play-through, especially seeing as how the vast majority of the notes this time were text formatting, a couple typos, and rewording in various dialogs. I also managed to wipe out a couple nagging bugs that had defied all previous efforts to fix them, including the odd area bug I discussed last time. Thanks, Starwars, by the way, as your suggestion seems to have done the trick.
So now I'm waiting on a few things. First, I have feedback from another beta-tester that's incoming. Then there's the music. After I get all the pieces, I'll need to edit the music 2da, add the pieces to the different areas and dialogs, and finally integrate the movies. Then I'll want to test it all again.
I'll probably run through the entire thing again before the music comes anyway, but it's getting tougher and tougher to be motivated to play the same 18-hour campaign for what would be my 10th time or so, not to mention all the partial run-throughs I've done.
My thought is that I'll take a break, maybe try the recently-released Misery Stone to get my mind on something different, and then come back to TMGS.
That's the big picture. However, a somewhat serious issue arose during my last play-through regarding domain spells. Apparently, the engine has a difficult time determining if the player has any memorized. This introduces potential bugs that can't be fixed by anyone but Obsidian - and they're not exactly frothing at the mouths to work on NWN2 anymore. You see, I have numerous points where the game is supposed to determine if a player has a spell memorized, allow certain actions if so, and then decrement the number of times the spell is memorized. It works perfectly for normal cleric spells and even for wizards, druids, and other spell-casting classes, but it goes all to hell if that spell happens to be a domain spell.
After banging my head against the wall for days on end, there appears to be nothing I can do about it. The bug is just going to be in the game I guess, and it's going to piss me off to have near-continual "bug" reports that I can do nothing about. I have begun to even think about editing the domain 2da so that no domain spells at all are available. That would end the bugs, but it would overpower those domains that grant extra feats instead of extra spells. I've even thought about wiping out the domains period for the campaign, but that obviously goes against established D&D rules. There's really no good solution here I'm afraid.
So now that you know my dilemma, feel free to vote on the sidebar. I have a feeling I know which way the poll is going to go, but I'll formalize it anyway.
So now I'm waiting on a few things. First, I have feedback from another beta-tester that's incoming. Then there's the music. After I get all the pieces, I'll need to edit the music 2da, add the pieces to the different areas and dialogs, and finally integrate the movies. Then I'll want to test it all again.
I'll probably run through the entire thing again before the music comes anyway, but it's getting tougher and tougher to be motivated to play the same 18-hour campaign for what would be my 10th time or so, not to mention all the partial run-throughs I've done.
My thought is that I'll take a break, maybe try the recently-released Misery Stone to get my mind on something different, and then come back to TMGS.
That's the big picture. However, a somewhat serious issue arose during my last play-through regarding domain spells. Apparently, the engine has a difficult time determining if the player has any memorized. This introduces potential bugs that can't be fixed by anyone but Obsidian - and they're not exactly frothing at the mouths to work on NWN2 anymore. You see, I have numerous points where the game is supposed to determine if a player has a spell memorized, allow certain actions if so, and then decrement the number of times the spell is memorized. It works perfectly for normal cleric spells and even for wizards, druids, and other spell-casting classes, but it goes all to hell if that spell happens to be a domain spell.
After banging my head against the wall for days on end, there appears to be nothing I can do about it. The bug is just going to be in the game I guess, and it's going to piss me off to have near-continual "bug" reports that I can do nothing about. I have begun to even think about editing the domain 2da so that no domain spells at all are available. That would end the bugs, but it would overpower those domains that grant extra feats instead of extra spells. I've even thought about wiping out the domains period for the campaign, but that obviously goes against established D&D rules. There's really no good solution here I'm afraid.
So now that you know my dilemma, feel free to vote on the sidebar. I have a feeling I know which way the poll is going to go, but I'll formalize it anyway.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Big Surprise That Wasn't
Well, I'm flying through my latest testing of TMGS, and I’m reasonably pleased with the number of notes I'm taking of things to correct. There's virtually nothing left that would constitute a real bug, and I'm still well below 100 comments while being a ways into Act III. Nearly every note I've taken can be handled quickly.
My two beta testers, however, both came up with a rather nasty bug. Specifically, two small interior maps in Act III cause the game to crash in some instances. After examining the error logs, it appears that the problem isn't with the module or even with NWN2, but rather with the NWN2 call to the MicrosoftVisual Studio 2005 runtime DLL, probably during a screen draw. I'll need to hunt down exactly what the issue is, as the fact that both of my beta testers ran into the same problem is probably a sign that I'm in for a lot of grief when it's released to the general public. Funny enough, neither I nor Alazander had this issue, so it’s not universal, but there’s definitely some hardware or software configuration that doesn’t like those two maps.
Note that if anyone out there is a wiz at external API invocations and thinks they can help me track down the exact issue, I'd appreciate it. I've got both error logs.
Once I track that down, I should have a very polished version. However, I'll have plenty of time to continue testing because in what was the worst-kept big surprise of all time, I recently agreed to collaborate with StrangeCat Productions on custom music for TMGS. The process was initiated early last week, but I'm already excited about the results. I've posted a small snippet of Verona's theme (the love interest for male PCs) below.
Also, I managed to find enough pictures of a similar style on the net to make start and ending movies viable. I’ll be sure to post the start movie as soon as the music for it is ready.
So these two developments mean that the final production will have the far more professional feel I was originally hoping for. Things are looking up!
My two beta testers, however, both came up with a rather nasty bug. Specifically, two small interior maps in Act III cause the game to crash in some instances. After examining the error logs, it appears that the problem isn't with the module or even with NWN2, but rather with the NWN2 call to the MicrosoftVisual Studio 2005 runtime DLL, probably during a screen draw. I'll need to hunt down exactly what the issue is, as the fact that both of my beta testers ran into the same problem is probably a sign that I'm in for a lot of grief when it's released to the general public. Funny enough, neither I nor Alazander had this issue, so it’s not universal, but there’s definitely some hardware or software configuration that doesn’t like those two maps.
Note that if anyone out there is a wiz at external API invocations and thinks they can help me track down the exact issue, I'd appreciate it. I've got both error logs.
Once I track that down, I should have a very polished version. However, I'll have plenty of time to continue testing because in what was the worst-kept big surprise of all time, I recently agreed to collaborate with StrangeCat Productions on custom music for TMGS. The process was initiated early last week, but I'm already excited about the results. I've posted a small snippet of Verona's theme (the love interest for male PCs) below.
Also, I managed to find enough pictures of a similar style on the net to make start and ending movies viable. I’ll be sure to post the start movie as soon as the music for it is ready.
So these two developments mean that the final production will have the far more professional feel I was originally hoping for. Things are looking up!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Alaska is Cold in January!
The title may seem obvious, but first-hand experience is an eye-opener regardless. I have just returned from my (hopefully) last business trip to Alaska for a while, but this one just had to come in January. I will say that -35 degrees F (-37 degrees C) with no wind feels a LOT warmer than even -5 degrees F (-20 degrees C) with a 5 mph wind!
Then there was this poor bastard. It wasn't the worst I saw, but it was the worst I saw when I had a camera handy. I can't believe people actually agree to live like this full time, but I guess the world needs all kinds. On Saturday, I woke up to -25 degrees F in Fairbanks, AK, and ended up in 75 degrees F in Melbourne, FL. That means I actually made up 100 degrees in a day. Crazy.Maimed God's Saga
One of the benefits of my week in Alaska was that I returned with renewed fire to wrap up TMGS. I just received the detailed feedback from my first beta tester, and there are several small issues to handle. However, his wrap-up comment was as follows:
Can I also note I think is is a much stronger piece of work than the SG series despite the character restriction. By the end I was thoroughly enjoying playing the priest character!
I'm currently waiting for the feedback from my second tester, but he seems to be near the end.
In other TMGS news, I have an exciting announcement coming up, but I want to get a little further in before I reveal exactly what. If it all works out, it's going to be cool.
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