I Hate Cutscenes!

I hate cutscenes worse than any other part of mod making, but I sucked it up and finished the major one I spoke of last time. It's still not quite what I envisioned, but it certainly works, and I think it remains pretty compelling. That finished my work on all notes I had from my last playthrough of Act II.

I then turned to Act I again. I rewrote a couple dialogs, cleaned up some scripting, and added another encounter. Then I started another play-through from the start of Act I intending to go through the end of Act II and even into Act III. As it turns out, I need to look into some issues regarding changing between modules within a campaign. It should be easy to figure out.

During the play-through, however, I managed to find about twenty issues, mostly misspellings or bad punctuation, and I wiped all but one out already. I still have a little polishing of Act III that I know needs to be completed, but the bottom line is I'm getting into campaign-level testing at last. The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely approaching!

So I have another screenshot from a recent playthrough. Nothing exciting, but it's part of the dialog the PC has with Tancred as the two investigate an especially grisly scene. Enjoy!

Taking Stock of the Situation

It's been about a while since my last update on TMGS. Unfortunately, my progress has been somewhat slow, but as it has been a month, there's still quite a bit to talk about.

Up front, there've been a couple tough decisions. The first is that I'm about 99% sure that my hope for original music is gone. I'm not going to go really in-depth on my rationale, but I will say that given the current economic outlook as well as my own shifting priorities, I just can't justify spending the kind of money on the software that it will take to get it done. I'm going to try to find some suitable music in the public domain instead. Frankly, I took a long time to come to this decision, and I'm not thrilled about it. Most of the major themes for TMGS are running around in my head even as I write this, so it's not a matter of not being able to come up with them. Disappointing, but life goes on. Maybe one day...

Second, I've not looked incredibly hard, but I have looked a bit and I followed up what leads were suggested to me in various forums. However, I've not found a 2D artist that's willing to contribute around 15 drawings for free, so the intro and final movies are in jeopardy. I've been looking through online images to see if I can get enough to cobble together a movie that looks to have a unified drawing style. I'm close, but there are a few gaps. Amazingly, the gaps are actually what I would think are the easier drawings. For example, I'd like to find a silhouette of a man and woman walking into the sunset holding hands. There are several that I've found online, but all of them have people wearing what is obviously modern clothing, and that won't work. It makes it kind of hard to have a movie that depicts the PC and companion "living happily ever after," and without that slide, the ending movie would be really lame. So, if anyone reading this is willing to try their hand at about 4-5 pictures (and can draw), I'd appreciate it if you piped up.

So what have I done? I finished the play-through I talked about last time and took down 163 notes, 162 of which I have now corrected. The last one is a big one that will take some time. Just yesterday I finished the 162nd note, which concerned a nagging doubt I had in regards to the final dungeon of Act II: namely that it was too short. Initially, it was just a series of three rooms, each of which had an important encounter, but that seemed a little too rushed. After playing it a couple times, I finally gave in and redesigned the whole dungeon, including adding a couple more encounters, a new puzzle (of sorts), and some hopefully interesting things to investigate. To give you an idea, I've included the overhead map of the renovated dungeon. In the top left, if you look hard, you'll see three rooms surrounded by a red box. Those were the original dungeon, and all the rest, including area design, dialogs, scripting, etc. has been the task of the last week or so. I am much happier now with the final product.

The final note from my last play-through is in regards to a crucial point where the PC finally uncovers the identity of the opposing deity. It's done via a complicated dialog that's supposed to be full of pyrotechnics and very dramatic... only I have to admit that it falls completely flat. The idea in my head absolutely does not translate at all into the NWN2 medium, so I'm going to have to do a lot of rework. It might even require a whole new rewrite of the scene. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's necessary.

Other than that, I'd say Act II is now in a pretty high state of polish and fairly bug-free. Of course, I'll probably never be happy with the polish, even after release, but it has to be done some time...

MoW Activation Limit Removed

The title says it all. As recently announced on both the Ossian website and the BioBoards, the much-maligned activation limit on MoW has been officially removed. Contrary to what many believe, it seems Atari does actually listen sometimes.

Thinking of Another Snappy Title...

TMGS General
Since my last post, I've done a ton of work. As a quick run-down:

• I've spot-tested all of the sidequest locations in the outlying areas and now have them as polished as the core town.
• I've implemented and tested the last remaining sidequest. By way of explanation, there's been an idea I've had since the beginning for a puzzle-based sidequest in the mansion library that I've been struggling to figure out how to implement satisfactorily. I kept putting it off hoping that inspiration would just come to me, and it finally did. So the bottom line is it's finished and in the game.
• I finalized the algorithm to determine the romance state with the companion. More on that later.
• I implemented two ambient encounters in Navatranaasu I've had on my wish list for a while. Both are designed to further characterize the town. One will allow the PC to utilize another skill they may have, and the second will really bring home the fact that the PC is the only priest in the town. (Incidentally, there's no temple to go to for healing. You're the healer here!)
• Finally, I'm about three hours into my next play-through with everything looking pretty good for now. I've switched to a male PC to verify that everything works as well with Verona as it did with Tancred. I've got a few extra polishing notes thus far, but nothing that could be classified as a true bug.

My plan is to finish this play-through, handle whatever notes come from it, implement the last two things on my "wish list," and then play through Act II one more time before moving on to Act I again. I'll need to make some minor corrections there to account for post-1.21 patch changes, and I'll want to verify that Act I transitions smoothly to Act II. Once that's finished, I'll need to finish up Act III, which is already in an advanced stage of completion. After that, it's just campaign-level testing and then release! The light at the end of the tunnel's getting bigger!

Romances
So what's this about romances? I've added tons of influence shifts. There are something like 90 throughout Acts I and II, some of which award or subtract more than one point. The full range of potential influence states is around +85 to -55. These shifts are not for things like what I've derisively refered to as "say you like my hair six times and I'm yours." Instead, they're for things you say or do which reflect similarities to the companion's background, thoughts, feelings, and values, and no, you won't know these up front. For example, there is a point where the companion will ask where you are from, and you get +1 influence if you're from the same area of the world and +2 if you're from the same city. Fair? No, but the truth is people are more likely to trust others if they share the same background. You also gain influence by asking for their opinions and advice. You can gain or lose influence by how you treat others in front of them, but don't assume that treating someone candy-sweet is the way to gain influence. You'll just have to read how they react to others and gauge accordingly.

In addition, there are what I call "flirt points" littered throughout the adventure. These are chances to fan the flame and show interest. Sometimes, they will initiate these encounters and sometimes you can.

Finally, there are shared experiences. In one sense, of course, the entire adventure is a shared experience, so this should mostly be covered automatically. However, there are a few things that aren't necessary to do but can be done ayway to build up the pool of "shared experience" points.

So after everything is said and done, the game will look at how much influence you have modified by the flirting and shared experience, and this will determine whether the romance will begin. Of course, it can also be shut down by the PC expressing a clear desire not to partake.

The Role of Religion in TMGS
Obviously, TMGS deals heavily with Faerunian religion. Of course, the PC is a Tyrran cleric, but the enemies are also followers of one of the evil deities, and there is a dastardly divine plan in the works centered on Navatranaasu.

One of the design choices I've made in Act II is to force the PC to pray every day at a chapel in order to have their spells and abilities restored. In Act I, the PC is assumed to pray when they rest, and Tyr obviously recognizes that the PC can not perform the normal rituals while on the road. But once an altar is available, the full treatment is required. Therefore, you can sleep in the bed in your suite to regain HPs, but you must then pray in the chapel to receive your spells. Oh, and while you can pray whenever you want, your spells only replenish once per day!

I realize that this might seem onerous at first, but as I've played, I've verified that it isn't. The design choice actually has several reasons and benefits.

• First, I've always wanted this to be a uniquely cleric-based adventure, and one of the things most often glossed-over when playing clerics in D&D CRPGs is that their powers do come directly from their deity. So this is partly to enhance role-playing.
• Second, it forces a strategic way of thinking for the player. Whatever choices you make in terms of your spells, you're stuck with for a day. Add to this that I've made a conscious effort to utilize many of the less common spells in unique situations throughout the adventure, and this creates an important element to the game. If you concentrate on only buffing spells for battles, you will miss large parts of the game and even slow your progress drastically.
• Third, it adds another strategic element by forcing the player to use their spells judiciously. There are no huge dungeons in TMGS, but there are several smaller sidequest areas that contain 2-4 encounters. These have all been designed for one cleric and one ranger to be able to handle with one "batch" of daily powers.
• Finally and most importantly, it is a game mechanism through which the PC can have visions from Tyr that allow me to drive the plot forward at certain points.

Screen Shot
With the above discussion in mind, I give you the next screen shot. Here the PC approaches the altar in the VanGhaunt mansion chapel for his morning devotional. This chapel is conveniently located next to your suite. The altar is also the scene of your first sidequest upon reaching Navatranaasu, but I won't spoil that for now!

Big News

I literally just now finished handling the last of the 170 bugs/improvements I noted during my last play-through. (Yes, the list grew slightly from the 166 I mentioned last time.) This included a fair amount of targeted testing, so I'm now fairly confident of the core village of Navatranaasu as far as polish and bugs go.

That said, the side quest areas are improving but significantly behind the core, so I'm going to be working on them one at a time. I have confirmed that the proper areas all become available on the overland map at the right time, so it's just a matter of polishing what happens when the pc gets there.

I also still have one more core sidequest to implement that I've been busy reworking and am now much happier with, and I think I'm going to make a small change to the flow of the second act, but once all that's done, Act II is going to enter beta.

First Time Through Act II

Quick update... I was off work today and so working on TMGS. I can report that I have just completed my first playthrough from start to finish of Act II. I had played parts before, but never the whole thing through. I found a couple show-stoppers, but slogged through by using the console. I made 166 notes of things to fix and tweak, and that will consume the next few days. There's still a lot of polishing, but it was a major milestone.

More to come.

Another TMGS Update

My last playthrough of Act II netted 81 comments, bugs, and general improvements and ended in a critical path game-ending bug. After a few days, I was finally able to work through them all. Some were maddeningly difficult to get rid of, but they're finally gone.

In addition, I began to add a few more ambient characters to give the town a little more life. Again, no one in Navatranaasu is just a plain old commoner, but even with twenty-two fully-defined characters, things felt a bit sparse, especially because many of these have a daily schedule that removes them from the village for periods of time. My plan is to add six more and see how that goes. A couple of these have even turned into a brief sidequest, which will be completed today.

Last Sunday, I began my latest playthrough, and I've already found 21 more things I want to polish (no bugs, just polish). The work is never done...

So screenshot time. This is a bit atmospheric and pretty dark. By way of explanation, I've even given most of the inside maps a daily light cycle to imitate the sun entering through windows during the day and having much less light at night. I was really aiming for a way to make the large VanGhaunt mansion feel much more creepy at night, and I think I hit the mark.

So that's why the attached screenshot is so dark. Here, Sheridan, my PC, and Tancred have found the mansion's groundskeeper, Grayson, cooking his dinner after a long day in the gardens. He is giving details of an odd event that occured recently in the village. More later.