Are We Where Yet?

[Domi]

Good ...insert time of day... everyone! Coding went well in the past week... FOR ONCE! Numerous thanks goes to the most kind Shaughn, who posted a beautiful walk-through on setting up the companion influences for a module. It works.

 

The first mini-area is all done, the first quest-setting cutscene works fine as well, barring small adjustments. Alas, I will need someone to re-voice 42 lines. Upon hearing them in the game, they are simply unacceptable. I have an actor who promissed to do the retake, but if he can't do it by April, I will have to find someone else.

 

On the good side of the voice-work, random characters dialogues are lovely.

 

On the comic relief side, I tried to voice Mother Keys myself, since I found no takers so far for a vigorous female half-orc... yeah. Half Orc I am not!

[Domi]

Here is a perfect example of how NWN2 Toolset can be extra sensitive. This morning I was polishing up my mod, a bit of script, a bit of dialogue editing, some area editing... so, everything goes well, I save it, bake and go for a test run. Lo and behold! A transition between the spawn area and the Sanctuary area stopped working! After about an hour of reimporting things and testing them with the last saved version of the mod where everything worked, deleteing and completely redoing all the doors and transitions, I finally found what went wrong.

 

In my bid to make the lighting in the area more interesting I placed two lit braziers on either side of the enterance. A major no-no, because there was a carpet some ways off, so that combination made the area unwalkable, hence - my character could not transit there. It's not as trivial as it sounds at 5:30 am after you got up at 3:00 to polish up the stuff.

 

Lol.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Domi

[Domi]

OMG! I got a companion to join my party! I hope I didn't do it via some pathetic hack. I guess, I will find out when the time comes to figure out how to kick them out and rejoin.

[Domi]

I coded 2 of the initial questioning and join-in sequences, for Alianna and Elhan. Well, I need to add Journal entries to Elhan's, but all the pesky influences, XP for skills, etc are in already, and I find that they take me a lot of time.

 

Also, in a fit of despair, I voiced Mother Keys myself (until such time as someone better comes along!) and her dialogue is now working, thanks to the kind folks from bioboards who helped me with the script to trigger it into the player's face.

[Domi]

And surely, the join-in did not go smoothly. Apprently it duplicates a companion the way I did it. Gah. Gods, do I suck as a coder.

Edited April 5, 2008 by Domi

[Domi]

Well, with the help of the kindly folk at Bioboards, I got over this hurdle, and am happily coding away Nyalee's join-in dialogue. I hoped to finish it this morning actually, but slept in Gotta get an alarm clock.

[Domi]

Yay, finished coding Saemon's join-in dialogue (apart from the Journal entries).

 

I've also got an audition I dig for Nyalee, so if the actress confirms the commitment, the 4 main characters will be all set for... and the actors are about to be hit with the first 70-80 lines

 

Anyways, for once, everything seems to be going well. I am not sure yet what I will be switching to next after polishing up the first area; it's either setting up all the encounters in the outdoor area (Imoen, Jaheira etc) or coding the rest of the companion dialogues.

[Domi]

Heya, folks. Well, here is what’s happening in my littl’ story creation escapade:

 

I did a lot of maintenance, updating to V12 of the Toolset, doing some redecorating on the temple area, tidying up he scripts and dialogues, adopted EE’s milling crowd script, etc.)

 

I also coded in and tested out all the join in sequences, and all the random banter between the characters. It seems to be working, though I did not have a chance to set up one more trigger to be absolutely sure. Heh, it is kind of funny for me to talk of all the random NPC-NPC banter and refer to the total of 8 banters; I am too used to do them by the dozen!

 

I also have finalized my conversational skill checks and rewards system. I added one more category to the Diplomacy, Intimidation and Bluff, the Perception – a check of the Wisdom or Spot or Listen which will net you those descriptions of behavior and attitudes I do not want to put in the regular dialogue, and might be helpful with hinting at specific stuff (though I try to keep them subtle.) I also finally leveled up and exported a level 10 character, lol, so I adjusted all the checks to the realistic numbers.

 

So, the scheme now works like this: I do highlight the skill you will be using in the option; I also edit almost all of the ‘failing’ options to sound differently from the successful ones to give a player a hint that he is not sounding all that intimidating or manipulative or diplomatic! I also use two different tags for Bluff: Lie and Manipulate, and, accordingly Truth and Sincere for the similar sounding options that are not devious. I do NOT flag success of failure in the NPC’s reply, but instead I send a message to the player and give a goodly amount of XP for every successful check. I think this compromise will work for me.

 

And, finally, a cool, cool thing: Xaltar came by and started making the custom heads for all the familiar BG2 characters! You can see Jaheira’s and Imoen’s one here:

 

http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=13914

 

I will be gone for a couple of days, but I hope to get back to it over the weekend. Though I dread it too. I will have to move to the next area!

[Domi]

Got my husband to alpha test the area for me, and yeah, I will have to do a store, as opposite to a 'free for all' stuff in the containers in the treasury. With the item flood in NWN2 it just doesn't work. I guess, it means that I will have to voice more Mother Key's lines. Oh, horror!

Edited April 21, 2008 by Domi

[Domi]

Argh. Full withdrawl mode. Had no chance to work on it *at all* and won't till next Tuesday. Darn, I am going to forget everything.

[Domi]

Well, I finally got my machine back, but while I was doing a fair bit of modding, I didn't manage to get to the DS seriously, overwhelmed by Kivan's stuff and FP, and playing MotB (yep, sometimes I just play too! )

 

However, I got me Saemon Havarian voice Heads up for everyone - it's not coming until I sort out a couple of issues in the first area (mainly setting up the store instead of free for all loot in the treasury), but next I will be working with Imoen, so if you want to voice her, please, give me a shout!

[Domi]

Mostly I was working on making item aquisition more interesting (and some minor fixes). I added pickpocetable magic items on select characters in the temple area. Made the 'free' stuff in the treasury mostly non-enchanted, with a few magic items thrown in. And attempted to add the store to Mother Keys.

 

Attempted because so far it doesn't work. The dialogue additions are fine, but by whatever reason the ga_open_store in combination with a blueprint store I've created won't load when the conversation option comes up. I am not sure what's up with that. But that's not new, lol.

 

The auditions for Saemon Havarian also got done. Thanks to everyone who participated! I have gotten a few lines for Nyalee, so if I am becoming cautiously optimistic that I will be able to intergrate a custom soundset soon. Other voicing is not that hot - I can't get in touch with the Toral re-voicer, and I am afraid I will have to recast the role again.

 

Lol, I am starting to think that I will never move into the area 2.

Edited May 7, 2008 by Domi

[Domi]

Heh, the store now opens, but everything costs 1 gp. OMG, I created a WalMart!

 

But, the upside of the store torture is that I corrected pretty much every other glitch and added a couple of short 'pointer' dialogues with the companions advising the PC to rest or pickpocket someone.

[berelinde]

Heh, the store now opens, but everything costs 1 gp. OMG, I created a WalMart!

Priceless!

[Domi]

Apparently, in NWN2 0 Mark-up doesn't mean that there is no Mark-Up, but that the merchant doesn't charge anything for the items. It's a default value, and one has to set it to 100 to get the 'default' price. Huh. Live and learn!