Are We Where Yet?

[Domi]

Well, thanks to the kind help from the folks on the BioBoards, I finally sorted out the last of the issues in my 'starting zone' and moved on to the huge outdoor area that contains 3 talkie encounters and a couple of a large-scale battles... well, in plans!

 

I started coding Imoen's dialogue, and completely forgot about the introductory dialogue that is *supposed* to introduce the area. Hmm, I guess I will finish Imoen's first. Again, for all the concerned folk - Imoen does NOT have to be killed, but there are consequences to either choice. There are a few different motivations offered as well.

 

On the sound front, I've got a bunch of sound for Saemon and Nyalee, so I am starting to insert it in the game, and it works very well.

 

What I am falling ridiculously behind on is the coding of the companion's dialogue trees. So far, I only have the join-in sections done, and barely scratched the surface on Alianna's info gathering snippets that allow you to mine the info you might have missed when going through her intro. I will need to catch up on Saemon and Nyalee's first, because I have the voice actors actively working on these two atm.

 

Anyways, it's going relatively smoothly, but too slowly, as ever.

[Domi]

Well, my progress reports are as dynamic as a snail's treck accross a rotting branch

 

So, at that break-neck pace of mine, I did a lot of finalizing in the first area - mainly experimenting with custom animations to make conversations a bit more presentable. My biggest concern is Nyalee, whose speech patterns just don't flow well with the normal talk animation.. I need something more jittery and bobbing. I timed some nods to her 'yes', 'yes', and I added 'fidgetnervious' or something like that in a loop mode; I know that the nods show up, but I am yet to see the fidget thinggie. It will be a pain to custom animate her every line, but that's life.

 

I put huge amount of time into editing the voice-work. As a result, I have:

2 custom soundsets rcorded and functioning (without subtitles though, sorry, I don't think I have enough patience to paste 200 entries into a custom dialogue talk and then reference each of them just now.... yeah, I know, polish, polish, but I want to see my mod happening too.)

The same 2 characters now have the completely voiced intro sequences and interjections in the first area. All told that was about 150 strings edited, lip-coordinated, and assigned.

 

I also rough-coded the area introduction dialogue and Imoen's encounter - obviously, once the voicework is in, I'll need to go back and finetune, ajust cameras to be more precise and all that. I am now learning how to make my first spawn and intergrate it with a cutscene - hoping madly that an on-enter script in the spawn will make the cutscene trigger AFTER the creatures are spawned. I mean... it's logical, no?

[Domi]

Hello, folks. The pulse is still beating.

 

RL interfered (I didn't have the access to my machine from Thirsday to Monday), and I took a few hours off modding to finally finish the MotB - yay, I feel accomplished!

 

I managed to:

 

--> rough-coded "Luashalee, the Drow" encounter (took me a while before I got it semi-right; I am still unhappy with parts of it, but I leave it to the fine-tuning stage),

--> corrected ga_move_exit to ga_force_exit so all my character actually go to a way point before dissappearing

--> thanks to someone very kind who tweaked a script for me (it would have taken me the decades), the Influence now only changes when the character is actually in the party to hear the conversation

--> created about 10 or so blueprints for the Harpers to attack my PC, and started to place them - and think on how I want to pace that battle, who will be preplaced, who will be spawned, and stuff like that....

 

I am waiting on the voices for Luashalee and Imoen to polish their cutscenes - I find that it is way easier to get it right when I have the characters talking.

 

As always, it's slow, so damn slow! And the next encounter to code a dialogue for is Jaheira, and she has the most difficult dialogue of all of them (all other dialogues are about 20-30 states as pre-written, hers is over 40). I will be very glad if I can report back in two weeks saying that her encounter is done!

 

As for writing, I did background writing on my next module; some flirts for Safiya and a wee bit on a character I am writing for someone else's mod.

[Domi]

Just got Imoen's voicework. I really like it. Heh, the more cool voice acting work I get, the more I am embarrassed about my own lines (particulary Alianna's placeholders I record here and there to see the dialogue flow, until I get the proper voicing for her) Well, on to implementing it!

[Domi]

Heh, I've just had my first 'run in' with balance. I painstackingly created a bunch of blueprints, set up an ambush, andget my husband to test. After simmering for 40 minutes as he was shopping and rearranging his inventory (Honey, I know I said there will be fighting, but I am incapable fo creating a tough encounter), I told him 'just charge in!' when one of the companions gave a hint to rest and he wanted to load the companions with spells and rest. Well, his party was dead in two rounds.... LOL! The absolutely last thing I expected.

 

Never a dull moment, huh?

[BigRob]

Ha! Well, this is why we test things.

[Domi]

I know (grits her teeth). Testing in NWN2 is the major pain, unfortunately, because the changes in a module do not apply unless you start the darn thing from the beginning (no good old IE 'just enter the area for the first time'). So, as I progress further in, I am becoming more and more hateful of my first areas and dialogues.

 

Anyways, in the past two weeks I got the 3 encounters in the outdoor area tested and tweaked to the point of "leave it like that till the polishing stage". Imoen's and Luashalee's voices are now intergrated as well as more lines for Saemon. There is one spider that doesn't leave after the cutscene, so I will need to take care of that, and add a couple of Journal entries.

 

I chickened out of coding Jaehira's encounter, and instead roughed in the romantic scenes. I am almost happy with the pace etc of the first one, Saemon's, so now I just need to run through it one more time, making sure that the last changes made it flow better, and code Alianna's and Elhan's following the same template.

[Domi]

Well, nothing much really happened in the past 2 weeks, because of the exam and that house selling bussiness, but I'll check in anyways.

 

Basically, the last thing I have done before diving into studying the law and ethics in Engineering, is coded part of Elhan's romantic interlude cutscene; while I was studying, I've also recieved more files for Saemon and Nyalee, so that is next to intergrate (and finish Elhan's and Alianna's scenes).

 

Also, I found out that the Quest XP tag in the journal is only for a reference, so I have to go through my files, find all the journal entries and add XP. (Shakes her head.) So much to do, so little time!

 

I am trying very hard to not get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that needs to be done on this project, Kivan and the flirtpack, but it is one of those difficult points in time when it is almost impossible to do.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Domi

[Domi]

The voicefiles are in now, and I finished roughing in Elhan's cutscene. Alianna is next, and then I am up for a serie of test runs....

[purpleblob]

good to hear you are making some progress. I was really upset when I found out you've given up on MotB for now... (poor Bishop!) but I'm really looking forward to this mod! please do not abandon this project!!!

[Domi]

No, no. I am very determined to finish it. It is about 75% done in my view from the complete workload, so it makes absolutely no sense not to finish it. It's just kind of tough to find time with all that Real Life TM, so I am picking and chosing what to work on.

[Domi]

I got all Alianna's lines to date from Ace, so that makes three out of four companions almost completely voiced to that point in the game. So, I am busy editing and intergrating the voice now; it should take me a few days.

 

I like the colder, with an edge of arrogance voice Ace did for her. I am getting really curious to hear it in the game and see how it will go with the character.

 

Hmm, I think it will be time soon to poke my Elhan actor to have all the companions brought up to date in terms of voice.

[theacefes]

Oh good! I'm glad you liked it!

[Domi]

It's amazing how much time one can spend working on NWN2 stuff without opening the Toolset. I have edited the soundfiles for Alianna now, and they work in game. Yay! Still need to do lip-sincronization. Heh. It's Neeshka's day next, so the joys of FXE editing will have to wait for a day or so.

[Domi]

I've just gotten a wonderful present - Adam Miller (Dark Waters etc) sent me and is uploading on the Vault his lip-synching utility! That's going to save me *insane* amount of time that I used to spend on editing each RogueDao FXE manually!

Edited August 14, 2008 by Domi