85 réponses à ce sujet

[kamalpoe]

dunniteowl wrote...

When it comes to fantasy design, you have to get weird. And I mean, over the edge, stepped off the precipice weird. Hey look! I can fly!
And one of the best places for this is fantasy literature and old movies.

You mean weird like this? 

One great place to look for inspiration is conceptart.org (you might recognize that piece of art...). Concept art is really good in general.

/I had a long post with plenty of examples of concept art you could turn into NWN2 areas with little modification, but a firefox crash ate it.


Anyway, with magic commonplace, there is no reason not to go crazy. Just look at the alchemical placeables, they just are asking for a bright green light. Purple torches, sure why not? The x2 plant placeables look like they give off light. Many of the vfx just ask for a light to go with them, the "song portal" is primarily pinkish, so place some pink lighting in it to represent light coming through the portal.

Let's take a quick look at a temple to Shar. A quick look shows Shar's primary color to be purple. So let's make purple lighting.

Red Sun module? Crank the lighting in the daynightset for very high contrast from the harsh sun. I also altered some of the properties for the sun to make it look so large, that's not a custom sun.

Blizzard anyone? Those blade golems are standing right next to each other. A white fog with a short range (-5 meters to 30 meters is what I used there) makes for a whiteout when combined with altering the snow vfx for more speed to make it driving snow.

[The Fred]

Fog is good.

kamalpoe wrote...
Cherry trees are in MotB. The flowering one is under spring.

Damn I thought so. I'd better go buy MotB then.
I'm making an oriental campaign so cherry blossoms are like the single most important feature. What's the point in having ninjas, samurai, reworked monks and unique foes and items if you don't have cherry blossoms?

[M. Rieder]

Transitional scenery helps intensify the sense of immersion in the game world. A good example is Last of the Danaan. There, in the unwalkable border of each area, you can see the terrain and placeables of the adjascent area. This creates a seamless and cohesive gaming world.



To achieve this effect I use the TerraCoppa plug in, which is amazing. In just a few minutes, I can put in seamless transitions in my areas.





For outdoor areas here is my process:



1) rough sketch on graph paper

a) terrain height

major terrain features

c) major placeables



2) Use the flatten tool to rough out my height map, water areas, and major terrain features

3) Use the smoothing tool to soften terrain transitions

4) Use the raise/lower tool to create smaller terrain features: ridges, gullies, washes, draws etc...

5) Add my basic textures

6) Add secondary textures and grass to avoid the repetitive texture patterns in open areas

7) Blend textures with 50%,then 30%, brushes at all texture borders (unless there is a need for abrupt texture change, like a cliff face jutting out of the ground, which can look awesome).

8) Add color to darken appropriate areas such as fores floors, riverbeds, lake beds, paths (to give the muddy churned dirt look), and anything else that needs more depth of color.

9) Add major placeables

10) Darken the ground around major placeables and add more grass around them. I usually use a shade of brown at about 30 -50% pressure and weeds which are taller than the other grass in the area.

11) Add secondary placeables. To do this, I think about what I see in day to day life. I like to add the clutter that accompanies life. Debris in forests, tools in towns, barrels (preferably with little goodies in them for pilfering!). Things like that.

12) Add water.

13) Add sound, placeable effects, walkmesh cutters.

14) Add encounters, triggers, loot, and all the other things that give life to an area.

15) Swear like a sailor when the toolset crashes and I realize that I have autosave turned off and I haven't saved the area since step 3.

16) Weep bitterly.



And that's how I make my areas! You can check out The Wizard's Apprentice to see how this process works.

[M. Rieder]

One other thing. When I make mountains, I put trees on the slopes. The higher up the slope, the smaller I scale the trees. This helps give the impression of a mountain range which is taller than it actually is.



A similar technique can give the impression of looking across a wide valley. Create a winding path that gets narrower and eventually becomes only a line, with lots of litle placeables at the bottom of the valley.



Beware: you have to contend with the edge of the are and make mountains on the other side of the valley or it looks really artificial. Also, make sure you don't put too many tiny trees down there or it bogs down the system big time. I put a whole forest once and it was really messy.

[kamalpoe]

M. Rieder wrote...
And that's how I make my areas! You can check out The Wizard's Apprentice to see how this process works.

That's fairly close to my workflow except I tend to do water before the texturing, but I have a 4a. I use the color tool to paint the area border and where I anticipate major things will go. 7a would be painting the area with white to remove these "sketches". 1 is normally done in my head because I tend to make changes on the fly.

[PJ156]

Pretty much the same structure as me as well, except all my work is in the toolset so 1a is using the colour tool to lay out the area.

Once it comes to detailing I work in blocks from one part of the map across until it is done. That way I miss less. I also have a lot of testing phases in between. I find if I do too much I leave too many bugs, floating placeables etc behind.

I like the mountain ideas. I don't have terracoppa so I tend to scratch build the outer two squares. These have to be done though or the area looks wrong. I will try the shriking trees idea soon, I have the perfect spot.

PJ

Modifié par PJ156, 14 août 2010 - 06:39 .

[The Fred]

I tend to make it up as I go along. I've not made many outdoor areas in NWN2, though, because I find them quite time-consuming.

[Lance Botelle]

rjshae wrote...

Something I thought about implementing here is to include a lot of functionality associated with a door that doesn't require the party to enter the house. For example, a script checks whether the door is locked and if anybody is inside. If they are, the mouse click-to-open is treated as a door knock and the owner materializes outside for a chat. If the door is locked, open a 'conversation' that does a house thieving query. This will run some tests against the best thief in the party and provide some stolen loot and/or cause the neighbors to call the guards. (Maybe provide various levels of thievery, such as cat burglary to pinch a few valuables, or pillaging to ransack the place.) The level of risk would then be set based on the nature of the establishment.

That would at least make the house seem inhabited. That was something I didn't care for in the NWN2 OC; most of the doors were inert and the cities and towns didn't seem very "occupied". They just seemed like cardboard cutouts.

Hi rjshae,

I have done exactly this in my module I am writing, Better The Demon. It is almost exactly as you describe apart from the owner coming out for a chat. In my own scripts the PC may or may not hear somebody inside (Listen check) and decide whether to enter to basic loot (non traceable loot) or valuable loot (traceable loot). Subject to the result, the PC may gain some wealth or have the guards called ... or simply slip away. All checks are made with the best skilled PC in the party. And by the way, my PCs do "knock" as default behaviour to "test" the situation prior to listen checks. I found a blog with some info on it: Professions: Earning A Living.

I think it works well .... And it does satisfy both the need for houses to look right without having to detail every one.

I call it part of my Real Life system. My module is written in a way that I hope better reflects a more "realistic" response with objects and people. Hopefully, without compromising the fun.

Lance.

Modifié par Lance Botelle, 16 août 2010 - 12:33 .

[M. Rieder]

I like secret caves, secret areas, hard to find little trinkes (like the ring of wizardy in baldur's gate), basically any little clever nook that is hard to find. I like when there is a reward for really exploring instead of just rolling through leaving a bloody haze in your wake (although that can be fun too...).

[The Fred]

Those are good, but it annoys me a bit when every field seems to contain a secret cave or ring-of-mushrooms portal into the faerie realm or something. Also in Baldur's Gate, you had suits of armour and powerful magic items just left on the ground or in little hollows in trees.They were meant to be like easter eggs I think, but once you know where they all are, it's a bit ridiculous.

[M. Rieder]

Chaos Wielder wrote...

In NWN2, due to how much exterior areas 'take up' in terms of load times for your mods, I think exteriors can sometimes come off as too filled. So, in a certain sense, I echo the above concerns. However, I think that so long as things make sense--no +5 Godslaying weapons in the Shire--then it can be appropriate and, importantly, make the player attach emotions to individual areas. Once the ethos moves beyond tinting the ground, then real interest can begin.

Also, I have tons of secret doors in my mod. They usually have little hints--like, maybe this section of the cave is lit differently--so the player can fine them. If you're within 1 foot of the secret itself, irrespective of skill checks, you can find it. A little "gamey", perhaps, but I'd rather have people see things than not.

Yeah, it's a tough balance between making a secret rewarding when it is discovered and making it so hard that everyone is like "you mean there was a secret door that opened if you did a dance directly northeast of the ancient dwarven statue when you had barkskin cast on you at 715 pm?"

[rjshae]

The Fred wrote...

I tend to make it up as I go along. I've not made many outdoor areas in NWN2, though, because I find them quite time-consuming.

Yes they can be time consuming. I suppose one could always grab some area prefabs off the NWN2 vault.

[PJ156]

rjshae wrote...

The Fred wrote...

I tend to make it up as I go along. I've not made many outdoor areas in NWN2, though, because I find them quite time-consuming.

Yes they can be time consuming. I suppose one could always grab some area prefabs off the NWN2 vault.

I'm just starting a 16 x 20, one of two that I still have to do and I hate this first part. All you can see ahead of you is hours of texturing and blueprint placement. Once I am into it it's generally okay but the first half hour or so is bloody hard work.

I like to leave titbits in big areas to make exploring worthwhile but it does not have to be a trinket/new area. A triggered convo that develops an npc is also good, or an encounter works as well. I like to think that an area can be explored, a whole lot of time has gone into it's creation so it is better to get the most out of it.

As for secret doors, I don't know how to do them adequately yet . Another project for me as I will need one for an upcoming area.

PJ

Modifié par PJ156, 20 août 2010 - 07:09 .

[The Fred]

I tried to make actual secret doors, using the secret door door models (i.e. they're doors, not placeables as they were in NWN1) but with varying success. It might be worth making placeables out of the door models and laying them over actual doors. Then you could destroy the placeable to reveal the door.



I didn't really like the kludgy secret doors in NWN1 (you couldn't bash them down, for example) but they were a lot better than nothing.

[kamalpoe]

Fog and vfx can produce much more dramatic effects than the official campaigns are willing to do. In the following examples I used a short range fog with plenty of the Thaymount dust vfx to make a raging sandstorm (sunrise and sunset are the example times) and an even shorter fog with a custom snow vfx to make a raging blizzard. The sandstorm uses a fog range around -5 to 60. The sandstorm uses a fog range of -5 to 30. These areas are both prefabs I altered to get these effects.

Sandstorm in the desert video
A blizzard in the toolset video


Examples of using color. The Temple of Old Night is a temple to Shar, whose color is purple. Therefor virtually everything has been lit with purple. In the Calimport Muzad many odd plants grow and glow, and the glowing light from gigantic ruined statues suffuses the fog and lightens the underground a bit.
Use of color Temple of Old Night
Use of color Calimport Muzad

[M. Rieder]

ElfinMad wrote...

...My aim with encounters is to generally go light on the filler combat and focus more on unique battles as I prefer a challenge. However, saying that, frequent easy battles can be good if there are rest restrictions as this means those easy battles progressively get more difficult and a large easy battle with many enemies can be fun just to see how many kobolds you can fry with a fireball...

I would like to second what ElfinMad pointed out here. 

I recently finished a rather long and epic Campaign which had an interesting story and many redeeming qualities, however I almost quit in frustration several times because of a couple of endless giant dungeons with dozens of identical battles.

I like hack and slash as much as the next guy, and I think that a good module should have its fair share, but it is impotant to keep the battles meaningful and interesting.

A few challenging encounters which require strategy and tactics is much better in an area than dozens of identical opponents.

[M. Rieder]

I also think it is important to give the player an environment which can be used tactically in combat.



A good example comes from Pool of Radiance: Remastered. The final battle is almost certain doom for anyone not in godmode, unless you go to the little peninsula in the middle of the pool of radiance. That places you out of reach of the dragons claws, fangs, and if I recall correctly, breath weapon, and allows you to pelt him with spells, arrows, bolts, orc dung, and just about anything else that is handy.



So here, an impossible battle becoms manageable if the environmet is used appropriately. If a developer can implement this, I think it is very rewarding for the player who discovers it. It adds a lot to the game.

[M. Rieder]

kamalpoe wrote...

Fog and vfx can produce much more dramatic effects than the official campaigns are willing to do. In the following examples I used a short range fog with plenty of the Thaymount dust vfx to make a raging sandstorm (sunrise and sunset are the example times) and an even shorter fog with a custom snow vfx to make a raging blizzard. The sandstorm uses a fog range around -5 to 60. The sandstorm uses a fog range of -5 to 30. These areas are both prefabs I altered to get these effects.

Sandstorm in the desert video
A blizzard in the toolset video

Oh my god, that looks great!  I have never monkeyed with fog settings before.  Just to clarify, the "fog" is how far away things start to fade out of view, and the "fading" is accomplished through the "fog" settings.  Is this correct?

[kamalpoe]

M. Rieder wrote...
Oh my god, that looks great!  I have never monkeyed with fog settings before.  Just to clarify, the "fog" is how far away things start to fade out of view, and the "fading" is accomplished through the "fog" settings.  Is this correct?

The fading is done via having the minimum fog distance (FogStart) in the toolset be shorter than the max (FogEnd). A gradient of fog is done atomatically over those distances from the camera, with FogStart representing zero fog, and FogEnd representing 100% fog that blocks all vision. You can have a negative FogStart, which will cause it never to be perfectly clear. Typical fog distances mean it's not very noticable, and heavy fog forces the player to zoom in if they want to see anything. Fog is normally used to prevent the player from seeing the map edge and helping performance by cutting the number of things that need to be drawn onscreen.

"Fog" of course is any airborne/waterborne particle that blocks the view. So it can be snow, sand, smoke, heavy rain, very humid air, being underwater. The color of the fog can be varied in the toolset of course. And you'd want some kind of placeable vfx visible to tell the player what the relevant fog is (the Thaymount dust and the blizzard vfx in these cases). You could also use fog to help make a "dream" scene by making things never quite clear. Or use identical FogStart and FogEnd to make view blocking "walls" that travel with the player (they don't stop the all seeing minimap of course).

FogEnd of 30 is the practical low limit. Below that it's really hard to see anything at any distance and I can't imagine any remotely natural fog that would be below 30. fog screenshot, the golems in the test picture are directly next to each other. As you can see things fade quickly.

As for the custom blizzard vfx, I wrote a tutorial on the Vault that covers making it step by step among other custom vfx. The limits of custom particle vfx are another topic which I can cover if people are interested. falling cherry blossom "blizzard". You can do bad, bad things to framerates if you don't fake things with fog.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Fog can also be used to exaggerate distance. We get a sense of distance not only from things being smaller, but also from being greyed out by all the haze in the air between the thing and us. Setting the FogStart to about 30 is good place to start, closer makes the air seem dirty, and further looks like a vacuum. I even use fog in interiors, to give the spaces a bit of depth and to thicken the atmosphere a bit.

[The Fred]

I haven't done much messing about with NWN2 VFXes (I had just learnt to hand-edit NWN1 visuals in Notepad when I moved over...) - though I have made my own cherry blossoms, of course. There are some pretty cool options available, though I do occassionally run into limits in terms of things I would like to be able to do with them (like wind - can we make particles affected by wind, for example?) but don't seem to be able.



Of course, VFXes are kind of a topic in their own right, but some nice placement of them can be really effective in areas.

[Shallina]

Making a good interior Area takes as much time as making a Good exterior Area. Except maybe for a city area.