318 réponses à ce sujet

[kamal_]

Alupinu wrote...

IC, interesting. I have tried, tried and tried again and finally had to come to the conclusion that two walk-mesh helpers just don’t combine.
A walk-mesh ramp? You talking about the stairs?
Yes being that the maps are technically 2d you would have to make two maps.

My next question is when the player is on the roof can he see creatures walking around on street level?

There is a walkmesh ramp placeable in the walkmesh helper pack. It didn't get included in the official game, only the flat helper did.

How I planned on doing it was that important npc's would have a duplicate on each map. Much of the two areas walkmesh would be the same, it would only be the overlap areas that differed. I don't have any important npc's that walk under my overlaps. The random commoners would have their walk waypoints adjusted so they don't cross the overlap. So basically faking it and asking the player to accept it as a solution for the lack of 3d.

[kamal_]

I've got the guards properly recognizing store hours now. So if the door is open during the store's open hours, the guard doesn't react. But at closing time, the store's door is closed for the night and locked. If a guard finds a shop door open during a store's closing hours, the guarded door behavior listed previously occurs, the guard looks for the thief...

So a question. Should the hours be put in as the "name" of the door, on an examinable sign, or nothing and the player knows the shop is closed just by the door being locked?

[kevL]

talk to the guard, perhps

[kamal_]

kevL wrote...

talk to the guard, perhps

I plan on having a "Guide to Crimmor" pdf, sort of an out of game but mostly in character game manual. Perhaps include that information in there? The common store hours and the hours for some major places like big temples and such that the pc would know as a native of the city. That's where I'm going to be putting things like my Crimman cant dictionary.

Modifié par kamal_, 31 juillet 2012 - 01:16 .

[kevL]

Guides are good. Also, a lot of information could go in an IG book, or descriptions on the doors, even a town crier ... "The Poobah declares" ... during the day, guard at night eg.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

The lazy way to do would be just to set some variable on a door whose lock's been picked, and have the guard check the variable instead of looking up the store hours. You could even do a skill check roll to see if the variable gets set - inept rogues are more likely to leave traces of their tampering than expert lockpickers.

[Tchos]

I like having that sort of information in the description of the shop's sign, and have the signs set to examine by default when clicked. I'm doing that with my signs to describe the shops.

[PJ156]

Tchos wrote...

I like having that sort of information in the description of the shop's sign, and have the signs set to examine by default when clicked. I'm doing that with my signs to describe the shops.

Nice idea for when you have shops signs, could also have several market signs. You could also put the information on the map pin though this would be more limited.

PJ

[kamal_]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

The lazy way to do would be just to set some variable on a door whose lock's been picked, and have the guard check the variable instead of looking up the store hours. You could even do a skill check roll to see if the variable gets set - inept rogues are more likely to leave traces of their tampering than expert lockpickers

Noticeable failure or success is actually built into the PRR system. I'll have to make sure my code accounts for that so I don't reinvent the wheel.

[kamal_]

Since the module starts at level 8, it doesn't seem too likely a thief at that level would have much change of ****** the lock bad enough a passing guard would notice. Now a rogue multiclass might be levels 4/4 or 3/5, but you'd have to fail pretty bad to catch the attention of a guard that's simply patrolling and not actively looking for busted locks. Crimmor's a large, modern (for Faerun) city, so the locks are presumably built into the door modern style as opposed to padlocks.

Still, if there's interest in seeing that, I could add it and put it out there as a system like I did the commoner ai.

There is already a penalty for failure. It's possible to jam the lock.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

@kamalpoe: I was thinking too of how you might expand the mechanic to other situations, where the time of day wouldn't be a dead give away, like a street merchant's lockbox or random houses without posted visited hours.

Time of day at lockpicking could certainly factor into the DC, though. It's harder to open a door at night without looking creepy, but a high-bluff rogue could break and enter in broad daylight, just as long as he looks like a regular bloke fiddling with his keys.

[kamal_]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

@kamalpoe: I was thinking too of how you might expand the mechanic to other situations, where the time of day wouldn't be a dead give away, like a street merchant's lockbox or random houses without posted visited hours.

Time of day at lockpicking could certainly factor into the DC, though. It's harder to open a door at night without looking creepy, but a high-bluff rogue could break and enter in broad daylight, just as long as he looks like a regular bloke fiddling with his keys.

In the PRR system, there's a seperate "noticed" check when you unlock and pickpocket. I forget whether it's based on sleight of hand, bluff, or a combination. Just Sleight of Hand I think. You can succeed, but still be noticed, and vice versa, fail but not be noticed.

[kamal_]

For the city streets, should it be harder or easier to pick during the nighttime?

[Arkalezth]

kamal_ wrote...

For the city streets, should it be harder or easier to pick during the nighttime?

Depends on how you have the victims notice it, but I see it more dependant of other factors, rather than of daytime.

Anyway, I'd say harder to spot, easier to listen (if any noise is made). The rest would be pretty much the same, I guess... Also, in daytime it could be easier to pick in populated areas, if you mix with a group of people.

I don't know, it's probably too complicated, not sure if worth much work.

Modifié par Arkalezth, 01 août 2012 - 12:29 .

[kamal_]

Arkalezth wrote...

kamal_ wrote...

For the city streets, should it be harder or easier to pick during the nighttime?

Depends on how you have the victims notice it, but I see it more dependant of other factors, rather than of daytime.

Anyway, I'd say harder to spot, easier to listen (if any noise is made). The rest would be pretty much the same, I guess... Also, in daytime it could be easier to pick in populated areas, if you mix with a group of people.

I don't know, it's probably too complicated, not sure if worth much work.

Well, we'd need to figure out what we'd like to see. Then I can figure out how I would make it happen, and if it would be prohibitive in terms of time to code. I could detect a crowd for instance by counting creature objects in a given radius of the picker, where crowd is a number of .creatures greater than x. That level of detail is probably not necessary though.

I'd have to look at PRR picking to see what the detection check is. If it's Hide, I already adjust the Hide skill at night.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Well, the idea was kinda half-baked, but I was trying to imagine a strategic alternation to the classic rogue-thief, like a bard-rogue-con artist type. A typical thief would sneak into town at night, when most of the inhabitants are at home asleep. Any patrolling guard would be automatically suspicious of anyone or anything out of place, or even any odd noise, so the thief would have to be extremely careful.

The day thief, though, hides in plain sight (in the original sense). He blends into the crowd, his fidgeting at the door blends into the hustle and bustle of the town, and people just assume he bought the pricey merchandise under his arm.

In terms of gameplay, thieving at night means a high risk of a low threat (one guard chasing you), while thieving in the day is low risk of a high threat (every grown man in earshot beating you down).

[kamal_]

August update:

Added maps supporting a common request for something to see in a thief based module. A lot of trial, error, and learning more about the walkmesh. Exactly what's done I'll leave as a surprise for people if they play it, but you'll think it's a couple of neat tricks . Much of the month was spend here.

Reconsidered my main plot. This is the important one for this month, even though it's going to be developed over the next month or two. I haven't been happy with the plot for some time. I can and have played the main plot to one of the endings, I just don't like it. The plot as it existed was an outgrowth of the proof of concept version of Crimmor I had a few people play early last year. The proof of concept just had a generic "find the plot mcguffin" plot since I wasn't concerned with plot so much as showing a module that didn't require combat could be workable. When I decided to go forward with Crimmor, I came up with ideas for what the plot mcguffin actually did and why people would want it and built a plot out of that. The problem was that I wrote myself into a corner as the story ramped towards it's conclusion, and the endgame was out of left field. It didn't "fit". Why were these npcs where they were and doing what they were? It was a big problem, I couldn't figure out a reason, and "they have a reason that's all you need to know" felt hollow.

I've been doing some research on lore via the old sourcebooks, and working on some other ideas I can use, so we'll see where those go. I have four pages of notes right now for my new main plot idea. The new main plot fits the world and characters I've set up much better, I don't have to wonder why they are doing what they are doing. I've worked out an outline of much of the new main plot in two days of brainstorming (yay for bursts of writing creativity!) Even as I make major changes to the main plot, many things that were formerly in the main plot will remain in as an extended sidequest that effectively runs the length of the module, or secondary main plot, depending on how you wish to look at
it. The current sidequests are all in place, even if not all are finished and tested. The new main plot looks to be able to better integrate some of these sidequests into it, making the sidequests more relevant to the main plotline.

I have a three day weekend coming up, if I remain as productive on writing plot I hope to have the whole new main plotline laid out over the weekend in enough detail to start implementing in September.

Modifié par kamal_, 31 août 2012 - 12:30 .

[darkling lithely]

kamal, i doubt you need any advice on plot, but since you're exploring, here's my two cents on it:

Let it be simple.  Put more effort into great static NPCs that drive the story.  For background, let the player know who the enemy is as soon as possible and have increasingly confrontational conflicts with the enemy.  Create suspense with 1. deadlines for quests and 2. the old-fashion way, with a little missing information mixed with incredible foresight.

A Buffy the Vampire marathon always fills me full of ideas too.

[kamal_]

September update:

I spent a few days early in the month, and today, fixing Path of Evil bugs, so I'm not quite as far along in Crimmor as I could be. That's ok though.

The new main path is pretty well plotted out. The old TSR Lands of Intrigue soucebook, which covers Amn, Tethyr, and Erlkazar gave me plenty of background lore to set up a new main plot that grows out of recent Amnian history as put down in the book, with the characters and their motivations. It's a much better fit of a plot than the old main plot I think. It's not a "traditional" DnD adventure, there are no orcish hordes, drow, or dragons. It's just not the type of adventure most campaigns run.

Laying out the new main plot went fairly rapidly once I got the base idea. I've been filling in the details, I built a new area for the new plot, started expanding three previously finished existing areas for their new relevance to the plot, and took a last area from barebones to mostly done and changed it a bit for the new plot. The new plot didn't require a whole lot of new areas, I already had the city almost completely built so it was just figuring out where I wanted things to be. There are roughly 120 areas in the campaign, ranging from individual shops to city districts, about 110 of those areas are in the city itself. Probably 3/4ths of the areas are original, for the rest I found prefabs that fit, changing them somewhat where needed.

There was a tricky bit I wanted to show in a cutscene, so I built a script system to handle it. That took about a week. Like my commoner ai and other things, I will released it. It works in my test area, but the actual game is much more demanding of the script. I'm going to have to put a copy of the game area into a test module and work out the problems. Another bit of trick scripting to handle the use of a custom magic item in the plot went fairly quick.

My conversations for the new plot are still a lot of placeholders with single conversation options. I haven't worked out all the dialog and things a player might think of saying.

Modifié par kamal_, 30 septembre 2012 - 10:25 .

[kamal_]

Update:
First, thanks to Tchos, the custom sound now works.

As
of today, the new main plot is tested through to completion in the test area. That makes a nice milestone towards completion. There's still a bunch of lines of conversation in the new plot that say "placeholder...", but the conditionals and scripts are in and apparently working.

Remaining:
Take care of some placeholder sidequests. They work, but aren't fully developed, or the areas for them are placeholders.
Put in sound in areas that don't currently have it. I'll have to do a bit of editing of a few sounds, but the big part is done.
Get consistency of activities through the campaign. For instance the use of my generic foraging/scavenging system is currently concentrated in a few areas. There are many other areas where I could realistically add potentially scavengable items.
Eliminate placeholder conversations, and get a consistent 'voice' for the Thieves Cant spoken in the campaign. There's a lot of Cant spoken in Crimmor, but since I'm learning it and writing over a period of time, I need to go over things and edit where needed so it has a consistent 'voice'.
Miscellaneous scripting of npc activities to bring the city to life. My commoner ai goes a long way, but some npc's need specific scripting.
More pre-beta testing, testing, testing.

Modifié par kamal_, 14 octobre 2012 - 11:44 .

[likeorasgod]

I took a break from playin NW2 to play some other newer games and some old ones I haven't played in ages. So hopefully by time I'm tired of them and ready to go back to NW2 I'll be standing ready with my Rouge to play this. Keep it up.

[nicethugbert]

About guards and doors, how would a guard know if a door has been opened? Wouldn't a typical thief just close the door after him? The only way the guard would know is if the door is locked by something like a chain and pad lock, something that the thief can't close behind himself.

[kamal_]

nicethugbert wrote...

About guards and doors, how would a guard know if a door has been opened? Wouldn't a typical thief just close the door after him? The only way the guard would know is if the door is locked by something like a chain and pad lock, something that the thief can't close behind himself.

[kamal_]

October update: (few days late)

Completed:
First and biggest, thanks to Tchos, the custom sound now works. It will need tweaking of sound levels and possibly some tweaking of the sounds themselves. But it's in and working. All areas now have sound as well.

The new main plot is tested through to completion in the test area.

Most conversation placeholders are filled in. There are exceptions where I want to get the "feel" of what things will be like in the flow of a real game versus the speedy testing generic area of the testing module.

Better consistency of activities. Jumping converted to my jumping script instead of jumping via conversation, and jumping is included in all areas where it would be appropriate. Likewise, general foraging (hmmm, my skill in appraise tells me that sculpture looks valueable) is in where appropriate.

The bad news:
Several areas became corrupt somehow, and the corruption affected the offsite backup. These are external city areas. I have old backups, but they don't reflect recent changes I made. One area will have to be significantly rebuilt. This will be time-consuming because of the need to get the walkmesh correct. I don't want to go into too much detail because it would be a spoiler of something the pc will be able to do, but building the area for it and getting the right walkmesh took several weeks. Redoing it won't be faster, and it's a main plot required area.

Remaining:
Fix the busted areas.
Take care of some placeholder sidequests. They work, but aren't fully developed.
Eliminate remaining placeholder conversations, and get a consistent 'voice' for the Thieves Cant.
Miscellaneous scripting of npc activities to bring the city to life. My commoner ai goes a long way, but some npc's need specific scripting.
More pre-beta testing, testing, testing.

Modifié par kamal_, 03 novembre 2012 - 12:45 .

[PJ156]

I don't post much here Kamal_. This is just to say good luck with moving this along this is a fantastic sounding project which seem like it is going to hit completion.

Also sorry about the corrucpted areas, would they not open in the toolset. I have had that once or twice and it is a pain. No major rebuilds yet touch wood.

PJ