This will be my first NWN2 module, aside from some tinkering around I've been doing while playing the OC/expansions/various modules. My overall intentions for this module (in campaign format) are to include one main quest in several short "acts", and several side quests that can be done at any time during the module (as many as I have time to add). It will be pretty lighthearted, with bits of drama (or melodrama) and bits of comedy, and things that I hope will be fun to watch or participate in. Areas should have a high density of content. No running around large areas where there's nothing to do or see.
Design choices include no voice acting, and no "cinematic-style" dialogue, because that's how I prefer it. As readers of my blog know, I take umbrage at the trend toward more and more non-interactive cinematic content in what is supposed to be an interactive medium, to make games more like movies. If I use any cutscenes at all, it will only be to direct attention to something important, and only briefly.
My larger dialogue box will be included, and optional. It will be in campaign form, since it will include several features that I've read require that. It will include the SoZ party gen as well as a selection of recruitable companions, SoZ-style party dialogue, and the SoZ death and rest system, as well as a small overland map for one section. It will also feature the quest indicator system I scripted. This goes along with my emphasis on "game" vs "cinematic experience".
If I include any custom loading screens, they'll be in widescreen format, since widescreen is the current standard -- stores don't sell 4:3 displays anymore, as far as I can tell. On modern widescreen monitors, loading screens are ugly and stretched out when they're designed for the 4:3 aspect ratio. I calculate that the correct loading screen dimensions should be 1600 x 600 for a 16:9 display, accounting for the borders, as opposed to the 1200 x 600 for 4:3, if I go with the same vertical dimension, though if I make any at all, I really should make them 1920 x 720 so that they wouldn't need to be blown up at full HD resolutions. Scaling down looks better than scaling up.
I have the main quest and several side quests and NPCs written out in an outline and ready to go now. Since it's the beginning of the month, that makes a convenient way to gauge the time. I'll aim for a release at the beginning of July. I'll make updates on my progress in this thread every day or two.
It should be known that I'm not giving my module the same title as the pen & paper module that serves as its basis ("The Sea Witch"), because I found much in the P&P module to be in need of revision. First of all, the names were bland. Secondly, it was sorely lacking in detail, so I needed to flesh it out anyway. I thought some of the plot needed work, too, mainly in the logistics of the situation. The basics are the same, but there will be some major additions. Don't read the original module if you don't want spoilers regarding the main plot, since that much is the same.
In fact, it was part of the discussion surrounding the creation of the Neverwinter Nexus that partially inspired my choice of module. During the discussion of which tags and categories should be available for modules on the Nexus, "Undersea Adventure" was voted as unnecessary, since there was only one module meeting that criterion across both NWN1 and NWN2. I thought it was a shame that I couldn't find any NWN2 undersea adventures, especially considering Robinson Workshop's excellent Underwater Placeables. When I also found RWS' swimming system, I decided I wanted to create an adventure with an undersea section.
I searched the prefab area on the Vault and Nexus for an appropriate starting town. It needed to have a good dock, since that's the launching point for this module. I also had a specific town size in mind. The original P&P called for a small fishing village, but it also involved some rich merchants in the shipping industry. I liked the merchant angle, so I opted for a larger city, which would also allow me to provide decent suppliers for the player and some quests around town to earn some money.
On the short list of candidates was Grumpy Strumpet Prefabs - City Docks, Outer Harbor Clandestine, Port Town, and Old City. Each had their pros and cons. The best overall was TGS' City Docks. The city was beautifully detailed, and full of nooks and crannies that I could fill with quests. The only reason I didn't use it is that I found it to be a little too heavy duty for my computer to play at a smooth frame rate.
My second choice was Port Town. What I liked about that prefab was mainly the docks themselves, which had numerous long piers with good detail. The town itself, however, was not to my taste, and it was very cluttered. Old City was appealing mainly due to its use of elevation, rather than being a flat city. It would have been a fine choice for a module, but not this one, because the city looked a bit too rich for my purposes. Outer Harbor had some good ideas, and also had some interesting elevation, but the town was a bit too cramped, and built much too close to the water without sufficient safeguards against flooding. In the end, I decided that even though it's likely to be rather recognisable, I'm going with a beautiful prefab by Sébastien, though I need to make a lot of alterations to fit my purposes.
I spent most of the day learning how to use prefabs and how to use TerraCoppa to merge two areas together, since the dock area in this prefab was split up into two areas, right in the middle of the wharf. Most of the time involved troubleshooting, figuring things out, and waiting for the toolset to reload after numerous crashes.
After I got the whole dock area merged smoothly, I fixed up all the seams, found many floating placeables to correct, and extended the ocean to build a lighthouse rock off in the distance. I changed the atmospherics to taste and added some sky rings, and set about naming the map notes and readable signs. I'll be doing some more customising to the place later, changing buildings and such, and deciding which ones I want to use as shops and inns for this module.
For this module I'll need at least 5 locations -- the city, the lighthouse exterior, the lighthouse interior, the underwater area, and some caves. I'll also need a number of interiors in the city, and I'll need to create an overland map. Adam Miller has a classic style lighthouse in Dark Waters, but I couldn't find any permission notice on that work, so I'll just use one of the RWS towers instead. It's important that I get this done quickly, so I can't leave anything waiting on anything.
But before I get into too much fine detail, I'll focus on roughing out the main quest and putting the key NPCs in place. I'm going to try out Kamal's advice on speed building, since it closely matches my own philosophy, and seems like a solid plan.
NPC conversations
One of the things I consider important to liven up a place full of NPCs is to have them talk -- Speaking "barks" when walking around, or when the player tries to talk to them, or having little conversations between each other.
The first instance can be simple ambient chatter that adds to the atmosphere, like "Oh, that bread smells delicious!", or can be used to call a player's attention to something that can be explored.
The second instance I often see used to give a player information, like "I hear strange things are happening in the old Lodge," such as to direct them toward quests. They can also be used to show a progression in the world by acknowledging the player's actions, or other recent events, by updating their lines after things happen.
The conversations between NPCs can serve the same purpose, but in greater detail than a one-liner can, but I think I'll be using them more to just provide extra flavour and humour.
I found an example of how to accomplish NPC conversations in Kaldor Silverwand's Sample Campaign. The campaign doesn't feature documentation, but it's a valuable resource as an example of many useful systems. It took me several hours to figure out which elements were necessary, and how to adapt them for my own NPCs. I had a lot of trouble getting the conversation to fire at all. Eventually I discovered that I needed to have the NPCs set to "can talk to non-player-owned creatures".
The second problem was that when I did get them talking, they spoke the entire conversation at once. I couldn't understand that, since the sample conversation had no delays set anywhere, but it had several seconds between lines, as it should. Eventually, I found the one difference between my conversation and the sample was that mine was set to "NWN-style conversation", and the sample was not. After removing that setting, the conversation proceeded at a normal pace. Good. Now I can make a generic blueprint trigger with an attached script to handle these things more conveniently. I'll probably edit the script to use local variables to select the NPCs I want to speak instead of having it specified in the script itself, so I won't need a new script for each conversation.
I also learned that you can prevent players from aborting a conversation with the escape key or moving around during a conversation (which can mess up some kinds of encounters) by ticking the "multiplayer cutscene" box on the conversation, even though it's not a cutscene. That'll eliminate any disadvantage to using the NWN1-style dialogue box as opposed to the cutscene style I dislike so much.
Modifié par Tchos, 06 juin 2012 - 01:25 .
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I've done a module before in the Dragon Age toolset, which is very similar to this one, so I thought with that experience, giving myself an extra week would be enough to offset the larger amount of content I want to include. I expect it'll be a challenge, but that's why I waited until I had what I expect to be an uninterrupted block of time. Besides, there are other modules I want to make after this one, and I have to finish one before starting on another.
I'll try out the bar trick if the conversation distance setting doesn't do it automatically in the campaign settings.
