I'm beginning work on a compaign. This is my first time using the Toolset. I'm looking for tips and suggestions that will help me reduce errors; I want to avoid those moments where I look back at an area I created early on, and think to myself, "Well, I've done enough of these now that if I had to re-do that one again, I'd do it much differently".
I'm a software developer. I know what it feels like when you've worked with a tech stack long enough to become proficient with it, and you don't make the mistakes you did when you were first learning it. If I had to mentor someone new to my tech stack (and I've had to do this before), there's a lot of hints/tips/advice I would give to someone so that they could avoid pitfalls and re-writes later on.
I'm just looking for anything like that. I'm in the process of learning the Toolset, inporting blueprints, trying things out.. It's good fun. But I want to be productive right away and start actually building real areas for my modules.
Thanks!
Area Building Tips & Suggestions for easing the Learning Curve?
Débuté par
ColorsFade
, févr. 13 2013 08:48
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#2
Posté 13 février 2013 - 09:07
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there's a very well written toolset guide with all the bells and whistles. guess it's the most complete thing you can find.
#3
Posté 13 février 2013 - 09:58
Dann-J
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The sad fact is that you'll never reach a point where you don't think you can improve things. And no matter how many tutorials you read, nothing beats trial-and-error (mostly error) experience. Like any artist or writer, you'll always look back on your 'old' work and despair.
I don't so much as finish modules, as I get tired of working on them and decide they're good enough to release. Otherwise I'd tinker with minor issues forever and never get around to releasing anything. Chances are that all those 'faults' that still seem glaringly obvious probably won't be noticed by anyone else anyway.
I don't so much as finish modules, as I get tired of working on them and decide they're good enough to release. Otherwise I'd tinker with minor issues forever and never get around to releasing anything. Chances are that all those 'faults' that still seem glaringly obvious probably won't be noticed by anyone else anyway.
#4
Posté 13 février 2013 - 11:55
rjshae
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I'd start small. If you get too ambitious too early, then it's a lot of rework when you change your mind. Maybe build a modest outdoor and indoor area and connect them together, then try it with a character and see if it meets your expectations. Keep experimenting until you're happy with your work. Shrug.
#5
Posté 13 février 2013 - 11:58
kamal_
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A long time ago I wrote up my tips for getting things going quickly.
social.bioware.com/forums/42350/t1481440-gah-samara/forum/1/topic/167/index/8558944
I highly recommend the Toolset Notes already linked to, as well as the Don't Panic guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php and the area building guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php
To me, building areas in the toolset isn't really as much technical (you said you were a software developer) as it is artistic and creative. It's more like painting. People have different artistic styles, and the things you can place in an area can be changed in size, shape, tint (not always), etc to simulate things that aren't in the toolset. For example, there are threads on alternate uses for things,
social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/165/index/11922430
social.bioware.com/forums/42350/t1481440-gah-samara/forum/1/topic/167/index/8558944
I highly recommend the Toolset Notes already linked to, as well as the Don't Panic guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php and the area building guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php
To me, building areas in the toolset isn't really as much technical (you said you were a software developer) as it is artistic and creative. It's more like painting. People have different artistic styles, and the things you can place in an area can be changed in size, shape, tint (not always), etc to simulate things that aren't in the toolset. For example, there are threads on alternate uses for things,
social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/165/index/11922430
#6
Posté 14 février 2013 - 12:20
PJ156
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What Kamal_ and others have said is true to a very great extent.
Area building is an artistic endeavor, you will get the scripts, the baking and the triggers etc right but never be happy with the shading or textures. The toolset tutorials can teach you the way things can be done but can't tell you how to do them or how to create you own area.
Read all the tutorials by all means but better still do something small and make some mistakes. You will find your way. If the artistic elements do not appeal then use prefabs and make them your own with your technical expertise. You are welcome to anything I have done and I am sure others will say the same. then you can forget the art and let your technical knowledge take over.
Keep posting on prgress, it is great to have a new person building. the support you will get here may help you through the dark times
PJ
Area building is an artistic endeavor, you will get the scripts, the baking and the triggers etc right but never be happy with the shading or textures. The toolset tutorials can teach you the way things can be done but can't tell you how to do them or how to create you own area.
Read all the tutorials by all means but better still do something small and make some mistakes. You will find your way. If the artistic elements do not appeal then use prefabs and make them your own with your technical expertise. You are welcome to anything I have done and I am sure others will say the same. then you can forget the art and let your technical knowledge take over.
Keep posting on prgress, it is great to have a new person building. the support you will get here may help you through the dark times
PJ
#7
Posté 14 février 2013 - 12:38
kamal_
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If there's a module you played and you liked an area, you can open it in the toolset, even areas from the official campaigns (except for Mysteries of Westgate areas because of the DRM on that). For various reasons, many persistent worlds don't include the toolset required area file for their areas though, so you generally can't examine those.
By the same token, you can open all the scripts and conversations etc in anything (except MoW) via the toolset.
The Vault also has tons of prefabs http://nwvault.ign.c...refabAreas.List which you can either use as is, or modify to suit your purposes. This will save you tons of time.
By the same token, you can open all the scripts and conversations etc in anything (except MoW) via the toolset.
The Vault also has tons of prefabs http://nwvault.ign.c...refabAreas.List which you can either use as is, or modify to suit your purposes. This will save you tons of time.
#8
Posté 14 février 2013 - 12:48
ColorsFade
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Thanks everyone!
I've been looking at prefabs today; there's some great areas people have created and even if I don't use them directly, they've been very instrumental in lighting my own imagination.
Some of the prefabs are pretty great; I think more than a few are going to make it into my campaign just because of what I want to do. When you see something someone has already built and you say, "That's almost exactly what I was thinking", then I think you're better off just using what they made with a few tweaks as opposed to building it yourself from scratch. Some of the prefabs are going to be giant time-savers, I can tell already.
I am definitely thinking small to start, but the overall campaign is big. It's been on my mind for a while. And fortunately, a game such as AD&D is really geared just for this kind of thing - start small and work your way up.
I've been looking at prefabs today; there's some great areas people have created and even if I don't use them directly, they've been very instrumental in lighting my own imagination.
Some of the prefabs are pretty great; I think more than a few are going to make it into my campaign just because of what I want to do. When you see something someone has already built and you say, "That's almost exactly what I was thinking", then I think you're better off just using what they made with a few tweaks as opposed to building it yourself from scratch. Some of the prefabs are going to be giant time-savers, I can tell already.
I am definitely thinking small to start, but the overall campaign is big. It's been on my mind for a while. And fortunately, a game such as AD&D is really geared just for this kind of thing - start small and work your way up.
#9
Posté 14 février 2013 - 12:50
Tchos
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I detail my own learning process here, describing the problems I came across, and how to solve them, with the assistance and contributions of others. It's not what I'd call concise, but it might save you some time if you run across the same problems and want to accomplish similar things.
http://social.biowar.../index/12436288
http://social.biowar.../index/12436288
#10
Posté 14 février 2013 - 12:55
ColorsFade
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kamal_ wrote...
A long time ago I wrote up my tips for getting things going quickly.
social.bioware.com/forums/42350/t1481440-gah-samara/forum/1/topic/167/index/8558944
I highly recommend the Toolset Notes already linked to, as well as the Don't Panic guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php and the area building guide nwvault.ign.com/View.php
To me, building areas in the toolset isn't really as much technical (you said you were a software developer) as it is artistic and creative. It's more like painting. People have different artistic styles, and the things you can place in an area can be changed in size, shape, tint (not always), etc to simulate things that aren't in the toolset. For example, there are threads on alternate uses for things,
social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/165/index/11922430
Thanks for the links kamal_! I really appreciate them!
I've found the Toolkit Notes a couple days ago so I was already pouring over those; they're written very well and it reads like a very comprehensive technical manual. It's going to be a great resource while I'm buildling.
Your thread is also great. I'm grinning reading it because I had already done so much of what you suggested on my own. I have three fairly large documents already underway that I have spent the past couple days working on: one for quests, one for areas/NPC's, and one for the overall story arc (the quest document is probably my favorite to work on; ideas really get fleshed out there and I have criteria listen for for How the quest is triggered and how it concludes).
It's funny - as a software developer, I *should* have a lot of experience with design documents, but I don't, because I've worked in mostly fast-paced or Agile shops and we have little time for documentation (our code is our documentation, and I love working like this).
That said, I have written my fair share of docs, and this is turning out to be useful. This documentation is actually fun and is really helping drive the ideas and get them fleshed out completely.
I've played with some test areas and I'm excited about what the toolset can do. Being able to grab RWS's bridges, for example, and right after loading I can place them? Wow. Very cool. Fun.
#11
Posté 14 février 2013 - 01:31
MokahTGS
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The advice of start small cannot be stated enough. It actually might be helpful for you to build a few small areas (read between 6x6 to 12x12) and release them as prefabs as a learning exercise. Most of my prefabs on the Vault and Nexus were me teaching myself how to do something.
About prefabs: One of the great things about the NWN2 community is it's willingness to share and you can find scads of prefabs that are just waiting for someone to put an adventure into them. I would say that the wisest thing you could do would be to grab a single prefab, tweak it a bit and put a small adventure into it. A lot of learning can happen even in that small step.
Also, ask questions here on the forums and in the IRC chat whener you need to. Most everyone you see posting is a vet builder or scripter or modeler or writer. No one is going to call you a noob because we were all there once.
About prefabs: One of the great things about the NWN2 community is it's willingness to share and you can find scads of prefabs that are just waiting for someone to put an adventure into them. I would say that the wisest thing you could do would be to grab a single prefab, tweak it a bit and put a small adventure into it. A lot of learning can happen even in that small step.
Also, ask questions here on the forums and in the IRC chat whener you need to. Most everyone you see posting is a vet builder or scripter or modeler or writer. No one is going to call you a noob because we were all there once.
#12
Posté 14 février 2013 - 06:01
Lugaid of the Red Stripes
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As for the dirty business of area building itself:
1. Pick out your textures. Each megatile (black grid lines) can only have 6 distinct textures, which in practice means 3-4 textures used throughout the area and maybe another texture or two for specific points of interest. I generally like to pick out a dirt texture, a grass, and a cliff face before I do anything else. Make sure they look good next to each other, and blend nicely. The toolset's a bit buggy about swapping textures in and out, so figure out your textures in a scratch area before you move on to the real thing.
2. Rough cut the area. Swap out the original grass texture for your preferred base texture, and then use your other primary textures to roughly draw out the big features of the area, like roads, rivers, tree lines, etc. You might want to throw down a couple of creatures or buildings for scale, maybe even do a test run through the area just to get a sense of how big it is and how close things are together.
3. Elevation. Use the flatten tool at 2 or 4 meter intervals to draw the basic contours of the terrain, just like a topographic map. You might actually want to draw out a topographic map with the heights listed for reference. Next, turn on the walkmesh view and use the smooth tool to sculpt the landscape to your liking. Pay particular attention to what's walkable and what's not, and use the smooth tool to smooth out areas that should be walkable, and finesse cliffsides into their proper form. Unless your area is a dry lake bed or something similar, use the raise tool to add a little noisy height to your flat areas, and then use the smooth tool to even things out.
5. Add in your trees, placeables, and water, and make sure to adapt the terrain to fit the new objects.
6. Add texture and grass. Most textures don't actually mix very well, they tend to just cancel eachother out and look like mud. So keep the blending limited to spots you actually want to look like mud, like the edges of dirt roads.
7. Shading. Some textures are good for lightening up other textures, but generally you should use the color tool to add a bit of depth and variation. Basically, concave features, like where a building meets the ground, and low-lying, wet areas should be darker, while exposed, high, dry, convex features should be a bit lighter. You might want to throw in some random stuff, too. The goal here is to break up the repetitive pattern of the underlying texture. If the shading doesn't fix it, just add some placeables, grass, or elevation to break it up.
8. Fix the day-night cycle. The area lighting is actually the most important, most evocative aspect of area design, make sure it fits the mood of the area. Sunrise and sunset also bring out the bump map of the textures more than mid-day sun, so make sure to test those out.
1. Pick out your textures. Each megatile (black grid lines) can only have 6 distinct textures, which in practice means 3-4 textures used throughout the area and maybe another texture or two for specific points of interest. I generally like to pick out a dirt texture, a grass, and a cliff face before I do anything else. Make sure they look good next to each other, and blend nicely. The toolset's a bit buggy about swapping textures in and out, so figure out your textures in a scratch area before you move on to the real thing.
2. Rough cut the area. Swap out the original grass texture for your preferred base texture, and then use your other primary textures to roughly draw out the big features of the area, like roads, rivers, tree lines, etc. You might want to throw down a couple of creatures or buildings for scale, maybe even do a test run through the area just to get a sense of how big it is and how close things are together.
3. Elevation. Use the flatten tool at 2 or 4 meter intervals to draw the basic contours of the terrain, just like a topographic map. You might actually want to draw out a topographic map with the heights listed for reference. Next, turn on the walkmesh view and use the smooth tool to sculpt the landscape to your liking. Pay particular attention to what's walkable and what's not, and use the smooth tool to smooth out areas that should be walkable, and finesse cliffsides into their proper form. Unless your area is a dry lake bed or something similar, use the raise tool to add a little noisy height to your flat areas, and then use the smooth tool to even things out.
5. Add in your trees, placeables, and water, and make sure to adapt the terrain to fit the new objects.
6. Add texture and grass. Most textures don't actually mix very well, they tend to just cancel eachother out and look like mud. So keep the blending limited to spots you actually want to look like mud, like the edges of dirt roads.
7. Shading. Some textures are good for lightening up other textures, but generally you should use the color tool to add a bit of depth and variation. Basically, concave features, like where a building meets the ground, and low-lying, wet areas should be darker, while exposed, high, dry, convex features should be a bit lighter. You might want to throw in some random stuff, too. The goal here is to break up the repetitive pattern of the underlying texture. If the shading doesn't fix it, just add some placeables, grass, or elevation to break it up.
8. Fix the day-night cycle. The area lighting is actually the most important, most evocative aspect of area design, make sure it fits the mood of the area. Sunrise and sunset also bring out the bump map of the textures more than mid-day sun, so make sure to test those out.
#13
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Posté 14 février 2013 - 11:59
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Personally I stick my big placeables like houses,walls etc in an area first and then paint the path textures that link them and sort out the surrounding terrain height etc. But that's just me being confusing so stick with Lugaid's sound advivce.
When you put in trees start with the smaller ones, dot them all over the place then use the area contents tab select the whole lot and lower them into the ground a bit ( careful when selecting too many at once my laptop has had a few heart attacks !), then do the medium ones and finally the big stuff. It helps to do it this way as if a big one overshadows a little one you'll have a hard time selecting it so it can be moved. When you're doing other stuff turn the trees off for the same reason.
When you put in trees start with the smaller ones, dot them all over the place then use the area contents tab select the whole lot and lower them into the ground a bit ( careful when selecting too many at once my laptop has had a few heart attacks !), then do the medium ones and finally the big stuff. It helps to do it this way as if a big one overshadows a little one you'll have a hard time selecting it so it can be moved. When you're doing other stuff turn the trees off for the same reason.
Modifié par Iveforgotmypassword, 14 février 2013 - 12:01 .
#14
Posté 14 février 2013 - 05:01
rjshae
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One other thing: I strongly recommend reading the Toolset forum "Toolset FAQ" topic on "The toolset keeps crashing". It's pretty much a guarantee that your toolset will crash; there's nothing more frustrating than losing all your work that way.
#15
Posté 14 février 2013 - 05:27
ColorsFade
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rjshae wrote...
One other thing: I strongly recommend reading the Toolset forum "Toolset FAQ" topic on "The toolset keeps crashing". It's pretty much a guarantee that your toolset will crash; there's nothing more frustrating than losing all your work that way.
Yeah, I gathered from reading various topics that the toolset crashes a bit.
I'm installing Mercurial for source control (Mercurial + Tortoise is what I'm used to using at work). I figure that will save me some headaches as well.
#16
Posté 14 février 2013 - 05:32
ColorsFade
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Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
Personally I stick my big placeables like houses,walls etc in an area first and then paint the path textures that link them and sort out the surrounding terrain height etc. But that's just me being confusing so stick with Lugaid's sound advivce.
I can tell I'm probably going to end up using and tweaking a lot of outdoor prefabs. So many people have done so much good work - far better than I will be able to do.
We'll see. It's been enlightening so far to attempt to make outdoor areas. The toolkit is awesome; I just wonder if my artistic creativity in this arena is up to par enough to get the job done.
#17
Posté 14 février 2013 - 06:35
PJ156
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ColorsFade wrote...
We'll see. It's been enlightening so far to attempt to make outdoor areas. The toolkit is awesome; I just wonder if my artistic creativity in this arena is up to par enough to get the job done.
No better way to find out than to get stuck in with a small area. In the end it will be yours and the players will have to enjoy it for what it is
I know there is a lot to think about and Lugaid has put some good basics down but do think of colour as you work. Grey especially. If you put a house down on an empty area it looks okay, paint down grey at 10% round the base and you will see that it helps to blend things in. Paint it over large areas and you can knock down overbright textures, olive green under grass creates wet looking areas and so on.
As Kamal_ said, even if you do create these areas yourself it is good to download a mod or two and open the areas to see what has been done.
Good luck,
PJ
#18
Posté 14 février 2013 - 07:49
ColorsFade
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PJ156 wrote...
No better way to find out than to get stuck in with a small area. In the end it will be yours and the players will have to enjoy it for what it is
I know there is a lot to think about and Lugaid has put some good basics down but do think of colour as you work. Grey especially. If you put a house down on an empty area it looks okay, paint down grey at 10% round the base and you will see that it helps to blend things in. Paint it over large areas and you can knock down overbright textures, olive green under grass creates wet looking areas and so on.
As Kamal_ said, even if you do create these areas yourself it is good to download a mod or two and open the areas to see what has been done.
Good luck,
PJ
Thanks PJ.
One of my starting towns is a kind of stockade-village type place. Amraphael put up a good ring-walled fort called Acorncroft on the Vault. It wasn't quite what I was looking for, but it was close enough to get me started. I opened his module up and got a lot of ideas. He also wrote some documentation on how he put it together, so that's been good to read.
I want to make everything myself. We'll see what happens.
#19
Posté 14 février 2013 - 09:34
PJ156
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That's a nice area, I have just had a look at it in the toolset.
You did not vote
Voting is a must in my opinion.
PJ
You did not vote
Voting is a must in my opinion.
PJ
#20
Posté 14 février 2013 - 09:52
ColorsFade
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PJ156 wrote...
You did not vote
Voting is a must in my opinion.
PJ
Quite right. I will create an account
Been playing with my area all day. Surprisingly, I am quite happy. Getting used to the controls is probably one of the hardest things to do so far. CTRL for some, SHIFT for others, mouse wheel for others... But I'm getting used to it.
#21
Posté 14 février 2013 - 09:57
kamal_
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Just wait until you've spent so much time in the toolset that you try to use toolset controls with google maps....
// has done this more than once.
// has done this more than once.
#22
Posté 14 février 2013 - 10:10
ColorsFade
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Well OMG that was fun!
I just baked my first area (20x20) and ran around. Three sets of stairs and a bridge spanning two cliffs, lots of buildings... it all worked. And it was so cool!
I am so glad I ran around it - some of the stuff I scaled too big - I have a bit more room than I thought I did, which is great, because I was regretting not making the area bigger, but now I can see I was just fine. I can actually shift some things around now and resize a few things.
Totally awesome. I still haven't done any texturing yet; just scuplting terrain and placing. But darn.. happy with the results so far. That was cool.
I just baked my first area (20x20) and ran around. Three sets of stairs and a bridge spanning two cliffs, lots of buildings... it all worked. And it was so cool!
I am so glad I ran around it - some of the stuff I scaled too big - I have a bit more room than I thought I did, which is great, because I was regretting not making the area bigger, but now I can see I was just fine. I can actually shift some things around now and resize a few things.
Totally awesome. I still haven't done any texturing yet; just scuplting terrain and placing. But darn.. happy with the results so far. That was cool.
#23
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Posté 14 février 2013 - 11:05
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I still like running around areas that I've made it's one of my favourite parts of module making. The first area I ever built was a village and it took me a month so you're off to a flying start !
#24
Posté 14 février 2013 - 11:11
MokahTGS
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ColorsFade wrote...
Well OMG that was fun!
I just baked my first area (20x20) and ran around. Three sets of stairs and a bridge spanning two cliffs, lots of buildings... it all worked. And it was so cool!
I am so glad I ran around it - some of the stuff I scaled too big - I have a bit more room than I thought I did, which is great, because I was regretting not making the area bigger, but now I can see I was just fine. I can actually shift some things around now and resize a few things.
Totally awesome. I still haven't done any texturing yet; just scuplting terrain and placing. But darn.. happy with the results so far. That was cool.
One tip for placeables and scale is to place down a human creature model from the pallette as a way of jugding if things are the right size...of course you still have to playtest, but I do this all the time and it saves me some headaches in the long run.
Modifié par MokahTGS, 14 février 2013 - 11:12 .
#25
Posté 15 février 2013 - 12:28
ColorsFade
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MokahTGS wrote...
One tip for placeables and scale is to place down a human creature model from the pallette as a way of jugding if things are the right size...of course you still have to playtest, but I do this all the time and it saves me some headaches in the long run.
Thanks! I didn't know you could do that. That will certainly save some trouble
