560 réponses à ce sujet

[OfficerDonNZ]

When you think about it the OC is riddled with flaws some major some minor. The best one for me is West Harbor being in the Mere of Dead Men. After reading a 2e description of the Mere I seriously doubt an inhabited village being there. Unless it had changed radically in 3.5, which I very much doubt, Obsidian didn't do their homework again

[Dann-J]

[SPOILER] At the end of Storm of Zehir you learn that West Harbor doesn't exist for much longer. The swamp giveth, and the swamp taketh away.

I'm pretty sure the village of Ember was invented for the game as well. I can't find any reference to it other than as part of NWN2. Then again, there are bound to be plenty of minor hamlets scattered about that aren't worthy of being labelled on a map. Or don't last long enough to be noticed - monsters have to eat too, and small poorly-defended villages must be like buffets to them.

Modifié par DannJ, 22 novembre 2013 - 12:47 .

[ColorsFade]

Sometimes you just have to take liberties to tell a good story.

[andysks]

ColorsFade wrote...

Sometimes you just have to take liberties to tell a good story.

That. I think campaign settings are there to give people this... a setting. But mostly ideas, so that they make their own adventures.

[ColorsFade]

Journal Entry

I got Load Screens working.

This one has been sitting on the to-do list for a LONG time... It's just labor-intensive process, to get all the images and resize them and apply effects and filters. I saw what kamal_ did with Crimmor and liked his "oiler" effect. Unfortunately Photoshop Elements doesn't have such an effect. But I found something I liked a lot just as well, a filter and some adjustments.

One module is done anyway. I need to do screenshots for the other four modules. Hopefully have it done tonight and call it good.

[kamal_]

Congrats. Loadscreens are not particularly hard, just takes some time doing repetitive work. I think it adds a lot of polish to the module though, since it's a very obvious customization you made.

[ColorsFade]

kamal_ wrote...

Congrats. Loadscreens are not particularly hard, just takes some time doing repetitive work. I think it adds a lot of polish to the module though, since it's a very obvious customization you made.

Thanks kamal_. Your load screens, and the ones you showed off on your blog, were a real inspiration. 

I just logged into my module and wandered around for a while going between zones to check out the screens. Pretty happy. 

[andysks]

Good work Colors. And the areas look good as well. I think I see some extremely good texture work in Triel.

[ColorsFade]

andysks wrote...

Good work Colors. And the areas look good as well. I think I see some extremely good texture work in Triel.

Thanks Andy. 

Triel was the very first area I ever created. I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I needed a walled-fort like town, according to descriptions I'd read. 

Amraphael made a cool one called Acorncroft and put it on the Vault. I considered using it, but it wasn't *exactly* what I had in mind, and I knew I needed to learn how to make external areas or this whole project idea was for naught. 

Fortunately, Amraphael did something really cool: he provided a step-by-step tutorial for how he created the area, including how he initially textured and colored stuff. I read the tutorial and then went to work and came up with Triel. 

It's grown up a lot over the last few months. I'm pretty happy with it. I don't think it's too shabby for a starter town. 

[ColorsFade]

Journal Update

Prologue... so close to done. 

I have two areas left. Worked on one of them the past three days (along with other stuff). It's created, cut and baked. Pretty happy about this. 

This started as an external area but I couldn't get  Ar Pharazol's ceilings to work right. Tchos later provided me with the proper ceilings (transparant on top for the overhead map to work) but I had already moved on to using RWS's Deep Caverns, which I really like. The external area underground will happen later, so those roofs won't go to waste. I have a lot of underground caverns to make for this mod... 

I was also happy to discover how easy it was to alter item property text via a custom TLK and some simple 2DA editing. Now my sequencer rods properly state how many spells they allow you to store. These things are going to save me so much grief... I already cannot wait to play with them. 

Anyway, some screens, because I feel like it this morning: 









I have to say, I really dig the work RWS did on so many of these tiles in these sets of theirs. It takes the rather boring standard cave tile set and makes it fun. 

Now I'm down to spawnin the encounters in here, doing the cut scenes, and putting the loot in the containers. Once this area is finished I only have one external area left. Then it's play-through time and full prologue test. Anxious for that. 

I did some testing last weekend and got quite far before I encountered something broken enough to prevent me from continuing. I can't wait to play this all the way through without issues. 

[andysks]

The RWS stuff look amazing indeed. I nearly can't use any of the stock ones anymore, for they look quite ugly compared to these ones .
I have to praise your work in this cave, because I had some problems with all these RWS tilesets, and this was the narrow corridors, bridges and chasms. I just couldn't figure out how to connect them to the main way. Or at least it took me really long to. Did you have a similar problem when using this?

[kamal_]

andysks wrote...

The RWS stuff look amazing indeed. I nearly can't use any of the stock ones anymore, for they look quite ugly compared to these ones .
I have to praise your work in this cave, because I had some problems with all these RWS tilesets, and this was the narrow corridors, bridges and chasms. I just couldn't figure out how to connect them to the main way. Or at least it took me really long to. Did you have a similar problem when using this?

There are connector tiles to connect the narrow to regular width tiles for both caves and standard castle. The other way you can do it us fill in the wall space gape with placeables like some of the boulders.

[ColorsFade]

andysks wrote...

The RWS stuff look amazing indeed. I nearly can't use any of the stock ones anymore, for they look quite ugly compared to these ones .
I have to praise your work in this cave, because I had some problems with all these RWS tilesets, and this was the narrow corridors, bridges and chasms. I just couldn't figure out how to connect them to the main way. Or at least it took me really long to. Did you have a similar problem when using this?

It took me a little bit of time to figure out how RWS had designed the tiles. Once I understood how they connected (and the tileset bitmaps help) then it was no trouble at all. The trick, I thought, was discovering that it's a 3-level tile system, and all of the bridges and cavern drop-offs have to be on the top (T) level to work. In fact, the vast majority of the tileset is still on the top level, but you can drop down into lower levels to create taller caverns. But eventually you gotta come back up so you can make use of the standard tile set. 

The RWS tile sets aren't meant to replace the standard tile sets. I still had to use a lot of the standard cave tiles, like corners and doorways, to connect everything together. But the RWS tiles give you all the cool goodies like pits that disappear, narrow walkways around them, bridges, etc... 

[ColorsFade]

kamal_ wrote...

There are connector tiles to connect the narrow to regular width tiles for both caves and standard castle. The other way you can do it us fill in the wall space gape with placeables like some of the boulders.

Indeed. RWS provides a few things like columns, which you can use just to fill space. 

I am using the RWS tiles for wizard-tower-like stronghold. There's a central square part and then four towers on the corners. The RWS tower rooms have spiral staircases that go up and down. Sometimes you only want the up or down part of the spiral staircase, so I use a placeable to cover up the upper part. Here's a screenshot: 



In this case, since this is the ground floor, I only wanted the stairs to go up. So I used a placeable column to block the downstairs. 

I was using the narrow passages in one part of this area and was having to use placeables there as well to block and make the narrow parts match the larger rooms, just because there are not enough connector tiles for all types. But it was getting to be too elaborate so I scaled back. Pretty sure I'll end up using them later because they are neat tiles. 

Modifié par ColorsFade, 25 novembre 2013 - 05:42 .

[andysks]

kamal_ wrote...

There are connector tiles to connect the narrow to regular width tiles for both caves and standard castle. The other way you can do it us fill in the wall space gape with placeables like some of the boulders.

About the connector tiles I am aware. But there were moments that I had a gap on the floor. Like when I needed to connect a bridge tile with a corridor tile. I think the tiles need some more space. Like, always one normal connecting tile in between the weird chasms and bridges. Needs some searching, but it's worth it.

Colors, in these screenshots, there is both RWS and standard caves right?

[ColorsFade]

andysks wrote...

Colors, in these screenshots, there is both RWS and standard caves right?

Yep. There's a lot of the standard cave set in here. Mostly corners and doorways, but they are in there. 

If you think RWS has left something out of the tile set, it's because the default tile set already has the appropriate piece. 

[ColorsFade]

Journal Entry

One area left for the prologue. 

Down to the last two areas, I chose the more complicated one to do first, the hobgoblin cave. It was easier in that it is an interior area, and laying tiles is always easier than crafting an external area, but there was more going on, more cut-scenes, more loot, more monsters, and generally more of everything.

I learned quite a bit while doing it. 





HEEGZ's hobgoblins came in handy and saved me from having to create the creatures myself. I'd been wanting to use these guys for a while and finally had the opportunity. They work well. 

I ran into a few issues. 

1) I am using RWS's Deep Caverns, and on one of the lower level floors (3-deep) I had a doorway. When I put an actual door on it, it wouldn't open during gameplay. I finally had to abandon the door and just leave the doorway open. Not ideal, but it was the only way I could fix the problem. 

2) I tried to write a script that works when a specific hobgoblin dies, that causes several other hobgoblins to spawn around a corner, out of sight, and charge into an open area. I wanted it to be like reinforcements coming to the rescue. The hobgoblins spawn just fine, but they don't move, even when I issue ActionForceMoveToObject command. I don't know if it's because they are hostile creatures or not. I finally had to abandon the idea until I could test it out more completely later on. 

3) I learned a lot about perception ranges and proper dungeon layout due to aggro.

I have several hobgoblin archers and sling users set around the cave. Their job, of course, is to engage in ranged combat. But in order to do that effectively they need a default perception range of at least medium. Problem with this is, in a dungeon setting, it causes aggro issues... Especially with nearby creatures that are not hostile. 

Originally I had the dungeon setup so that there were basically three stages, and as you passed checkpoints (doors, floor triggers) that would turn the *next* group aggro. Problem was, in a packed dungeon like this, the aggro mobs from battle area #1 would go and attack the non-hostile mobs from battle area #2, since they were so close. That was... bad. In one test I came busting around a corner expecting hobgoblins to attack my party, and instead they were cleaning up the non-hostile hobgoblins from the next room. 

So I had to make sure I flipped them all hostile at once (they start out non-hostile because there's a cut-scene when you enter the cave, and I don't want the hit-point bars popping up during the cut-scene). 

That lead me to fiddle with perception ranges. 

Setting their perception ranges to Short made it so they stand around and do nothing until you're right on top of them, which is useless for the ranged weapon fighters. So I had to adjust some of the perception ranges in order to get the behavior I wanted. I didn't want to rework the entire dungeon design, so I ended up making the archers use a Medium range perception while the rest of the hobgoblins have a Short perception range. It seems to work without having the whole dungeon crash down on you when combat starts. I'm still playtesting but so far so good.

What this taught me is that, in the future, I need to be very aware of how I space out rooms and encounters. Hallways are a dungeon's friend. I've been packing things a bit too close together. I had the same problem in the kobold mine, and I made it work by making all the kobold perception ranges short. But still... it tends to get a bit messy in combat as the aggro chain gets going. 

I'm not going to re-work either dungeon. They're still funcitonal and fun encounters and I invested a lot of time in making those areas, but Ill certainly be paying attention to how I design dungeons in the future, and making sure that there are some long hallways between major battlegrounds, and that battleground rooms don't bump up against each other so that creatures on the other side of walls don't aggro. It's all about pacing the encounter properly. 

4) One thing I did get working that I really like is a faster way of populating an area for combat. I spawn everything with onClientEnter scripts, but I had previously been doing it in a way that was a bit more code intensive than it needed to be. 

What I have now is a function called SpawnEnemy(sCreatureTag). You pass it a creature tag and it will look for all the waypoints in the area that are named spawn_creaturetag. If it finds a waypoint, it spawns the creature there. You can also pass an optional boolean to determine whether to spawn the creature in as Hostile (most of my stuff spawns in non-hostile and I flip to hostile after cut-scenes or other triggers). 

So my onClientEnter script looks very clean now. It just has a bunch of lines like: 

SpawnEnemy("hobgoblin_archer");
SpawnEnemy("hobgoblin_spear");
//etc...

This makes it incredibly easy for me because I can lay down a waypoint and copy it all over the place. When I am ready to change creatures and start laying down a different type, I just adjust the tag of a waypoint I just layed down, changing it from hobgoblin_archer to hobgoblin_spear, and start laying down all the spearmen. I had my dungeon populated in seconds... 

At any rate, the last playthrough everything seemed to work well. So there's just the one external area leading up to this cave and then the prologue is done. Which is good, because I'm ready to work on Scornubel. 

Modifié par ColorsFade, 29 novembre 2013 - 08:28 .

[andysks]

Won't an encounter do the job? I did the same thing, and when a creature dies you fire an encounter that is placed on a tile that can't be reached.
The dungeon layout, I had monsters attacking me from every spot in the sewers I made because of that. I tried lots of solution. Changing the tiles, adding doorways... nothing. So I decided to make every fight in there an encounter. If you place the encounters, and then the spawn points wherever you want it will be the same as you have it now, but the next group won't get aggro, since it hasn't spawned/fired. Of course, that means that you won't spawn the hobgoblins OnEnter style .

If I remember correctly, they did this in the barrow on MotB, since there are no doors at all.

[kamal_]

ColorsFade wrote...
1) I am using RWS's Deep Caverns, and on one of the lower level floors (3-deep) I had a doorway. When I put an actual door on it, it wouldn't open during gameplay. I finally had to abandon the door and just leave the doorway open. Not ideal, but it was the only way I could fix the problem.

The deep chasms hak doesn't include a doortypes.2da, but it's possible that door uses a non standard type. My tile project will be including a doortypes.2da eventually, since some tilesets use doors with atypical geometry such as the round doors of Dark Ruins.

[ColorsFade]

The encounter triggers, if I recall correctly, are not quite as fine-grained as I would like for doing this sort of work, in that they don't allow you to specify a specific creature for a specific waypoint. You have to give it a set of creatures and then you have to say something like "spawn the creatures evenly across waypoints" or something like that. I used one of the encounter triggers in one dungeon. It fit for that purpose but it didn't seem very flexible to me.

I'd have to look at them again. I'm spawning five different styles of hobgoblins in one room. I'd probably need five different triggers and five sets of trigger waypoints to get them to spawn exactly how I have it setup now. Which might work, but this seems to be working as well.

Plus, as you said, there's the issue of the hobgoblins needing to be non-hostile and spawned in at the beginning for the intro cut-scene to the area. That's a separate room, but doable.

I'll have to re-examine why I chose not to go the encounter route. Maybe it's the right solution.

[ColorsFade]

kamal_ wrote...

The deep chasms hak doesn't include a doortypes.2da, but it's possible that door uses a non standard type. My tile project will be including a doortypes.2da eventually, since some tilesets use doors with atypical geometry such as the round doors of Dark Ruins.

Good to know. 

It certainly looks like a standard door size, and I can hang a standard interior door on it, but it just won't open. 

What's interesting is, if I flip the camera around in the toolset and try and hang a door from the OTHER doorway direction, it won't hang. The door never "snaps" into place. I figured there was a bug with the tile and that's what precents the door from opening. 

[kamal_]

ColorsFade wrote...

kamal_ wrote...

The deep chasms hak doesn't include a doortypes.2da, but it's possible that door uses a non standard type. My tile project will be including a doortypes.2da eventually, since some tilesets use doors with atypical geometry such as the round doors of Dark Ruins.

Good to know. 

It certainly looks like a standard door size, and I can hang a standard interior door on it, but it just won't open. 

What's interesting is, if I flip the camera around in the toolset and try and hang a door from the OTHER doorway direction, it won't hang. The door never "snaps" into place. I figured there was a bug with the tile and that's what precents the door from opening. 

Tell me which specific tile (and variant if there's more than one of that type) and I can look.

[ColorsFade]

[quote]kamal_ wrote...

[/quote]
Tell me which specific tile (and variant if there's more than one of that type) and I can look.

[/quote]

Okay Kamal, here they are. Deep Chasm tile set.

Each of these tiles only has one variation, so two tiles total. The default tile is a middle tile, the variant is the "deeper" tile. I am using the variant in both cases, so we're at depth level 3 on both of these tiles. 

1_Wall_(1_door) 

I can hang a door on this tile, but it won't open. On the other side of this tile, I have: 

Hall_End_1_Door_Variant

I cannot hang a door on this tile at all. 

[kamal_]

[quote]ColorsFade wrote...

[quote]kamal_ wrote...

[/quote]
Tell me which specific tile (and variant if there's more than one of that type) and I can look.

[/quote]

Okay Kamal, here they are. Deep Chasm tile set.

Each of these tiles only has one variation, so two tiles total. The default tile is a middle tile, the variant is the "deeper" tile. I am using the variant in both cases, so we're at depth level 3 on both of these tiles. 

1_Wall_(1_door) 

I can hang a door on this tile, but it won't open. On the other side of this tile, I have: 

Hall_End_1_Door_Variant

I cannot hang a door on this tile at all. 

[/quote]
Try putting this in your campaign folder, it's 1_Wall_(1_door) variant 2. There were two door hook points on this tile, I removed one. It will either work, or not, but won't break anything otherwise.
link

Hall_End_1_door doesn't actually have hookpoints for attaching doors, just the geometry. That explains why you can't hang a door on it. I don't know enough modelling to add one.

[ColorsFade]

Thanks Kamal.

Didn't work. I replaced the tile and rebaked, hung the door, still no change in behavior.

It's not a big deal. But something I have to watch out for if I use that tile again.