Weekly Update
Going to try and do one of these posts each week, just as a way of keeping myself on track.
Work continues on the pirate grotto. I finally figured out the best way to bake this complex area. One large walkmesh, and then a bunch of cutters to block out the non-walk areas. It ended up being the most reliable way, and it provided the cleanest walk areas. I'm happy I got this working because I still need to do the same thing at the Scornubel docks, and now I have a clear method for getting it done.
I'm actually placing encounters now. One of the things I had to build was a couple of sirines:

I like the way these ladies turned out. The outfit is courtesy of The Complete Beldin Collection. I remember having to deal with Sirines in Baldur's Gate (I haven't played the NWN conversion yet), and they're a right pain in the butt (they'd always Charm Minsc or my main character, and then it was chaos). I thought about downloading the Baldur's Gate Reloaded mod (and I am going to, to play it), but I didn't want to rip off their work, so I made these myself. I still have a couple tweaks to make and they need playtesting, but I think they're going to do quite nicely.
I'm pretty happy with how this area is turning out. This particular area is designed in a way that I'm going to try and emulate throughout the rest of the campaign as much as possible.
What I've managed to do is provide multiple ways for the player handle the remaining combat in the area (once they reach a certain NPC and a conversation happens). Depending on the player's dialog options, the player can end up fighting everything remaining in the way to their final destination, or almost nothing. There's some dialog options in there (Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate) that the player can use to their advantage.
After getting it done, I'm pretty happy with the end result. I read a lot of comments from players on other mods who say things like, "I don't like hack-n-slash." And my prologue probably has a bit too much combat for some folks. So I'm going to try and provide options like this (withing the framework of the story/quest) to deal with the content in multiple ways. Players are still going to have to fight (that's a huge part of this campaign), but a lot of combat should be able to be avoided by simply being an effective communicator and rolling well with skills. At least, that's the plan. I like the way it's turning out in the pirate grotto, so we'll see if I can translate it to the rest of the campaign.
Story
I did a lot of story-writing for Chapter 2 this week. I don't know how everyone else does it, but when I started this campaign I had a very loose outline of the chapters and content and then I just sort of started building with the first pieces of the story I was sure about. As I get closer to the time when I need to actually implement specific portions of the story, a bullet-point in a text document has to turn into a lot of paragraphs of details. Who, what, when, where, how... I don't try and nail everything down at the beginning, because I figure I'll create it organically. A lot of times I think of ideas for cool quests/story elements/characters/etc. when I'm out walking or driving to the gym, etc. I think if I had to rely on writing the whole story up-front, it wouldn't be as good. A lot of my better ideas have come later on.
Chapter 2, in outline form, could be summed up in a couple of sentences. In detail form, it ended up being quite a bit more. I wrote most of the implementation details this week. In the process, a couple new areas on the map became useful. I have a pretty good sized map of the Western Heartlands for the campaign, and sometimes I just scan the map looking for nooks and crannies where it might be fun to place an adventure. That happened this week and I'm looking forward to building these areas.
Toolset
There's some pratical toolset housecleaning I'm trying to do. I have everything 3rd party put in my override folder, and I have subfolders for different people's content (got that from PJ's implementation). I created a subfolder for Darksky, and as I use 3rd party content I'm trying to move it over to that folder. Hopefully when I'm done I can then just put everything in my Darksky folder into a HAK and be done with it.
Scornubel
Two-thirds of Scornubel (the exteriors) are done. Many of the interiors are done, some are more developed than others. I tend to go through these in waves. I revisit them frequently, and think of new things to add to them, to make them look better. I periodically create NPC's and get conversation stubs made. It's a long process; it's a big town. But I'm hoping when I'm done it's at least more interesting than anything in the OC
I found Neverwinter to be quite dull.
I'll be thrilled when this pirate grotto mod is done. I think it's making me seasick...





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