560 Antworten in diesem Thema

[ColorsFade]

Thanks for this PJ. Looks great. 

 

You probably notice the seam on the columns where the texture meets; I just need to turn them 90 degrees so the seem doesn't show. But I was too excited about the screenshot and wanted to post it. 

 

[ColorsFade]

Just a small rant.. 

 

The wandering monster system is the biggest, buggiest, most fragile piece of crap in this entire toolset. 

 

I'm done with it.

 

Writing my own. I'm so sick of this crap not working. I don't know if it's because it has to read from a 2DA file or what, but this is a hunk of garbage. I have the 2DA setup perfectly, but run the debug script and the percentages are totally different. I get BadStrRef all the time. I get interrupted from sleep, but no monsters spawn. 

 

What a hunk of junk. 

 

There has to be a better way that dealing with this. Even javascript 20 years ago wasn't this fragile. I have wasted so many hours testing areas for wandering monsters on rest. It's disgusting. 

 

/rant off

[ColorsFade]

And... fixed. 

 

Trick was to replace the call to  WMGetWanderingMonsterFrom2DA(oPC) with a custom function. There was a little bit more to it than that as I had to essentially replace three scripts with my own versions, the core one being ginc_resysys, but it's totally worth it to have something reliable (and easier to modify). I was able to nuke all the 2DA code out those scripts and clean it up.

 

I don't know why the 2DA file is so fragile for the wandering monster system, but it is. Every time I'd touch it to add a new set of creatures for an area, it broke. 

 

I like having it in a script now. Easier to manage. I don't have to update a 2DA and re-insert it into a HAK file. Just add a couple lines and compile. 

[ColorsFade]

[Weekly Update]

 

Good progress the past few days, except for Saturday, when I burned a whole day trying to figure out why my world map transition would not work when attempting to travel back to a module I had already loaded. Lesson for myself: just always check the override folder first. The error message let me astray for several hours, thinking there was something wrong with my baked walkmesh... The disappointing part of the whole thing was that it was one of my rare free Saturdays when I had about 8 hours to myself... And I got no building done. Arg. 

 

Cut-Scene Sticky

 

The other hangup happened last week when I was trying to put together a cut-scene in a new area. The PC basically enters this cut-scene while other parties are mid-conversation, and at some point one of the conversation participants finishes and walks away, and then the PC is supposed to walk up to the people who remain. Well, the NPC that was supposed to leave would turn, but wouldn't walk away, which I found very odd because the same exact code calls had worked in other cut-scenes I've done. Also troubling was the PC not being able to approach the remaining NPC's. 

 

Any guesses on the issue? 

 

It was a rug, not yet set as an Environmental Object, and so the walking NPC and the PC couldn't traverse it during a cut-scene. The NPC would get "stuck" on that carpet. I remember running into that issue way back when I was building the Prologue. I usually go through an area and turn everything into an Environmental Object and then walkmesh-cutter the area. But this was a new area that I wasn't done decorating yet, and I wanted to work on the cut-scene. And so there was the issue. I guess best thing to do is, once a rug is placed, immediately make that sucker an Environmental Object

 

Pirate Cove

 

The Pirate cove is now 95% done, including all encounters. I have one conversation node left to build for the (rare) possibility that the PC decides to go back and visit a certain NPC (an NPC that may not even be alive, depending on how the PC plays their hand). I don't think it will happen very much, but if it does, there needs to be a conversation. Of the few issues reported from the prologue, the one that irritates me the most were conversation bugs that could have been prevented if I'd been more thorough testing the possible pathways. So I'm trying real hard here to make sure every possible conversation path is accounted for.

 

Outside of that, I have one container that wasn't dropping loot and then the whole thing is done. 

 

I don't know how other people do this, but I have an Excel sheet that has a list of all my areas, one for each row. The columns on the sheets are where I mark off things like Sounds, Load Screens, Description (because it shows on the map), lights, music (if any), battle music (if any), if Wandering Monsters are enabled, etc. If the area is a prefab I note it here along with the author name, so I know to credit them. This lets me know how close an area is to being "done." The Pirate Cove ended up with 8 areas, none of which were prefabs, so there was a lot to build and verify as being done. The only thing I haven't done yet is the loading screens. 

 

Encounters

 

I spent quite a bit of time testing all the encounters in the Pirate Cove, to ensure balance, but I still need to run through the whole quest from start to finish to make sure every door and trigger works.

 

I ended up changing the way I did the encounters during this process. Instead of spawning everything with the OnClientEnter scripts, as I had been doing in the Prologue, I switched over to encounter triggers on the floor and painting down the encounter waypoints. My thought was, for large dungeon areas (and the Pirate Cove has two of these) it made more sense from a performance standpoint to go with the encounter triggers and utilize the area creature caching. I don't know how much of a difference it really makes on modern hardware, but I liked the end result so much that I have been going back and rebuilding some of the encounters in the Prologue as well. 

 

The next encounter in the main plot is pretty straight-forward (although, again, conversation choices can make this go in different directions) but the ones after that are where it starts to get really fun with manipulation of placeables and hopefully strategic/tactical elements for the players to deal with. I've never had an occasion to lay a trap in any of these games, but there's one whole area here where, if you have a trap-layer in your party, you're going to be at a distinct advantage in finishing that particular quest. 

 

Next

 

Finishing up the Pirate Cove means it's time to move on to the next part of the main quest, which means some interiors in Scornubel need to be finished, or at least far enough along to accommodate cut-scenes and encounter testing. I've started on several areas and have most of them in a position where they can be at least baked and used for testing.

 

What I found myself doing most of the last few days is building interiors for areas that are not critical to the main plot. Sometimes an idea just inspires me and I find that I want to work on building that instead of some area that is immediately more important. But I don't feel like I've wasted anything, because I'd eventually need these areas anyway, and I think I get a better result if I build when when I'm inspired by a decorative idea.

 

In particular, I've been working on an idea for the only temple in Scornubel, the Healing House of Lathander. The area is not far enough along for a screen shot yet, but I like where it's going. There are also a couple fest-halls in Scornubel, and I've been glossing over images on Google and trying to come up with something interesting for both of them; trying to make them look distinct from each other. As with all of these areas, my rule is: if I'm putting it in the game, there has to be something interesting for the player to encounter if they visit there. The temple is fairly easy for that - it's the only location for temple supplies and resurrections. For the fest-halls I hope to provide some fun-side quests. I keep a running list of ideas for smaller, side-quest style encounters and right now the list is pretty good size. 

 

Summary

 

Another good week of building, except for the blown Saturday. Hope to have more screens next week. 

[ColorsFade]

[Weekly Update]

 

Mostly screen shots. I've been really busy working on areas this past week. I'm bouncing around between a dozen different areas or more, just adding stuff when I have time.

 

A lot of the weekend was spend baking the Scornubel Docks, which I had rearranged.

 

 

Previously, the land just sloped up away from the docks, and while more accurate than a flat riverbank, it didn't look that great and I was never happy with it. I kept thinking it needed something else. So, I spent some time playing some other mods and looking at various dock arrangements in prefabs, and decided to go with a wall for the east side of the docks. There's a main artery that comes down the hill from the north side of town, and when it reaches the dock, I decided to split it up. The east side quickly slopes up, so I added a wall along that side of the docks. The west side lays right on the docks with a few nearby warehouses and the Serpent's Tooth tavern, which is currently under construction.

 

 

The challenge, of course, was once I went with a wall and steps, the bake got difficult. It's done now, but there's a couple tweaks left to be made. 

 

The nice thing about the wall on the docks is it lets me carve out a couple alcoves for shrines. 

 

 

The literature on Scornubel says that while the city only has one temple, the Healing House of Lathander, it does have shrines to nearly every deity scattered through the city. I don't have enough room to do every deity, but I intend to do as many as I can. My idea right now is to make it so you can opt to pray at the shrine, and if anyone in your party worships that deity, the party gets some kind of buff (bless, haste, etc.)

 

I only have a few shrines up right now, but I have waypoints down in all the city areas where there's space to put them. So we'll see how many I can cram in there. 

 

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The other thing I got wired-up recently was the sundials.

 

 

I'm not a big fan of mods that make anything time-sensitive (like shops closing at night or quests that only trigger during certain hours), unless there's an easy way to manage the waiting. I know Kaldor Silverwand has a sundial in his sample campaign, and I almost looked at that, but it's a simple enough thing to do, so I just wired this one up myself.

 

 

I wanted a small shrine-like area to set the sundial off from everything around and make it stand out a bit. The pillars lie on the north side of all the sundials in the cities so as to be out of the way and not cause shadows on the sundial proper. The conversation that comes up gives you a lot of options for passing the time.

 

My intention is to make it so that all the vendors in The Walk, as well as any other shops in buildings (like Angah and Preszmyr) go to sleep between 8 and 10pm and don't get back in their market areas (or open shop) until 8am. But I don't want the player to be annoyed if they really want to see a vendor, so they'll have a sundial right there that they can use to wait around if they wish. Every area in every city has these, except the starting area of Triel. 

 

And now that I have them, I can do a couple time-sensitive quests that I hope won't be annoying either. I like how the literature describes Scornubel as a city that is kind of a wild place, especially in the summer during caravan season, and there is this big mishmash of people and cultures wandering around, and things probably get a little crazy after the sun goes down. And then you can do things like vampire familiars luring unsuspecting prey into dark corners, and parties of drunken adventurers getting up to you and getting in your face and taking it out into the street, and strange looking folk wandering down dark alleys. I think with the sundial any time-sensitive stuff will be more fun than annoyance. At least that's my hope. And I kind of hope than when the sun does go down, the player, instead of immediately reaching for the sundial, heads for the nearest tavern. There's quite a few in the city. I'm working hard on their areas to give them each a distinct look and feel, and also associated quests and trouble to get into. 

 

And that's all for now. 

[ColorsFade]

Update

 

Lots of updates from everyone else lately in the Modules forum, so I've been holding off posting anything. Want everyone's threads to prosper. Love seeing so much activity!

 

This is mostly screen shots because that's what I dig seeing from others. A few comments along the way... 

 

 

Scornubel, all three zones, is now baked. It's not done, but I can walk around and all of the stairways work (and that was the hardest part, even with walkmesh helpers). There's still quite a bit of placeable decoration to do to sort of fill-it-up and make it look lived in. I'm sporadically working on getting all non-used doors set as static, and getting all the transitions done. 

 

 

This is the exterior to Mother Minx's Festhall. I've tried to keep Scornubel from being a "flat" town, since it sits on a riverbank. I grew up in a town that sits at the confluence of two rivers, so I've taken quite a bit of inspiration for multi-level streets and such from the area of my youth. 

 

 

The inside of Mother Minx's Festhall. I took a lot of inspiration from inns in Skyrim, and some searches on Google. It's not done - still needs a lot of decoration. But I was happy with the way the basics turned out, especially the fire pit. 

 

 

The cellar to the Randy Wench Tavern and Brewery (that last part is my own addition; a little creative license there). I found the metatile for the hole in the wall by accident, and so I had to build a story around that. Torch on the ground, a bunch of broken crates... there's a quest here. 

 

 

 

The Serpent's Tooth tavern, down on the docks. Supposedly a very dangerous place, so I tried to make it dark and mysterious. I played around with the BCK for quite a while trying to get the alcoves just right. I figure in a tavern such as this, their patrons probably frequent there because of the alcoves, where they can have their conversations without too many prying ears. 

 

 

Preszmyr the Herbalist. I had a lot of fun with this, because I didn't have any idea what to do. I gave him a small wizard tower exterior when I was putting The Walk together, and when it came time to do the interior I just wasn't sure what to do. It's a two-level tower, and the entryway is where he grows all his plants and herbs. Past that you can barely see the teleporter, which will whisk you upstairs. 

 

Encounters

 

I finished another encounter for the main quest this week. Well, I should say, the encounter is finished, but all the remaining conversations are not done. I find the conversations take the greatest amount of my time to get right. I like this encounter though - you're fighting another band of adventurers. It can go one of two ways depending on dialog choices, but however it goes you're going to end up in a scrape (because the drow is kinda nuts). I remember playing Baldur's Gate and there being a couple times when you had to fight other adventurer parties, and I loved those encounters because they were quite a bit more challenging than fighting kobolds and whatnot. 

 

Not much else to report. Just plugging away. Mostly area design, a little bit every day, trying to make every area appealing. 

[WrayeOfSunshine]

That tavern looks incredible! Very inventive.

[ColorsFade]

That tavern looks incredible! Very inventive.

 

Thanks! 

 

I can't take credit for it though. MokahTGS did it first. I just borrowed the idea. 

 

But I do like how it is turning out. It's giving the tavern the appropriate level of dark and creepy that I was going for. 

 

There's a LOT of taverns and inns in Scornubel. I'm trying to stay true to the city maps. If a building is marked on a map as being a tavern or inn of specific name, and my area contains that portion of the map, then I am making the interiors for it. I'm trying to give each tavern/inn it's own distinct look and feel, based off the relatively scant descriptions I've found around the internet. 

 

I've basically cut a path down the middle of Scornubel, from the docks to the north end, and everything in there will be realized, including a few extra interiors I need for extra quests. What I'm not building are the east and west "greens" that one would encounter as they come into town. There just weren't enough unique landmarks or locations pertinent to the story to merit spending the time on those exteriors. 

 

All in all, it's still a lot. It's three city exteriors (Docks, The Walk, City Center) and it's dozens of interiors. But I think when it's done it's going to make a very interesting and fun city to wander around in. 

[Sabranic]

Some very interesting scenery there.  Very dynamic landscape.  I like how visually different it is from most of what you see out there.

[ColorsFade]

Some very interesting scenery there.  Very dynamic landscape.  I like how visually different it is from most of what you see out there.

 

Thanks Sabranic! I really appreciate that. 

[PJ156]

Those are some very nice interiors CF. I like the shrines too. Good work all round

 

PJ