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[ColorsFade]

Tchos wrote...

You've said that only one of the companions will be mandatory, and that the rest are optional, so why not give the players the option of creating their full party in addition to recruiting NPC companions?

Companion Interaction, mainly. 

I mean, letting the player create their party: I just don't want to. It's just not the vibe I'm going for. 

I want something that feels a bit more like Baldur's Gate 2, in terms of NPC's and stories and quests, and the interaction between them. 

I want to have the opportunity to script some conversations and scenes between NPC's. 

Like, as much as I hated these two characters in the NWN2 OC, there's a funny line in there during a cut-scene when Bishop says something like, "Grobnar, you half-man, strike up a tune... before I strike you." I love stuff like that. I really hated Bishop, but that line was classic (because I hate gnomes). 

I intend to have several NPC's of all sorts of alignments. I want some interaction in there, and I think some of it could be fun. 

[Tchos]

Yes, but you're allowing the players not to take any but one of the companions. Is that compatible with the vibe you're going for? I'm just saying that if you allow that choice, then for the players that choose it, they wouldn't experience any of those interactions anyway.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

You know, the GetName/GetFirstName/GetLastName function is bugged, it always returns the name from the template. You might want to make sure that your new companions have a new template as well as a new resref and tag.

@Tchos: If the combat is hard enough, then the player will want to recruit some NPC companions. Not all the combinations will present in any given play-through, but some will be, and the appropriate dialogue will fire.

A bit O/T, but I wonder if it could be possible to have a custom party, but then assign each custom party member a pre-scripted "personality" with associated dialogue, backstory, and side-quests. Say that at the start of the module, a script sorts through the player-made party and tries to find the best fit for each personality, e.g. "Bob" is a stereotypical paladin, so find the party member that is most lawful-good, and is a paladin/cleric/fighter/monk/ranger/etc. "Susie" is a chaotic caster, "Nicky" is from a diminutive race, and so on. Then the script sets a variable on each party-member corresponding to their new personality, which the conversations can check instead of the tag.

[ColorsFade]

Is that compatible with the vibe you're going for?

Yes. 
In Baldur's Gate I & II, you didn't have to take any of the companions. You could try and solo the game if you wished (and I remember reading a lot of forum threads about the ideal powergaming build to do it with). But if you didn't have any companions in your party, you missed out on some content.

Like, if I recall correctly, you couldn't do the planar sphere quest without Valygar in your group, because he was the only person who could open it. Keldorn had his whole Paladin quest line, etc..  

That's how I want this campaign to be. If you choose to go solo, you are going to miss some content. That's the player's choice. I have no intention of forcing them to take NPC's (other than the one, and I am still debating making that character required).

The design of the campaign is really such that you should take advantage of the companions. And I want there to be enough of them for you to have to make choices.

I'm building this for myself first and foremost. I want replayability. I think I have played BG2 at least a half dozen times from beginning to end, often times tryng out different NPC combinations. I think the ony NPC I never kept in my part very long was Mazzy Fenton. Most of the other NPC's I played with at least once, to see what their story was like.  To me, that's fun. 

[ColorsFade]

Today was pretty cool. I made quite a bit of progress on an encounter and I'm really happy with the knowledge gained from doing it. Now I know how to do others like it and it's not that bad. 

It was nice to see all the triggers, conversations, scripts, actions and conditions work. It's a simple encounter near the beginning of the game: you've been tasked with removing some thugs from a local establishment. When you arrive, they are giving grief to an NPC that you can recruit (and who also has a quest for you). 

I wanted the encounter to have two solid paths: Either you can find a peaceful resolution to the situation (via Blff/Diplomacy/Intimidate), and that is in fact the preferred method requested by the person who tasked you with the quest, or you can use violence. Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy options only show up in the dialog if you have a minimum skill in each. I had the DC set a little too high the first time through; it was fun, however, to watch the fight correctly break out once it failed. 

Scripting out the fight was pretty easy and painless, and it was easy to get the post-fight conversation rolling after the group died. One thing I did do, after some playtesting and watching the NPC die, was set the NPC's Plot flag to true, because that person really needs to survive, for the time being anyway. At the end of the fight I unset it and life moves on. 

Making the peaceful option took al little more work, because having the thugs walk away caused the conversation to break. But thankfully some help on the scripting boards pointed me at the ipoint speaker and that solved that issue. Now the thugs walk away, to a point, disappear, and the conversation moves on. 

I like the way it turned out. And I like that I know how to do this sort of thing now. Triggered conversations/events seem less daunting than they did a couple days ago. I'm excited to move things forword from here. 

[Tchos]

Yes, but even in Baldur's Gate you can, if you wish, play it with an entirely player-created party and eschew the recruitable companions entirely. It isn't just a choice between taking the companions or going solo, as you suggest. You just start the game as a multiplayer game, and create each party member yourself. Plenty of people do that.

I understand that you really want the player to take the companions you provide. I personally would indeed prefer to take the offered companions and experience the content that they bring, but I know that there are others who enjoy a different way of playing, and I thought you might, as I do, see value in providing the alternative for those who prefer to create their own party. It's a simple thing to add that could greatly increase the fun for others, even though it would result in them missing companion-specific content.

@Lugaid: That should be just as possible as doing the checks on individual nodes. Maybe even simpler than that way, actually. It would require some testing.

[ColorsFade]

I get your point Tchos. I'll think about it. If it's not difficult to do, might as well do it.

[PJ156]

ColorsFade wrote...

I get your point Tchos. I'll think about it. If it's not difficult to do, might as well do it.

At the end of the day CF it's your mod and the content therein will reflect your style of play. I found early on that trying to play to everyone diluted the things I wanted to get into the mod. In latter work I have focused on the elements that suit me and I think my mods are better for it (though not everyone likes them).

If much of your content is story based around the npc's (as mine is) then they have to be there otherwise you are faced with creating a loooong main story path to suit persons who take no npcs that's a lot of extra work if you are puting the npc content in too.

Just my thoughts on the matter. In my mods the npcs are core to the story. There are no side quests associated with them but thier story is the story at large. They have to be there at certain times and that's the end of it. Some players have hated it and some say it's great but its all me and if you don't like it, play someone elses mod

Cheers,

PJ

[ColorsFade]

PJ156 wrote...

ColorsFade wrote...

I get your point Tchos. I'll think about it. If it's not difficult to do, might as well do it.

At the end of the day CF it's your mod and the content therein will reflect your style of play. I found early on that trying to play to everyone diluted the things I wanted to get into the mod. In latter work I have focused on the elements that suit me and I think my mods are better for it (though not everyone likes them).

If much of your content is story based around the npc's (as mine is) then they have to be there otherwise you are faced with creating a loooong main story path to suit persons who take no npcs that's a lot of extra work if you are puting the npc content in too.

Just my thoughts on the matter. In my mods the npcs are core to the story. There are no side quests associated with them but thier story is the story at large. They have to be there at certain times and that's the end of it. Some players have hated it and some say it's great but its all me and if you don't like it, play someone elses mod

Cheers,

PJ

Thanks PJ. 

That's kind of been my take on this so far. I'm making the mod for me, and I want the NPC's to be a big part of the story. One NPC in particular is a very, very big part of the story. That was a total accident; I discovered this NPC while doing research for my larger story arc, and I was so entertained by the NPC and the story, and how well it dovetailed into something I was already doing, that I just had to include. And I think for the people who want to enjoy NPC's and stories, this is going to entertain a lot. 

I think if I were going to make a full-party campaign, I'd choose a different story to tell, and I would really focus the campaign on it being that way - on supporting a full party of custom PC's. 

I'm not saying  'no' to this idea totally yet. But right now, it's definitely not my focus. I'm really enjoying creating the NPC's, their quests and the encounters where the player meets them. To me, that's just a lot of fun. And I'm excited about the idea of crafting their personalities and dialog. My hope is that after people play the campaign, they'll say things like, "I really loved NPC X, but I hated Y and kicked his ass out right after I met him". I want people to react... that would be fun. 

Right now.. there is so much on plate as far as immediate stuff to get done and created. I have a very clear vision and focus for the first few levels now, and know who you're going to meet first, where, and when. There's enough stuff on my to-do list right now to keep me busy for a while. And I just want to get all of that done so I can actually play and test the first X levels of gameplay and be satisfied with it working. 

That's one of the things that is interesting to me about workking on something like this, is dealing with workflow as ideas come and solidify. Craeting areas and crafting encounters often breeds new ideas for me and I find myself saying, "Oh yes, I should do *that* too". So the list of things to build and make gets longer. But that's a good thing - I want the ideas to keep coming. 

Now it's just a matter of getting enough free time to really implement a lot of this work. 

[Tchos]

Yes, of course as PJ says it's your mod, and you should build it according to your design philosophy. I hope that my discussion of the niceties of that philosophy hasn't seemed like an attack of any kind. I would not have brought this up at all, except that you specifically mentioned that the companions would be optional, but that you would not allow a player-created party, which made me wonder what reason there would be for specifically excluding a particular segment of our small community. If the companions were not optional, as in PJ's modules, then there would be nothing to discuss.

I do have to add in response to PJ's statements that I was not suggesting at all that you should support the full-partiers by adding another plotline to accommodate them, or any special dialogue or conditional checking. That's not necessary at all. Your intent is to make a good companion-based game, and that's all you need to do. Adding the option of creating the party (and doing nothing else, which is all I suggested) would simply allow a few more people to enjoy it who otherwise would pass it by, regardless of the amount of content that they would voluntarily miss by not taking the companions.

[ColorsFade]

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
When you play a game do you actually remember what your PC was or is it the npcs you travelled with and met you remember better ? I only ever remember npcs myself and find them to be the most important aspect to any game so that's where I try to put in the most work..

That's me too, for the most part. Minsc, Jaheira, Imoen... Viconia...They're memorable characters. And they're a big reason why I kept playing those games over and over. I kept replaying the game, trying out different NPC combinations, to see if there was some awesome NPC I was missing, or to see if there was a story arc worth investigating.

I was lying in bed last night thinking about dialog I wanted to write for one of the NPC's, and it was making me chuckle. And I was thinking - that's what this campaign is all about for me: giving me a chance to write, to tell a story, and to see if it has any impact with an audience. Maybe I'll fail spectacularly. So be it. At least I'm having fun building it. 

[ColorsFade]

Tchos wrote...
I hope that my discussion of the niceties of that philosophy hasn't seemed like an attack of any kind.

It's just discussion Tchos. Nothing more. I don't mind. I welcome other's input, always. That's the only way to make a project great.

Ultimately it's my decision, and I'll go in the direction I feel best about, whatever that happens to be. I have a feeling it will all sort itself out over time. 

And if someone doesn't want to play my campaign because I end up not offering full party creation, that's their decision, not mine, and I won't lose a wink of sleep over that. 

I just don't want people to not play it because it sucks - that would be on me. I really want to put something together that is fun and polished. 

[rjshae]

ColorsFade wrote...

I was lying in bed last night thinking about dialog I wanted to write for one of the NPC's, and it was making me chuckle. And I was thinking - that's what this campaign is all about for me: giving me a chance to write, to tell a story, and to see if it has any impact with an audience. Maybe I'll fail spectacularly. So be it. At least I'm having fun building it.

It's possible to be too windy on conversations. The NWN2 cutscene dialogue is really built for short statements and responses. I've had to trim down my own long-winded conversations considerably because I've found it doesn't look all that good and it tends to interrupt the flow of the game. You may want to experiment with what approach works before investing heavily in the conversation trees.

Just a suggestion...

[ColorsFade]

rjshae wrote...

It's possible to be too windy on conversations. The NWN2 cutscene dialogue is really built for short statements and responses. I've had to trim down my own long-winded conversations considerably because I've found it doesn't look all that good and it tends to interrupt the flow of the game. You may want to experiment with what approach works before investing heavily in the conversation trees.

Just a suggestion...

Wise words. 

I'm trying to keep everything just right. I was quite annoyed at times in the OC when things got very windy. 

I prefer the Strunk & White approach... And a bit of Stephen King. Trying to keep my dialog sounding real, but omit needless words. 

[PJ156]

I try to keep to an upper limit of at most 30 words for most conversation nodes.

Note, that if they are very short you will need to use the delay function on the node tab to keep them from going too fast.

PJ

[ColorsFade]

Lots of different kinds of work over the past few days. It's interesting to work on a project like this. The hardest part is molding a workflow that is productive for me. I find area development can suck time like nothing else... and it doesn't feel productive (although I know it is - this stuff has to get built sometime). 

On a software project at my day job, I know exactly what to do when a new project spins up. I've done it so many times, I know exactly where to start and what the end looks like. I know what progress feels like on a project like that, and what kind of milestones I can use to measure progress. 

This is a different animal and it's taking time to figure out how I want to work and what methods end up being productive. 

One thing I've figured out is that I mentally track progress by encounters. When a quest is done and I can play through it from start to finish, that, to me, is real progress. It's measureable and it means something.

As such, i find myself working in this fashion: I create the bare areas first, so I know what areas are necessary to a given encounter. Then I immediately go to the Journal and setup the quest. Next is the conversations - these take a good chunk of time and are the thing I am constantly refining. I work on conversations a lot, probably because most of my NPC's, at least in my first town, are not one-off quest givers. A lot of the NPC's are people you'll go back to for additional quests, so getting their dialog right and having it firing at the right time requires work.

Once I have something in place that works for the conversation, quest XP is defined, and there's a flow to the encounter, then I add the NPC's to the bare areas, give them their conversations, and start a walkthrough. Usually I start with the quest giver, and I walk through all the variations of the conversation by using DebugMode and manually advancing the Journal. This helps me spot errors in conversation logic before my character actually starts running around the game world wasting time. I do this for all the NPC's involved in the quest (if there are more than one). Once that's complete, then it's time to actually create the encounter NPC's (if there are any), or necessary items, etc. 

Only when the whole thing is complete do I typically start working on making the areas pretty/detailed/etc. 

One thing I've found really valuable is actually walking through the encounter, because I frequently spot issues with area placeables this way. Like a tree that's not set low enough to the ground, or a container that isn't set right. There's nothing like walking around the game world with your PC and checking stuff out. 

And of course, everything ends up in a giant task list in Excel. It's a big list now. Some stuff is just tedious, and I prioritize everything and am constantly resorting the list. Like, I placed a bunch of street lamps around my first town, and used the SLS2 prefabs so they could turn on/off night/day cycle, etc. Well, they still all need to have their placeables and lights associated together via tags, etc., so the script will work and turn lights on/off and show the correct lamp. It's nothing but tedious work, but it has to get done, so it ends up on the list until sometime when I'm like, "Okay, time to get the lights done. Go.:"

What's been really fun is watching things grow and evolve over time, almost organically. Like, when I started this project and had picked out my first town to build and put quests in, I only had a couple of things for the player to do. As time progressed and more stuff got built and more characters were defined, more quests just naturally seemed to crop up. Now there's quite a bit to do and it's going to be fairly easy for the PC to get to the level I want them to be before they leave town. 

The other thing I've been doing is playing other modules on the Vault. I still just want to play from time to time, and that's fun. But what is interesting is playing a module with a specific design decision made, and how it affects my thinking process. For instance, I was contemplating the idea of limiting rest areas, so that the player had to rest in an Inn, or other safe spot. Games have done that for years and it's a staple of sorts. But as I played a recent module that limited rest like that, I found myself annoyed to no end. I just found it "not fun". Sure, it's "more immersive", but it's way less fun. And so clearly it seems I am a player who leans more toward the "make it fun" side of things than the "make it immersive" side of things. And that's going to shape my module quite a bit. 

I do, however, want to implement the MotB rest system, only because I like the idea of 8 hours time passing as you rest, so that the day/nigth cycles can have some affect. Watching the game world switch from night to day and back again is really groovy. I like it a lot. 

[ColorsFade]

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...

I like the way that when you're making a module it grows by itself too and that's what I let mine do, my latest mod is a test of that with no story planned at all but it's flying along at high speed and I think it's because of that. So go for it and let everything come naturally especially when you play test that's when stuff gets added because you as a player would like that to happen and this makes it better for anyone else playing too.

This really is one of the coolest parts of making a game - just watching stuff grow organically. I started work on my first dungeon this morning, and I had no real idea what I wanted to do with it - it's just a small dungeon for a small encounter. But I wanted it to look cool, and that was the only priority I had. I'm about halfway done with it and I'm incredibly happy with it. It's fun to play with the toolset this way. I didn't have a "plan" for the dungeon, but it's turned out nicely, and I think it has a good atmosphere. 

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
Anyway it sounds like you're enjoying yourself and that's the important bit because when something becomes a grind to create it will show up in the game and your mod will lose the spark of life it had when you first started.

I'm having quite a bit of fun... It's really fun to have "the power" - I get to do this however I want, and so I get to make all the decisions, and that's inspiring. 

One decision I've made is to eliminate crafting. Both times I played through the OC I crafted all my weapons, because they were just better than anything the game could provide. And that was kind of lame, I thought, because it made all the other items you could buy or find totally irrelevant. 

I'm going to do something a bit different. Instead of crafting, I'm going to have certain NPC's possess the ability to create unique (pre-defined) items from components that the adventurer's find (plus this kind of fits into the story of one NPC).

Kind of like Cromwell in Baldur's Gate 2. So, if you find a ghoul claw, for instance, instead of distilling that down to an essence for crafting, you're going to want to seek out an enchanter or other NPC merchant type who has the ability to craft something out of that. One NPC might be able to make a dagger out of it, because weapons are their speciality, while another NPC might be able to enchant that into an amulet or ring. Each item will have different attributes. As you progress througth the campaign, finding more rare artifacts, the NPC's will be able to make more spectacular items out of them. And some of these NPC's might be easier to find than others... 

I want to do it this way because, as an old Everquest and EQ2 player, I love item acquisition. I love unique items. I like drops and finding things in chests, and I like going on quests for stuff (epic weapons). I want to have some quests in this campaign like, for instance, you find a rare component, and take it to an enchanter/artificer, and they tell you, "I can build a mighty sword out of this, but I also need X & Y to do it." So now you have a side-quest to hunt down components for a weapon that might be far more powerful than anything else you are going to randomly find or buy at a vendor. 

To me... that' s fun

[ColorsFade]

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...

However I've only thrown in a few workbenches ( 3 so far in 9 modules ) and made the items needed hard to get...

I think if you're going to do crafting, that's the way to do it - limit it to an extent. Otherwise, it's just too unbalanced. 

I'm excited about the possibilities for items by doing it this way, and leaving crafting out. Items are going to be really unique, if I can be creative enough with them. And I intend to accept suggestions/submissions. If people want to throw ideas at me, even items with lore attached that they've written up, and I like it, it will go in. 

I like loot. I want it to be a fun part of the campaign. I don't want it to be a loot-fest like Diablo, but making unique items that are fun and make players feel powerful, and giving players options as they progress, is fun, to me. And since there are going to be a pleathora of NPC's and classes represented, I want a wide array of stuff...

[ColorsFade]

 Here's something I ran into, and maybe someone has an answer; 

I was trying to take a few screenshots today in anticipation of doing my own load screens. I found some help on the Vault and that lead me to the Spoon of Vanishing. Unfortunately, my character's glowing symbol on the ground is still present. I am wondering if people have a way to remove this, or if you simply crop your images (since it has to be 2x1 widescreen anyway for the load image). 



Any help is appreciated. 

[ColorsFade]

Well, that was fun. I got my first "boss-mob" encounter working, cut-scenes and all. I couldn't be happier.  

It's absolutely fun to sit there and watch the cut-scene progress. When the necromancer summons his boss skeleton during the cut scene, I know it's really a fake cast spell and a CreateObject call at work, with some timing delays to sync it up just right... and it looks so neat. 





I had a lot of trouble getting my custom AI script to work, but once it did, it was outstanding. Having an NPC necromancer cast spells in the proper order makes the encounter slightly more challenging, which is what I was hoping for. Watching him Charm the rogue, or land a Ghoul Touch on the fighter... very fun. 

Knowing I can write custom AI for all the boss encounters really excites me. I can really fine-tune my encounters now. That's a giant part of what I was hoping to do with this campaign and now I know I can. 

I feel like I have a huge part of the toolset under my control now. I can do the things I really want to do. 

Oh, and the final piece of goodness: I figured out I could create my own script function libraries and declare constants... wow. That just made my life easier. I wrote a library of functions for quickly creating a PC party and levelling up all in the party using their default packages. I can now just type x_create_party(iPartyConfiguration, iPartyLevel) in my debug window and get a specific party at the specific level, with default spells already memorized, etc. Sure makes debugging encounters faster. 

I've also started work on a library of functions for the AI for my encounters. I want to make the AI a bit more complicated, like having certain enemies attack casters first, making sure enemy mages attempt to dispel, silence, strip buffs, etc... It's gonna be fun. 

[Tchos]

Removing the circle under your character is a setting in the game options.

Also, if you're planning to support widescreen displays (today's standard), please make sure your loading screens are formatted for widescreen monitors, instead of the stretched-out pictures designed for 4:3 displays that the old loading screen tutorials produce.

[ColorsFade]

Tchos wrote...

Removing the circle under your character is a setting in the game options.

Thanks. Just what I needed. 

Also, if you're planning to support widescreen displays (today's standard), please make sure your loading screens are formatted for widescreen monitors, instead of the stretched-out pictures designed for 4:3 displays that the old loading screen tutorials produce.

Good to know. I figured the loading screens were static dimensions. I'll take care to prevent the stretching.