676 réponses à ce sujet

[andysks]

That's what I meant by smoothing. They are hand drawn and scanned, and I thought the more pencil pressure I put the best scanning results I'll have. Nothing that can't be fixed in phitoshop though.

[PJ156]

That looks very nice indeed. I am intrigued by the bottomless chasm.

PJ

[Eguintir Eligard]

if you want paper to look old just dip it in tea and dry it. It's a lot more constructive than burning it haha wow

[andysks]

I did this trick for my p%p buddies back in the days EE . They seemed to enjoy it.

 

PJ why this in particular ? Wondering what might come out of it? Or do you wish to venture deep in it?

[PJ156]

PJ why this in particular ? Wondering what might come out of it? Or do you wish to venture deep in it?

I think it sounds like it's worth a little look see

[rjshae]

It'd be a good place to toss away garbage; no need to worry about it filling up...

[kamal_]

It'd be a good place to toss away garbage; no need to worry about it filling up...

Until the garbage starts falling out of the sky a hundred years later (as happened in a sci-fi story).

[Elrith Galadon]

Interesting campaign! I'm a bit excited to see non-Faerunian pantheons. The deity restrictions in NWN2 is a bit iffy, and I recall being able to play a Champ of Corellon in NWN1 as a PRC... only to discover that it appears as a no-go for NWN2. It keeps forcing my main male elf to pick a human pantheon for some reason. And my sun elf isn't interested in Tyr. (I'm also surprised this community's still alive. I was led to believe everyone upped and migrated to DA.)

 

Regarding cutscenes, my 2 cents is that if it doesn't deal with the character insight, it might be better to just use boxes. I remember running through OC and going "yeah yeah Casavir, can we get moving?" as it had little to do with his character and more with "you charge here, I go there, etc" kind of thing. Another mod I recently played didn't allow me to skip the voiceover so I got frustrated. On the other hand, Anya arc in MoTB could have used some cutscenes, as it involves Gann's past and his flippant behaviour that really attracts trouble. 

 

If you are doing voiceovers... fake accents make people cringe, forced voices even more so. Please please consider the accents when picking actors. I don't mind voice acting, and when used they add about two more dimensions to the character. One reason I didn't like NWN2 OC was because everyone sounded forced and well, like they were trying too hard. The only voices I liked were Nevalle and Neeshka, and Nevalle didn't even talk that much. (Oh, and Nasher, but I was far more concerned with the fact that he lost his hair than his voice.)

 

Just my two cents. For me, writing counts far more than anything else. 

[andysks]

Two cents much appreciated . It is still early to think of the voice acting. It's good though to take ideas and hear people's opinion on the mater.

 

Non-Faerunian pantheons is how I played D&D and the way I loved it. I enjoy the games that took place in Faerun but I never played in it in real D&D. So I choose to do what I know and love, and a setting I was DMing for. The pantheon is actually Greyhawk though. I didn't create any new deities except for some divine champions and demi-gods that get referenced throughout the story.

 

And regarding the scenes I have taken some good insight from here plus some private conversations I had lately. The key for me is to keep it in the middle as I said. Important things and complicated scenes go in cutscenes, Merchants, side quests unimportant scenes go in box. I know I'd love playing like that.

MotB tried to do this, but I felt it could use some more cutscenes at some points. But all in all they got this system pretty well.

[Tchos]

The deity restrictions in NWN2 is a bit iffy, and I recall being able to play a Champ of Corellon in NWN1 as a PRC... only to discover that it appears as a no-go for NWN2. It keeps forcing my main male elf to pick a human pantheon for some reason. And my sun elf isn't interested in Tyr.

 

If you are doing voiceovers... fake accents make people cringe, forced voices even more so.

 

Khelgar's accent is particularly bad, especially since he's the only one in his clan who even talks like that.

 

You shouldn't be having those deity problems.  I routinely create elf characters who pick Corellon Larethian and Hanali Celanil as their deities.  I'd look into that.

[Arkalezth]

Some classes have less deities to pick from. Since you can pick Tyr, I assume you're playing a paladin? Similarly, rangers and druids are also restricted to nature deities.

I like the map. And I agree about mixing cutscenes and dialog boxes, depending on the relevance of the conversation.

[OfficerDonNZ]

Voice acting can be a blessing and a curse. So mods that have none don't bother me at all. Infact I prefer them.

 

There was a mod I tried to play that used some VA from the NWN2 OC. The idea was good in practice though I found it very jarring as I knew who the original character was. I couldn't play it after that. So don't go that route if you do have some VA.

[andysks]

Well, I finally did something I wanted to do for a very long time but always time was short and preferred working on quests and plots. This time I put my head down, and because I never did it, now I had to make custom loadscreens for some 100 areas. I guess postponing was not the best option here . I also picked my style and they will look like this: They use same filters but the first one is more edgy because of the place the player is supposed to be... darker .

 

 

 

I first wanted to use some pencil strokes filter or generally something that will make the image SoZish. But I thought that we work hard to create an atmosphere and two colors, might look good but loose some of it. Then I thought that I really liked that Bethesda introduced on the Elder Scrolls Online a style of loadscreens which seem hand drawn, and generally nothing like the dark mysterious rpg that is always the case in games. So I thought why not. Still some to go but it's worth the effort. I think kamal_ once said that it's easy, but a clear custom thing in your work.

[PJ156]

These look good, they're going to swell the campaign folder somewhat if you have 100 of them

 

PJ

[kamal_]

These look good, they're going to swell the campaign folder somewhat if you have 100 of them

 

PJ

Not so much when they are really jpgs. I did 250 loadscreens for Path of Evil. It was 43 megs.

 

And yes andysyks, I probably did say that. It's a bit time consuming, but not hard at all. The hardest part is probably figuring out what look you want to give them.

[rjshae]

Very nice. It has a Borderlands cell-shaded look that works well.

[kamal_]

Very nice. It has a Borderlands cell-shaded look that works well.

With a carefully constructed daynight setting, you can play the game that way. {http://4.bp.blogspot...0-h/redsun.jpg

Hard to get it so it's not oversaturated/too bright though.

[Eguintir Eligard]

somehow the second one doesn't look as good as the first dark one. Maybe you need to increase the settings on certain pictures to get that nice first impression to the second one I can't even really tell there's a filter it just looks kind of low res looking. 

 

Up to you of course. I found (using oilpaint as my chosen filter) that there were definitely different settings for darker vs lighter areas to get the same desired output.

[andysks]

I know what you mean. Exteriors and interiors too. It's not all press last filter gallery and you're done. Sometimes you need to adjust something more.

On the particular second one, I tried to play with the filter but this is best result I got. I thought I'd use less posterise for darker areas because it creates this dark from the first image, but for exteriors and lighted areas is not giving so good results .

[andysks]

Journal Update

 

• The baking gods smiled at me!

Here I was, just before a big test I have soon, and I thought I'd blow some steam on the toolset. I haven't worked on the campaign seriously for a while because of the above reason, and I thought, if I do something to relax then do something daring.

 

One of the items of my To Do list was remake a whole area, and make it as a standalone module. This area is the docks/slums of the capital. I was really not satisfied as to how the area looked, and in general together with the main living and royal districts it was raising the module size to the limits.

 

I was not satisfied with the looks because it had turn out as a flat mud land, which was originally the case, and still is, but it didn't really give me the feeling of slums. Somewhere where it's crowded and thug gangs rule the place etc. Also, a slum city/area has always been in my head as Nulb from ToEE. Docks, and between the docks the buildings.

 

So I thought I'd try it. When I was done (partially, as a testing phase), and pressed the bake button I was expecting the worse. Thankfully the best results came, and now I have something like that. Of course non-textured land and no placeable around, but you get the idea . As you can see, I could open doors and everything. Only thing I needed to do to give it a feeling of dock built place was to place a lot of environment objects square docks under the buildings so that they are not elevated.

 

Only "disadvantage", the camera might zoom at some points.

 

 

 

[PJ156]

Really nice shots. The gods of baking truly have your back

 

PJ

[andysks]

Journal Update

 

After some crazy busy real life weeks I manage now to get some building/playing time. Reworking the slums/docks area is going steady and as days pass I think it will look more and more as I want it to. One of the things that I didn't take into account while making the old one, is the size of the campaign. I think I said it before but I can't stretch how important this is for me to have in the back of my head at all times.

 

When I have an area, like the docks in the capital, I don't expect it to be used only one or two times. The party might return there after the end of the 4 chapter let's say... way down the road. More quests might open, and there was just no space for anything more. So this, as well as the fact that it was... ugly made me want to rework it. Thankfully, my other cities are already big enough to fit everything I want to place there, and more beautiful, so I don't need to rework any more areas except this one.

 

This whole situation reminded me of what Eguidir Eligard said one time. That he heard stuff after the release of Islander that he would change if he would do it again, and that working in chapters prevents such things from happening. But I guess working for so much time in my campaign and going all the time back to the previous areas to add a follow up on a quest or something like that makes me see some things that I did a year ago and I want changed.

 

So the work progress is like that: Go forward, go back, stay back for a while, go back forward to continue.

 

Except placing some placeables around on my little free time I also tried to make the map a bit better. A lot better. Here is an almost final version. I feel good about it .

 

Outlines have been more smooth. Color on sea and many names and rivers as well have been added.

 

[Tchos]

A very impressive map!