675 replies to this topic

[Tchos]

It just takes a little planning to prepare your campaign for future chapters or expansions. I think starting in a special "starting area" as you said you were leaning toward, is a good way to do it.

If you begin the campaign with a conversation, you can update that conversation later when you have the next chapter ready, and give one of the response options a script that updates all necessary quest variables or other considerations to what they should be at the end of the first chapter, and then teleports the player to the necessary area.

[andysks]

When you say modules you mean chapters right? Because each chapter could have more modules. I am thinking to make an intro movie for each chapter. First one is the intro movie and later ones the recap of the previous chapters. That way if the second chapter is released in a year or so, you will have a recap. Kinda like a series on TV which comes every year. Now, if someone plays the whole campaign in some time from now, he can just not put the movies in the folder and he will continue playing normally without the recap.
As for release, there is still playtesting to be done, suggestions from playtesters that they may say I could add or bugs they might find and I have to fix. As for the next chapter, I know for a fact that it will be faster since now I have a big database of scripts and more experience on the toolset. But it will take more than half a year nonetheless.

[andysks]

Yes something like what Tchos said. I've seen it in so many modules and it works fine. I just need to auto export the character on end of each chapter.

[PJ156]

For me each chapter was a single module of say 4 - 8 hours duration so mine was constructed differently but it matters not. The next chapter will still be a jump from a module to a module. Once you are in a single campaign the toolset does not set it any other way.

Also I think, but I am not sure, that you only get one movie at the begining of a campaign and one at the end.

Cutscenes are your only tool for an opening but they are more flexible and easier to construct anyway.

PJ

[andysks]

Cutscenes yes. They seem like a movie anyway .
So to sum up, I will continue working on the same campaign, and assign the next modules to it. When they are ready, I upload the whole thing again, plus the next chapter separately for the ones that already played chapter one. I believe Planescape:Shaper of Dreams team does something like that.
As for length... it is kinda tough to calculate because chapter one takes me about 5-6 hours to finish, but my girlfriend's run is already 3 hours and she is not even half way through. But this makes total sense for I know every secret and riddle and so on .

[Arkalezth]

PJ156 wrote...

Also I think, but I am not sure, that you only get one movie at the begining of a campaign and one at the end.

I've seen campaigns with more movies than that.

[kamal_]

Arkalezth wrote...

PJ156 wrote...

Also I think, but I am not sure, that you only get one movie at the begining of a campaign and one at the end.

I've seen campaigns with more movies than that.

Movies can only play at beginning and end of a module. I'm not sure if they can be played mid-campaign though. You may have seen some tricky cutscenes, as you can display pictures during a dialog.

[Arkalezth]

I was thinking of Markus Schlegel's modules, but I guess that's what you describe: pictures with dialogue. In any case, I don't recall those being too different from most movies I've seen in the game (MoW's, for instance), except maybe the one at the start of PJ's campaign.

Edited by Arkalezth, 06 October 2013 - 01:26 PM.

[andysks]

One of the most difficult things I have to get used to while building, is the fact that I have to build by trying to think as a player and not as a builder. What I mean is, even though my playthroughs went fine, on the test my girlfriend did, she encountered bugs I hadn't seen, simply because I always new where to go and which conversation I want to have and so on. For example, a conversation that is supposed to happen only once happens more times, or a journal entry gone wrong, because in my head, I did everything in order, and didn't consider the fact that a player will do as he pleases and in any order he wants.
It is mostly conversation stuff... some local variables that need fixing and some journal entries. I was really frustrated, but I guess it makes sense. I have written so much, it's like a novel. I also wanted to give the freedom to the player to do quests in any order he wishes. But the thing that went most wrong and needs some fixing, is the fact that I want to give the impression that the choices the player makes matter. When he kills an innocent or helps someone evil... all these will come back to you. I played a lot with local variables for this, and I have to do some digging to see what went wrong.

[andysks]

So a moment of truth arrived. I sent a test version to two test players. Arkalezth and PJ. They have already mentioned some glitches and corrections that are needed. I wanted to do more before I give it to them, but I got a bit fed up and wanted a second opinion on many things, plus people to point my mistakes in order to make it better.

In the meanwhile, I started collecting some resources for the chapter two. I found some really cool prefab areas on the vault and decided to use them to speed up the process. Some include :
kamal's arabic city will be one of the main areas.
dwarven stronghold from SKG73 will be an area that you can go at any point for a huge dungeon side quest.
A snowy mountain exterior I found(name eludes me), and many more.
These are all extraordinary works. Of course I had to adapt them to the lore of my world, add some placeables or remove some according to my needs, but they are great help indeed.

[PJ156]

You can take any assets from my mods for prefabs. Some of the areas could stand a second airing.

I keep meaning to strip the mods down and post a prefab set but there are always better things to be doing.

PJ

[ColorsFade]

PJ156 wrote...

You can take any assets from my mods for prefabs. Some of the areas could stand a second airing.

I keep meaning to strip the mods down and post a prefab set but there are always better things to be doing.

PJ

Almost every time I've gone to use a prefab in my mod, I've ended up building my own from scratch. I think I'm a nutter... 

I've used one prefab. Was pretty cool to get something done fast with a nice prefab... 

[andysks]

I also have a little problem with prefab areas, for there is always something that doesn't match my needs. And I don't know the code here... are we allowed to alter a prefab we found or not? I mean small stuff.
Example, I downloaded some ancient dwarven ruins from Anduraga, which has a quest inside and a scripted encounter. I am not sure if I'm allowed to use this area, or deleted the encounter or the quest and so on. Sure, the name of an area I have to change to match my lore, but that is small.

[PJ156]

Rip it, strip it, colour it or delete it. So long as you credit the author for the prefab you can do with it as you will.

PJ

[andysks]

So Beta 1 is ongoing, some bugs found by PJ and Arkalezth. Infinite XP bugs, convos, attributes... but mainly typos . One thing that got my thinking though, and I am not sure about when to release this work.
What I mean is that, in the beginning I wanted to make it in the form of chapters. 3-4-5 I don't know yet. But now that I got more experienced in the building, I see the work progressing quite fast. All this time that I am waiting from the testers to report bugs so I can fix them, I started making some work on chapter two, and I already have most of the areas that I will need. They only need convos quests and population. For me building a terrain or placing placeables takes most of the time, so I can safely say that chapter two will take less than a year for sure.
I also found some nice prefabs on the vault, like the city Hopeless in Outlands, that I wanted to build for my campaign, but Rogue Dao did it already. With that addition, a big part of chapter three is done as well. I want to build some layers of Hades and Celestia for later. This could prove time wasting.
But in any case, I am torn and can't make a decision, if I should release chapter by chapter or all together when it's done.
There are advantages and disadvantages on both. For example, if I release chapters, people that might play, may not remember well the plot by the time they play the next chapter, and I also have to merge them together somehow.
If I release it all together, it could be a while, and I don't know how many people will be left here by that time.

Anyway, just some thoughts that I wanted to share .

[ColorsFade]

andysks wrote...

But in any case, I am torn and can't make a decision, if I should release chapter by chapter or all together when it's done.

I can totally understand the temptation to release in chapters. I feel that temptation myself. You work so hard on something, you think it's good, and so you naturally want people to play it, experience it, and give you feedback. And that feedback cycle could help make subsequent chapters better. 

That said, I think releasing in chapters realy only benefits the builder and the builder's ego. Releasing as a whole story is better for the player. 

And that is what I try and remind myself daily: how do I want the player to experience this? I have a very defined campaign, four acts long (Prologue, Acts 1 through 3). There's a very definite character progression, story arc, places to visit, dungeons to dive... I want the player to experience it as the big story I think it can be. 

So, my advice would be, try and think about how you want the player to experience your work. Let that be your guide. 

[PJ156]

I release chapter by chapter for a number of reasons

1. Because I may never get to the end. It is very possible that some other hobby might pull me away from the tollset in the future. Better to get what you have out there, and if you work in bite size chunks to reach a kind of conclusion at each ending so if the next one is not finished then so be it.

2. It forces me to think of the story path in bit size peices and allows me to deviate if I feel like it. That way each module is self contained and reaches an ending in itself. Cliffhangers are no so good in my opinion.

3. Releasing something is energising. Building Tales from the Lake of Sorrows was a three to four year process had I not broken it up it would have been very hard.

4. You get feedback as you go which allows you to develop.

In the end it depends why you're doing it and what you want out of it. Some people never release thier work at all. I do it because I get a buzz out of sharing. 

PJ 

[andysks]

Colors: I get what you mean. I also have quite a big story, and I don't want the player to forget what's going on by the time chapter two is out. Even without a cliffhanger, and even with a synopsis of chapter one in the beginning of chapter two, there's always a risk of something being forgotten. One other thing is the campaign resources I have. All companions and some convos and of course the journal are campaign based, All these need to be attached to each seperate chapter and so on, something that confuses me a lot when I think about it.

PJ: I don't know about the hobby thing... creating D&D modules when I was a DM for my friends was a great joy. So after we stopped playing and I found the toolset, I was so glad... you cannot imagine . The energy and feedback are important, yes. For example I have made so much work on chapter two, because of what you and Arkalezth say to me. Even if it's only bug mentioning... it somehow pushes me to do work... in a good way .

In an case, the intro chapter is only in beta 1, which means I still have some time to think. I am leaning a bit towards an all together release... but I really don't know yet .

[andysks]

So after some thinking, I think I will go for the all together thing. There are just so many turns in the story, that it's tough to not have a cliff hanger by the end of some chapter. In a way, the PC is never left in quiet. One thing that was worrying me, was that I don't really know how many people will be here by the time I am finished. But seeing how the modules keep coming I guess the community will stick here for a while . In any case, there are many modules coming up, and many under development at the moment.
I was really torn on the decision, I still am to be honest, but I hope I am making the right choice.
I just want to say I'm sorry to the testers, because it might seem that the test was premature. But that is not entirely true. Through their comments I managed to make work that I was bored and not motivated to do before. Also, they game me motivation to start working on chapter 2 together with polishing the prologue and fixing the bugs. So I thank them for that .
Lastly, I got really jealous and inspired by the journal idea of Tchos and ColorsFade, and I want to make this thread like that from now on for the next chapter.

With that said:

Chapter two is progressing so fast that I cannot even believe it. I have all 40 areas needed, except from 4 dungeon layers and maybe a couple random exteriors. There are deserts snowy mountains, forests, islands... everything. I also see that my texturing on exterior areas is so much better and faster than before. I also found some interior areas prefabs on the vault, simaon best of interiors I believe it was called. They were absolutely stunning and together with a couple more prefab areas I am set for chapter two.

Main plot is written down, and all that is left is NPCs to get the convos. I got my hands on the Desert Folks by Storryteller as well. Amazing NPCs. I know, I am knew here .
All side quests are written as well, with locations and objectives.

One thing that needs to be done that I want to introduce in chapter two and I haven't even started it yet is the death of the PC. I will make it so that the player is transfered to a place between the planes when he dies, where he learns some things about him/herself. I won't matter much to the main plot, because I can never know how many times one will die. But it is going to be like something extra, and a different thing will be known every time someone dies. Up to a point of course. Maybe after one has heard everything, he then has to go through some task to get back to life. It is still only a thought.
But this comes later. First I wanna finish all areas, populate them, arrange the quests... and then I will think about that.

[kamal_]

andysks wrote...

simaon best of interiors I believe it was called. They were absolutely stunning

"Generic interior from Simaon/Intérieurs génériques de Simaon", and yes they are. I used them in both Path of Evil and in Crimmor. They look realistic and like people actually live in them. nwvault.ign.com/View.php

[Tchos]

andysks wrote...
Lastly, I got really jealous and inspired by the journal idea of Tchos and ColorsFade, and I want to make this thread like that from now on for the next chapter.

Hey, I wish everyone would do it, so I'm glad to see you will!  And I find my own very useful in remembering how or why I did things or what I was planning for something.

I'm a bit sad to hear you won't be releasing as chapters, though.

[andysks]

I am also sad because I wanted to see something released as soon as possible. But I cannot tell why I cannot do it because of spoilers. Of course this is not the only reason. It is also all the variables, companions etc that are campaign resources that are just overwhelming to adjust in chapters when I think about it. I don't think it will take much time... reasonable, but not forever.

[ColorsFade]

andysks wrote...

Colors: I get what you mean. I also have quite a big story, and I don't want the player to forget what's going on by the time chapter two is out. Even without a cliffhanger, and even with a synopsis of chapter one in the beginning of chapter two, there's always a risk of something being forgotten. One other thing is the campaign resources I have. All companions and some convos and of course the journal are campaign based, All these need to be attached to each seperate chapter and so on, something that confuses me a lot when I think about it..

There are two ways I can see releasing chapters. 

One way would be to have the campaign perform an auto-save at the end of each chapter. I would release new chapters by simply updating the previous campaign with the new module contents and re-releasing the whole thing. Then all the user would have to do to play the next chapter is load their last savegame that was automatically performed by the end of the chapter, and move forward. For new players to your campaign, they would be getting the sum of the chapters to that point, which would be ideal. If anyone didn't have a savegame (due to length of time between chapters, or loss of data), they'd have to start from the beginning, which may or may not be a bad thing. 

The other way would be to archive the campaign when you're done with a chapter, and then adjust the starting point when you publish a new chapter. You'd work with the same campaign folder and resources, just giving the whole thing a new start point (start of the latest chapter). You could remove any modules from the campaign that weren't used in the new chapter to keep size down. If you archive it before you change anything for the new chapter, you still have all the files and such for later use. When you finish all the chapters, you could go through the archives and add all the old modules back in, and tidy the campaign up as a single release with all chapters. 

So... I think it's doable in a couple of different ways without it being cumbersome of confusing. 

That said, you've elected to go the whole-story route anyway, so it's rather moot. 

I hope you do keep a journal here. They are fun to read and good motivation. 

[andysks]

Journal Entry

• Setting the stage for chapter two

I try to give the city that is the base of operations of chapter two a dangerous look. It's an opressive slave trading city, and I am trying to give it a feeling that someone always is watching you. There are a lot of hostile community groups, and story wise, many of them want the PC. So I had to make a disguise, and play with the factions. The disguise doesn't work, it only works halfway. But I guess I will figure this out. It's not so important at this state.
The factions, behaved very weird to me today. I want to make the civilians of this city untouchable, so that when a group attacks the other, they don't get on the way. I tried making them friendly to all, neutral to all... to no avail. It seemed that the hostile groups like killing them, and I have no idea why.

• Side Quests

I sat yesterday on excel, and make a sheet of all side quests that I will need. I came up with 15, added to the 20 of chapter 1. I tried adding some diversity, and I think I'm gonna use the scripts Tchos permited me to, the ones for gathering xNumber from the yThing. I love such quests. Also trasport an NPC, save someone, and evil ones of course. Like manipulate people or kill innocents because an evil NPC has something to gain.

• Companions

3 more added. The only one that don't exist yet is a bard from the basic ones. I just cannot fit him somewhere.

• The Chasing

I managed to do the chasing scene I asked help about a while ago in the scripting forums. You open a door, they attack you, you enter a dark corner, they miss you. I wanted to give it an Uncharted feeling. I remember chasing in the city was really cool in that game. I also got inspiration by the recnt game I played "The Wolf Among Us".

• Scripting

So far so good. No problems, everything compiles and behaves, except the perception-heartbeat with the disguise.
KevL's item trasfer script is flawless. Great help.

Until tomorrow with more progress .

P.S : PJ, I test now every convo when I write it for typos .