Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
When you look at the shots from NWN2 and the caves from Baldurs Gate you can see why it needed a remake. Amazing really that what people once thought was incredible looks really basic compared to what you can get on a phone !
I can't wait to see what we'll be looking at and playing in another twenty years. Roll on the 3D virtual reality wii style hack and slash madness with video helmets and sword controllers.. And I wouldn't mind a computer that you just tell what to do too.
When you look at the shots from NWN2 and the caves from Baldurs Gate you can see why it needed a remake. Amazing really that what people once thought was incredible looks really basic compared to what you can get on a phone !
I can't wait to see what we'll be looking at and playing in another twenty years. Roll on the 3D virtual reality wii style hack and slash madness with video helmets and sword controllers.. And I wouldn't mind a computer that you just tell what to do too.
I will need to be virtual in 20 years. I would have the energy to pick up the sword 
Pj
Just for your viewing pleasure here are the second and third levels of the skindancers in the bridge district. I'm doing all the interiors for AR05**
Level II
Level III
The last area is how I imagined it to be i.e. a loading dock in one of the bridge tunnels. A bit more work needed on the lighting now I look at it again.
PJ
PS: Thanks to Rjshae for doing the walkmesh for the level 3 area, saved me a whole lot of baking fuss
Great work, PJ! 
I have some new screenshots from the Athkatla Docks! It's still a work-in-progress, but it's getting close to final. As I think I mentioned before, the idea was to take a single, difficult exterior area and take it all the way through block-out to deco'd so I could properly gauge how much time it will take to deliver all the areas at "SOAR quality". While not entirely representative of the original, I think it still maintains a similar theme and style (hopefully!). 
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Bg2 doesn't look basic it was far better than nwn 1 and as good as nwn2 it just can't alter the viewing angle
And exactly what sort of drugs were you on when you played it all those years ago ?
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Sorry to be negative and I can see there's a lot of work involved but the dock walls and big buildings look modern with all the extremely precise angles, flawless colouring and smooth rendering and the placeables stick out like a sore thumb which makes it all look strange. I know it's none of my business but is there any way of removing all the render from the walls etc. just like in the patches where it's fallen off.
I don't know what the original looked like so it might've been like that but it looks like mediaeval mixed up with 20th century architecture.
I'm glad Tsongo pointed that out because I was thinking the same thing and I was wondering if it was just me, or if every other NWN2 area looks that way. I've played BG2 and I can perfectly recognise the docks district in those pics, but I agree that some walls look a bit too... polygonal, angular and clean, to put it in some way. Maybe it's just the textures.
Looking at the original Athkatla Docks screen shots, it appears that there are very few flat walls. It would need a bunch of slightly curved surfaces to match that look. It's do-able, but it would take work, and realistic-looking uneven edges and curved surfaces result in much higher poly counts.
Since I built another city in Amn for Crimmor, and looked to BG2 Athkatla for inspiration among other things, I wanted to chime in.
The docks shown are a mighty work (I'm guessing you used BCK, and BCK is a pain to work with), but they need help. Athkatla as seen in BG2 has much more grime, imperfection, and "tightness". Athkatla is nearly 1200 years old, and looks it. Arkazleth and Iforgotmypassword pointed out the flaws. The reason that those straight, perfectly textured walls look wrong is that they contrast very sharply with the missing plaster wall decals, eg the walls are perfectly kept... except for those giant sections of missing plaster. The rounded walls of the original look more like an area that was once nice, but is now run down, versus the newly built pre-planned look of the perfectly textured and straight walls.
In BG2 the docks district is mostly run down, the bars there are low class catering to the sailors, the thieves make their home there, the walls have large sections of exposed brick and the parts of the walls that aren't exposed are deeply weathered. The gloriously decorated Harper guildhall stands in contrast to the grime outside. In fact the Harper guildhall being so glorious and sticking out so much is part of the Jaheira plotline.
I'd make that area about 2/3rds of it's current size, squeezing things together. I'd also reduce the height of the walls. rjshae mentions the work in making curved walls, but there are BCK curved walls so it's a builder's choice. I think those bck walls and buildings need a much less perfect texture. If I got a hold of the area and had to keep the wall positions as they are, I'd replace the bck walls with mulsantir walls or use the mulsantir textures on the bck walls in order to rough up the walls. The ground needs a coloring pass with brown, to bring out the griminess, and I'd put in some splotches of dirt texture on the pavements. The buildings need an additional brown pass around their base. Finally, it needs a grimier day/night setting than shown, the Akthkatla of BG2 is drearier.
If I could get a hold of that area and the haks for building, I could grime up a section pretty quick.
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Tsongo it was the same drugs you were on when you became a bg2 expert having never played it.
I might've never played it but I've seen plenty of screenshots and it's one of the reasons why I've never bothered with it because it looks pretty crap and if it's as good as NWN2 then why remake it ?
I'm not an expert but there's nothing wrong with my eyes drugs or no drugs !
I might've never played it but I've seen plenty of screenshots and it's one of the reasons why I've never bothered with it because it looks pretty crap and if it's as good as NWN2 then why remake it ?
I'm not an expert but there's nothing wrong with my eyes drugs or no drugs !
Well we've all got our tastes, I suppose. I've replayed it four times and it is still one of the best cRPGs available. Unfortunately the rules are based on AD&D, which seems pretty archaic now. Playing BG2 in NWN2 with v3.5 rules would make it a fresh experience, at least for me.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. Ultimately, I felt pretty good about the area, especially considering NWN2's challenges and all the custom content that went into trying to hide some of them, but I definitely feel much less good about it after reading your comments.
Why is the area so angular?
The walls are purposefully angular because otherwise the walkmesh wouldn't bake and I wouldn't be able to pull up the terrain through the walls. The ground of the Docks are actual terrain and terrain doesn't like being curved when being raised/lowered. I have some ideas on some ways to potentially help mask this, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to explore these options as I'm not sure it'll work out and they're pretty expensive.
The walls are too "perfect".
As you probably already know, the walls are made out of BCK (as are a lot of things in the area) which isn't the most flexible for texturing. A single wall can have more than 4 tiled textures on it, which makes it extremely difficult to make anything that will look good. It's possible though that my texture map is just wrong and needs more help.
There were supposed to be some extra decals for the walls, but those were failing to work properly in the hak (though they were working fine in Override) as they were grabbing other mesh's materials for some reason. I ran into this issue on BGR too, and I still have no idea what causes this (maybe the hak size is too large?).
Why don't you use the OC walls from NWN (such as the ones from Mulsantir)?
These walls not only do not match thematically (they look really bad in the Docks), but they don't have the right pieces to create the docks too.
The area looks too big.
I very much disagree. NWN2 is not a very fun experience when you're fighting in super-cramped areas (and there's plenty of fighting in the Docks at night), and the area isn't that big. Maybe the screenshots are a bit misleading when it comes to scale?
The ground texture looks too light/not dirty enough/etc.
Yes, I agree. This texture is a first iteration, and I'll need to do some extra work on the color balance of it, not to mention darkening it up a bit. The dirt texture used over top of it will obviously have to change too since it will no longer match in hue.
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I was hoping to not have to create a bunch of new custom content from scratch, but it looks like I might need to. It looks like I'll need to create some custom walls (not just BCK wall textures) and make the Harper's Hold and Thieves Guild as a single mesh too so I can texture them how I want. As for the curvature of the docks, I can maybe used the rounded BCK floor that I made which matches the ground texture to hide the gap between the terrain and the wall. It might look really weird though and the walkmesh most certainly won't work properly.
I can now see why the BG2Redux team wasn't able to finish their mod...
areas with big height differences and overhangs are really awful to play with other camera modes but the character one.
I really like how your docks are progressing. I assume you will continue to improve the texturing and coloring as you go, and adding little touches and so on. One thing I did not think fits the area is the grey stone wall next to the large yellow building (last picture). You might find a better fit with one of the adobe placeable walls, which are the same shape I believe, but are textured yellowish. Its possible that Kamal made an improvement on that package to allow you to tint-color them too!
Keep up the good work!
"Why is the area so angular?"
yup there is a lego feeling or NWN1 feeling, it needs improvement.
"The walls are too "perfect"."
yup they are"too perfect" as they are. It also needs improvement.
"Why don't you use the OC walls from NWN (such as the ones from Mulsantir)?"
they could be used to "dress" the BCK walls and gives an "old" feeling to the area.
"The area looks too big."
I think many thing gone wrong in that area, but if one thing I find is really "on the spot" it s the size and proportions.
"The ground texture looks too light/not dirty enough/etc."
True, or maybe there isn 't enought placeable yet. I think the area in is "too bright"
Question about a small detail, best seen in the 3rd pic: Can those wooden stairs actually be accessed? It looks like you have to climb the wall first, which shouldn't be possible to do in game, unless it's a very small wall. Maybe add a small set of stairs on the other side of the wall, or better yet, make a hole in the wall in there?
PS: Unlike the last few posters, I'm not a module builder, and hence don't know what can actually be done or what's available in practice, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Mr Eligard.. You're on those drugs again ! It was you that said the original looked as good as NWN2 so I don't know what you're on about and I said that I could see why it needed a remake because it looked bad not that it needed one for my sake because I'm not bothered about playing it.
I don't know why you're defending some old game so much it's only a game and really no big deal. You know the tennis one with the two lines and the ball that bounced around well everybody thought that looked good at the time but I'd much rather play Mario Tennis in 3D. I think you're suffering from nostalgia but those days are gone and computers are capable of far better things now and I certainly will never go backwards from what we have now. There are lots of people who have grown up with better graphics and games like me ( I only got a computer 8 years ago ) and want more from a game and NWN2 is more capable of delivering that than the original so good luck to all concerned with this project.
Hey before I forget I wanted to share a technique I thought of to make high gloss marble floors in islander.
You can use these for the harper hall and churches etc.
Create an ultra low layer of colourless still water for the entire interior. This gives you reflections and refractions such as you would expect. I think the technique was used in witcher sparingly. I don't know how they did it but that's how I duplicated it.
That's a really cool idea; thanks!
Here's a quick, WIP view of a new wall I'm retexturing:
Retour en haut
