Henchman Profile: Vai

Vai (neutral evil, human female, cleric of Malar) is a mistrusted local cleric whose prowess in divine magic has seen her rise to the rank of Spirit Seer within Barrow Vale’s Wolfguard. The villagers fear and loathe Vai in equal amounts, although this concerns the priestess little.

Vai rarely consorts with other villagers as she believes her path will lead her to a higher purpose than any common folk could hope to aspire to. Following a vision she had as a young girl she is adamant that her destiny is to become one of the Beastlord’s chosen – an avatar of Malar.

As Vai regards the village and its inhabitants as worthless peasants she only involves herself in their affairs when her actions bring her closer to the unholy destiny she has foreseen for herself.

VO and new henchman profile for Eyes of Eilistraee

After a few polite emails I think I might have got some people interested in doing VO for some of the main characters in Eyes of Eilistraee. I have one very talented male voice actor confirmed and I'm hopeful of a positive response from two female voice actresses - who are also very talented.

In the meantime there's a new henchman profile on the way so stay tuned!

eR

Slow going, but still going...

No update for a couple of months again! Sorry about that.

If I could summarise the state of Eyes of Eilistraee I'd say the critical path is almost done but a lot of polish is still required to many elements of the module. Combat balancing is something I need to tweak as is making sure all of the party members have their storylines fully implemented and bug free. Still a fair bit of work to do.

The worst part about it not being finished is that the migration to NWN2 appears to have really picked up pace, since some of the newer high quality modules have been released and with the event of MOTB and the announcement of Mysteries of Westgate. If more people playing NWN2 mods means less playing NWN1 mods then I'll be releasing the mod to a much smaller audience. Although that's something that does concern me, I can envisage a situation that would see me port Eyes of Eilistraee to NWN2 in the future so, in theory story, dialogue and scripts would not be lost and therefore the bulk of the project wont be wasted effort.

Since I've had 8 interruptions since starting this post (that is why I never get time to update the damn blog) I'm going to have to abandon this update. Sorry guys. They'll be more as soon as I can grab some time to post it.

eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Battle Scripts

Been a long time coming this post, so apologies for the delay. I have so much other stuff going on right now it's hard to keep this up to date.

Over the last few weeks EOE has continued to take shape even though I've not been posting about it. The main highlight has probably been the addition of the double dealing demons quest in act 3 and the custom battle scripts that I've added to the final showdown with the player's nemesis.

For the demon quests I've taken a fair amount of inspiration from the Underdark section of Baldur's Gate 2. The player gets the chance to work for and double cross a number of different fiends (a Pit Fiend, a Glabrezu and a succubus to be precise) whilst trying to obtain a key item that allows him to progress to the end of act 3. It's my hope that the various paths through this quest will highlight the "Tanar'ri Fortress" as one of the most enjoyable sections of the module.

With the battle scripts I've managed to change the way the final battle plays out depending on the tactics adopted by the player. They'll also be ways to make the final confrontation easier by completing various quests throughout the module. More to come on this later.


eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Player Choices Part 1

One of the hardest things to get right in an RPG is the creation of a story that accommodates meaningful choice. In EOE I'm trying to allow the player to make decisions that have an impact that can be both recognised and appreciated. I'm not talking about simple mechanical gameplay choices where the player chooses to use a +2 Axe to get better damage. I'm talking about choices made at the story level and character level that have the potential to cause change.

After some thought and a lot of research I've come to the conclusion that significant player choices should be able to change the following:

1) The environment - i.e the gameworld in which the story unfolds.
2) The story itself.


In terms of changing the environment the task at hand is actually pretty simple. For example if the story featured an evil red dragon who ate the local townsfolk, the player's choice to take on and then defeat the dragon would be easy to reflect in changes to the town environment previously under threat.

For example before the dragon was defeated the town:

1) Had a group of brave but arrogant knights each boasting of how they would be the one to defeat the dragon.
2) Townsfolk too scared to hold the annual summer fate for fear of attack
3) A merchant going out of business because people are either leaving the town in fear or staying at home rather than visiting his shop

Following the dragon's defeat all of the above features of the town change:

1) All but one of the knights leave. The remaining knight pledges his loyalty to the player due to the player's bravery.
2) Upon the player's return from slaying the dragon the summer fate gets into full swing as word has reached the town that the dragon is dead. The player is made the guest of honour at the fate
3) The merchant invests in a new line of dragon scale plate armour which he sells to the player at a heavy discount

Whilst these are only examples - some of which are pretty unoriginal - they all serve to highlight the fact that aspects of the environment have changed due to the player's actions. The pre-victory features of the town carried the theme of fear and despair whilst the post-victory features draw on features that were already present, but changed the theme to happiness and success.

If areas have a theme based on the circumstances of their inhabitants, then guidelines to consider for environmental change are:

1) Change to existing features allows an old area theme to be replaced with a new one based on the players actions i.e the environment has changed from bad to good. Adding new features offers the potential for greater emphasis of a new theme but sacrifices the connection with the old theme - i.e things are good now (but we don't know what things used to be like)

2) The feature that is going to change must be noticeable by the player. If the captain of the guard changes his tunic from a red one to a green one after the defeat of the dragon and the significance of this is not communicated directly to the player then the change was too subtle and the opportunity has been missed. If the town guard all wear red, are heavily armed and patrol the town before the defeat - but then change to all wearing green, carrying light or no arms and are all stood in line listening to a speech about how everyone should be grateful to the player, then the change is clearly easier to notice and draws attention to itself.

3) The change should be in keeping with the story or the quest the player has just undertaken. If in the above example the player learns that red tunics are worn when times are bad to remind townsfolk of the blood spilled by their ancestors fighting dragons the change feels more significant on a number of levels. Removal of the red tunics symbolically communicates that the danger has passed, no more blood will be spilled, the war is over, the guard are now focused on the "green shoots of recovery".

4) The player should always have an idea that their choices may have good or bad consequences. Unforseen changes can take place but they must not appear to punish the player's actions particularly if the players actions were good or neutral. Unforseen change should be good or neutral in the eyes of the player. If the player's actions result in something terrible, or a number of terrible things, happening to the town the player may well feel unfairly punished for their actions. Changes like this are along the lines of the defeat of evil the dragon leads to an orc invasion and the enslavement of the town - something a good player could not have forseen.

Well since this post has turned out longer than expected I’ll split the discussion of story changes into another post and leave you with the new logo for Eyes of Eilistraee – minus the background image (which is coming soon).

eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Funky effects

After playing around a lot with some of my custom encounter spawns in the later part of Eyes of Eilistraee I decided to add a random delay to the spawning and spawn effect of individual creatures in a group.

This turned out rather well. I now have a set of scripts that I can reuse to "place" a balanced (I used a custom scoring system to determine encounter toughness) group of spawned creatures that appear one after the other at variable intervals. This not only makes the spawn in effects seem cooler (those are configurable as well) as they last for longer but it also means that the player doesn't know what his party is dealing with until the last monster has spawned - and by that time he's already in the thick of it. :)

Other stuff I've been working on includes the main hub of the last act. There's some stuff to add to the last act before it's complete, but once that's done I'll be able to start fixing and polishing the other acts one by one. In addition to this I managed to get some more party banter into the module.

During exploration of one of the crypt areas under her village Kyrie pipes up and starts to question why the tyrant buried in the crypt has such a majestic tomb. At which point Vai starts to argue with her, giving the player the chance to pledge his support for either NPC and gain affinity points through my influence system (another post on that in the future).

The only thing I need to master here (because HOTU provided a lot of custom scripts for party banter) is how to start the banter between two characters without the generic "Hey can I talk to you for a moment" conversation node.

Keep you posted
eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Bug stomping

Bugs are the most annoying thing in the world. I've spent a chunk of time trying to figure out why a certain NPC wasn't spawning to deliver some plot critical dialogue. Turns out the variable I was checking was... er... the wrong one. Argh! That's a real basic error that I should have picked up on. Ah well, the good news is that now this bug is fixed key parts of the storyline can be reached and many more aspects of the module are falling into place.

Before I go, and because I'm sure everyone loves a good ogre screenie - here's another ;)


eR

Blog update: New layout!

Since the old layout was getting quite popular with other boggers - *cough* Alazander *cough* - I've gone for a new template to give my blog a fresher feel. It needs a fair bit of tweaking to re-add some of the old links and my traffic monitor but hopefully I'll get all of that sorted out over the next few days.

eR

Ogres! Waaargh!

Just a quick update following some progress I made over the weekend. My time was taken up by a lot of other stuff last week so I didn't make the progress that I wanted to. Having said that two of the player's henchmen got updates and re-writes to their dialogue to make it more in keeping with the character of the NPC.

The first NPC who received attention was Lina Ghostwhisper, the first henchman the player can hire. She has a strong dislike for the streets of Sundabar, it's smell and the lack of good soup. She's also an eager halfling ranger who wants to get out into the wilds on a new adventure as soon as possible.

The player's first quest is to solve the mystery of who is attacking the village of Barrow Vale and why. Vai the Nightseer, who joins the party early on in the story, has important information about this mission. She won't give her clues up easily though, as her poor relationship with the villagers gives her little inclination to help them. After the updates Vai's attitude is now much more transparent and the player dialogue options are much more focused.

Finally I managed to grab a screenshot of the Ogre caves area that the player needs to explore to complete an element of the main storyline. The ogre models are taken from the CEP and have been contributed by the DLA team. Don't they look mean!

eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Area updates

I honestly don't know where I'd be now if I hadn't decided to focus on one build of Eyes of Eilistraee that used content from CEP 2.0. The sheer volume of quality placeables has allowed me to give distinct visual themes to a number of areas - something that would have been impossible otherwise. If I want to make an ancient elven city with some districts left untouched by time and others tainted by the presence of Tanar'ri demons, I can!

I'm pretty happy with the way the final act is shaping up. A lot of polishing is still required but the overall structure, branching game play paths and area themes are in place.

Hopefully by the end of next week I should be able to do a complete run through and highlight the areas that need attention. Following that I have some side quests that I'd like to add just to expand the player's options and to re-enforce some of the core story elements in the module.

Keep you posted.

eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Progress at last!

Workload for my day job has effectively put a hold on EOE development for Neverwinter Nights over the last 3 - 4 weeks. It's frustrating to have to drop everything then pick up where I left off, but that's life. The good news is I've put in a good few hours this week fixing bugs (some odd things happening when henchmen rejoin after dying and escaping prisoners running away without stopping to thank the PC for freeing them - how rude), developing areas with groups of placeables that fit the theme for that area and generally tidying up content that was added a while ago but still felt a bit unrefined.

Garron the ranger is officially out as a starting henchman and will be replaced with Lina Ghostwhisper. She's a different sort of character - a bit more light-hearted and fun. Speaking of Openings the starting area of Sundabar's East Gate (see the city screenshot from the toolset) has undergone a few significant changes to make it feel a bit more closed and imposing. A few of the encounters that the player could have on the city streets have been moved to a tavern as they make sense as more private affairs.

The mid section of the module - where the player gets a significant choice over which path they take - still requires work to ensure that both paths diverge successfully and that the player can complete the goals has he/she wishes to and that the game world reacts accordingly.

Keep you posted.

ER

Eyes of Eilistraee: Let the setting do the talking

One of the design principals I try and follow in building neverwinter nights modules is the "show don't tell" approach to delivering the back story. In a lot of cases it's much more interesting for a player to learn something through some kind of interaction, even if the player is largely passive, than to force them to read an in-game book or character journal for the same information.

As a result of this approach, I'm constantly trying to find engaging ways of delivering plot related information whether it be ambient or critical, so that players feel that they are discovering my story rather than being spoon fed.

Last night, whilst updating one of the cavern areas close to the village of Barrow Vale, I was struggling to come up with a back story that covered the history of the cavern's current and previous inhabitants. After rejecting one particular back story, I started to think about the history of the people of Barrow Vale and their relationship with werewolves. After a bit of tinkering around, I came up with the premise that the caverns were the retreat of werewolves who'd been driven out of the tribe when the human members had decided to settle down and build Barrow Vale. Over time, the werewolves had waned in power (for various reasons) and other inhabitants had taken root in the caverns - making their own distinctive changes in an area once inhabited by lycanthropes. With a “layered” history I used lycanthrope habitation as a background theme for the design of the area then overlaid the influence of the cavern’s newer inhabitants with appropriate terrain features and placeables.

This link between the people of the village and the caverns gives me an opportunity to plant plot elements in the caverns that relate to the back story for the module. I think this will raise the areas above your standard "stone dungeon" variant and create a more interesting atmosphere (with appropriate placeables, secrets etc) and provide the opportunity for the player to explore the history of Barrow Vale should they wish to do so.

Last note: Apologies for a lack of screenshots. They are coming I promise.


eR

Content Loading

Over the last weekend and last week or so I've managed to spend a fair amount of time on the areas in acts 1 and 2. The village of Barrow Vale (where the story really kicks off) has had most of its connecting areas polished and improved with new encounters, CEP placeables and adjustments to layout. A few new 'minor' puzzles have found there way into some of the crypt areas that are accessible from the village, as well as a larger puzzle that will require a fair bit of testing before it's stable.

On the characters front just about all of the henchmen have their party banter, interjections and progression points mapped out. It'll be a fair challenge to implement all of these but a few sustained sessions should see most of that stuff in the module and working.

I have to admit that the wealth of stuff in the CEP is making dressing areas a whole lota fun although finding the right placeable can be a bit of a trawl due to the sheer volume of assets.

In the next update on Eyes of Eilistraee I hope to post a few screenshots so that folks can get an idea of the setting and areas they'll hopefully be exploring in the future.

Thanks for stopping by ;)

eR

Henchman Profile: Kyrie

Kyrie (chaotic good, human female, fighter) hails from the village of Barrow Vale nestled in between the cold forests and harsh mountains of the north. Uninspired by mundane village life, she left her home and headed for the city of Westgate seeking adventure.

After spending a number of months enjoying the delights of the city, Kyrie found herself broke and unemployed. Ever a capable swordswoman she became a mercenary to pay her way. However, after seriously wounding two well respected noblemen in a dispute over fees, she was forced to flee into Westgate’s underworld to escape hanging.

She spent the following months working as a lookout for the Night Masks until news reached her that Barrow Vale had been under attack from a group of wizards. After a harsh re-assessment of her loyalties Kyrie gave her employers the slip, stole out of the city and headed home.

Henchman Profile: Federo Blacklock

Federo Blacklock (chaotic neutral, human male, rogue) has a notorious reputation as a gambler, swindler, thief and con artist in the cities and townships along the Sword Coast.

Born in the Amnian capital of Athkatla he was fortunate enough to be educated within the city’s wealthy elite. However, a taste for skulduggery and a rebellious streak saw him join the ranks of Shadow Thieves upon completion of his schooling. Following a number of successful robberies and scams he became very popular within the guild only to have his rise to fame cut short, when the Shadow Thieves put a price on his head for failing to pay off huge gambling debts. Settling his debt with the proceeds of a successful heist against the Zhentarim saw Federo earn new enemies faster than he could placate old ones.

With the recognition that his life was in danger he decided to put as much distance as possible between himself and his victims. Under the shadow of darkness he left Athkatla and headed north. Following months without word, a recent sighting has sparked a rumour that Federo has holed up in some disreputable tavern in a northern village called Barrow Vale.


Federo VO line 1

Federo VO line 2

Eyes of Eilistraee: New NPC profiles on the way!

Just about to upload a new profile, more to follow soon.


eR

Eyes of Eilistraee: Update

This is just a short update on my progress with Eyes of Eilistraee just to show that I’m still beavering away on it despite the lack of recent news.

What’s new? Well quite a bit. The module was always fairly neatly split into 3 acts and since the last update acts 1 and 2 have received a lot of attention. As a result much more of the module is playable (and robust) and you really start to get a good feel for the scope and story. Act 3 is a bit shorter than the others and so shouldn’t take too long to implement. 4 out of the 5 optional henchmen have basic implementations (I.e they’ll join you, get fired and re-hired) and I’m starting to give them some life by dropping in appropriate interjections based on location & PC actions.

So a lot has been achieved over the holiday period which is great news for everyone, especially yours truly. One less positive aspect is that I’m having trouble getting hold of someone to create additional art resources to help me promote the module. I have some cool stuff (that will make it on to this blog in the future) but I need a few more art assets to take the production values up a notch. Any volunteers?


eR