Clearly it has. Too many things have gotten in the way of my beloved EOE project for me to make significant progress since the last post. There are a number of revisions in the pipeline that will improve the overall gameplay experience, but most of them are still stitting in my note book for the time being. Things will change, I will get this mod done but once again I ask you to make a roll on your patience skill and hope that you all pass ; )
eR
Friday, August 01, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: NWN 1.69
Not found much time over the last week to work on Eyes of Eilistraee. I was going to post part of my ToDo list, so you folks have an idea of where I'm up to, but as it would give away a bunch of spoilers I decided not to ;)
On the plus side I've been looking into the new features available in NWN patch 1.69. It looks like this will be a major patch from BioWare (possibly the last for NWN?) as it will release a whole raft of new content. Since Eyes of Eilistraee is coming out in the twilight years of NWN's popular lifespan I think it kind of makes sense to utilise whatever I can from the new patch especially if it adds to my existing setting and style.
For reference here are some of the highlights from the patch notes for 1.69. I'm not promising that all of this will make it into Eyes of Eilistraee but some of it certainly will:
8 New Tilesets:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Barrows Interior
Castle Exterior, Rural
Castle Interior 2
City Interior 2
Fort Interior
Sea Caves
Steamworks
Tropical
New Creatures (over 100 new apperances):
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Caladnei (NPC)
Cobra (Regular, Black and Gold )
Curst Swordsman
Gem Golems (Diamond, Emerald and Ruby)
G'Zhorb the All seeing Eye
Halaster
Harat, Lord of Darkness (Large and Small)
Horses (63 Different varients, plus mounted Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, Halflings, Gnomes, Half-Orcs and Dwarves)
Lord Antoine Baccha, Visier de Guise (NPC)
Maggris, the Hive MotherMasterius (Regular, Disguised and Powerful)
Mist Dragon
Nightmare ( Regular, Saddled and Armored )
Ogre Chieftan
Purple Dragon Knight Archer (Female and Male)
Purple Dragon Knight Blade (Female and Male)
Satyr (Regular, Archer and Warrior)
Wereboar
Widow Hagatha
Wyvern (Great, Adult, Juvenile and Young)
plus hundreds of new placeables..
eR
On the plus side I've been looking into the new features available in NWN patch 1.69. It looks like this will be a major patch from BioWare (possibly the last for NWN?) as it will release a whole raft of new content. Since Eyes of Eilistraee is coming out in the twilight years of NWN's popular lifespan I think it kind of makes sense to utilise whatever I can from the new patch especially if it adds to my existing setting and style.
For reference here are some of the highlights from the patch notes for 1.69. I'm not promising that all of this will make it into Eyes of Eilistraee but some of it certainly will:
8 New Tilesets:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Barrows Interior
Castle Exterior, Rural
Castle Interior 2
City Interior 2
Fort Interior
Sea Caves
Steamworks
Tropical
New Creatures (over 100 new apperances):
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Caladnei (NPC)
Cobra (Regular, Black and Gold )
Curst Swordsman
Gem Golems (Diamond, Emerald and Ruby)
G'Zhorb the All seeing Eye
Halaster
Harat, Lord of Darkness (Large and Small)
Horses (63 Different varients, plus mounted Humans, Elves, Half-Elves, Halflings, Gnomes, Half-Orcs and Dwarves)
Lord Antoine Baccha, Visier de Guise (NPC)
Maggris, the Hive MotherMasterius (Regular, Disguised and Powerful)
Mist Dragon
Nightmare ( Regular, Saddled and Armored )
Ogre Chieftan
Purple Dragon Knight Archer (Female and Male)
Purple Dragon Knight Blade (Female and Male)
Satyr (Regular, Archer and Warrior)
Wereboar
Widow Hagatha
Wyvern (Great, Adult, Juvenile and Young)
plus hundreds of new placeables..
eR
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Go Henchmen!
After some messing around I've sorted out the levelling up of the henchmen as they join the party. This functionality is available in SOU scripts but I've abandoned those, due to bugs when trying to do stuff with more than one henchman. I had to start from scratch and recreate each henchman with a "pure" legal build so the LevelUpHenchman function would work. Now everyone levels up as they should so I have a party of 4 (3 henchies and one player) ready to kick ass. Now that the party is at the right level I can do a lot more in the way of combat balancing.
Most of this weeks work has been on creating more dialogue for the henchmen story arcs. Xanthea has had the most attention so far. Hopefully she'll be finished up soon and I can move onto completing the others.
I've also spent a lot of time reading up on the nature of CRPGs. Being a builder I'm always interested on how players feel about "what makes a good RPG". One key aspect that keeps cropping up is roleplaying through skill use. This is something that is implemented in EOE already, but reading about player choice and skill use in an article on the RPG Codex (sorry no link - easily googleable though) has given me a few more ideas on how to allow for skill use. I've now got plans to allow players with certain skills to discover hints about a puzzle and to allow other players to see the hints via another method - cryptic I know but it'll all become clear in time ; )
One screenshot before I go - some early dialogue whilst questing in Barrow Vale:
Most of this weeks work has been on creating more dialogue for the henchmen story arcs. Xanthea has had the most attention so far. Hopefully she'll be finished up soon and I can move onto completing the others.
I've also spent a lot of time reading up on the nature of CRPGs. Being a builder I'm always interested on how players feel about "what makes a good RPG". One key aspect that keeps cropping up is roleplaying through skill use. This is something that is implemented in EOE already, but reading about player choice and skill use in an article on the RPG Codex (sorry no link - easily googleable though) has given me a few more ideas on how to allow for skill use. I've now got plans to allow players with certain skills to discover hints about a puzzle and to allow other players to see the hints via another method - cryptic I know but it'll all become clear in time ; )
One screenshot before I go - some early dialogue whilst questing in Barrow Vale:
eR
Monday, March 31, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Progress, progress
About a week ago I took a long hard look at my "todo" list for Eyes of Eilistraee. A lot of it was really simple stuff that could be sorted out quite quickly. These things got done over the last week; fixing minor bugs, adding or correcting scripts, deleting redundant NPCs, moving triggers etc.
There are still small things that need sorting out but now the list contains mainly core stuff that still hasn't been done yet. This actually makes it look scarier than before : (. There are some fairly big tasks on there that I still need to think carefully about.
Time to take stock I think and look at the value of adding the features on the list versus polishing and improving what is already in the module.
Despite the work left, a big success story is that the introduction to the story has had its overhaul completed and the swine of a cutscene that I could never get to work has been fixed. The beginning of the story feels much more natural than it did before.
On a final side note NWN podcast guys have an interview with Adam Miller that is worth checking out. Adam doesn’t give away huge insights into his design approach but there’s some useful general advice on mod building – and it’s really cool to see such a well respected module maker turn out to be actually quite humble, and pretty funny.
eR
There are still small things that need sorting out but now the list contains mainly core stuff that still hasn't been done yet. This actually makes it look scarier than before : (. There are some fairly big tasks on there that I still need to think carefully about.Time to take stock I think and look at the value of adding the features on the list versus polishing and improving what is already in the module.
Despite the work left, a big success story is that the introduction to the story has had its overhaul completed and the swine of a cutscene that I could never get to work has been fixed. The beginning of the story feels much more natural than it did before.
On a final side note NWN podcast guys have an interview with Adam Miller that is worth checking out. Adam doesn’t give away huge insights into his design approach but there’s some useful general advice on mod building – and it’s really cool to see such a well respected module maker turn out to be actually quite humble, and pretty funny.
eR
Friday, March 07, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Argh! Mind Flayers!
With the huge choice of monsters available in nwn (including custom creatures from the CEP) it's easy to pick a bunch of cool enemies to throw at the player - what is harder is fitting them into your story.
I've never been a fan of having generic caves that feature bugbears, drow, goblins and the odd grey render. If I'm going to use a creature type it has to have a motive for being there, whether it's simply ecological or because it actually has a role within the story.
Anyway enough chatter on to the screenie!
Mind Flayers make a few appearances in Eyes of Eilistraee for very specific reasons - this allows me to add fun battles to the mod and helps in the telling of the story.
Along with the addition of the Illithid encounters I've added in a whole bunch of new dialogue for existing characters and generally spiced up some of the earlier areas of the mod.
The next thing I need to do is to get back on top of VO as it's something that takes time to get hold of and can be tricky to manage.
eR
I've never been a fan of having generic caves that feature bugbears, drow, goblins and the odd grey render. If I'm going to use a creature type it has to have a motive for being there, whether it's simply ecological or because it actually has a role within the story.
Anyway enough chatter on to the screenie!
Mind Flayers make a few appearances in Eyes of Eilistraee for very specific reasons - this allows me to add fun battles to the mod and helps in the telling of the story.
Along with the addition of the Illithid encounters I've added in a whole bunch of new dialogue for existing characters and generally spiced up some of the earlier areas of the mod.
The next thing I need to do is to get back on top of VO as it's something that takes time to get hold of and can be tricky to manage.
eR
Monday, February 25, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Fixes and scripts
Just a quick update this morning - larger ones to follow this week when I get the chance to re-size some new screenshots. My main focus over the last couple of weeks has been fixing a few long term bugs and adding bits of missing content (adding effects to creatures, removing content no longer needed and tweaking scripts).
The biggest addition to the module as a whole is the use of the Bioware tilemagic system to apply different tile effects to areas. I'd always planned to use this but just hadn't got round to it until now. Tilemagic has let me create ice caverns with ice and pits that actually look like pits! I now have a tilemagic system that uses variables on the area to determine what tile will be changed and where, whilst a default script takes care of the rest. So far it works well apart from some issues with tile effects not showing up in the city interior tileset.
Thanks for the comments on the previous post - it's good to know there are nwn players out there! Regarding the level of Eyes of Eilistraee - well it's not set in stone but I'm aiming at a starting level of 10 -12 (although encounters should balance to a wider range). As usual the player will get bumped to the minimum starting level if required at the start of the mod.
That's it for now. Just a quick plug for the guys over at http://www.nwnpodcast.com/ - keep up the good work guys. For anyone who hasn't been tuning in, the podcasts are well worth checking out.
eR
The biggest addition to the module as a whole is the use of the Bioware tilemagic system to apply different tile effects to areas. I'd always planned to use this but just hadn't got round to it until now. Tilemagic has let me create ice caverns with ice and pits that actually look like pits! I now have a tilemagic system that uses variables on the area to determine what tile will be changed and where, whilst a default script takes care of the rest. So far it works well apart from some issues with tile effects not showing up in the city interior tileset.
Thanks for the comments on the previous post - it's good to know there are nwn players out there! Regarding the level of Eyes of Eilistraee - well it's not set in stone but I'm aiming at a starting level of 10 -12 (although encounters should balance to a wider range). As usual the player will get bumped to the minimum starting level if required at the start of the mod.
That's it for now. Just a quick plug for the guys over at http://www.nwnpodcast.com/ - keep up the good work guys. For anyone who hasn't been tuning in, the podcasts are well worth checking out.
eR
Monday, January 21, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: News
Not made much progress since the last post - the hostage quest is still shaping up though developing both good and evil paths is challenging. One bit of news that I've not mentioned yet is that a new Drow Outpost has been added to EOE.
This area offers players a nice side quest and some background history to the main plot - as well as the chance to fight nasty drow (always a good thing - even/especially if you are drow). I'm happy with the layout of this multilevel outpost, although at some point I need to add a few encounters and set up the scripts required for a fun side-boss battle.
Until next time ;)
eR
eR
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Crypt battles
I've recently spent a lot of time implementing some custom battle scripts that I did a while ago. The battle is the first major boss fight in EOE and I wanted to add in a few special rules to make it more interesting. Though I'm still not 100% happy with it, it's pretty much done and functions as required. It was good to finally get this one out of the way as it's been waiting to get done for a while.
Yesterday I received more cool VO for Casmir. I still need to get reads from my other actors but hopefully next week I'll have a bunch of sound assets to add into the module.
Next on my “to do” list is an encounter with a band of ogres holding hostages. The player gets a number of choices as to how this plays out - the tricky part is balancing the choices so that an evil decision has both a negative impact, but also has a good reward - whereas a good decision results in giving up the reward and facing greater trials to save the day (it's not supposed to be easy being a hero!).
I've taken a few screenshots that I'll be releasing over the coming posts, so here's the first, showing an encoutner in the terrible tanar'ri fortress:
eR
Yesterday I received more cool VO for Casmir. I still need to get reads from my other actors but hopefully next week I'll have a bunch of sound assets to add into the module.
Next on my “to do” list is an encounter with a band of ogres holding hostages. The player gets a number of choices as to how this plays out - the tricky part is balancing the choices so that an evil decision has both a negative impact, but also has a good reward - whereas a good decision results in giving up the reward and facing greater trials to save the day (it's not supposed to be easy being a hero!).
I've taken a few screenshots that I'll be releasing over the coming posts, so here's the first, showing an encoutner in the terrible tanar'ri fortress:
eR
Monday, January 14, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: First VO has arrived!
The good news on the VO front is that one of the guys has come up with the goods and sent over some lines for Casmir. I've uploaded a couple of these on to his profile so check them out!
eR
eR
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Eyes of Eilistraee: Banter, banter
Well the Christmas break gave me a good chance to put in a lot of work on Eyes of Eilistraee. After some exploring I found that the HOTU random and non-random banter triggers for conversations with party members didn't quite do everything I needed - so I wrote a new one. This has turned out to be a wise move since now I can quickly add in banter conversations between henchmen at appropriate points of the story, just by laying down a trigger and setting 3 variables on it.
Eyes of Eilistraee now has a new sort of prologue area that introduces the player to one of the main characters and helps to set up motivation for the main quest, as well as giving them a mini intro quest to get stuck into. Speaking of the main quest, I've added a number of elements that make the story a bit more of a personal journey of discovery. The player can now learn how to unlock and wield special abilities that are stored up inside strange rune-like scars on the palms of his hands.
With a lot of new stuff going in, the next job is to tidy it up and make sure the module is stable from start to finish - with the new content.
My hope is that the end is in sight - after almost 2 years of on and off development I really want to be getting close to something that can at least go out to beta and then released. Then I can start *playing* games again ;)
eR
Eyes of Eilistraee now has a new sort of prologue area that introduces the player to one of the main characters and helps to set up motivation for the main quest, as well as giving them a mini intro quest to get stuck into. Speaking of the main quest, I've added a number of elements that make the story a bit more of a personal journey of discovery. The player can now learn how to unlock and wield special abilities that are stored up inside strange rune-like scars on the palms of his hands.
With a lot of new stuff going in, the next job is to tidy it up and make sure the module is stable from start to finish - with the new content.
My hope is that the end is in sight - after almost 2 years of on and off development I really want to be getting close to something that can at least go out to beta and then released. Then I can start *playing* games again ;)
eR
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to one and all.
Hope you enjoyed the holiday season. Stay tuned for updates on Eyes of Eilistraee coming soon.
eR
Hope you enjoyed the holiday season. Stay tuned for updates on Eyes of Eilistraee coming soon.
eR
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