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

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