Project Update: ON HOLD

Sorry for the lack of updates. I recently have been recovering from a flood that we had a few weeks ago here in Washington State. I thankfully live on the 3rd floor of the building I live in so nothing project wise was lost. I did however lose my vehicle. I was also unable to get back into my building for a few days as well. Dealing with that and of course the holidays have been keeping me quite busy.

The scene from my balcony:

THIS PROJECT IS NOT CANCELED. I WILL finish it. It is merely on hold.

I have decided to suspend working on it and work with the team making the Realms of Ultima.

I feel Realms of Ultima is a VERY good thing for the Ultima Community, and ultimately a better mod to have finished first. Plus, I hopefully would be able to borrow many assets of this mod, once it is finished.

I will let you know when this mod will resume. I'll try to tell some of the various other Ultima news sites when I am back to finishing this.

Thanks to those of you following this blog and your encouragement for this project. I GREATLY Appreciate it!

For now I encourage you to visit Realms of Ultima!

Moonshade Catacombs area finished

Sorry for the lack of updates, but rest assured progress continues.

Area built and is exactly the same layout of the original. I still need to write 1 script for this area (The Magic Harp), but am having difficulty coding it. I decided that wasting any more days working on this is not productive, so I will address it later (I think I know how to tackle this).

Next: Furnace

The original Furnace area was around a 48 x 28 tile set, which is something you do NOT want to do in the NWN2 engine. I will sadly have to break this area into 2 areas. I need to play through in the original game and explore and figure out the best way to break it up.

Can't wait to code/script the Test of Purity!

Sample Music

I have sample of the music I am working on for this mod: Music

Please note this is an ALPHA mix and needs some remixing, but it should give you a good idea on some of the music... as well as some of the original voice files from the game.

Hope you enjoy.

The Mountains of Freedom finished

The area layout and dialogs/scripts are finished for this area. Some of the scripts need a bit of polishing but they all work (sadly, I was able to re-create a bug that exists in the original with one of my scripts, it however is fixed now...amusing). I was able to keep about ....99%? of the layout the same as the original, but again, the Ultima game has some tile sets NWN2 does not have. I also had to come up with an idea for the endless tunnel. The way they archived that in the original is not even possible in the NWN2 engine (loading tile sets while playing), but hopefully I have a happy resolution to that.

Some screen shots:

What did you call me?

The Black Sword thank to
MWM Ultima Black Sword Hak

The RWS Deep Chasms Tileset:

A very sad ranger

I am now working on all the updated states/conversations in Moonshade after you come back from Freedom (sadly, it is not that much).

Moonshade trial finished

Sorry for the lack of updates... I.. Uh.. spent some time playing Mask of The Betrayer as I needed to see what was new in the tool set and such. Wow! What an excellent game! This is by far, the best story/game Obsidian has done to date. I enjoyed it immensely. Thank you Obsidian!

I also have my game in DOSBox now up to this point as well, so now I can continue on working on this mod.

The trial in Moonshade is scripted, and the area built. I did not work on scripting the meeting with Frigidazzi, (all the dialogs and different conditions are finished) as this is when "Adult" content starts popping up in the game. (Actually there is another in Monitor, but I have not finished that one as well). I'm not sure how I will handle this, but I am still committed to making the game 100% like the original (as possible as I can with the tool set). I'll visit this later.


Up next: Freedom!

Monk Isle Finished

All the dialogs/Plot items are now finished for this area. After that I...

I put together a new computer: A dual 2.4 GHz Intel processor, 2 GIGS RAM, and a GeoForce 8600GTS.

I started a new game of Mask of the Betrayer and... HOLY CARP! I never realized how incredibly beautiful NWN2 was! I had basically an old computer that met the minimum specs (and with a shader 2.0 vid card), and NWN2 ran fine, but agonizing slow. Anyways, wow... having a decent graphics card makes NWN2 shine!

I made meticulous backups of all the work I had done so far, and no problems there. Everything loads in the toolset (so far) and is ok (keeps fingers crossed). EXCEPT, I had forgotten to make a backup of my current play-through of Serpent Isle in DOSBOX. It will take me a few days to get back to where I was, but this will also allow me to check a few various states of quests/items I had not checked, but now can.

As soon as I get back to where I was in DOSBOX, I'll be working on the dialogs in Moonshade.

Mad Mage/Northern Isle finished

All the dialogs/Items are finished (This is a plot specific area). I spent probably WAY too much time on this area, mainly because I needed to be sure I understood a few concepts on the NWN2 engine (especially creating a hak pack and custom TLK). After a couple of days forum reading I was able to figure out what I needed:

Custom loading tips:

Custom Portraits:

Custom Icons:

(I also have custom load screens as well, I just did not have a screen shot handy). I am pulling all the Icons/Portraits directly from SI (via Exult Studio). Also I made sure I understood the scripted waypoint system (i.e. Vasel/Erstam walk back and forth and performs tasks/animations) This all works fine now.

Also MokahTGS uploaded the Realms of Ultima Content Pack - Icons which included some SI specific icons! Thank you MokahTGS! :)

You can visit MokahTGS's site: Realm's of Ultima

Up next: Monk Isle

Northern Isle quest finished

The Plot essential quest on the Northern Isle, is finished. I was happy to be able to script this event 100% like the original. Some screen shots:

In the original
My NWN2 Mod (Currently, and may change):

Up next, writing the dialogs and making the interior for the Mad Mage.

Moonshade dialogs finished

These are now finished, up to the point where you acquire a certain item.

The area is not built, as I am still thinking how to break up the wilderness and the town areas of the island. I want to focus on the "explore" element prevalent in the Ultima series, but without having to load a bunch of external areas. I'm still pondering this.

Up next is the Isle of the Mad Mage.

I'm still not sure how to handle the "travel" to the Isle. I'll come back to this later as I think upon this more.

Arrival Area area finished

I had designed the arrival area and it was plain and boring. Thanks to Awesome area builder Vibeke, she finished the arrival area:

Welcome to the Serpent Isle

I would love to show you more of the great job Vibeke did for this area, but I do not want to spoil too much. I still need to polish the scripting/events and dialogs for this area, but that will be done in the next Phase.

I have almost all the dialogs finished for Moonshade completed (up until you... acquire a certain item that will make the residents... treat you more friendly). I'll work on finishing that tomorrow.

Project listed on Ultima: Aiera

Sorry for the lack of progress reports, but rest assured work continues, I'll have another post later tonight.

The nice people of Ultima: Aiera have listed this mod project on their site!

http://aiera.timeimmortal.net/

So go have a look, and visit there for all your Ultima needs! The Ultima timeline they have on there is an excellent resource to those that may be new to the Ultima series. Give it a read. It is very well done.

Sleeping Bull dialogs finished

All the dialogs/variables needed for this area are done. I did make the first floor of the Sleeping Bull, just to test some of the dialogs and scripts (Such as after talking to an NPC thier name will change from say "fighter" to "Wilfred") as well as being able to turn the candles on or off.

A sample pic (This area is FAR from finished, and will change):



Those that have played before will probably remember this priceless quote. :D

I updated to v1.10 for NWN2. So far, no problems. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Thankfully all the plug-in's I use are now updated for 1.10, that's why I waited.

Up next: I may try to do the cut-scene of the boat trip... or just move on to Moonshade.

Fawn dialogs finished

All of the dialogs for Fawn, including the "Event" are all now finished. This took me a long time to complete because there are TONS of conditionals in most all of the conversations. For example, 1 NPC took me 6 hours to write, due to the amount of different text the NPC will say, based off of certain conditions. Whew!

All 3 different conditions of the "Event" (The Player does 1 thing, the Player does another thing, or the Player does nothing at all) are there. I never knew that if you did nothing at all, you get a way cooler ending of the "event" (In my opinion). In all my times of playing through SI I never considered this. heh.

I really wanted to build the "event" area and test and script this scene, but with the new stuff in MotB coming soon, I'll wait till I have my hands on that.

I also finished the 1 side-quest in Monitor (The uh, one that involves 1 person in Monitor). All the dialogs are finished for that as well.

Up next: Sleeping Bull

Silver Seed finished

Wow. I never thought I would say those words. But currently, a person could play and finish the Silver Seed quest. Well, the mechanics/areas/items/dialogs to finish it are there. The areas are ugly, horribly unbalanced, and unfinished. But I have accomplished what I was looking to do. Oh and a screen shot, that doesn't really spoil things:

Actually this is a really crappy screen shot (because I don't want to spoil...something), but let's just say the entire sequence came out pretty well. I'm happy with it.

And thanks to Exult Studio, I could just load up the original, and enter the map mode, so I could easily map out the keep.

Up next. My favorite town, Fawn! The "event" that happens there is awesome. I can't wait to work on re-creating it.

Silver Seed Fiend's Domain finished

The area/scripts/conversations are all finished. I was really happy I was able to create this trap:


just like the original. Player sees a seemingly safe area, runs on in, fires suddenly appear and then ouch! Yay!

I'm not quite sure how to handle the "saw" traps, from what I can determine from the original, a proximity trigger gets fired, the saw blade animates and will damage anyone near it. For now I just have some spike traps. I'll address this when I get to the polishing phase.

There are quite a few missing creatures as well. I am happy with the Suit of Armor:


Still could use a little more tweaking, this is just what I cam up with in about 5 minutes. Now I just need Mongbats, Naga, Wild Men and Headless. and Gazers. Wild Men, Headless and Gazers should be easy enough to create. For Mongbats, well I tried just making the normal Bat creature, and resizing it. Works ok. Not sure what to do about the Naga.

This area is basically a gigantic combat and traps area, and finding hidden items in rubble. As well as finding the best item in the entire game. heh.

Next up is the Keep. Unfortunately there are no maps of the keep (like for the other 4 areas), so I'll have to do a little bit of digging to see if I can somewhat make a map and re-create the area the same as the original. I d/l a U7 editor as well as looked around in Exult Studio as well.

Silver Seed Aram-Dol's Lair finished

The area is finished (scripting etc..). Here's screen shot.. nothing too fancy.

Somebodies Throne Room

It occured to me when building this, that the documents that come with the Ultima Collection include the official Silver Seed walkthrough.. including maps. I was able to simply print out the individual pages for each area, and draw up a grid over the map, and create the area EXACTLY the same as the original! yay! (Well, Ultima has a few tiles that NWN2 does not have, so I improvised). The area ended up being a 32 x 24 area, and I was able to fit all 4 levels in the area, so there will not be any loading delays (which was my original goal). I am trying to not load any areas, while exploring one. The area still needs placeables and polish.

Next is The Fiend's Lair. And thankfully, I have a map of the area, so I can just draw up a grid and also create the area exactly the same.

Silver Seed Outpost Finished

Pics!

The original entrance to the outpost.

How it looks in my mod currently (not the final version).

Please DO note: No, that is not what the NPC's will look like. No, that is not what the Leather Armor will look like in game. I have not even begun to work on that yet. Since Mask is almost ready for release, I'll wait until I see what new stuff Mask has.

I pretty much kept the layout of the outpost exactly like the original. The Puzzles, scrolls, notes, traps are all done and scripted, and again for the most part, exactly like the original (like the notes/plaque that are unreadable unless... you do something). The area needs a TON of polish, but again I will wait until Mask is released. For the Ice Golems I used Patsy's & Sunlee’s Golems.
Currently they are un-killable, which was quite amusing as I play-tested this area. heh. I obviously have something set wrong in their attributes, I will change this later as balancing will be done much much later.

Now off to do Aram-Dol's Lair. Bleh. I *HATE* this area in the original. As a person who is Dungeonly Challenged™, it's easy for me to get lost, and lose my sense of direction (even with a map!). Yes, yes, I am truly a pathetic person. :D

Silver Seed mazes finished

All 4 levels of the maze are finished, and again, all the correct paths are exactly the same as the original. It still needs polish, like placed items, and re-doing the tint of the tiles (I forgot that once you find a certain item, I realized the maze is actually gray and not the brown I had made them). Thankfully there is the awesome Sunjammer's Tintinator 2 plug in!

Up next is to make the Abandoned Outpost, as I believe it is smaller than Aram-Dol's Lair. And I'll need to write a few unique scripts for the Outpost. So this should be interesting.

Silver Seed - The Maze

The first level of The Maze is now finished. All scripting is done and works fine. I just now need to place down some more blue flames and other objects so it looks pretty. The layout and "correct" path is exactly like the original.

Monitor dialog finished

All the dialog from the original game is now finished on all NPC's in Monitor (And 1 NPC in Fawn). I had to play through Exult a few times to verify a few different states/dialogs on certain NPC's and as far as I can tell I have it exactly as the original.

The next portion I will work on is the Silver Seed. As when I typically play SI, after the test is when I grab all my companions and head to the SS part (just for the ring of reagents!) heh.

of dialogs and Chaos

I have spent the last couple of days re-working all the dialogs. I wasn't happy with how they looked in game and am making them more efficient. Also since it is so blatantly obvious when a character is saying something that will allow a new dialog option on a character I removed the complete railroaded dialog, that I was forcing the player into. It is now working (for the most part) exactly like the original.

Anyways, this I what I am continuing to work on.

Knights Test

This is finished now.

Key areas/scripts finished:
1. The OMG! beginning area. You are however not damaged, as I don't know if there is a way to check to see if oPC is running or walking. However I feel the whole psychological experience of OMG! is there.
2. Locked doors requiring keys. Easy.
3. Secret entrances. I think I have a way I like that is somewhat close to the original. There is a discussion on this currently on the BIO boards, so I may read and consider that further.
4. The claw, using the claw.
5. All the scroll notes and corpse notes.
6. The pikemen encounter. This may need a little tweaking.
7. The Totem Animal. I *really* like what I did for this, model wise/cut-scene.
8. Shmed. Encounter works perfect.
9. Magic Gremlins! I love these guys! I think they turned out great.
10. Not sure how to do the "stack the stones" puzzle. I'll have to think about this.

Next up, work on the conversations in Monitor after taking the test. And the 1 side quest.

Magic Gremlins!

Posting comments

Sorry! I have set this now to accept all posts from anyone.

Sorry I had this turned off.

Screenshots

Just some sample screen shots from the beginning area. There is really no big spoilers. And each picture is 800X600, just warning those people that cant look at big pictures(?).

A conversation in the conversation editor:

All those sexy clickable dialog options!

Exciting Cut scenes!

VAS FLAM! That's going to hurt!

A nice fellow named Karnax.

So there it is. I'm sure you all are so overwhelmed by these screen shots that you had to run outside and have a cigarette break! Or not. Anyways, I hope you enjoy them.

Back to finishing the Knights Test.

Area Creator and or Modeler

Plain and simple, I can make an area, but I just do not posses the artistic talent to make those WOW!! like areas.

If this mod sounds like something you would like to work on, I am looking for the following:

1. I'd prefer someone who currently owns a copy of SI & SS. (Don't even ask me to send you a copy, I won't). But not necessary.
2. You do not need to have the artistic ability of Roge Dao, seriously my cat could make better areas than I. I just need someone that knows what the hell they are doing in the toolset and can make pretty areas. A genuine interest in making areas for this mod is all that is needed.
3. If you spend days/months creating an area, and I decide to completely change or not use your area, and this would completely piss you off, then please do not apply. This is still a work in progress, and so things may change. However the area you did create, that we don't use, could be shared with the community, so it's a good thing! :D
4. I am the final arbiter in all decisions. Any successful mod project MUST have someone to make all final decisions. I AM a very good listener, and will always listen to anything you might have a concern or desire over, but again, I will decide all final decisions.

I don't want to come across as some control freak and complete bastard :D (I'm not, really!), but JE Sawyer wrote a VERY good article on how to manage a group of people working together to make a mod. (I don't have the link handy). And I am just following his (very good!) advice.

So if you are an Area builder and or a Modeler (Serpent Statues, Ank's etc..) and are interested, PLEASE SEND ME AN IM At the Bio Boards in my thread:

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=582078&forum=111

I'm Gallaen Frost there.

Playing SI

Currently I am playing the original game up to what I have created in the tool set currently. Just to verify I haven't missed anything.

Time to go on a rampaging killing spree in the north woods to get meat for any living thing that moves! That drops meat...

After this, I'll be working on the Knights Test area in the tool set.

DEATH

Ugh! I spent more time on this than I care to admit. Man this was painful to figure out. *grumble*.

It's not pretty, but it works.. for now.

(Trying not to spoil too much)
On death player is transported to area.
Player receives a Silver Seed plot item
Player has conversation.
Player is teleported back to where they last died

It works. Enough said.

Northern Woods - West

This is now finished:

Shmed's house
Shemd's conversation
The entrance to the test
remove NPC's
Teleport player to the test

My (current) idea to handle all of the outdoors of the main Isle is to break it up into 3 sections: Northern Wood West/North/East.

Balance

Some may wonder what exactly I will implement into this mod:

Food?
Reagents?
Spellbook?
Lockpicks.
Leather armor, Plate armor, Magic armor?
Keys?

Food: This will be a low priority. I am not wasting any thought on it yet. I will use it, I just haven't figured out how I want to implement it. Also once you gain the goblet, this becomes useless. This is not plot related.

Reagents: After you find the ring of reagents (which you can get, *somewhat* early on) reagents become completely useless. Not sure what I will do yet on this. This is not plot related.

Spellbook: This should be easy enough to code using an item to cast spells. At least I hope it will. heh. Again see above about reagents.

Lockpicks: I haven't figured out how to allow any player to use lockpicks (that isn't a thief class). I'm sure this is really simple and easy, I just couldn't figure it out...yet. I just then have to figure out how to make them work or break, based off of some stat. I believe it was based off of DEX in the original.

Armor: My idea for this is, for example Leather Armor. What I would do, is change the base AC of leather armor down. Then if you have leather gloves, this will add 1 AC. Have leather legs, add another 1 AC. Leather helm add another 1 AC. Thus when you have Leather armor, gloves, boots and legs, you now have the AC of regular leather armor. I felt it important to maintain the same dynamic in the original.

Keys: Not sure how I am going to handle this yet. Currently a key is used up when used.

Money: I will be doing the exchange rates and different types of money. This will be finished later.


The above stuff will be implemented later. Again my current scope is to create a basic skeletal outline of a fully finishable Serpent Isle. Basically, conversations, plot items, bare bones areas, scripted scenes, death. Basically, if it is not plot related, I wont be working on it. But there is some stuff I am creating as well. Such as all the NPC's in Monitor. I just wanted to finish the conversations with all NPC's with this first phase.

Monitor

Monitor is finished.

The state of Monitor is exactly as if the Avatar has not taken the test yet.

~*Must have - Plot related*~
All NPC's and conversations
Guards accompany you until you meet Marsten.

~not added - will be added later~
Training area
Stores

Currently Harnna allows you to talk to her about all topics. Currently this is just for de-bugging purposes. It will be easy to set her back to the same behavior in SI with just a few variable checks. Man she used to piss me off! (Unless you use the cheat, ask her only 2 questions at a time).

And holy crap do people talk a lot! Marsten's initial conversation alone had a word count of somewhere of 2000+ words.

I almost wanted to to make a new NPC interaction where Shamino comments "Methinks the people of Monitor do talk most excessively! Perhaps they could just hand us a book to read instead to save us time on our quest!"

Something like that. heh. But no, I am trying to stick to being 100% true to the original game.

I placed buildings around but the only building you can enter (currently) is the Crematorium. The rest of the NPC just hang outside the buildings.

Again this was finished a while ago, just posting it here.

Arrival Area

The Arrival area is finished. For this area:

~*Must have* Plot related~
(Don't worry, I will not spoil anything.)
Lightning storms bad!
Meet the Monks
Script Monk Battle scene
Create specific plot items
The cave
1st creature encounter
Entrance to new area.

The scripted monk battle came out very well. I am quite happy with it.
Also the area I designed for this works just fine, but is unfinished.
I haven't figured out how to place a ring of fire, (for now I just placed the Sigil for that effect).

The conversation with the monk, I played SI in the background to verify I was copying the correct lines for that character from the Usecode. (I do this for ALL NPC conversations). It takes a while but I want to be sure, as there are a few un-used lines. If I remember reading correctly some of the plot was changed, but the old lines remain for some characters.

And of course all of the dialogs are in the Ultima style, in that all the topics appear, and as you read them those tops do no appear again.

Currently I am forcing the PC to read ALL topics before leaving the conversation. In my current play through in SI I am making sure I talk about all topics before leaving a conversation to make sure I have all topics available. I can fix this later as it is easy to figure out when a certain topic line allows a new topic to appear for a certain NPC.

I finished this area quite a few days ago. I am just posing it here.

Beginnings

This is my blog on attempting to make Ultima VII Part 2 - Serpent Isle in the NWN2 engine.

My current goal is to place/make a "skeletal" structure in a NWN2 mod to play and finish SI.

(It will not be pretty, but you can at least finish it, for now.)

Each area *must* contain plot essential events/items.

Each area *must* have the same dialog as in the original game.

Thankfully, anyone can open up the USECODE file in Wordpad and view ALL the dialog in SI. I can simply copy and paste the dialogs and re-create them.

This will be a huge time saver for me. I am however playing SI (In DOSBox) to verify the conversations, items etc.

And the main question: Why SI?

Well simply, for once you are not stuck with the "Virtues", are stuck in a strange land, still trying to find Batlin, and the story/dialog is great! Lot's of deception/intrigue (the traitor in Monitor), finding your lost items, it's a great game.

When re-playing SI a few weeks ago, while the interface was... nostalgic, it finally occurred to me, "Why not try making SI in the NWN2 engine!". And thus, it all started.

In case you were wondering, yes I have used Exult (I finished VII a few weeks before using Exult, but I just felt some things... missing, so I will finish SI using DOSBox.)

Anyways, this is my first post informing you on my goals.

I'll update later.