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.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
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!
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.
Sorry I had this turned off.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
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(?).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
~*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.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
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.
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.
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