Tuesday, October 30, 2007

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.

Friday, October 26, 2007

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

Monday, October 22, 2007

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.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

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.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

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.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

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.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

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