Cutscene Movie

I was able to test out my cutscene solution and it works like a charm. I am able to switch the camera around the area with ease, although I still have some bugs to work out of the intro movie. The screen shot illustrates how I am able to get shots of the battlefield mixed in with shots of the throne room without needing to reload different areas.

Cutscene Solution

I think I have a solution to my cutscene problems. With some prodigious camera placement, and a little creativity on space I think I can squeeze 2 to 3 combat scenes, as well as 1 or 2 (faked up) indoor shots into a single area. Then the area loads, and I walk the PCs through each of the various story points. When the intro is done, then the PCs are shunted off to the starting area (the Brelish Camp). That only leaves me with two area loads, one on entering the intro, and one on leaving it. I think I can live with that.

By the way, the armors you are seeing are made specifically for the cutscene. I want to show a battle between Galifar I's forces and the remnants of his opposition. The previous armor was for Galifar I's soldiers. The armor today is Daskaran scale (Daskara being the name for the nation of Thrane before it was conquered).

Armor Creation

After having worked on outdoor areas for the past couple of days, I decided to spend some time on another aspect of the game. To my (not great) surprise, I also stumbled upon another bug in the toolset. It's not earth shaking, but it is just annoying enough to really tick me off. Fortunately I figured out a work around.

It seems that when you first create an armor, you can not save any tint information for the armor's base selection. Now, the tint always seems to revert to whatever it was originally each time you change the armor by adding additional models (bracers, shoulders, etc...). The annoying part is that changes you make to base armor tint are not saved. I have been able to get around this by 1) creating an armor, 2) saving the armor and closing the toolset, and then 3) re-opening the toolset and changing the tints. Without closing and re-opening the toolset, none of the tint changes made to the baseline armor stick.

Dragon's Crown

I had this idea that I would be able to use cutscenes in order to give the player a sort of introduction movie before the module starts. Something that outline the roles of rulers like Karrn the Conqueror, Galifar I, and all the way out to King Jarot, that will give the players some background on how the Last War starts and why.

Come to find out, cutscenes in NWN2 are driven by conversations. That means that my plans for jumping around from one great battle to the next, and into and out of throne rooms, is almost busted for sure. For one thing, you would have to wait for each of the various areas to load before their cutscenes played out. Well... the whole idea needs rethinking now.

In the meantime I will continue to plug away at my module. I want to create a few more of the important outdoor areas before I begin to populate them (either with NPC or with encounters).

Walkmesh Problems Solved

I finally solved my walkmesh problems. It took some rearranging of the three various campsites in the area, but I think I have something usable now. The image should be very similar to the one I posted yesterday, but if you look closely, you should be able to spot the differences. The only other real problem I ran into is that the walkmeshes for the two large military tents (in the lower right hand portion of the image) are backwards. Where the tent shows an opening, the walkmesh shows a wall, and vica versa. It's an obvious bug, and I'll wait for a fix. The walk around is, of course, to enter the tents from the rear.

The area itself is now probably about 40% done. My daughter spent a few hours helping me to place various mundane objects in some of the command tents. I have no problem with the swords, and armors, and other implements of war that might be in a soldier's camp, but leave it up to a little girl to ask, "What are they going to eat?" She's been a big help in making the area seem more real.

I'm going to try switching gears now and start working on one of the introduction cut scenes. I've never done a cut scene before, so we'll see just how painful this gets. Hopefully there are some helpful sites out there that can walk me through the difficulties I am sure to have.

Expanded Camp

I spent more time fleshing out my Brelish Camp, and now estimate I'm about 30% done. It is still slow going, but that's mostly because I'm looking through all of the placable lists without knowing exactly what I want or need.

I've also run into a slight problem with the walkmesh and baking. Apparently I'm arranging my placables in such a way as to prevent vast portions of the camp from being walkable. Not what I want. I'll need to play around with the placement until I get something usable.

My First Area

Well I've spent the last two nights messing around with area creation, and I can only say that I hope it gets better from here. The base camp for PCs during the early part of the module will be a Brelish military encampment on the outskirts of Mishann's Crown. I tossed my first attempt, because things just weren't flowing right. I can't stress how important it is to have a drawn design for the areas you want to create... however even that doesn't help if you refuse to look at them during design ;). Never fear I've learned my lesson.

The picture above is the culmination of about 2 hours of work last night. I estimate I'm about 10% done with the area. I really hope things go faster, but I can tell you that I am already starting to get the hang of the new toolset, and am picking up several tricks to area creation. My second attempt at designing the Brelish Camp went much smoother than my first.

Right now I've just got the command tents in place. I still need to add the soldier's tents, supplies, and several sections of ancient ruins.

The Official Campaign and the Toolset

I was able to play the game for about 2 or 3 hours before leaving on a week long vacation with the family. Since I've been back though I've had some time to continue playing the official campaign as well as delve into the toolset.

The toolset is more complex this time around. There are areas where they have improved it and areas that I find lacking at the moment. I truly do like the flexibility that you have in creating outdoor areas, though I do miss the days of tiles simply for their ease of use. Creating outdoor areas is much harder than it was in NWN1, and to tell you the truth I haven't even begun on any of my own. After a week I'm still devouring every tutorial that I can find on the net (though at the moment, I do play more than I develop... so sure me).

I've also got some mixed feelings about armor generation. On the plus side are the tints. I like being able to fine tune colors as much as NWN2 allows you to. However I have to say that I think NWN1 offered a wider range of overall looks. I am hopeful that the community will start to add more custom armors in the near future to rectify this problem. As a side not I also find that switching through armor components is very slow and tedious on my machine. This is very frustrating as one of the things I enjoyed most about NWN1 was designing custom armors, but now it takes me 30 to 40 minutes just to put a single outfit together. So far I haven't found any other aspects of the NWN2 toolset that are as tedious.