Friday, January 27, 2012

Progress Update

I haven't posted much in a few months on what progress has been happening with Crimmor.

Wyrin's foraging placeables have been added. I didn't say the full wyrin system because I rewrote his script into a general forage script that checks skills party-wide to allow party cooperation in harvesting. (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Scripts.Detail&id=395). Crimmor is getting a modified version of my posted version of the generic forage script. The posted script preserves Wyrin's forage system, but for Crimmor I wanted to alter things.

Wyrin's stuff requires the pc have some survival skills to have a realistic chance, since survival is a skill always checked in his system and the survival DC goes up to about 20 or so. Crimmor is an urban environment, so finding the plant among all the things in the forest (survival) isn't needed. I removed survival checking, as I figured someone skilled in alchemy (the other skill wyrin checks) would be able to recognize the alchemical plants they can work with, even if they didn't have general plant knowledge from the survival skill. So survival checks are out except for the two plants, reeds and the retch plant, where the description of the forage process in the placeable description implies it's pretty much entirely survival skill. Those two still use survival. The craft alchemy check is made much harder (mostly over DC 20) now though to compensate, and make the foraging a reward for those that pursue the craft alchemy skill. Additionally, you must also have base skill points in survival or craft alchemy, it didn't make sense that the untrained person could harvest extracts, or even know that they could.

Several small fetch quests were added to fill out the world and give a purpose to some areas that were entirely for flavor previously. Hopefully people will find these better rationalized than NPC "I need some firewood", Player thinking to themselves: "There's an axe and a woodpile right next to you, you're able bodied and there are no monsters around." I don't like it when there's no rationale for why the npc isn't taking care of the task themselves. In Crimmor these often function as exploration quests, as the npc doesn't generally know where what they are looking for can be found. For example one npc is looking to find a particular kind of wood to have a lute made, as he's a hobbyist lute player in his spare time. He hasn't found anywhere that sells that kind of wood yet.

The scripting of some of the generic commoner things has started, to cover things like people in taverns sitting and drinking, bards playing. I found some useful scripts out there I can use.

A prefab area had all it's trees replaced. Crimmor doesn't have a perpetual windstorm like the Sword Coast, Chult, and Rashemen apparently do. A community member gave me access to redone tree spt files, that eliminates the trunk/branch swaying (the leaves still sway).

A number of placeholder conversations have been filled in. Tip for other builders, putting {placeholder} into a conversation allows you to search for "placeholder" in the toolset and find all these placeholders, but since it's inside the {}, it won't show up in ingame testing. This allows you to write out your conversations quickly if you're stuck on finding the right conversation lines for your characters, so you can add in scripts etc and test things even if you're having a bit of writers block.

8 comments:

  1. This sounds good kamal. I like the {place holder idea} I have been using specific notes but searching for them could be tricky, adding a tag at the beginning of my notes will make it easier.

    The foraging system is a great piece of work too. The first time I used it in Dark Avenger I was very impressed. The removal of survival makes sense with your campaign and will open it up to more character types.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Kamal,

    This sounds like it is having all the right attention that I also like to consider when modding. :)

    I am still considering the foraging system myself at the moment,but may leave it for a later addition. Time will tell.

    Lance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is looking really good Kamal. I love the way your doing skill checks, and stealth. Really looking forward to it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi! Your blog progress on this new mod looks great and I am looking forward to the release!

    I was wondering if you are still active on NWvault as your account though, as I had some issues with PoE and sent you an email from your profile at the Vault, but couldn't tell if it's reached you yet. Is there another way to get in touch with you if I have some questions?

    Thanks again for all your hard work and what you've done for the community!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Post your problem here, I have not received any email through the Vault, it must have been caught in spam filters.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Okay!

    I have been playing PoE recently, having gotten through the Neverwinter and Muzad areas with relatively little trouble. However I started to notice something happening after I left Muzad and began to wander about and explore the rest of the World Map, eventually trying out Ekkathys. The difficulty I seem to have run into is that the In-World Clock Timer seems to be running extraordinarily fast. I was casting spells for buffing and then finding the spells expiring almost within minutes of moving around a map area.

    I don't know if this problem was already there and I only just noticed it, or if it only kicked in when I went to Ekkathys, but I noticed in my Record Window at one point that the module information had 2 real minutes for every in-game hour. My character and the party are around levels 9-10 currently and it felt 'wrong' that I couldn't even get through a few rooms without losing my spells -and as a primary caster, it hurts!

    I'm really enjoying the campaign, and I love the playing experience- I just really wish I could find out why the in-game clock is moving so fast! Did you set it that fast on purpose? Is there a way to fix this? I could really use a hand, as I have had to shelve the saved game I have for now, being unable to get very far at this point without my spells working.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have no idea as I did not alter the game clock. However you might be better off heading to Al-Qasr (near the crashed boat where you enter the world map) and the city of Pros in northwest faerun before Ekkathys.

      Delete
  7. Oh okay... I don't think this makes much of a difference, but I have been using the Client Extension Add-On to play the module with; you don't think that might have had anything to do with this, do you? I was finding it very useful for me overall in comparison with the standard NWN2 but I don't know if that should affect the way the game is played in the module itself.

    Thanks for your help so far, and maybe I can figure out why my spells expire so rapidly. It really hasn't been such a noticeable effect until I ran into the Yuan-Ti Ruins and the On-Strike Mines, as relying even on Extended Light Spells wasn't helping me at all. I'd fall into darkness almost immediately after exploring.

    ReplyDelete