So a progress update

About 70-80 quests are complete, this is about 2-3 times the amount of quests in the entire Path of Evil intro module (all four questpaths through that).

Four modules are complete. These include three major areas and one smaller area. Three more modules are in various stages of progress: a very short one that starts the campaign (half complete), the companion sidequests (85-90% complete), the Stronghold (player controlled stronghold mechanics complete, otherwise still working on area design).

Two more modules are needed but not started yet. One of which should go relatively quickly.

Nine modules? Well, some are quite small, only 3-4 areas. Others are 20+ areas. I have a logic to it's organization, and since it's a campaign no reason I can't have lots of modules. Also I figured smaller modules would make providing bugfixes for people quicker since I'd just have to upload smaller chunks instead of a whole campaign. The OC's Skymirror area was a module by itself iirc.

Then comes going back over everything to add flavor, companion flavor/conversation/options, and polish. Overall, the campaign is somewhere greater than 50% complete, but it is not playable to completion.

What's taking so long? Well, there's the player controlled stronghold for one. It's never been done that I've seen outside the OC. And there's eight possible companions. All of which have their own sidequests, interactions and you can ask about any quest in the game. Plus I'm a lone author, poor scripter, and slow writer. :-)

Two of the modules would be releasable as separate modules of 20 or so quests each, since they're virtually all sidequests. Players could just do random jobs without a big overarching story or having some untied up story bits (ie finding campaign items whose reason for being there is given in another module). Another section of the companion sidequests would be releasable as a 15 minute all action no story hackfest.

Exotic Inn, complete

So here's a bunch of toolset screenshots from the exotic inn.

Pic 1: reading area

Pic 2: upper hallway

Pic 3: basement level

Pic 4: basement level another angle (crafting and merchants in the back of pic)

Pic 5: main floor

Pic 6: main floor second angle

Pic 7: The drink deliverator

Pic 8: Stairs to basement (note the ode to NWN2/MotB/Soz)

Pic 9: Feature alcoves

Exotic Inn

Here is an inn from the feature area I've already put up pictures of. The innkeeper has a few pets. It's just the first pass, there's still more to do.

generic stronghold needs beta testing

ERF format
module format

There is no story or point in doing anything in the generic stronghold. When the pc spawns, he can talk to the debugger, who will grant him 1,000,000 gold, sufficient for doing anything in the demo. Any pc of any level may be used for testing.

At this point it contains everything Crossroads Keep stronghold is capable of, and that is what needs testing. Only base NWN2 is needed.

Picture 1: I named my keep what?

Picture 2: The architect can build for you.

Pic 3 and 4: Now you don't see wall upgrades, now you do!

hah I borked it!

Somewhere along the lines in generalizing the stronghold, I busted the timekeeping feature, breaking everything and forcing me to start over. Which stinks, since I had pretty much everything working.

Fortunately redoing it will be much quicker as I already know what scripts etc I need.

Stronghold proof of concept progress

Thanks to wholesale taking of scripts from the OC, I now have the basics of a OC style stronghold. I'm also abstracting the stronghold terms and re-commenting the scripts so others will be able to make their own strongholds when I'm done.

What works:
The architect (Veedle in the OC) can upgrade buildings.

The architect can upgrade roads/towers ala the OC.

Interior upgrades: in the OC you can have Veedle open up some areas by destroying placeables. This was surprisingly difficult to adapt the OC scripting for, since the scripting was almost entirely driven OC event checking.

Majordomo to give you updates on your lands: this was simply a matter of copying over a script from the OC. The script handles the display of the status items like number of merchants/soldiers,/civility/road status etc

Armorer/Weaponmaker: removed the ore checks, now you pay gold. You could reimplement a secondary resource check if you wanted.

soldiers: the abstracted Greycloaks. They can recruit more troops and be sent on road/land guard duties. Special missions are event/sargent driven in the OC, I've not implemented them yet.

What doesn't:
The OC uses multiple interiors for the same building, jumping you to the relevant waypoint depending on whether you've built the church or the monastery for instance. Even with the same scripts, this is not working. The scripts for this are on the door, they are just not returning info and unlocking the door. (I tagged the waypoints and door the same as the OC just in case.)

Secondary upgrade: the architect can upgrade a building further ruined church -> church -> upgraded church. The OC only does one upgrade. The second level upgrade isn't working yet. Odd because the multi-level upgrades of the towers/roads work fine, but maybe they work because those are "invisible", at a given upgrade level there is a building or not, no "upgrade" buildings.

Not attempted yet:
Sargents: such as Bevil and Light of Heavens.

Special troop missions ala the OC.

What I've learned:
If you're going to "build" buildings , the area it's being placed needs to be unwalkable before the building is placed. Otherwise you can walk right through the building (the area already has marked that area as walkable. Basically unless most of the building is hidden in a cliff or otherwise unwalkable area, you can only upgrade with a building of the same footprint. So no guard tower -> Crossroad Keep upgrading.

edit: more stuff is working now, so I've edited as appropriate.

"Shut up dwarf."

"I can barely see your head over the table anyway. "

A dialog snippet from the Path of Evil campaign. Spoiler free.