Bedine Progress Update

When I released my  tileset project, I hadn't expected that community member rjshae would start turning out new and expanded tilesets on a regular basis. I've updated the ptoject six times in little more than two months as rjshae released new tiles and tilesets. And there's at least two more in the pipeline from him, converting a nwn1 drow tileset and an all new adobe tileset.

Since Bedine will use a SoZ style overland map and the existing Obsidian documentation on the OM was.... well I'll say it was incomplete. So I've been doing documentation on the OM like I previously did documentation and a demo for the SoZ trade system. It's rather time consuming, but will be a good community resource. And like when I did my commoner ai, it's taking a bunch of time to get something together I consider essential for my mod.

That plus a new job taking my time during the week, so I've only been working on this during the weekends. Quests and areas and such are things I haven't worked on much if at all. It was the same when I did the commoner ai, just did that, so it's not out of the ordinary.

PJ's placeable cornucopia

 PJ's Placeable Cornucopia gets special mention in this post, for making these screenshots possible. I've been bringing placeholder areas up to standards and adding content from PJ's Cornucopia. Numerous different content haks come together in one master placeable 2da, complete with blueprints.

First shot: RWS cliffs, PJ's tintable stone walls.

Second shot: mushrooms from about 4 different packs, Callisters lights package

Third shot: RWS (tents), Morbane (arcane circle), Callister (lamp), Dragonlance (netting), Jaesun999 (rugs), Amraphael (rugs, lamp), Purgatorio (razorvine), Dreamteam (hanging bag).

Last shot: The screenshot contains content from MoW, Purgatorio, Dragonlance placeables, rjshae, and zspirit.

Bedine Progress Update

With the exteneded time on the tile and exterior texture projects there is not a tremendous amount to update on Bedine. The main quest seems to work reliably in the test module. Some placeholder sidequests have been added.

I also want to thank Boccob's Blog, which has two posts on it with some two hundred (and two!) quest ideas. Lots of good ideas there. Not all would be suitable for implementing in Bedine, but a couple will show up as sidequests as I use the author's ideas to get me through a creative block in the toolset.

Pictured: The Zhentarim stronghold at Taroudant, it controls the eastern portion of the Black Road, the trade road that goes through the Anauroch. To the Bedine, the Zhentarim are known as the Black Robes. Some Bedine tribes work with the Black Robes as the Zhents are very generous with gifts, some tribes do not wish to work with the outlanders.

Tile project released

The purpose of this project is to add tint support and retexturing support to all NWN2 tilesets. Additionally, this project adds the ability to use all exterior textures on interiors. Due to the wide variety of tiles and textures, not all combinations will look good on all tilesets, you will need to experiment.

Includes the unreleased Jungle Ruins set by RWS. This set is not complete.

Notes: Several tilesets were released without all the standard tiles. These tilesets have a zero in the tiles.2da for the missing tiles, to indicate this tile is a standard tileset tile that does not exist. There is some intentional duplication of textures, as several tilesets use the same textures. The duplicates exist in folders for each tileset that uses them, so if you elect to not use a tileset and delete it's texture folder, other tilesets that use that texture will not be affected.

The Huge Caves tileset is supported for retexturing, but not tintable because of the tile geometry.

Screenshots here are RWS Citadel using rust, copper, and Codi-Sigil textures. RWS Dark Mines using the exterior textures Cobblestone44, Snow02, and Grass19. Sunken Ruins in hot pink snow, I don't know why you'd want to do that, but you can.

http://neverwintervault.org link.

Vault download link.

Literacy in the rpg world

Something for me to think about for Bedine, literacy.

No, not among the players. I assume players can read :-)

Instead I'm talking about the pc. I think just about every rpg ever assumes the pc can read. While a universal literacy assumption is reasonable in a modern day/future setting, historical/fantasy rpgs also assume pc literacy. The data dump to the player by reading books is an old, old trope.

In the real world, literacy rates were low, even among the upper classes/elites of society. Scribes were a well paid profession in the real world for a reason. Old versions of the Dungeon Masters Guide only obliquely reference the literacy issue in their tables of wages for common professions when they listed wages for a scribe (scribes are among the better paid of the commoner professions).

In Baldur's Gate it's entirely reasonable the player can read, after all they did grow up in Candlekeep! In NWN1 the player is attending an hero school at the beginning of the game. It's reasonable that at least basic literacy would be taught to a would be hero, knowing which book on the evil wizard's shelf is the one that has his plans is a useful skill in the hero trade. In NWN2 Daeghun could reasonably teach the pc to read given his knowledge of the pc as carrying the shard, and there are bookshelves in the players house so there are certainly books around.

On the other hand fantasy worlds are full of barbarians, nomads, tribal groups and other such societies where learning is an oral process, possibly supplemented with pictures or pictographic representations. What about a pc from these groups? They can be highly intelligent, yet illiterate. Back to the example of the evil wizard's shelf, how does the nomad know which book to take? How do you give them information while in the dungeon, so often done with a reading data dump?

Bedine update

I stopped working on proof of concept areas since I've discovered I can make decent looking desert areas with the toolset. I've done some work on implementing some of the quest ideas from the Anauroch sourcebook as sidequests. These are relatively straightforward quests along the lines of "merchant hires you to find something" and will make up some of the sidequests. Any obstacles for the player will go in later, puzzles, enemies etc. I've put in placeholder blank areas so I can put in the area transitions.

I've worked out a basic outline for a main quest and put in placeholders to support it. These are generic named npcs such as "shaman" and their conversation say things like "go click the clicky first!". While the written down plot outline has more detail than that, some specifics will be worked out over time as they grow into their spots organically. I haven't worked out the details of the ending yet, but that can come later as I currently don't have any inspiration for it. I'm not going to work on something like the endgame when I'm not feeling inspired, the lack of inspiration would show.

One big thing to come later, specific dialog lines for npcs. I try to find "voices" for the npcs so not everyone's dialog reads the same. Placeholder conversations will allow me to do basic testing of the main plot. The basic testing will focus on ensuring the story flow of the written outline is translated to game dialog correctly, making quest options show at the right times for example. Specific "voices" for npcs can come later.

Next step is setting up a test module and putting in these npcs/script to allow me to run through things and do basic testing of conversations and scripts.

Bedine

I've opened up the toolset again, and settled on a setting. I'll be working on things as I feel like it, instead of grinding things out, so who knows if this will ever see the light of day. These pictures are from proof of concept areas.

Bedine will take place in the Anauroch desert, and the player will play a member of one of the nomadic Bedine tribes. The timeline is some point after the NWN1 expansion Shadows of Undrentide.

Why Bedine? I like nonstandard settings. I like the cleanness/brightness of desert area settings. Tada!

I won't be forcing the plaayer to play specific race/class, but as a Bedine tribemsan the story will treat the player as a human male and a non-spellcasting class. Non-spellcasting as Bedine are very suspicious of magic, and there are very few Bedine spellcasters. Players will also be restricted to traditional Bedine weapons (dagger, kukri, scimitar, sling, spear) and armor (max of leather, Bedine are nomads) until they find other things or reach somewhere they can trade for them.

I'm trying to keep things relatively simple compared to PoE and Crimmor. Of the official campaigns plus my past work, it will be most similar to SoZ. Soz party building will be included, as will a number of cohorts. The cohorts won't have their own stories or quests, just be "lore appropriate" party members for players that would prefer that. The SoZ overland map will be used, though as a native and nomad the player won't be slowed as much by bad terrain.