Like I said before, I'd be getting a new one set up soon

http://thayviannights.blogspot.com/

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My life has just turned crazy. It has been very difficult to find time to work on TN recently, however, I have wrestled with the attention-craving demons in an attempt to get this thing into Beta. It feels so close, yet so far with my time constraints.... I have no idea whether I mentioned this before, but I'm taking 6 courses at the moment. I'm not sure what I was thinking to be honest. Differential Equations has become a real killer. Of the 15 questions I did, I only got 7 right the first time. After a second run through I got 11 right; still 4 more to go. Top that off with 80 problems in Macroeconomics, HW in Calc 3, Physics II and some various form of a Physchology course. Yea, the only class I don't have any HW in is Chemistry. The class is a drag, so I usually do other homework during his class. Not as if I'm learning anything ;)

On the bright side of things, this is my last term there before I can finally return back to a university. I feel like they keep giving me the run-around with these ridiculous transfer requirements, but that's life for ya.

So what have I been doing with TN in what spare time I could accumulate? More dialogues, and I added some interesting details to alot of my areas. Well, for some people anyways. When TN is released, one of the bigger boasts I'll make is incorperation of Bloom. Sadly Obsidian never once makes use of it. It's almost like a wasted effort to them. However, I've been tinkering with it for ages and finally cracked some good settings. Now both exteriors and interiors have bloom. I just added the interior ones today. The effect is pretty astronomical. It really looks pretty kickass.

And if you don't believe me, well compare the Tyraturos screenshots to the last six on my wiki page. The last six have minimal bloom (which btw, they have been changed), whereas the top ones have been enhanced. And some complimentary screenshots of the Ibu-dakan Dwellings, which thanks to dirtywick for doing such an awesome job with the area.









I've also been having second thoughts of one of the quests in TN. I wanted to incorperate a djinni of some sort early on and what better time to do it than in the mines while you're escaping. Well, the djinni quest parallels the one in BG2 that its not really funny at all. So, I was at a lost at what to actually do with him. Cut him out completely and have a bland excuse for escaping or replace him. Well, I started playing Shivering Isles again, and I was actually impressed with what Bethesda did with it. It was a vast improvement from Oblivion. The ending sucked pretty bad, but that's to be expected. Yea, so, what's the point? Well, one of the NPCs in Shivering Isles struck some inspiration into me for a possible replacement.

There's this guy named Haskill who is like the butler of this Madgod. He doesn't seem all that enthused about his job, but he helps you nonetheless because it's his job. Well similiarly, I might be able to allow the PC to not free the Djinni, but continue to use him for your own personal gain later on. He'll basically be an item in your inventory that you can use to summon him. He won't come out if there's danger nearby and he'll hide again if he feels threatened. Given the personality traits of Haskill, the djinn can become a pretty entertaining person to converse with. He'll kind of be like the equivalent of an intelligent weapon.

Personally, I think it's a vast improvement over a simple free the djinn, and I'll give you what you need to get out of here quest-line.

Oh, and one last thing. There seems to be quite some popularity in the blogspots recently. I'm considering to move over to one of those for my new blog area, and I'll keep the Wiki page here. I'll try and do that whenever I can find the time again.

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Yea, I've been neglecting to update my blog, and actually I had typed up something to post two times now, yet I just never went through with it for whatever reason.

There's some good news and of course some not so pleasant news. The good news is that TN is nearing beta quickly. The amount of dialogues in Chapter 1 ranges about 40,000 words and is about half as long H&C (Harp and Chyrsantheum assuming I spelled it right). And thats in pure dialogues, excluding any item descriptions I may have written or got from the source books. I would estimate the beta going on during February with any luck.

The bad news is the amount of free time has been dramatically reduced. Last term it was only 4 courses, now its 6 courses. No worries though as I'll still be plugging away at the module in my free time, just not on Mondays, Wednesday, and most of Tuesdays. And if you're interested in my life-long college career, you might wanna skip down to the bottom. It's kind of long, but interesting for most people to read:

My class schedule on those 3 days are horrible with the way labs fall at night and the courses consume my entire day. On the bright side, I only need to take 2 more courses for Assossiciates, and I'm finally back in Uni. A word of advice for those high school students though, being a transfer student is as hard if not harder than being a freshman at a uni. Getting in to a university from high school is nothing, but as soon as you're a transfer, they feel compelled to slap down ridiculous requirements, which results in me taking math all the up to Calc 3 and Differential Equations, Physics 2, General Chemistry II, and dozen other general requirement courses.

I'm not saying Unis aren't difficult, quite the opposite. They're full of their own unique issues: social and academic. Right after high school, I went into an university. One of the worst experiences of my life right there. It wasn't so much academic, but social. I had a few friends there, but not many and they certainly weren't any to ever hang out with. Hanging out probably would've been shopping in a mall to WoW to getting so drunk you miss the toilet while taking a dump. I believe in drinking, but not till the point of getting so drunk, you're pathetic.

Speaking of that university and how insane it was. First semester I was there, they put me in Modern Western Civics with a cultural history class right after it. Let me tell you now, history is by far my worst subject. It's nothing but a huge memory game, and I've got better things to stick inside my head than history. Yes, it's interesting in some spots, but I'll do the research whenever I'm interested in it (which is not very often mind you ). But anyways, that class was absolutely horrible. I don't there was a single thing I even liked about that class. It was 8 AM, all auditory class. I am not a morning person. To make it even worse, the guy was an absolute prick. 400 pages of history to read per week and we had to discuss them every Friday. No freaking kidding! It was absolutely insane. Most of the people in that course, including me, simply looked at a few pages, found some cool looking quotes and BSed the entire thing. Whenever that failed me, I just skipped that Friday. Did that about 4 times. First time I ever skipped a course, but I'm not going to sit there while he ridiculed me for not reading 400 pgs. I promise you that was by far the worst and hardest 100 level course I've ever taken. It was just flat out ridiculous.

But enough of my ranting. I hope to be on the right track again soon to sum it all up.

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But what of TN? As I mentioned before, it's nearing Beta, likely to be in February or so. There's also some fairly new screenshots on my Wiki. If you haven't seen them yet, then I would definantly recommend having a look. I think I was more surprised with Neverwinter Nights 2 than I was with the area itself. I look at the screenshots, and it's just like... wow... It's really amazing what you can do with the toolset, as limited as it is.

Speaking of limitations, dunnite and I were talking about the next moddable game, NWN3 or some other name - doesn't matter. There were some very interesting points mentioned there, most of it pertained to character creation, which is a very vital part of a modding engine. In terms of replayability, there needs to be alot of things to choose from. Ideally the best system I have seen for character customization was probably Oblivion. You could sink your cheeks in, make yourself appear fatter or muscular. All of this is like poly/vector modification. I don't know how it is done, so I could be wrong in terms of what it actually is, but that's what I see and I understand of how it works. This combined the tattoo system in Fable would make the ultimate character creation engine I've ever seen. Could add haircuts to the gray as well to really make me happy.

But I think more importantly, where NWN2 currently lacks is in two places. For starters, NWN2 lacks a Physics Engine, or a proper one at least. Basic Physics covers everything from projectiles (catapults, ballistics, falling objects), 2-d collision (3-D collison is a bit more complex, but the same concepts still apply), and various other subjects. If you ever wondered why NWN2 never had the z-axis, well this one of reasons why. There are many other complications with the z-axis than just that, but that is where you typically start. Add a physics engine and many new possibilities open up for Obsidian and modders.

The second part is to make things less hard-coded and more open to the modders for custom modification. Now, they did do this to a great degree with NWN2, and that's great, but there are still a few things that are causing some issues with the custom content people. And with those two things in mind, the toolset will get significantly harder to use by default. NWN2 would pale in comparison. In NWN2, you're only working in two dimensions. Can you imagine sculpting a floaitng landmass in the middle of the air? You'd have to smooth out the top plane, and then start working on the side edges and then the bottom. Making the controls able to do this is.... very difficult, and even harder to make user-friendly. If any of you had ever messed with 3DS-Max, I'm guessing that it'll be something along those lines with some modifications. A down-version of it geared towards gaming.

I would mention more and go into further detail, but much of this information has already been mentioned. You can continue this discussion here if wish: http://nwcitadel.forgottenrealmsweave.org/showthread.php?p=10934#post10934 .

But I believe that is all for now. Sorry, I could not go into much detail with TN, but its nearing Beta, and you'll be able to play it soon enough. I wanted to release Chapter 1 along with 2 and 3 as 3 is the ideal point to leave off, but I believe that's not going to happen for quite a long time. And you can see those TN screenshots on this page:

http://www.forgottenrealmsweave.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Thayvian%20Nights

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Its that time of the year, and no I don't mean Christmas. Finals... Unfortunately, I have some rough classes this term and next term is even worse. So I will be inactive until Dec 11.

I did make some headway into Chapter II. Made a good amount of areas for it, mostly interiors with one new exterior - combined to make 7 new areas. Tyraturos Outskirts, 3 Slum Houses, 2 Taverns, and a Gambling Den. I did mention you can gamble in TN didn't I? Well, if not, you most certainly can. It's pretty fun, but I still have to write the dialogues up for the NPCs you're gambling with. Give them each a unique personality and not all the same dull conversation each time you play (unless its the same NPC, then it might be some of the same stuff).

The gambling game is called Liar's Gambit, based on the Dice game called Mia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_(game) ). The dice game puts your Bluff skill to use, where you can detect your opponent's lies or craft a lie of your own based on the numbers you have. I am even contemplating adding Poker to the gambling section, but its not one of my higher priorities atm. Finals are at this time.

As for Chapter I, you'll be pleased to know that it is mostly complete now. I'm still adding some tidbits to the Aragaard piece which is a big chunk of what the chapter is about. Adding dialogues here and there. Without them, Aragaard would just be a giant hack and slash dungeon which wasn't its intention. Aside from that I have load screens and two more companion's base convos to create.

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First off, this game is simply amazing. The language and sex aside from the game, the Witcher has everything you could have possibly ever wanted in an RPG game. It has an intriguing and detailed storyline, lifelike NPCs, interesting combat, and areas that'll just blow you away. Granted they were all done in a 3D modelling program which is rather obvious considering their crypt dungeons and houses have the same exact layout but with different placeables. The storyline is full of surprises and twists that you couldn't have possibly have seen coming. Not like Scooby Doo mind you where they always blame the person that showed up for only 10 seconds of the whole episode. No, typically it's someone you've met and is lying to you.

The witcher takes place in a post-war era, but not everything has settled down. There is a great animosity between humans and non-humans (in particular elves and dwarves but a third group called the vodyanoi as well), which eventually you have to choose a side as neutrality is no longer an option. The game starts off with the character coming back from life some way or another and has lost his memory. As the game advances, you can relearn what you lost and reforge your character. I won't ruin it for you, so that's all i can tell without spoiling anything. Many of the quests in the witcher have more than one way of doing it, which is always nice. I recommend this game to anyone (except those that faint at the sound of very insulting language).

There are a few minor problems with it, like many games - they can't be perfect, although there were a few that should've been corrected as they're rather annoying. The biggest one is the constant crashing in one of their areas due to heavy VFX and infinately spawning mobs. But if you lower your resolution down, this issue goes away. Coincedently, this same area makes getting to your destination very difficult. You have to enter a building with infinately spawning mobs right next to it, and go figure, you can't leave the area while you're in combat. So, you have to sit there and pray for a temporary cease and dash to the door.

Other than that, my only other complaints is poorly written dialogue in some spots and a little overboard on the number of quests in Chapter II.

Before I started playing the Witcher, I made alot of progress on dialogues, writing several thousand lines of dialogue, mostly for companion's base dialogues. In addition to that, I have two new companions to add to the fray: Ysan Des'knva and Lilith Ashfield. This totals up to... hold on lemme count for a sec... 8 possible companions thus far, each complete with backgrounds and 4 planned romances (evenly distributed).

I may have mentioned Ysan before in previous posts, but now you can learn a little about him. Ysan is an air genasi enslaved by the Thayans, even though granted partial freedom, he is unable to rome the lands and see the skies. He was eventually bought by a Red Wizard who set up a camp for them to stay in. He granted them partial freedom to roam the lands within the Tyraturos tharch (tharch is like a state border, but not a divide in the country), so long as they carried out the duties that he had given to them. This is rather odd behavior coming from a Red Wizard, but it has accumulated him much gold. This camp is known as the bounty hunter's camp. Over the years, Ysan honed his skills with a bow to the point of near mastery. He claims that he has been cursed by Akadi, but he sees hope through your character (you're fighting for your freedom and to exact revenge on the person who enslaved you). Freedom is one of the central concepts to Thayvian Nights, and Ysan is one of the greater focus points for it. It is not like the other companions are not affected by their lack of freedom (most of them aren't free), they do make mention of it at some points, but not like Ysan who gravitates around it (not to the point you're sick of it like Casavir with Old Owl Well).

I also wanted to make mention that all of the companions are optional, but travelling solo is ill-advised, and you'll probably meet your death rather quickly as the encounters are not designed for solo play. Although Chapter I may be a bit lax on the difficulty, you'll find the other chapters that this is not so.

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Not much to report module-wise, really, but I'll cover some older things in TN in this post later. Been fairly busy working on a much-dreaded programming assignment. We started Object-Oriented? Programming (OOP) a few weeks ago, and things have gotten alot harder since then. Well yesterday, we had an full-fledged OOP assignment due. I started a week before, but encountered a rather annoying problem on the last day. Couldn't get my second window to pop up -and- be able to pass an array in at the same time, without it screaming at me. I spent 11 hours trying to fix it and never actually managed to fix it, so I had to turn in the assignment as it stood.

What sucks is that MSDN nor any of my friends could help me out. But other than that, the program was fully functional as far as I know.

Awhile back, I added quite a bit of new systems into the mix for Thayvian Nights. In any civilized area that you go to, I have taken the daunting task of creating a lifestyle for each NPC. I haven't gotten to the point where the NPCs actually go to bed or wake up, but I may eventually get to that point. At the moment, NPCs will walk around, sit at a table for a couple of hours, drink some nice cold ale, and then run it off by walking around. Pretty exciting right?

There also has been some discussion of theft systems going about on some modules, so I have also taken the task of incorperating this as well. It's still a WIP, but so far, I have completed NPC-owned placeables. So if you steal from a placeable that is owned, they'll yell at you, then call the guards. There's 3 scenarios at this point that could happen. Commoners and Merchants will run away and call the guards. Few moments later, if you're still there, guards will pour in, and fine you or kill you. There's a small problem with this, which I'll mention in a minute. If a guard or noble adventurer spots you, then it'll skip the running part, and he'll question you right away. Guards will fine or kill you. Adventurer warns you to put the stuff back or die. The final scenario is that the person just doesn't give a damn. Why would a thug care if you're stealing stuff, right?

But the problem resides with the guards fining you. In Thay, this never happens. They'll either kill you on the spot or chop off your hands. Taking the fun factor into consideration, I decided to add in the fining part. Just keep that in mind when you're playing TN though.

And not just anyone can steal stuff and get away with it. You have to have Hide and MS skills to accomplish this, which will be made vs the opponent's Spot/Listen. This is a pretty nifty system that I think Rogues would find rather cool. I still have Pickpocketing and Murder systems to incorperate into the module, though.

That is all I wanted to mention this time. There is one system that I am considering, but I am leery as to what mechanics I should put into it as there's been quite a bit of hate floating around on the topic.

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It's been awhile since the last update, hasn't it, but the good news is that even though I haven't been posting what I've been up to, I've made considerable amount of progress. I've also been rather busy at times with exams, assignments and real life just mushed together all into one. Most of you know what that's like. It sucks, but its a neccessary evil.

There is also the Anphillia II server which will be approaching Beta near Dec. 1st, so they've been keeping me busy as well. I've made some great areas for them recently, which you can see for yourself:

www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/ArduneTomb.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/Plains1.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/Plains2.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/Axfell-MerryOgreTavern.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/chapellathander.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/Foulscale.png
www.ruinvalor.com/Josh/images/Foulscale2.png

For Thayvian Nights though, things are progressing well. It's been updated to MotB and one of the cutscenes broke which I fixed rather recently. I've also went back and retouched up on some of my older areas with some of the new content. In particular, I completely redone Aragaard, the first area you visit. I was never happy with it and the cutscene was a real pain, so I decided to redo the entire thing. The dungeon is now considerably longer (was 1 area, now 5) with lots more to see in there. It's really quite something and I'm impressed with how it turned out. I'n still working on the dialogues and cutscenes for it, however.

And one of my more recent works is the addition of two new romanceable companions (male and female). I'm impressed with the storylines behind them and one of them is rather unique and different. I won't spoil the details here about them other than that I am putting a lot of work into companions with realistic and believable backgrounds.

You all are probably also wondering how far along am I with TN now. This is how it currently stands:

25 completed areas
28,000 words
8 Companions (4 of which romanceable) Of those eight, 4 have their base convos complete
Hundreds of NPCs. Can't be bothered to actually count them. Just -alot-

And that is how it currently stands. Take into count, I've still alot of Chapter II left and 4 companions to complete, there's quite a bit of convo space (roughly 2000 words per companion, sometimes alot more).

Percentage-wise, you can see it like this:

Chapter I
Areas - 100%
Dialogue - 75% (2 base convos left for companions)
Cutscenes - 95%
Main Quest Progress - 94%

Chapter II
Areas - 20%
Dialogue - 5%
Cutscenes - ?%
Main Quest Progress - 5%

Unfortunately there isn't much I can do for the Main Quest progress until adobe haks come out so I can work on the city of Tyraturos. I have some great ideas for it assuming the adobes allow me to do it. The majority of Chapter II takes place in this city with some side quests outside of it.

I have also gone back and improved some parts of my module that have caused some lag. Now, most of the NPCs spawn in when the player enters the area rather than have them run unneccessary scripts when they need not be.

There is also some new screens from TN, an interior called the House of Pleasure. One of your quests resides in this place, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. And although the name would suggest otherwise, I have kept this area rated PG-13, although it can be suggestive at some spots, but nothing jaw dropping (other than the area itself of course).

Thats it for now, I'll keep you update hopefully more often than before :P

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Ok, so I haven't been all that active on these blogs lately as mostly I've been recruiting and bug squashing at the same time. First and foremost, I'll give mention to my recruitments:

I've been looking around the BioForums? some, similiar to that of a wolf hunting for its next prey, and I stumbled across a few people that seemed to have quite a bit of knowledge concerning the Thayan region. This is great news for me as I could probably use all the help I can get conerning writing, so I contacted them telling them a little about the project. After a few PMs, I successful recruited 2 writers and one reviser. So, give welcome to Imported_Beer? and his friend, Boozehound (or Bozoehound, I haven't the feintest idea how its spelled ) and schalafi.

Anyway, I look forward to working with them. Recently, I've been bug squashing as there's a few spots that work for me, but not for others and vice versa as well, which... baffles me as to how that can happen. Unfortunately, this happens rather early on (within the first 5 minutes) and it's a showstopper for some. I'm trying to find out what's wrong with it, but I can't seem to figure it out. Damn these cutscenes! I also recently fixed another issue with a possible break after another cutscene in temple. You could cut in front of a walking NPC or talk to him and he would stop and clear his action queue. Well, I did some researched and stumbled across something called "Scripted Waypoints". This is great news as now the cutscene is fixed, but not only that I can update the AI on my NPC commoners, truly giving them life. I <3 Scripted Waypoints.

All that good news, you think there wouldn't be any bad news to say; alas there is. I have yet to find anyone to create adobes for Chapter II yet. I'm edging near it rather quickly, and I have contacted a few people, but you should know that Custom Content people are hard to come by. It seems that I will have to wait for MotB and pray that they have adobes, but October is a rather long wait to begin working on the major parts of Chapter II.

There is also one area in the module that has little use(and of little importance). I am brushing it up and I will eventually post it up on the vault for others to use as there's rather a lack of high-quality areas.

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For those aspiring TN fans, this post isn't really related to it. A new post can be found just below this one. This tutorial was designed for modders from the BioForums? since I couldn't post it there without having problems:

Note: For those who haven't been to the thread on the BioForums? may be lost as to the terminology here. Follow this link here to learn more.

Mt. Galardrym Tutorial

Want to use your new-found skills? I mentioned a long ways back that Mt. Galardrym and the wastelands areas are perfect places to begin learning. There’s a reason for this. Everything I mentioned above, is pretty much all you need to achieve the right effects. This small tutorial that will follow will employ the same techniques above, and it will also teach you a few new ones. Remember that we’re not making that enormous mountain in the center of the map! That’s just tedious work!

Mt. Galardrym is a fire scorched mountain pass, but in our case, we just want to make a small narrow valley, using Galardrym’s texturing techniques.

1) We want to start off by creating an 8x8 area. Find and select Grass_21, then hit the Fill button and allow it to fill it entirely.

2) Now, whip out the Flatten Tool and set the height to 10-15 and etch out the cliff-sides as demonstrated in the screenshot below (we’re mainly concerned primarily about the little pass there, not everything off to the sides and ends of it):

Click here

Note: Try making the cliffs a little further out from the road from what is shown here. This is because when you use the Smooth tool to flatted out the sharp edges, it’s going to expand a little bit.

3) Use the Smooth tool at 15% on the cliff sides to remove the sharpness of it as described above (3x or more until its not as sharp).

4) Select the Cliff_04 texture and paint the cliff sides. (Follow the same process as mentioned above cliffs). Use zig-zags, random painting or using the walkmesh as a guide to help you make your cliff sides feel non-linear.

5) (NEW Technique) In order for you to achieve the desired effect that you’re after, you’re going to need to change a few things. Firstly, your default sky settings simply will not do. You will never get the effects you’re looking for with them, so download this Day/Night setting file below:

Galardrym Day/Night Set (17 KB)
Right Click -> Save As (For some reason browsers will open it up as text file, so you need to save it)

Put the file in a place where you can find it. I typically stuff them all in an .erf folder I created in My Docs. Next go back to the toolset, open the Area Tab and select the area you are working on. Then click the Properties tab and you should see the Area’s Properties. If you don’t, just right click on the area in the area tab and click Properties (New Window). Near the top, you’ll see some buttons. Go to Import Properties -> Day/Night Settings -> All, then find and select the Galardrym file.

Now all you have to do is go up to the top click the Day/Night button and select Daytime. The area should be darker looking now.

6) (NEW Technique) To compliment the change in sky, we want to also darken the entire area. Sometimes you will find that the textures you are using are too bright and vibrant for the effect you want to aim for so you have to do an area wide Grey-scale. Go to the color tool and select the grey color that shows up as (115, 115, 115) R, G, B. Change the brush settings to 100x100 at 100% pressure and color your entire area with it. After that, change it back to a 6x6 brush at 25% Pressure.

7) Now, we want to use a Cobblestone texture. One of the best complimenting textures for this scenario is Cobblestone_46. Change your texturing brush to a 1x0 since we are about to do tedious details. Very sparingly along the cliff sides make some black scorch marks at 30-50% varying pressure (just change the pressure constantly rather than being consistent).

8) Keeping the same pressure and same size select the Dirt_01 texture. Fill in any cracks that you have where Grass_21 is showing and adding some flavor to the cliff walls a little bit but very sparingly (moreso than the last is all).

After all that, your cliffs should be near completion. You can go back and use the Color Tool for touch-ups now. Grey-scale it (use darker colors than 115, 115, 115), add light reds, light yellows and browns to the mix.

You should have cliffs that looks something like… this:

Cliffs

9) The next part is the road, which is similar to the cliffs. Follow the instructions above on constructing a road with the Cobblestone_46 pressure at 60% (the scribble method). Then follow that up with filling it in and using higher pressures near the center. Remember to blend out to 60%. (In other words you shouldn’t have 100% and 60% Cobblestone textures sitting side by side).

10) Follow that up with the Jagged Edges mentioned on the BioForums?.

11) Afterwards, finish up the road by adding Dirt_01 along some of the edges of the road randomly and even a few spots in the center. Use varying pressures: 25-60%. Try not to be too excessive with it or else it won’t turn out.

12) You’re almost done now! Only thing left to do is touch-ups and grass. Go the Grass palette and Choose Reeds_01 and set the pressure to 25% and the brush size to a 4x4. Lower the blade size to about 1.0 and set the variation to about 0.13, then start painting on the grass here and there. One click per spot should do it.

13) After you have done all that you are pretty much finished with texturing! You should go back and take the time to do touch-ups here and there from a few spots you don’t like. Once you’re all done, your road/cliffs should look something like this:

Charred Mountains


Hope this tutorial has helped you learn how to texture better!

-A

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Just wanted to give an update, since it has been a little while since I posted here. I haven't abandoned the project. My silence just means that I'm working on the mod intensively now.

The mod is coming along great. Went back to the first area of Chapter I and started working on it again, since it was the most troublesome of them all. For the rest of the mod, we're also fixing up some of the scripts to make sure they work properly and to hopefully include multiplayer functionality (cross your fingers on that one).

Where does TN stand you ask? I couldn't be bothered to count the number of creatures I used, but there's a few varieties from Asabis to Gnolls to Orcs to Hagspawns, with Humans and Half-Orcs? in the mix as well of course.

Conversations: 15,000+ as it stands right now. There will be much more than that as I've still conversations for the slave camp and the last area to do still, not to mention your companions. Which speaking of which, Balthier's conversation file is getting rather large hitting around 3500 words, and I've just barely got started with him!

Here's a snippet of his convo (the PC choices I took here are not the only ones available):



And that's it for the sneak peeks

I've also several items in the palette as well. Dungeons are often filled with various items (good and bad and useless) that you can use (or don't).


In other news, I signed up for the Purgatorio Beta, which I anxiously await to see what they come up with. Whenever the Beta is released to us, I'll be taking a day or two off from the toolset and plunging into the game. Some of RogueDao's work is just phenomenal. If you haven't seen or at least heard of these guys, check them out here. The setting is in Planescape based off the Planescape: Torment released years ago. I know little in the ways of the setting, so there's little more that I can tell you. You'll just have to check it out for yourself and see what its all about!

I also posted some tips and tricks on how to create areas on the BioForums?. For those of you modders seeking tips on how to improve your areas, well, that's the place to go. Each step takes practice and perfection, and eventually it'll just come to you. You'll notice above this post is a tutorial on how to texture Mt. Galardrym. I had problems with posting it on the BioForums?, so I posted it here and linked it.

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