How to make your own NWN2 paintings – The Easy and Free way

This short tutorial was thrown together in 30 minutes and it probable contains lots of spelling errors, missed words and so on. But it should help the average module builder understand the principles of making a painting (or a rug, floor tile etc.) in a quick and easy way without expensive tools and knowledge about 3D-modelling and texturing.

[EDIT]
It's up at the NWVault. Go there for the latest version.

/A

Playing the pipe

No, not the painting with the same name but some rusty sewer-pipes. Tired of fiddling with the combat scripting I spent some hours making a few more pipe models for the module. It's a couple of bends, valves and a new texture. I don't know if those ever will be interesting for someone else as I'm pretty sure that iron pipes and valves are rare in Forgotten Realms. In the Great Underground Empire they are common though.


The guy in the background has nothing to do with the pipes. They are a part of my old self-balancing encounter generator. For the moment they are spanking an overpowering troll...

Day Zero. Overdue release.

The frequently visitor already got the message but here's a official announcement - sort of :)

Today is Day Zero - the day the Zork was predicted to be released and... it isn't. The Halloween project stole some time. But it was worth it. My contribution was small and simple but relaxing to build. Work stole a whole lot more time. Big things are happening on that front, both good and bad. It will continue to eat my time for a while. Next week I'm going to Denmark. I'll take my toolset with me now that my laptop can run it. But I suspect that the evenings and nights will be filled with work-related things.

So, the big question. When will this module be released? The answer is: As soon as possible. The release-o-meter to the left of this page will keep on ticking, reminding me of that you never should promise a release date :)

Here's two in-toolset screen shots of the animated trapdoor I've made for the Living Room in the White House and I also used it in *small spoiler* my secret laboratory in the Halloween module. It has a second placeable that is a hatch that can be placed in the roof of the room below the trapdoor. Not much to fuzz about but I'll put them in a pack and upload them to the NWVault if anyone should be interested.

So that's all for today. Now I'll fix me some lunch and then plunge into the scripting of turn-based Combat Conversations.

By the way. It started to snow yesterday night. Dark times are coming...

/Amraphael

Safe

No big news today so I thought I'd share this image with you. Doing custom placeables doesn't have to be hard or advanced. This little safe is only 232 polygons (which probably is overkill) and still looks good in the game and it really does its job. It's a container and I didn't bother with animating a door. I could and maybe I do it if anyone else would like me to, but for this game this lump of metal will do. Even the texturing is done the cheapo way with a very small 8 bit 128x128 bitmap. With the free gmax 3D-tool and the also free Paint.Net and some of the many tutorials on the net you can within an hour make a such model on your own.

Try it, it's fun! I promise.

Two new Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault submissions

First it's the Short Exterior Area Texturing Tutorial as a downloadable PDF, as promised.


The second thing is a very tiny Visual Effects Pack containing two Stained Glass Windows, that I made as a response on Glorfindel2's post on the NWN2Forums. As usual nothing to fancy but it can be usefull for builders that don't want or don't dare to play with custom models and 2DA's.

Building Construction Kit

I really wanted to use the BCK by Nytir to enhance the areas in the mod, but until last night I had some problem with it. It's a great but very time consuming kit that provides the builder with lots (218) of building blocks to use pretty much like Lego but without the nice interlocking knobs.

The problem was that my mod won't load when using the provided hak pack. I'm not sure why because there's nothing wrong with placeables.2da but when I re-packed the content into a new hak it worked. That sounds easy, and it was. The boring thing was that it took me three evenings to discover that it wasn't the 2da-file that made the game halt. Well, it's forgotten now and I have already built a nice long indoor 25 pieces complex bridge which looks much better than the old slum dock wooden bridge. I'm afraid that I will prioritize playing with it before making dull scripting :) It also make my module fatter but it's allways looks before size!

Resting from Zork - for one day

I've carried around some bad conscience for a couple of moths now. It's the airship model I started on but gave up when the 1.10 patch did something with the animation that makes NWN2 crash with a reference to granny2.dll.
I made a race today, leaving Zork behind, and found that it may (I'm not an expert) be something with using too many diffuse maps in the same model. Anyhow I fixed it and could deliver the package to a fellow modder this evening. There's still some polishing to do but I hope he can use it anyway while waiting for my next bad conscience-day :) I've the intention to do two more ships based on the original NWN2-ships.

Here's two screenies that I think looks nice. You know two ships meeting in the dark sky...

Understanding Blending in the Visual Effects Editor plugin

Many things in the VEE plugin, and other things in NWN2 is about blending. The first thing I understood was that I didn't know enough about alpha blending (and still don't). When looking around I came to the conclusion that I'm not the only one left in the dark. So here's some small notes that may be helpful if you play the the VEE.

About this thing called Alpha Channel
Alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a process called compositing. For example, compositing is used extensively when combining computer rendered image elements with live footage. Read more about it here.

Alpha Blending
With AB you can blend textures on a surface with transparacy on another surface. It also works with colours. The blending is determined by something called Source Blend and Destination Blend. Read more about it here.

Some of the Blends used in the VEE

• Both blends use Inverse Source Alpha
  Each component of the source color is multiplied by the inverse of the alpha of the source color, and each component of the destination color is multiplied by the alpha of the source color. This can be represented as (1 − As, 1 − As, 1 − As, 1 − As), with a destination blend factor of (As, As, As, As); the destination blend selection is overridden.
  
  
• Constant Blend Factor
  Each component of the color is multiplied by a constant.
  
  
• Destination Alpha
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the alpha value of the destination. This can be represented as (Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad), where Ad is the destination alpha value.
  
  
• Destination Color
  Each component color is multiplied by the destination color. This can be represented as (Rd, Gd, Bd, Ad), where R, G, B, and A respectively stand for red, green, blue, and alpha destination values.
  
  
• Inverse Destination Alpha
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the inverse of the alpha value of the destination. This can be represented as (1 − Ad, 1 − Ad, 1 − Ad, 1 − Ad), where Ad is the alpha destination value.
  
  
• Inverse Destination Color
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the inverse of the destination color. This can be represented as (1 − Rd, 1 − Gd, 1 − Bd, 1 − Ad), where Rd, Gd, Bd, and Ad respectively stand for the red, green, blue, and alpha destination values.
  
  
• Inverse Source Alpha
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the inverse of the alpha value of the source. This can be represented as (1 − As, 1 − As, 1 − As, 1 − As), where As is the alpha destination value.
  
  
• Inverse Source Color
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the inverse of the source color. This can be represented as (1 − Rs, 1 − Gs, 1 − Bs, 1 − As) where R, G, B, and A respectively stand for the red, green, blue, and alpha destination values.
  
  
• Inverted Constant Blend Factor
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the inverse of a constant set in BlendFactor.
  
  
• One
  Each component of the color is multiplied by (1, 1, 1, 1).
  
  
• S0urce Alpha
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the alpha value of the source. This can be represented as (As, As, As, As), where As is the alpha source value.
  
  
• Source Color
  Each component of the color is multiplied by the source color. This can be represented as (Rs, Gs, Bs, As), where R, G, B, and A respectively stand for the red, green, blue, and alpha source values.
  
  
• Zero
  Each component of the color is multiplied by (0, 0, 0, 0).
  

This helped me a lot and I hope someone else will find it helpful.

/A

Digging myself a hole!

An important part of one puzzle in ZORK I includes digging a hole. There's a shovel in the toolset but you can't equip it. After searching around a bit a found two interesting HAKs at the NWVault. One where you can equip the shovel, carrying it around and another where you can use it as a club and hit people in the head with it. What was interesting was that nobody has uploaded any shovel you actually can dig with. So I made my own very very simple one:
I made a new model of the shovel and attach it a via a visual effect on the PC. Together with the SHOVELING animiation and a invisible shovel item (to equip) the illusion of digging is complete.

And of course, I'll make a little package and upload it to the NWVault as soon as possible.

/A

How to raise the water level - Quick'n'Dirty!

Here's how it is. Wyrin wondered about me mentioning that I could raise the water. It's a truth with modification. You can't raise the water level in the game, perhaps in the future but not yet. What you can do is to make a placeable visual effect of water raising and script it into your module. There's plenty of ways to do it but I haven't seen anyone doing it yet. It's far from perfect and you have to balance smoothness vs performance. And why would I keep this little trick for myself? No Care to Share is the way to go, so I ripped out some VFX's and scripts from the ZORK I and put it into a demo module. In this demo i go with a water level resolution of 0.15 per 2 meters. It's a bit coarse but hey, the water is raising! You will soon drown! Don't stand there and look at the slightly choppy water-line!

Download it here: http://www.kliche.com add /download/WaterTrapDemo.zip to the URL. Contact me here if there's some problem.

Working with Expotron

Hi,
did you think I've been lazy, not working on NWN2-stuff? No way, I just have been too busy to keep you updated. I've done lots of things on the module, mostly on the Maze Area which has been quite hard. Should a good maze be sort of boring with all the rooms similar - if not it's just another area... or?

Then I've been playing with the Expotron Plugin for 3ds Max, trying to animate my Airships. That's not an easy walk in the park! Look at my thread in the nwn2forums. I felt stupid and frustrated. Many thanks to Hellfire59 for trying to help me out! So now my first airship is finshined (almost). The propeller now turns, you can tint the hull and tomorrow you can walk the deck! Take a look at the Max-shot below. It looks really good in the game! Now I just have to finish the other two and I'm sure it will go much faster.


Got to go now! Taking the wife out for dinner tonight.

Airship no.1 - Preview

A cargo airship passing over Flood Control Dam #3

As I mentioned earlier I've been working on some special CC beside the ZORK project. Here's the first preview. A simple but quite nice airship model. There's a few things left to do as in textures and details. I hope some of you mod makers will do all of us gamers a favor and build action packed airship adventures with it! It will take a while before release because i want to put three different types of airships in the pack and maybe some VFX to go with them.

But today I'll put all work into learning about Locations, Facing and Directions to get the Maze Area fully functional.

Alternative Handheld Light Sources Pack

"Nightly fishing trip"

"Last night I was woken by a bear..."

For a couple of days too much has been on my mind to stay focused on the module. Today I've relaxed playing with Gmax. I read at post on a forum where the poster complained over the boring torch in NWN2. She said she wanted the pick up a burning stick from the camp fire and use it as a torch and I started immediately got to work. It was a fast hack and I started to think of a Handheld Light Source Pack and made a lantern on a stick. Someday in the future I'll make some more items and maybe polish up the two I made today. If anyone want them they'll be up on the vault tomorrow. [edit] Here they are!

Music

Some of you may have read my thoughts on custom music for modules at the nwn2forums. I recieved a few good comments on it and now I've decided which way to go. So here's a little something about it without revealing too much.

1. I'll not use NWN2 original music at all.
2. Most of the music in the module is written and performed by the same artist.
3. The music will be contemporary, maybe a little futuristic with a classic touch. (think about that one)
4. I'll pay an amount for using this music. It will not ruin me because my work would fit in under Creative Commons licenses. As an artist myself I feel good about giving something back to the artist bypassing the publisher and the record companies :)
5. I'll write two or more tracks myself just because I want to, but focus the rest of the audio work on sound effects and the overall Soundscape[tm]. If time runs out of me I may drop this.

This didn't say much did it? Okay then, think Myst I, but better :) The thing left to do, before cutting, processing and encoding is to find battle-music for the few, but important fights in this game.

Non-stop troubleshooting

For a few days I done nothing else on the module than trying to find what's wrong with my ivory torch placeable. It looks fine, both in the toolset and in the game but I can't make it useable. I've come to the conclusion that it must have something to do with the collision check mesh but what or why is still the question. I've also been really tired because two very high tempo weeks at work combined with some issues at home. It's not the famous builder-burn-out, just real life that interferes with fun life. As soon as the problem with the torch is fixed I'll post some nice screenies.

I forgot that I've fixed one thing. The Great Underground Empire is a NoMagic world (for PC's there is) so I've fixed a smart litte script to disable all spellcasting in the mod. Sorry all spellcasting friends out there! Such is the rules - for now.

Thanks for reading!


Wait, don't stop reading yet!!! I just have to show you this folio-release from April 1984. $33.95, imagine what it would cost today :) But I'm sure that the per game hour cost would be almost as low as NWN1 has been for me. Hundreds and hundreds of hours fun for the same price as two DVD's...

Everybody loves ol' Egypt!

"The solid-gold coffin used for the burial of Ramses II is here."

""This is a room which looks like an Egyptian tomb.
There is an ascending staircase to the west."

Tonight I made a race on the Temple Area which is one of the more complicated in both scripting and decoration. So when I finaly was finished I couldn't resist to show you two screen shots from the Eyptian Room with Ramses II's gold coffin. One can wonder why is Rames' coffin here? I don't know but it's only natural in the weird world of Zork.
I'm quite satisfied with the floor and the hieroglyphic-ish wall details the gives the feeling of ancient egypt.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Granny is here!

"You se the dusty cover of a closed trap door.""The trap door reluctantly opens to reveal a rickety staircase descending into darkness."

This saturday morning I woke up early to make my wife breakfast before she went to work. As usual I had my laptop beside me at one side, reading the local newspaper and the coffe maker and the sandwiches I was making at the other side. Then I saw it! The 3dsMax Expotron Plugin (also known as Granny) is here! "Hurry to work!" I said to my wife and fast as ZORK , I'd downloaded it and started to experiment. Ok, it has some flaws but it's so cool and I'm sure we'll se some real custom content in a couple of weeks besides my own simple tweaks.

The screenie above show my first animation - the trap door! It's not as beautiful as I would like because I haven't the complete knowledge about normal mapping and problably not the skills either. But it works!

I promised myself not to loose myself into this tool before I can play through the module without any show-stoppers. Otherwise I won't get any job done at all.

And something about the development status. Yesterday I did a play test collecting all plot-items, double checking that the game score and the "experienceio-meter" was correctly calculated and against all odds it was working perfectly. I found some bugs in a couple of triggers which could be triggered two times. Next I'll make a go for the remaining areas. I really wanted to use the fablous RWS Deep Halls-tilset by Patrick Robinson (Hellfire) and Eric Rosendahl (Baron) for the underground temple area but unfortunately NWN2 doesn't yet support full include of tilesets into HAK PAK's, which is I think is very important to make distribution of many different modules and PW's work in a practical way. I hope we can do some lobbying for it.
Great start of the day!

Birdies!

This is my first public contribution to the NWN2 community. It's a a Flock of Birds Visual Effect I've made for my module. I think they look and move like martins and if I find a way to make a little movie clip of them I'll upload it. It's not very complex or fancy just a simple particle effect that spawns, rotate, change size and fade a TGA-image of the bird to imitate that flock behavior.

If you want them - grab them here at The Neverwinter 2 Vault.

You've Got Mail!

"West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here."

I've got the question at the NWN2-forums about how I'm going to create the mailbox. Here's the answer: I make one in GMAX.
To be honest - before this question I did not have any mailbox in the game. I put the letter at a bullitin-board outside the house. But when I read this post I was challanged to make a simple mailbox. I'm not a 3D-artist but I think this low-poly model will work just fine.