Back in business!

My back pain has lifted a bit. I don't care what the doctors say. Resting my back for a few days make my pain go away - workout does the opposite!

Okay, end of whining. It took me almost five evenings to find out what made my module behave like it did. Several scripts had been messed up and even if I recompiled them the result was the same. It seems that (I have no way to verify it) moving around my Halloween module scripts to and from the campaign folder made some of my Zork scripts believe that they were campaign scripts. Maybe due to the same name, I don't know. But converting all my scripts to campaign, compile them one by one and convert them back made it all work again. It's strange and I don't want to think about it anymore. I think I would have nightmares then.

Tonight I can get back to doing some real building - I hope.


/A

Fraser Fir Clusters; curse them all!

I have written about my forest areas performance problems by nighttime a couple of times. I've cut the forest into 7 smaller areas. I have removed all possible placeables and cut them out with the walkmesh cutter triggers. Then I've cursed, tried change the length of the night and cursed again. I've reduced the amount of threes to 40 per area. No luck! The games stutters at nighttime. I have even increased the memory in my computer to 3GB.

In a hysterical, wild and uncontrolled notion I did a batch replacement of all "FraserFirC" (they are nice an volumious) with a mix of "WestRedCedar (X1)" and "Scotch Pine - Cluster". To my surprice everything runs as smooth as anyone would ask for. The forest get a whole different mood to it but I'm not the one to complain. My wife says it look better. The sad thing is that it's 6 forest areas left to do it in. Lots of recoloring and adjusting textures for. But I'm a happy guy today! :)

Note: I should have suspected those fraser firs as I found out that the can be insanely performance craving when trying to help Wyrin with a strange crash in his DA2-module.

Thanks for reading, as always!
/A

Dusk, Dawn, Arrgh!

One whole day in the trash bin! Now I've learned the hard way that the Module Properties setting "Dawn Hour" and "Dusk Hour" don't affect the DayNight cycle. A short background to get interested people into the function

Every AModule has a Time property where you can set:

• Dusk Hour - the time when the transition from night to day begins
  
• Dawn Hour - the time when the transition from day to night begins
• Minutes per Game Hour - how many real time minutes one game hour takes
  
• Start Day - the start day
  
• Start Hour - the start time
  
• Start Month - the start month
  
• Start Year - the start year

Every Area has seven DayNight cycle settings where plenty of lighting a nenvironmental parameters can be adjusted.

• Sunrise
• Daytime
• Sunset
• Moonrise
• Nighttime
• Moonset
• Transition
• (Default - This one is not a part of the DayNight cycle and is used when an area has Day/Night cycle disabled.)

The problem I've been fighting is that I wanted the night to be shorter, as in the summer. So the natural way would be to set Dawn to 4 AM and dusk to 11PM. But no, after trying everything including suspecting my module to be corrupt I found:

The Dusk and Dawn settings only affect functions called from scripts, as GetIsDawn() and GetIsDusk(), some conversation tags, and the Area sound setting Ambient Sound Daytime and Ambient Sound Nighttime.

That's it, now I've to try changing the different DayNight cycles to fake a longer day by replacing the moonrise with sunset and night with moonrise and so on. I'm pretty tired of this and really need a better editor for the settings. Matbe I would write one. "NO, concentrate on the module!" *hitting myself with a mouse with low battery*


Here's a few of the new load screens. They are pretty dark, but when used in the game against a black background they look OK. The black top left corner will be used for some descriptive text in white.

The Cellar Area

The Coal Mine Area

Inside the White House Area

The Treasure Room Area

Last try

I asked about it a several of months ago, without any luck. Now I try again one last time before giving up.

Has anyone got the SetAreaTransitionBMP Function working in NWN2?
I want to control which load screen my OnAreaTransitionClick script throws (different load screens in different situations.

This should work but doesn't. Any clue?

Code

// Name:     z_tr_area_transition_ls

#include "ginc_transition"
void main()
{
   object oEnter = GetEnteringObject();
   object oTarget = GetTransitionTarget(OBJECT_SELF);
   SetAreaTransitionBMP(AREA_TRANSITION_CRYPT);
   AttemptAreaTransition(oEnter, oTarget);
}

/A

Module don't load from Directory mode

I did a post on this on the NWN2Forums but thought I would increase my chances by asking here too.

My mod is about 300 Mb now and the crashes when saving to .mod are quite frequent so I've decided to work in directory mode.

The problem is that the game won't load, it just stops at "unpacking module".
If I re-save it as a .mod it works just fine. What am I doing wrong? Ideas, anyone?

[Edit]
I've noticed that it loads just fine when I launch it via the games "new game > new module" button, but it fails when I try to launch it from the toolset.

[Edit]
After little more digging I found some faint evidence about that it may be problems with launching mods from the toolset when using directory mode in this NWN2Forums thread:
"Toolset has become useless..."

I think I have to live with it, but if anyone should stumble upon a solution, please drop me a line.

Two days work lost!

Despite the size I decided to use the RWS Deep Chasm Tileset to make the maze more dynamic. It's a very nice collection of tiles in three different levels. The texturing leaves a bit to wish for but the overall feeling is just perfect for this part of the game. At Saturday morning I put it in and worked all day with the maze. Sunday I spent on securing all transitions and random doors then I started to script the parts that is associated with the maze. I even wrote a short conversation (I felt great - because there are so very few of them in the game).

At the evening after we'd watched Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro (I really loved it), I did my usual backup and tried to play a bit. Argh, the area doesn't load! I restored my backups all way back to Saturday morning without luck. It seems that the area got corrupted that first save and that I had made backups of a non functional module all the time. It don't even loads in the toolset anymore. Well. well, this was the first time I've encountered such bug so I don't hang my head. I'll have a go on it again at Thursday.

The upcomming weekend will be dedicated to my wife. We will take in on al uxious manor house at Friday - Saturday, just relaxing, eating and drinking. At Sunday we visit an afteroon teaparty were you can eat so much candy, cake and cookies you wish, everything are homemade and of the very best quality. Next week I'm back on diet :)

Upgrading to Patch 1.10 with Mask of The Betrayer

Phew, that was intense! It took a couple of days and lots of worries to get everything in place. I'm not finshed yet as some things is left to fix. Heres a short report as I promised.

• Backuped everything in my NWN2-maps. I also did a copy of the registry, just in case.
• I deleted everything in my HAK, MUSIC and OVERRIDE folders.
• Then I upgraded to patch 1.10, restarted and installed Mask of the Betrayer.
• I started NWN2 and noticed that all my in game settings where lost, not only the ones replaced by new funktions, but everyting.
• After adjusting, resolution, detail levels etc. as they where before the game was slow and stuttering.
• I tried to load my old savegames but they failed to load. After getting some hints from helpfull people a deleted \my documents\neverwinter2 and let NWN2 recreate it for me I could load the games! Success!
• Then I started to restore my ZORK-files to hak, override and music-folders. It worked fine to load the module in the toolset.
• When loading the module in the game the unpacking stopped. I was lost but saved by one of the nice guys. It's important to doubble check all the .2da files so they are compatible with the latest patch. In this case it was nwn2icons.2da that was one line shorter than it should be. Easy to miss, hard to find.

This is a long list so I take a coffebreak here...

• Ok, now I could load the game but it didn't look nice. The cave metatiles' texture was screwed up showing lots of hippie-inspired patterns. I replaced them with the same tiles in the toolset and the hippe-trip was gone.
• Then I found that all of my item icons where wrong. The when filling up the missing line in the .2da all references where adjusted and every item had wrong icons. This will be lots and lots of work fixing so i leave it for now.
• When testing the module I noticed that door transitions using "NoVisibleModel"-doors didn't work anymore. I have to replace them all, and there's lots of them in the Maze Area.
• The Shadow Fortress tileset has red walls in the game but not in the toolset. I will try replace them and see if it solve the problem.

That wasn't too hard :) Soon I'm back at square one and can start working on the module again.

ZORK Show stopper! (not anymore)

I've posted a cry for help at the nwn2forums:

" I've upgraded to 1.10 and installing MotB plus the dialogue fix (on a blank my documents\neverwinter 2\)

Now I can't load my my work any more. It works fine in the toolset but when loading the module NWN2 says: "unpacking module..." I waited 2 hours before killing the proces.

I've tried loading from both .mod and directory with no difference. Help! Anyone?"

If you have any clue please help me save this project! Posting comments are open for everyone.

/A

[UPDATE]

Wyrin_D'njargo is the hero of the day!
He responded so quick and helped me to do what everyone else probably would have done first of all - think before you panic. Embarrassing but true.
While speaking about Wyrin - Visit his NWN2-blog. Right now he has some pictures of the new content in MotB. He also writes about his module development and has some interesting stuff about texturing and module design.

Thank you Community Pals!

As stunned I was over ATARI Sweden's bad customer treatment, I'm completly overwhelmed by the response from helpfull people out there. Whitin an hour my mailbox had none less than eight suggestsions that could solve my problems. Thank you to both HeffCon and Sadina76 for finding the solution. It's too long to explain here but most imortant was that I didn't have to reinstall my PC or reinstall NWN2. If you encounter similar problems feel free to contact me.

Now I can breathe again and my wife has drawn back the threath of midnight assassination for screwing up our OC save-games.

Only one thing remains: My character Amraphael has lost his facial hair and looks butt-uggly without it. As in real life I love my goatee and I miss it alot. Anyone know why it's gone?

Well, one more thing: I have to do some serious editing of my .2da's for ZORK. Obsidian and my entrys collide and I have to move up some 1000 entries. Lots of work but not impossible.

/A much more possitive Amraphael than yesterday

Thank you ATARI Sweden - I'm speechless!

Just for fun I called the ATARI Customer Service Number in Sweden and reported the problem mentioned before:

Support Guy: "Ehh, do you have some anti-virus or something?"

Me: "No, not on my gaming computer."

Support Guy: "Ehh, you have to reinstall your computer."

Me: "My computer? You mean the game?"

Support Guy: "Ehh, no (talking to some friend about last night). You have to reinstall your computer."

Me: "You must kidding, what would possible come out better if I reinstalled the PC?"

Support Guy: "Ehh, you know..." and here I quote as correct as I can, "... this is a shit-game which always crash.

Me: "OK, can you help me doing a bug report?"

Support Guy: "You have to reinstall or I can't help you."

Me: "Alright then, thank you for being helpfull. Have a nice evening!"

Support Guy: "Yeah!" Click!

I didn't exect ATARI to solve the problem but this was somewhere between funny and scary. Where do they find such (shut your eyes now) inappreciative assholes? I hope this guy get the same service next time his car breaks down! *Evil laugh*

Now I'm going to visit nwn2forums to get some help from the friendly community.

Didn't do enough praying...

I suppose there's only a few of you out there that can read Swedish - but this dialogue box talks for itself.

I can load my old save-games but within a minute the game crashes. What about new games then? Well, same thing: crash, crash, crash. I've tried lowering the game graphic settings but no change. I'm tired and sad and will take a couple of days off from NWN2.

/A

A few crashes later...

I'm a big-mouth! Yes, I am. Going on talking about "I never had any problems with the toolset. Crashes are for the weak ones who cannot configure their computers right." and "Quit whining kiddos, the toolset is great!". Well, now I have to eat those words. 18 crashes in 2 days losing data every single time! Lots and lots of work has gone into finding out what's wrong. I think I've solved it now. I was creating a placeable light source from a script. After deleteing the script the save crashes stopped. Very, very strange behavior.

On the positive side is that I've got the first winter flu. My care for my employees has no limits :) so I stayed home keeping the viruses for myself and... worked on the module. Between the fever waves I was kind of productive. Soon, very soon I can make the first run through the module testing all puzzles and solve the whole game.
It's a big step, but I admire all module builder's who can make quests, traps, encouters and balance their modules. Zork I has very few evil monsters, no real plot, no side-quests and almost no NPC dialog. Not to mention henchies or companions. Zork I is puzzles, puzzles, exploring and more puzzles. I hope someone finds it fun to play even if it's as far away from roleplay or hack'n'slash as can be.

The module with it's 16 areas is now 212 mb large. To that comes the hak-pak and the music files and I've lot's more to come.

Thank you for reading, and please throw me a comment now and then - it makes me feel good. For a few days I'll allow Anonymous comments so go on!

/Amraphael


Two screenies for my friends out there

Inside the white house on the hill.

Coming down from the attic - in one piece.

Save, crash, game lost!

Sounds dramatic doesn't it? Well it was... for a short moment. After attaching my first piece of music to the Hades area I was eager to see if it would work in the game. So I saved and then the toolset dropped dead. I waited 15 minutes without response and then I killed the process and rebooted. My 200 mb module was down to 68 and not a single area was useable. So after 20 minutes of horror I'd imported all the scripts, conversations and blueprints I'd created into the last backup. Long live the backups!!!

And the music worked! It's eerie and lovely and fits Hades perfect. Then I had a fight with ApplyEffectAtLocation and wasted lots of time finding out why I couldn't apply it to one specific creature but to any other. And then I found a bug in the game. I have never heard of it so I think it's a odd but one that can be reproduced. I have a script that under certain conditions forces a PC do immediately drop an item that the PC just picked up. The first time there's a normal loot bag on the floor. If the PC try to pick up the item a seccond time the loot bag is just a tiny slice and the third time it can't be seen at all. But it's there. Strange...

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...

Patch 1.06 and the toolset

Yesterday I dared to do the upgrade from 1.05 to 1.06. It was some quite exciting and nervous moments when i started to toolset and loaded my module (after making two separate backups far away from the NWN2-folders)...

"Toolset has encountered a problem..."

I tried three times without luck so I tried to open the "Dark Waters" module. No problem. A few minutes of complete and mercyless fear later I restored my ZORK I-backup and the module loaded just fine.

It's kind of late to do a 1.06 review but my impression of it so far is:

• Not so stabile as 1.05 but much better than 1.03 and 1.04.
• I can't get the new pressure control tool working (maybe because of my non-US operating systems keyboard handling).
• Placed effects don't always show up in the toolset so I have to save and reload a lot.
• The Visual Effects Editor hangs, and more irritating, don't refresh the screen sometimes. I've wasted much time on looking for problems that never existed in my PFX's.
• When using undo/redo the painted water vanish. Very frustrating until I learned not to use undo in exterial areas.
• The type-ahead in script drop down menues is very, very, very slow now.

But what's good in the 1.06 patch? To be honest I can't think of anything other than it didn't destroy my module, the OC works fine and it's the next step towards 1.1 (which in my dream world is like the NWN1 1.31 patch). Oh, yes, one thing the OnClick -event on placeables! I don't complain. Everything works good enough to make my work going and I've been reading about 1.07 and it's not very far away.

Tonight I'll make all OnItemAcquired scripts for the treasure items, there's just 19 of them so it wouldn't take long.

Thanks for reading!

The narrow Cave Passage

I'm quite satisfied with the narrow cave passage though I've not figured out how to make just the opening "illuminate" on mouse over. It may have something to do with how Gmax handle the model or more likely my lack of knowledge. So for now the passage consists of two placeables one for the wall-part and one for the useable entrance. It has some benefits as in flexibility but isn't as smart as I would like.

Yesterday I had a day off from work and spent some time on beeing in the sun painting lots of wooden planks and little bit more time on solving a couple of strange bugs in my move-placeables-script. DestroyObject() didn't work and I had no idea why. First i thought it was because I triggered the scripts from a conversation in the wrong order. Then I went over to blame the SetPlotFlag() and later my anger was directed towards the script engine. When testing the script in a test module it worked perfectly and after trying everything, shouting (mostly for myself) and pulling my short hair, I baked all areas. Voila, the script works! I didn't know if I should be happy or just irritated. I choosed the happy face and painted some more wooden planks out in the sun. Now my body aches but I can move placeables without a single trouble.

Weird models

Yesterday I spent several hours trying to make a rubber life boat model in gmax. I'm not a 3D-modeller but I'm an able learner so I thought it would be an easy match. You can't believe how wrong I was. It took me 3 hours to make the mesh fort the boat and then 2 more to texture it with something that looked like a crazy circus tent. Well it looked kind of ok in the game - as a placeable.
But my thought was to make a visual effect using the boat as a attached model and then use it on an invisible creature to make it cruise around the lake at my will.

It's now everything is going magic and weird. The effect works and it attaches fine to my creature BUT it can only be seen in certain angles and lights. Any other angles or at nighttime it i invisible. Crazy indeed. I'll have to dig deeper into creating custom placeables because I need some more special placeables in this game.

Something else: I've decided to use Unique Power to make the most "action"-items and the dialog for some items that need to present more information and recieve more complex instructions. It's more fun that way and my very small poll pointed in both directions. It can be changed without too much work if it don't work. I'll be back later tonight with a new screenshot (I hope it's of a bobbing, fully textured rubber boat).