ZORK for Neverwinter Nights 2 is now available!

I've received some emails about when the module will be released. It has already been released quite a while ago so seems that I've been somewhat fuzzy about the status of the project. Here's the public announcement:

ZORK - Revisiting the Underground Empire
is released for everyone to play!

It can be downloaded from NWVault by clicking this link.
If you play it - vote for it (according to the NWVault voting standards)


Information:
This blog will not be updated anymore. I'll keep it open for reference purposes. All my NWN1+2 and other CRPG postings will occur at my new blog:

Amraphael's House of Curious Things

please update your blog-rolls and other links.

Thanks for visiting!
/Amraphel

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

Do I dare to upgrade to 1.13?

...or should I wait for 1.14? That's the question to you all. The 1.12 version gave me some toolset problems. Do 1.13 solve them or will I get lots of new troubles?

If you have any thoughts about it please drop a comment on this post.

Yesterday I played the module from the start. When I reached about 195 score points (of 350) the game got quite difficult. The thief was pestering me as a mad dog and I had not got strong enough (score points) to smack his pale butt. Finally he stole my lamp leaving me to die in the dark. And still I'm happy as a golden canary. It works and feels like the original game. If you gain score points too fast (or in a not so smart way) the game gets harder. If you collect your treasures in a slow way, planning your every move you are probably more lucky in your quest. And for keeping my happiness down on a more balanced level I found a couple of new bugs.

Even more load screens

While re-designing my forest areas (changing the tress, grass types and converting loads of placeables to environmental objects), I take some new screen shots for the custom load screens that will be used. Going over those areas for the third time is pretty fun but time consuming and it's time I don't really have for the moment. But I'll try to make one area per evening and guess that I'm finished with it at Monday or Tuesday.

Release date

No one has commented on that yet, maybe it's because the visitor rate on this blog has dropped like a iron golem on a unicycle. It's expected because it's been more that a year now since I announced this module, and I've been pretty silent on the NWN2Forums. I never planned that it would take so long time. My first secret release date was November 1 2007, then I made a half public announcement about this spring. Now my realistic idea of a date is November 1, 2008 and there's a pretty green/white count down box in the top of the right panel.

The module is about 90% finished now. It's still very many small things left to do and then it's the never ending play tests. The last one was very successful and was the 68th in the long row. Now I'm trying to fix-up some uglies, tuning the areas. It's going fine at the moment and I have finished my cursed rubber boat cutscene.

But still, it's summer. I want to enjoy those short moments of sun. In Sweden we use to say "The Swedish summer is the most beautiful day of the year." Work has been hellish and it's hard to flush it out of the head and turn into that creative mod building mood. Then I want to wait for NWN2 XP2 - Storm of Zehir to see what it brings (it may be out by then). I don't think I'll make it mandatory for playing but it may affect my custom content (as the 1.13 patch).



As always, thanks for reading
/A

Long time no post

It would seem that I only sits home complaining about our shrinking privacy sphere here in Sweden. Nothing could be more wrong. Sure I've joined the underground freedom movement :) but most of the time I've been working on the module. My wife and I are play-testing as maniacs. And faster than she finds bugs I fix them. My issue report system crashed last week and it took a while to re-construct the database by playing and finding the problems a second time.
I think I've mentioned the problem with torches and other hand-held light sources that when they have been in a container don't have any light or visual effect anymore. This is a problem with the original game too. This is my conclusion on the topic.

• PC's can only have one light source at the time. The different levels of dark vision is the base of this priority system.
• Because of the only one light per PC, torches for example have their own light effect attached to them as an item appearance effect.
• When using the CopyItem fuction this effect is not copied and the item don't have the light, flame or whatever effect is attached to it.

That sucks because there's a lot of copying in the game. So I have struggled with making my own copy item function that checks if the item is a light source before copying it. If it find a light source it does a CreateItemOnObject instead. Not to hard to make when I found out why those damn things went black. The hard thing was to find out all scripts where I needed to replace the function.

My Thursday night issue list was 244 entries long (strange how it keeps growing) but this morning it's down to 75. The great thing now is that the fun-to-have and it-would-be-nice entries are the most common ones.

You know I like bullet lists so heres some of the categorized issues:

• 10 Area Issues, mainly black squares due to bad light placing and some walkmesh problems
• 3 Creature related bugs
• 8 Dialouge problems. Missing links and such
• 2 Door bugs (I'm sure there must be more of them)
• 3 Icons are missing
• 10 Models has to be fixed in 3dsMax
• 4 Bugged usable placeables
• 3 Script bugs. Long live the module verify.
• 6 Sound Issues. Most of them are wrong sound level and strange stereo image
• 3 Visual Effects are messed up.

I have also started to flesh out some of the conversations. I'm playing Zork I in a DOS-box close to the toolset and are cursing the DOS cut and paste. I'll shout out for a proofreader soon so if you are interested, drop me a line and I might send you a couple of text files to read trough. The text are quite stiff and I sometimes want to make it more literary but I'm afraid it will be a too large step from the original.

As I have been bug chasing there's not any new screen shots so i throw in these in-toolset shot from one of the more hot underground areas.

No more time for writing. I'm a toolset slave, and my wife is reaching for the whip. Khatash!!!

/Amraphael

=======================================

It was great to see that several of my favorite module makers won the Golden Dragon Awards.
Here's the complete list:

Best PnP Conversion Module:
Tomoachan by Enoa4
Enoa4 has added a great deal of polish to the original PnP classic; with a strengthened backstory, excellent area design and smart use of custom content. Whether you have played the original or not, Tomoachan offers an excellent gameplay experience.

Best Roleplaying Module:
Dark Avenger by Wyrin
Dark Avenger takes the 2007 Golden Dragon award for Best Roleplay module, because roleplaying is really central to the concept behind this superb module. You play the story character, but you define your role, your character and your background, and this impacts the world around you.

Debut Author Award:
Zach Holbrook
Zach Holbrook (aka Maerduin) produced one of the defining modules of 2007 with Harp & Chrysanthemum. His attention to detail; from landscapes to music, character writing to story, makes him this year’s Debut Award winner.

Community Contribution Award:
Grinning Fool
From beta testing until today, Grinning Fool has continued to support the community and NWN2 tirelessly. He has worked as a Community Rep on the toolset, answering questions and gathering up bugs on behalf of the community and making sure they reach the ears and eyes of Obsidian Entertainment. He’s also enhanced and added to the toolset’s features through a number of very useful plugins.

Veteran Author Award:
Adam Miller
Adam Miller wins the Veteran Author Golden Dragon Award for his consistenly top quality modules, produced across both NWN and NWN2. With the Dark Waters campaign, he continues to innovate and stretch the engine to the very limits.

Best Multiplayer Module:
Tomb of Horrors revisited by BM Productions
Tomb of Horrors is a devilishly difficult module based on the old PnP classic that really comes into its own in multiplayer mode, where strong thinking and team play will see you succeed… or fall.

Best Action Module:
Moonshadows Chapter 1 by Alex Hugon
Hugie’s Moonshadows is a blend of high action and gorgeous landscapes, set in the Forgotten Realms. With excellent polish, and varying difficulty, it offers an exciting journey for all players.

Best Adventure Module:
Dark Waters Chapter 1 by Adam Miller
Dark Waters sets a compelling mood, tells an interesting story set in a world with a well-developed history, includes extremely well-developed companions with richly drawn personalities, and exhibits extraordinary attention to detail.

Most Re-playable Module:
Pool of Radiance Remastered by Markus ‘Wayne’ Schlegel
This remake of the SSI classic captures the Most Replayable Golden Dragon Award. A strong story is enhanced with a plethora of choice on gear, companions and class options, and topped off with a variety of combat situations.

Best Sound/Music:
New Music Tracks for Harp & Chrysanthemum by Zach Holbrook
This year’s Best Sound/Music Golden Dragon Award goes to the new music tracks produced for Harp & Chrysanthemum, by Zach Holbrook. They combine interesting use of voice and backing with an excellent fit to the module itself.

Best Tileset:
RWS Deep Halls by RWS
The Best Tileset Golden Dragon Award goes to Robinson Workshop’s Deep Halls tileset, a new and deeply atmospheric interior for Neverwinter Nights 2.

Best Custom Content:
Sorceress Ashura VFX Pack
This VFX pack includes an astonishing array of weird, practical and beautiful visual effects: from ship wakes to the sparkles on a pile of treasure. The sheer depth and wonder of this pack makes it this year’s Custom Content Golden Dragon award winner.

Map making

More bugfixing today and a completed (cross my fingers) Death & Re-spawn script. Yes you can die in this game :) But you have three chances or lives as they called them back in the great days. Quoting the original manual:

What happens when you die in ZORK I?

• You may appear in the forest with your belongings scattered (valuables below ground, non-valuables above).

• ZORK I is as fair as baseball. Three strikes and you're out.

Then I returned to fix one of the maps that will help the players to find their way through the underground. Here's one map of the southern parts of the caves that is almost finished and inspired by the early-orginal maps.

42 down, 82 to go...

I have been hunting down some bugs this afternoon. I solved all of those found at our multiplayer session and a bunch the others. Many of them was area related such as faulty walkmeshes and missing doors. Then I focused on the script bugs because they were easiest at the moment. I've decided to leave all models, conversation TGAs and icons as is to the end of the project to stay focused on making everything work smooth. It couldn't keep me from making a new cave wall and ceiling texture of course :) I got bored on the earthy, clay-like texture and wanted mossy rock instead. I'm pretty satisfied with the look of it. See by yourself here in this before and after images:



Another screen shot from our multiplayer test. We are looking at a painting of the dire Christmas Monster...


Thanks for reading!

/Amraphael

Multiplayer test

Todays MP test run, went much better the one last Sunday. We could play for 1 ½ hour before our light sources burned out and we were Grue-food. Obvious I need to put bigger batteries in the lantern. A few bugs that makes me concerned is one where dropping an item to the ground makes it disappear. I can't see what I could make wrong and it only happened once. Another is that effects that are removed from the PC shows up again after an area transition. Very strange. Lots of issues we found are related to broadcasting messages to party or not and some other smaller MP screw-ups. I've also messed too much with a couple of areas and lost some tiles and the door transitions. Easy fixed but irritating.


Only one screen shot this time. It shows a bit of in-game object interaction to compare with the text game (if you have played it). The original game would have looked something like:


This is an art gallery. Most of the paintings have been
stolen by vandals with exceptional taste. The vandals left
through either the north or west exits.

A painting by a neglected genius is here.

>Take the painting
Taken.

/A

I forgot...

I don't know how it could happen. I completely forgot one area, actually two but that's another story. So when talking to one of my colleagues about Zork and old times he said: "When I played Zork I'd never understood what a barrow was. I was later when I read a book about the stone age I got it." - Barrow? I said. - What barrow? Now the barrow area is a very small one but important in it's own way, but it's no excuse to leave it out. :) So I took my bike and rode home for lunch and a quick modding. Here's the result. It's a bit dark, but that's how it is at night. If you click the image you'll see the details better.

"You are standing in front of a massive barrow of stone and dirt.
In the east face is a huge opening. You cannot see into the dark of the tomb."

/A

Multiplayer fiasco

Yesterday night my wife and I rigged a second PC in our very temporary home office to do a MP-test session. It ended after 25 minutes and those minutes were filled with failure :)
So we shut down the whole thing and watched Mythbusters (the airplane on a conveyor belt episode) and then a episode of Smash Lab.

This is some of the things that went wrong:

• Somewhere along the bugfixing-road I've introduced a new, nice one making it impossible to pick up placeables in MP ( I use them to represent importent items in the game until OEI fixes this loot bag flaw). If I didn't see this bug happen by myself I would say it was impossible.

• The game score message broadcast don't work in MP. Only the PC that solves the quest sees the game score pop-up. This seems like a little problem to solve and it is, but due to bad coding there's a lot of testing to do to see that it works for 19 separate quests. (I keep call them quests but it's really more points you get for laying parts of the puzzle).

• When interacting with objects in the game I use three methods. A. conversations, B. Floating text over PC, C. Cast spell, Unique Power. In MP it shows that the other PC's in the party will feel a bit off because they don't know what's going on in the interaction with the object. I have to look at broadcasting all written responses to the party's info box. Like the score message broadcast it is a huge job to find all scripts that "talks" to a PC.

• Originally there was only one light source because there was only one player. In MP there's too silly to use only on lantern per party. OK, it makes it harder to play and more realistic when everybody has to stay close to each other to avoid being eaten by the meanies in the dark, but it's also tricky to play. PC's stumble to each other etc. I need to rethink this and maybe give each PC a lamp. The limited burn time must be preserved, which means 4 lamps with 25% fuel instead of one with 100% (it will fail if all PC's uses them at the same time) or 4 lamps with a common time based fuel depot (it means that when one lamp has burned 100% of it's fuel all lamps will go out). None of those solutions are perfect so re-thinking there is.

I'll fix some the issues this week, and we do another run next Sunday. Hopefully a bit more successful.

Thank for reading
Amraphael

Can you walk on water vapor?

The game asked me "Can you walk on water vapor?" and I answered -"Yes, you can!"
It took me quite a while to figure out how to do it but here it is - The Walkable Rainbow - one of the most important objects in Zork. As usual there's some polishing left to do. For example a ugly spot at the base of the rainbow I left out in the screen shots and making the rainbow a bit fatter. But on the whole I'm quite satisfied with how it came out and you have to admit there's a great view over the White Cliffs from the top of a rainbow. One bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale for tonight!

"You are on a small, rocky beach on the continuation of the
Frigid River past the Falls. The beach is narrow due to the
presence of the White Cliffs."

"The river canyon opens here
and sunlight shines in from above. A rainbow crosses over
the falls to the east and a narrow path continues to the
southwest."

"The Frigid River flows under the rainbow."

Thanks for reading!

/Amraphaell

Walkmesh mess.

I'm back from our company development conference. Great fun for us in the management to hang out with the programmers. Hard scheme for the days, but lots of laughs and beer in the evenings. To night I managed to build some smaller parts of the last area and correct a few issues and bugs. Twenty one if I recall correct. One small catastrophe though. My coal mine area had a room with a strange walkmesh leading in a slope from the floor through the roof. I started to convert the placeables to environmental objects to simplify the walkmesh. No luck. Then I removed all objects in the room. No luck. So I removed all objects in the surrounding area. Total walkmesh messup. The whole area got corrupted and I used two hours to reconstruct it from scratch. I like it better this time :)

The re-constructed Shaft Room

Have a nice day everybody!
/Amraphael

At snail's pace...

Not much news for you. Lots of things going on at work and the spring is here and the garden scream for attention. Two room in the house (including my home office) is in bits and pieces waiting for total reconstruction. I force myself to 1 1/2 hour module work every day. That work mostly is about fixing bugs and other issues. I have given up the beautiful idea of having a different load screen at every area transition do give the player a real Zorkish feeling when reading the room descriptions. Ok, I have given up - for now. There has to be a solution to it. No nice screen shots as I think more of them will show too much. Now I get out in the garden to put my sunflowers in the ground. Then back to the toolset. Have a nice day everybody!

A Gruesome experience

Today I sneaked away from the refurbishing of our home office rooms and did some multi-player testing. I was curious about the Grue's AI. It worked fine the single player mode but when two players entered the same area strange things happened. One PC had a torch and the other had no light source. The Grue went totally demented and toggled between attacking the torch-less PC and fleeing from the other PC's flame. Then suddenly, it attacked them both, fled the room and returned. Sure, it's strange, but the very funniest thing was when the Grue started to attack placeable torches and wall lamps. If I only had a video capture software running :) I really laughed loud.

Okay, here's what should happen. When a PC walks into a dark area (there's lots of them in this game) without a light source with him/her the Grue shows up within a couple of rounds. If the PC equips the light source the Grue flees and vanish. It should be noted that no one ever have seen a Grue and survived to tell anybody about it. The Grue is also repelled by placeable light sources (with a certain tag) and this is what I thing messed up the play test. I'll tear the scripts apart because they seem very complicated to me and were written in a early stage of this mod. I don't believe I thought everything through then. So the next thing I'll do is try to fix this and then get back to correct a few issues from my list. I then have a quite funny thing to try to solve. I want a VFX of a singing bird, fly from the sky, land on the PC's head and lay an egg like item in the PC's hand. You think I can make it? We'll see...

Spring is here, summer is coming closer.

/A

Tiny update

As I've told you earlier. Area lighting is one of my weaknesses when it comes to the toolset. Today I've finished the play testing for this time and started to calibrate the area lighting. I found that I've been working with a pretty high setting of the in-game gamma. The result is very dark areas. Yes, I know that pitch black is very dark but I've learned that there are different levels of pitch black when building areas. So with a little help from the friendly NWN2 forum guys I've come up to a decent background lighting that is the base level of black and now my light sources look more natural. I had also time to write a script that replaces the area properties music handler. Now I can adjust the delay before the music starts in every area which was a small thing that have irritated me for some time.

And here are the screenies!

The bed of an artist

Looking for the Grue

Hot pepper sandwiches are my favorites...

Deeper down into the Great Underground Empire

The underground channel

A strange piece of art

Baldur's Gate style

Take care!
Amraphael

Testing day

When I got home from work to day I made me two sandwiches and a cup of coffee and started Play Test #11. It went very well and I played through about 85% of the module (the fastest way) in about three and a half hour. I had my old portable PC beside and tracked every issue I found leaving the aesthetic things out. I leave them for a prettiness test later. And now I thought it's about time to bore you with the list :)

Here it is, the ZORK ISSUE LIST. Warning potential spoilers ahead!

ISSUE 01: Missplaced item in front of the house in Start Area 1
ISSUE 02: The Music starts too fast when entering the different areas
ISSUE 03: No Jeweled Egg Placeable in birds nest
ISSUE 04: Game Score message boxs pops up in the cutscene conversation of the large tree
ISSUE 05: Due to ISSUE 04 the double amount of points are given in the tree conversation
ISSUE 06: The Outside House Area is still saturated
ISSUE 07: The Garlic Icon has to be changed
ISSUE 08: The trap door in the cellar needs a better closed description.
ISSUE 09: Solve the play once only music problem
ISSUE 10: Replace the Non-Zorkish painting in the Troll Room
ISSUE 11: Replace the ugly water fall in East-West Passage
ISSUE 12: Game Crashes when entering the Round Room Area
ISSUE 13: The Thief Jumps to PC routine is cursed
ISSUE 14: The Troll and the Cyclops generates loot.
ISSUE 15: Check the Hole placeable in East-West Passage. It may be the wrong model.
ISSUE 16: The wall texture in the Engravings Cave looks strange
ISSUE 17: No engravings placeables in the Engravings Cave
ISSUE 18: Make the Wall placeables in the Dome Room no fade
ISSUE 19: Make the rope placeable look better when droped on the floor
ISSUE 20: No bat cloud was triggered or seen when entering the Dome Room
ISSUE 21: Fix the torch icon
ISSUE 22: Make the granite wall in the Temple smaller
ISSUE 23: Check all statue(creatures) the seems to be barely hurt
ISSUE 24: Fix the Egyptian floor texture
ISSUE 25: No animation on PC when opening the coffin
ISSUE 26: Make a better drop item handler. Maybe a destroy/create
ISSUE 27: The prayer doesn't take you to the woods
ISSUE 28: The black book has some unfinished links in it
ISSUE 29: The black book doesn't kill the PC when burned
ISSUE 30: Fix the different key icons
ISSUE 31: Remove the curse item routine on the Trophy Case
ISSUE 32: Check the Hole placeable in East of Chasm. It may be the wrong model.
ISSUE 33: Destroying the Painting doesn't work correct
ISSUE 34: The combinations of items allowed into the fireplace seems incorrect
ISSUE 35: The "door" in the hole in East of Chasm needs to be non visible
ISSUE 36: Make a platinum bar placeable and attach the sound VFX to it
ISSUE 37: Fix the walkmesh in Loud Room
ISSUE 38: Check the Hole placeable in Reservoir Areas. It may be the wrong model.
ISSUE 39: Black light squares in the Reservoir Areas
ISSUE 40: The bridge walkmesh in the Reservoir Areas is gone
ISSUE 41: Fix the cave sky dome
ISSUE 42: Create a new Hades sky dome
ISSUE 43: The sounds of the Reservoir Areas are messed up
ISSUE 44: Fix the Walkmesh Helpers in Dam Area
ISSUE 45: No animation when trying to take the tool chests
ISSUE 46: Complete the raising water script
ISSUE 47: Fix the water pipe model
ISSUE 48: Fix the punctured boat script
ISSUE 49: Fix the Control Panel model
ISSUE 50: The Water Fall sound in the Dam Area is strange.
ISSUE 51: Fix the walkmesh helper in the Round Room
ISSUE 52: No Zork lore on paintings in Mirror Room
ISSUE 53: No It feels hot here floating text in Cave
ISSUE 54: Black light squares in Hades Area
ISSUE 55: The spirits are pushable
ISSUE 56: The candles goes out when dropped to the floor even if unlit
ISSUE 57: The spirits aren't cowering at PCs unearthly power
ISSUE 58: The spirits doesn't flee to in the right direction
ISSUE 59: Fix the undead in Hades
ISSUE 60: FallDownHere trigger sometimes fails
ISSUE 61: Fix the AutoClosing door timer in the Maze
ISSUE 62: The statues in Maze 5 doesn't stand still on their places
ISSUE 63: No Bag of Coins on the skeleton in Maze 5
ISSUE 64: Create the water triggers
ISSUE 65: Create all the thief's jump points
ISSUE 66: Fix the mirror model
ISSUE 67: Fix the mirror VFX
ISSUE 68: No animation on touching the mirror
ISSUE 69: The Floating Text in Cold Passage says "Hello World"
ISSUE 70: No chilling wind sound in Cold Room
ISSUE 71: No water drip sound in Atlantis Room
ISSUE 72: The magic boat turns when spoken to
ISSUE 73: The magic boat conversation has broken links
ISSUE 74: No animation on deflate
ISSUE 75: Freeze camera on boat travel
ISSUE 76: Fix the buoy animation and texture
ISSUE 77: Make the boat move faster
ISSUE 78: Fix the boats route
ISSUE 79: Make the cave door to Sandy Cave non visible
ISSUE 80: Make the lightable torches work or remove them
ISSUE 81: The shovel isn't shoving up on the inventory model when equipped
ISSUE 82: No digging sound
ISSUE 83: The digging animation don't stop at the end of the conversation
ISSUE 84: The digging animation looks crazy with female PCs. Maybe unfixable
ISSUE 85: Make the Sandy Cave look better
ISSUE 86: The dark spot in Sandy Cave is too dark
ISSUE 87: Connect Frigid River Area with Aragain Falls Area
ISSUE 88: PC can't force boat over waterfall
ISSUE 89: Remove Air Elemental sound set from boat
ISSUE 90: No bird VFX at Forest Path
ISSUE 91: No walkable rainbow
ISSUE 92: Waving the Scepter doesn't do anything

I suppose it could been worse. I have faith!

Thanks for reading, as always!
/A

I really shouldn't do this...

Yes I know it's sort of a spoiler, but I wanted to show you what's going on. *jumping up and down like a kid in front of mom with a new drawing in his hand*
As I wrote before I've been working on the starting scene with a moody thunder storm. Here's a preview from an early test I did. I think the desaturation makes the rain more realistic and I'm pretty satisfied of the lightning and thunder. I know that the quality of this 35 sec. clip isn't enough to show the details, but anyway here it is. Turn up the brightness of your monitor because it's dark at night.

/Amraphael

Some work on the "lobby"

I usually don't like game starting lobbys, but I have decided that this module needs one to get the player in the right mood and give ome background and list credits etc. It also allows the player to configure the game in certain aspects such as the help system and some multiplayer options. It's also the place were you get stripped of all your possesions (don't worry you get them back when you have solved the game - or leave it) and get some proper adventuring equipment to-go. I have also experimented with the weather in NWN2. It sucks - just like the real weather. No thunder storms, flashes etc. So I have made a couple of VFX and together with the right sounds and flickering withe light I've succeded pretty well with a real Dr Frankenstein-thunder storm.

The work is going slow at the moment. We have started to rip apart my and my wifes home office rooms. I'll post a image of the chaos later. So I have to find a new place to put my friendly workstation. The renovation of the two rooms will take at least 4 months :)

Moving forward

Yesterday I finished the framework around one of the biggest puzzle-quests in this game. The puzzle is a four stage rocket with several opportunities to screw up - and a few to fix it again. Play-testing it was quite difficult and solving some of the pedagogical aspects of it was even trickier. I think I have solved the most of it, but when we do the next multiplayer test run in about two weeks it'll show if I was successful.

One of the fun parts to do was the safe (you may have seen the 3d model of it in an earlier post) and the scripting for the combination lock. I've made it like a ten digit dial with 5 combs, which gives you 100 000 combinations to try out :) The nifty part is that it only needs two scripts and one conversation (and the combination of course). Then we had a self--inflicted power surge and I gave up for the evening. I'll restore the crashed parts of my module tonight.

I've looked at patch 1.12 and to my disappointment my two wishes didn't come true. One was that the toolset would be more stable. In fact it seems that it don't work at all for us Europeans.
" We are aware of an issue where European customers may not be able to start the toolset."

The other one was that we should be able to change that ugly loot bag to any model we want. I really want to see what stuff that lays on the floor.
Oh yes, fixing the OnAreaTransitBMP() was on my list too. I skip this update too and hope for the lucky number (1.)13. No luck for Amraphael this time.