Decision time...

What's this? An actual real update? Well, yes and no...

As you can see it's been quite some time since the blog was last updated, and the reason is that there has been no work done on the mod for the last 5 weeks. There are several reasons for this; primarily the fact that having a new baby doesn't leave much time for modding (or anything else for that matter!). I really hadn't anticipated what a demanding baby Ben could be!

However, there have also been other distractions (such as the first expansion pack for The Lord of the Rings Online; Mine of Moria). The recent arrival of Storm of Zehir for NWN2 has brought a lot of changes, and the thought of checking that my mod still works with it and then updating it to take advantage of all the new features does not really get my juices flowing. In fact, I'm not intending to buy SoZ at all.

So, all this leaves me with some decisions to make (or I should say "us" rather, as my wife has a lot at stake with the mod too). The options I can see moving forwards are as follows:

• Continue with developing the mod. Honestly, I cannot see any work being done on it for the forseeable future, so this would be a very long term aim, and I would be surprised to see it released before 2010.
• Stop development and submit the build as a prefab to the community. The state of the mod right now means I could submit an entire city, either with or without ambient life, to the community to use as they see fit. There would be no story (I would remove the story elements before doing this). This would probably mean an end to development of the mod however.
• Pass the mod on to another developer who wishes to continue it's development. I would still be available to help with story, but probably not with any major building. This of course requires someone to be interested in taking on a large project which is probably only 40% complete.

So, those are the options and we now have to decide what to do. Any thoughts and comments would be gratefully received. It would be a shame to let all the hard work go to waste!

Once we've reached a decision I'll obviously let the community know.

The Numbers Game

Well work is continuing on the city hall I mentioned a few weeks ago, though quite a bit slower than I would have liked. I'll be posting a new update on the City Hall when it is complete, most likely in a couple of weeks, but as a stop-gap and to give you all something to read I thought it might be interesting to jot down a few numbers.

This gives a summary of what has been done so far. I have no idea how this compares to other mods, but I found it interesting to see how much I'd actually achieved! Bear in mind that the final mod will be much bigger than this, but this is where it stands as of today....

So, here are some numbers, in no particular order...
External areas: 7 completed
Internal areas: 40 completed
NPCs: 168 individuals (98 form a pool of random citizens, 70 are unique individuals)
Stores: 16
Conversations: 69
Words in conversations: 24,513
Scripts: 279

I haven't included any information on quests as they wil be the focus of future updates.

That's all for now, I'll leave you with some new screenshots of the city docks.

New toolset tool

Just a quick update. I haven't managed to get any work done on Seahaven at all this week, as it's been my first week back at work after my paternity leave. I have however got myself a new toy in readiness for starting work on the mod again; this lovely new Acer Aspire 6920G laptop.It's a beautiful bit of kit, and pretty good for gaming too. After a bit of tweaking I've got Lord of the Rings Online running on High graphics setting at around 60 frames per second. Additionally, it seems to run the NWN2 toolset like a dream. So, hopefully my new found mobility will mean I can get a bit more toolset work done inbetween nappy changes.

Sanctuary

The toolset has offered a little sanctuary from the constant stream of dirty nappies recently, so I have another update for you. I've managed to finish my second indoor area; Seahaven Church.

The Church itself is a place of sanctuary, where the citizens of Seahaven can come and seek guidance and respite from their daily toils. Here the player may find healing and succour (in exchange for a donation to the church coffers of course). There are other things to be found here as well however, such as an ancient artefact.

When you visit the church you will find parishoners entering and leaving, stopping to pray and to listen to the sermons of Father Mycroft. Listen to his sermons well, for they often contain hidden meaning that may make your journey through the city a little bit easier.

As well as finishing the church I have managed to track down a rather annoying but well known bug. When you have too many lightsources overlapping in a single exterior grid it can turn water black, which looks horrendous. I was having this problem in Seahaven Park at night, due to the torches of the two wandering lovers Ronan and Lilian. After spending a long time moving lights around and playing with them I eventually managed to get a result that didn't turn the river black when they wandered past.

As so often occurs, whilst working on that bug I found another little thing to tweak. I noticed that the park was full of butterflies, even in the darkest reaches of the night. So, a few tweaks later and the butterflies will only come out during the day. It's a silly little thing, but spending time on stuff like that helps to improve immersion I feel.

The next thing to do is to start work on Seahaven City Hall, which will be the focus of the next update. Until then there are some screenshots from the church.

Outside Seahaven Church

Father Mycroft begins his sermon with a prayer

Mycroft's Sermon

The parishoners listen to Mycroft speak

You can find succour here as well as preachings

Modding 0 Nappies 1

Just a quick note that work on the mod is taking a brief hiatus again following the birth of our new baby son, Ben. He was born on Friday so the last few days have been full (as have the nappies!).

Both mother and son are doing very well :) I'll post more when I can get a free 30 seconds or so!

Back to business

So, my short break turned into a long break which turned into a very long break! I guess my toolset batteries needed more recharging than I thought! So, I apologise to everyone who has been following this mod for the extended period of inactivity.

This was due to several things (real life, a renewed interest in Lord of the Rings Online, and preparations for our new baby who is now almost a week overdue!). Still, I recently managed to get back into the swing of things and have resumed work on Seahaven. I'm not able to proceed at the pace I was before, so it's unlikely that this blog will be updated weekly, but I'll try and get regular updates made when there is something to report and when nappy changes allow.

I've managed to complete work on Seahaven Bank, which took longer than I anticipated due to some nasty toolset bug. It seems that you cannot adjust the inventory size of containers in the toolset (or at least you can change the setting, but it doesn't actually do anything in game). Amraphael gave me a pointer on how to address this in a comment on my last post, so big thanks to him!

I cooked up the following script that allows you to limit the amount of items that can be stored in a container. You set an int variable (called "InventorySize") on the container that specifies the number of slots, and then attach the following script to the container's OnInventoryDisturbed event. Hopefully someone else might find it useful :)

Edit: This script has been improved further by Lance Botelle from the Bard of Althéa mod. Thanks Lance! Head on over to his mod for instructions on how to edit the xml file correctly too!

// Count number of items in a container.
// Don't let player put items in if the container is full.
void main ()
{
int nSizeCheck = 0;
object oPC = GetLastDisturbed();
int nSize = GetLocalInt(OBJECT_SELF, "InventorySize");
if(nSize == 0){nSize = 1;}

object oItemPlaced = GetInventoryDisturbItem();

object oItem = GetFirstItemInInventory(OBJECT_SELF);
while (GetIsObjectValid(oItem))
{
nSizeCheck = nSizeCheck + 1;

if (nSizeCheck > nSize)
{
SpeakString("The container is full. You cannot place anything else inside it.");
ActionGiveItem(oItemPlaced, oPC, FALSE);
return;
}

oItem = GetNextItemInInventory(OBJECT_SELF);
}

// GIVE A QUANTITY FEEDBACK
string sCapacity = IntToString(nSizeCheck) + "/" + IntToString(nSize);
SetGUIObjectText(oPC, "SCREEN_CONTAINER_DEFAULT", "ContainerCapacity", -1, sCapacity);

}

Of course, this script does not get round the inventory size always being displayed on screen as 142, but a simple edit to a UI file has fixed that problem as well.

I've also taken the plunge and upgraded the game and toolset to version 1.13. I wanted to do this as the Creature Cache has been fixed. This loads the specified creatures into memory as the area loads, so the hitching you can get when creatures are spawned is minimised. I'm happy to report that this seems to have made a massive improvement to the outdoor city areas. There no longer seems to be any hitching at all when you move from one area to another, despite the large number of citizens and merchants being spawned.

So, the bank is complete. It has staff, citizens that wander in and out and talk to the staff, an opportunity for investment, an opportunity for theft, and a few other little surprises. I've attached a couple of screenshots of the main bank room below.

Next I'll be working on the interior of Seahaven Church.

Seahaven Bank

Short break

Some of you may have noticed that there hasn't been an update in almost three weeks. That's because there hasn't been much done, or at least not enough to report.

I've been taking a bit of a break from the mod over the last couple of weeks to try and avoid burnout on it. There have been quite a few distractions and I have been getting a bit unenthusiastic about booting up the toolset. This is partly due to my lack of enjoyment and working through conversations (I find writing convos really difficult) and partly because I'm starting to get annoyed with the silly bugs in the toolset (for example, I've had to scrap one puzzle I spent ages scripting due to the fact that you cannot adjust the inventory size of containers - they always end up with 142 spaces, no matter what size you set them too in the toolset).

Anyway, I have managed to spend some time working on the interior of Seahaven Bank, and have all my tellers, customers, and guards in place. There is a working vault with a combination lock (try to pick it, break it, or open it when a guard is nearby and you'll end up in trouble!) and a storage vault in which you can hire secure lockboxes for storing items (though there does not seem much point as I cannot limit storage space due to the stupid bug highlighted above). Next I need to work on a couple of rival merchant NPCs who are looking for investors in their organisations.

So, not sure when I'll get round to working on the mod in anger again, but hopefully I'll be feeling all reinvigorated soon!

Going indoors

Well, thanks to all the positive feedback I had following the sneak peak video I posted last time, I have forged ahead with renewed energy and reached a major milestone in the creation of Seahaven City. I have finally finished all the ambient life in the outdoor areas, so it's now possible to wander around the whole city and see the inhabitants going about their daily business, as well as talk to people, buy equipment, take a boat ride, enjoy a spot of fishing, and so on.

The last few additions and tweaks required me to include the last couple of outdoor encounters, and I also wrote some scripts to offer some scaling to them, so that they will hopefully offer some challenge at any point. As the design of the city is an open one, with several optional subquests, the player could be anywhere from level 3 to around level 7 when coming across the encounters.

I also tidied a few things up, such as adding some extra tiles to one area to improve the visuals, and retexturing the banners outside Seahaven Bank (see screenshot below).

So, now that key project stage has been completed, what next? Well, it's time to move on to adding life (ambient, encounters, notable NPCs, etc) to the indoor areas of the city. To give you an idea of what I'll be doing here is a list of the indoor areas I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks.

• Seahaven Bank
• Church of Ilmater (2 areas)
• Seahaven City Hall (2 areas)
• Seahaven Jail (2 areas)
• Seahaven Keep (3 areas)
• Barshank Mausoleum
• Various merchant shops (9 areas)
• Seahaven Monastery (2 areas)
• Port Authority (2 areas)
• Sewers (2 areas)
• 3 different taverns (2-3 areas each)
• Seahaven Theatre (2 areas)

That's quite a lot of work! I sometimes wonder if I have over extended my ambitions on this project :)

First up will be Seahaven Bank (simply because I'm going to tackle the areas in the order they come up in the toolset). The bank is the centre of the mercantile industry in Seahaven, which is a major merchant port on the Ursene Coast. It is here that the various merchant families strike deals and store their wares before trading. The bank will play a large part in one of the optional subquests, so it will take some time to get right.

The screenshot below shows how the bank looks from the outside, with the pot of gold banner above the main doors.

A sneak peak

Well it's been two whole weeks since my last update, for while I apologise. I have managed to get quite a lot done over the last two weeks (despite continued pressure at work and attending ante-natal classes), it's just that it isn't that interesting to report!

The north-western part of the city is coming along nicely, and I just have 2 or 3 NPCs left to place (plus their attendant scripts and conversations to write of course). Hopefully that will mean that I will have completed the external areas by this time next week. Fingers crossed.

So, as a little treat as I don't have much other stuff to update with I have put together a sneak peak at some of the external areas of the city I have been working on. This is not a trailer for the mod - there are no plot or conversation details, and the editing is perfunctory at best; but it might give you a sense of the city itself.

You can view the sneak peak video below (a small, streaming version) or download a larger version with more detail here (~24MB). I'd be interested to hear any feedback!

Moving forwards

Well I finally got the north-eastern part of Seahaven completed and have now moved onto the north-western part of the city. This is the last major external area I have to do, but it is also the largest and most complex.

This part of the city is where the main housing centre is, as well as the civic centre of the city. Around the impressive fountains of Seahaven Square you will find the city hall and bank, which looks after the interests of the major merchant families. In this part of Seahaven you can also find Seahaven Monastery on Deepview Isle in the middle of the harbour, the Searats Quarter (slums), the Port Authority, the docks, the Barracks and Jailhouse. The streets can be a bit maze like, but exploration can turn up unexpected rewards here.

I've already got the area fully built and have now populated it with guards and general citizens, so it is already feeling "alive". The next week or two will be spent putting in the rest of the NPCs, and after that it is time to move on to the internal areas of the module.

Here are some screenshots of the north-western part of the city.

The view down to dock street from Deepview Isle.

Across the city from The Ship and Anchor Tavern. This is one of three main taverns in the city.

Seahaven Square.

The Searats Quarter (slums).

I actually got a lot done this last week. As well as finishing the last area and starting the new one I integrated a new lighting system for the city, which really helps to bring it to life at night. There's also a new NPC to discover who adds a bit of light relief to the mod. In fact his conversation was actually a lot of fun to write and I hope people will enjoy it when they finally get to meet "The Shadow"!

Bits and bobs

After a couple of slow weeks on the Seahaven front things have now started to move forwards again. I'm still working on populating the north-eastern part of the city, but I'm almost done now, with only two more named NPCs to place and script.

Getting this part of the city done has taken a little longer than I anticipated; it sometimes seems that the most simple of things suddenly start to become very complicated where the toolset is concerned, and this week has involved a lot of tweaking and testing.

I've had to rewrite 26 on_death scripts for various named NPCs following the inadvertent discovery of a pretty major bug (some NPCs who got killed by hostile mobs would suddenly start respawning again). It's all sorted now thank goodness.

Amongst the more interesting things I've been doing this week are fully integrating Heed's Angler Pack into the mod. This means you can now spend some time fishing along the banks of the Deepview River. As well as offering a way to make a bit of coin and giving the player something else to do, this will also be tied in to a couple of the subquests.

I've also worked on getting some basic blueprints into the mod that I will need for another subquest involving cooking. I won't say any more about that just yet. :)

On the NPC front, as I said the north-eastern part of the city is almost done. I had fun creating a nice script for a teenager playing fetch with his pet dog, and have managed to get an interesting encounter with a guard dog into the area. The idea (as with many of the subquests and puzzles) is that there are several ways of getting past the guard dog, rather than the usual hack and slash method. Of course, the combat method is still available, but there may be a punitive outcome to doing things that way.

On a side note, its been great to see some new creature models coming out for NWN2, an area that was sadly lacking. As well as the unbelievably cool Beholder and upcoming Drider from JohnnyRee, the guys at Robinson Workshop have started converting NWN models to NWN2 with great effect. So far they have released a rust monster, basilisk, snake, and monodrone. Expect to see the snake appear in Seahaven at some point in the future!

I'll sign off this week with a couple of screenshots from the guard dog encounter. Hopefully by the next update I'll have been able to start placing the ambient life into the north-western part of the city (which is the largest and most complex region).

A little lore

Well, I'm afraid it's been another relatively quiet week in the world of Seahaven this week. Mainly due to continuing work on the nursery (nevermind, area building is my favourite thing anyway :p ) and completely relaying the back garden that was damaged in last years floods.

I did however manage to get the conversation I started last week completely finished. I even had time to refine one of the camera moves and add a little surprise in at the end which involves a rather unusual visual effect. By the time it was complete the conversation ran for about 700 nodes, around half of which contain speech and the other half various actions and camera moves.

Now that's done I've started work populating the market place with merchants, all of whom are only too eager to part an innocent young adventurer from their hard-earned coin. There are 5 outside merchants, and a further 7 inside various buildings in this area.

As it's a short update this week I'll leave you with a few selections from the lore snippets that will appear every time you zone (in the same place that the tips appear in the original campaign).

Random lore snippets

• Seahaven is one of the longest standing communities of the Ursene Coast, having been formed some 600 years ago.
• The slums of Seahaven are commonly referred to as the Searats Quarter.
• The primary religion of Seahaven is the worship of Ilmater, the Crying God. Worship of Ilmater is most unusual along the Ursene Coast, and was founded here by monastic missionaries who settled in the region.
• In recent times Seahaven has become a thriving merchant port. The main docks are protected from pirate attacks by the great sea wall across the harbour.
• The Dancing Rat Taphouse is the most popular tavern in the Searats Quarter. It is a boisterous place, where strangers can easily find both trouble and hedonistic pleasure.
• Rumours persist of strange tunnels that can be found beneath Highsea Mountain in the south-eastern part of Seahaven City.
• The monks of Seahaven Monastery live and work in their keep on Deepview Isle free of city taxes, apparently due to some favour they did the rulers of the city many years ago.
• The most famous and most feared pirate leader in the area is Captain Jacob "Blackneck" Bellamy. His fleet terrorises the more remote settlements along the Ursene Coast, and many fear what would happen if he succeeds in his ultimate aim of uniting the various pirate clans.

There are many more where those came from, but they may give you a flavour of what is to come.

Cards and conversations

Well the last week has been pretty quiet on the Seahaven front, what with the nice weather we've been having and starting work on the nursery.

In fact all I have done this week is a single conversation. However it does happen to be by far the most complex conversation I have yet attempted, with multiple branches, custom tga images, conditionals, and even special camera moves. At the moment it comprises 100 nodes of dialog (about 200 nodes in all) and I am only about one third of the way through it! So why is it so complicated?

Well, it involves a trip to see a fortune teller in the merchant quarter of the city. For a price she will take you into her wagon and read your fortune. This involves drawing three random cards from a deck of twelve to read your past, present, and future. As each part can influence the reading of the next it is starting to get a little complicated!

So, I have to create a reading for each card at each stage of the reading. That's 36 possible readings, plus keep track of each card as it is drawn in case it may influence the later responses.

I have created the cards myself, and you can see a preview of a selection of them below.

A selection of fortune cards from the Deck of Agura

Whilst the outcome of the reading won't directly affect the main plot, it may give some hints about what is to come.

So, a pretty short update this week. Hopefully I'll be able to get the conversation finished this week and move on to finishing the ambient life in the north-eastern part of Seahaven.

A relaxing ride

So, this week has been a continuation of the work I started last week, in placing the ambient life into the north-eastern part of the city. The first stage was to get all my guard patrols in place along with the random citizens that wander around the area (and particularly around the market place).

I managed to get that done quite quickly, but there was still something missing, so I spent a good deal of time tweaking and adding ambient barkstrings to the populace as well. I had to play around a little to ensure that the player isn't just spammed with the same old chatter over and over, but it also gave me a chance to add in some teasers for the various subquests as well. I also found that despite having a pool of 32 random citizens to pick from I was still getting too many instances of the same one cropping up in close proximity. Therefore I added another 16 to the pool and things now look much better.

Now that the general populace is in place I've started adding the more interesting NPCs. Much of this week was spent solving a problem that I first outlined in my second ever post. There is a stall near the market place that offers riverboat trips down the Deepview River, which flows through the centre of the city. The idea for taking a trip is that it serves two purposes. First it allows the player to bypass a guard patrol that there is no other way round. Secondly it gives me the opportunity to fill in some background lore for the city, as the ships captain gives a commentary on the city as the boat sails through it.

The problem I had was creating a moving boat in place of the PC for the cutscene. I tried a few methods, and one that looked promising initially was to have the PC with a visual effect of the boat around him. I then tried moving the PC by jumping him from waypoint to waypoint very quickly, to give the effect of smooth movement (I could not just have him walking between them as it would look odd). I managed to get this to work, but to get it anywhere near smooth it required hundreds and hundreds of waypoints stacked very closely together! In the end I plumped for a method that would not require the PC on screen and used an invisible creature to walk the boat visual effect down the route. Below you can see some screenshots taken during the boat trip.

Ophen's River Trips

The river trip took a few days to get just right, but now its out of the way I have finally moved on to some of the other interesting characters. I'm currently working on Madam Istar, fortune-teller extraordinaire!

I've been getting a little distracted this week by the latest free content update for Lord of the Rings Online too. So much to see and do, and so little time! I could really do with a TARDIS so I can get everything done!

Speeding up

Well, I've managed to complete the ambient life in the south-eastern part of the city in less than a week, which is a lot faster than the south-western part took me. I'm finding it much easier to lay down spawns and patrol routes now that I've had a bit of practise.

I had some fun creating some interesting NPCs for this part of the city, and had particular trouble creating a cutscene involving the player gaining entry to a theatre show. The show will make up a major part of one of the sub-quests.

I also enjoyed messing around with some ambient scripts to bring certain parts of the area to life. Here is a script I wrote for two children playing catch with a stick (I'd have preferred them to use a ball or stone, but I couldn't get the right graphic to show). It works by spawning a dart projectile. Anyway, maybe someone out there will find it useful. It's a quite a simple script, and doesn't require any haks or messing around with 2da files to work. I'm going to adapt it for a man playing fetch with his dog as well I think.

To use it simply create two NPCs and place them a distance apart (how far is up to you) and facing each other. Then add the following script into the heartbeat of each NPC, substituting "tagofotherNPC" for the actual tag of the opposing NPC. Finally you will need to add a local int variable ("HasBall" set to 1) on one of the NPCs to get them playing catch.

string sSelf = GetTag(OBJECT_SELF);
object oTarget = GetObjectByTag("tagofotherNPC");
location lThrow = GetLocation(oTarget);
int iHasBall = GetLocalInt(OBJECT_SELF, "HasBall");

SetOrientOnDialog(OBJECT_SELF, FALSE);
if (iHasBall == 1)
{
DeleteLocalInt(OBJECT_SELF, "HasBall");
DelayCommand(2.0, SetLocalInt(oTarget, "HasBall", 1));
int iConvo = Random(4)+1;
switch (iConvo)
{
case 1:
AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, SpeakString("Here you go! Catch!"));
break;
case 2:
AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, PlayVoiceChat(VOICE_CHAT_LAUGH));
break;
case 3:
AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, SpeakString("Bet you can't catch this one!"));
break;
case 4:
AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, SpeakString("Catch!"));
break;
}
PlayCustomOneShotAnimation(OBJECT_SELF, "thrw_1attack01");
AssignCommand(OBJECT_SELF, ActionDoCommand(SpawnItemProjectile (OBJECT_SELF, oTarget, GetLocation(OBJECT_SELF), lThrow, BASE_ITEM_DART, PROJECTILE_PATH_TYPE_DEFAULT, OVERRIDE_ATTACK_RESULT_MISS, DAMAGE_TYPE_SONIC)));
float fTime = GetProjectileTravelTime(GetLocation(OBJECT_SELF), lThrow, PROJECTILE_PATH_TYPE_DEFAULT, SPELL_TRAP_DART);
AssignCommand(oTarget, ActionWait(fTime));
DelayCommand(fTime, AssignCommand(oTarget, PlayAnimation(ANIMATION_FIREFORGET_DODGE_SIDE, 1.0)));
DelayCommand(fTime + 1.6, AssignCommand(oTarget, PlayAnimation(ANIMATION_LOOPING_GET_LOW, 1.0, 2.0)));
}

I've now started to work on the north-eastern part of the city. This part of the city is primarily made up of the market square and the merchants quarter. Here you will find the majority of the merchants, as well as the dock warehouses. The screenshot below is the loading screen for the area, and is the view seen from the ramp that leads down from the Highsea Estates.

North-east Seahaven

Finally this week, Jo set us up a TortoiseSVN server for the campaign. This means we can both work on it at the same time without fear of overwriting each others work, and we can also track the history and changes in the campaign as we commit them to the server. It's working really well.

On the non-NWN2 front, the Lord of the Rings Online kinship that I am a member of, Stout n Sturdy, celebrated its first birthday with a week of events, which were a lot of fun. If you haven't tried out this game yet I urge you to do so, it's a lot of fun and surprisingly adherent to Tolkien's lore.