In the last post, I covered why I thought the loot system in the vanilla game was not really a good option (in my eyes!) for BaL. This has been at the back of my mind for a long time, ever since I started working on this mod.

The first idea I had was to generate random loot items with prefixes and suffixes based on enchantments picked from a pool defined in a 2DA. Not very original, I admit. I mean, it's not like this hasn't been done in every action-RPG out there. While I was very enthusiastic about the idea initially, that feeling quickly (and rightly!) ebbed away once I realized this will not suit the gameplay at all. Then, I came up with the idea of extremely limited world drops but the player will have the possibility to run some dungeons which will scale loot according to level. Way too much work!

So, what can be done to make loot interesting? The loot definitely has to be of some use to the player and at the same time, there should be a feeling of anticipation when clicking the loot bag. The system I settled on revolves around Crafting. I know Awakening has Rune-crafting as a skill but again, in my opinion, I felt it was not enough.

Old-time readers of this blog might remember me mentioning Phaenan's Crafting GUI Framework a long time back; the possibilities this opens up are endless. The vanilla crafting GUI, unfortunately, had hard-coded ability IDs for the craft-skills which severely limits what you can do to extend that interface. However, with this new interface, the restrictions are removed and more important, customization options are present that makes it much more modder-friendly. Phaenan has already implemented this in the latest version of her Winter Forge add-on and if you are a modder, you can read about the implementation details on the Flexible craft UI project.

Phaenan's Crafting GUI in The Winter Forge (c) Phaenan

So, how can crafting make the loot system better?

• The player is always on the lookout for reagents and this can be used to generate loot tables that will be of interest to the player.
• The above only works when there is sufficient diversity in the reagents required. As an example, requiring one to just harvest Elfroot while all other reagents can be bought makes the player go ho-hum when he encounters another Elfroot plant/drop.
• The crafting itself can be designed to keep the player engaged in creating/modifying key aspects of the game. 

Now, I keep saying crafting but only because it is tied to the crafting GUI. As I said before, with Phaenan's modifications, the possibilities are endless. I am working on one such possibility right now and once it all comes together as intended, the player will be presented with a new avenue to strategically modify how the game is played. More later...

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Work on the new interior level is progressing well. The basic structural pieces are in place now. The tricky part is in finding the right VFX for the level. At this point, I'm not there yet and quite likely, won't get to that part till later. Why? This level was conceptualized around a big boss battle and until I have the mechanics of the battle in place and tested, the level will remain in it's rudimentary form. This way, if at all a rework is required, I can re-do the level quickly and re-test. This will also be one of the final areas the player encounters so as such, there won't be any screenies coming out on this area till release.

In addition to the level building, I have been working on some of the systems within the game, most notably the loot system. I mean, it's high time some of these are done and integrated into the module for balance testing.
First off, the loot system designed for Dragon Age is a very versatile one; requiring one to just modify 2DAs or add additional ones if required. I consider this much more flexible than manually assigning loot for every container/mob and is also much easier to tweak and adjust. So, I won't be making many changes to this system in its basic form.

However, there are a couple of issues with the actual loot in Dragon Age.
One, loot distribution was bad. I am not talking about vendor trash here. Vendor trash is an essential component of any loot system - it is not possible to have every drop contain an item that will be an upgrade to the player. Besides, vendor trash helps generate gold which can be used to purchase other useful things.

This fish is not meant to be cooked!

The problem I see with DA loot is that the distribution of the items for the different treasure levels was bad. Towards the very end, you come upon a locked chest that requires level 4 lockpicking and possibly, extra cunning to break through. You eagerly open it...and find a Health Poultice inside. Oh, the disappointment! Or you find the rare Manuscript Copy. Most of the highest level chests/creatures either gave you potions or money or trash, with some giving runes - which can be more easily purchased.

Second, usefulness of the items. Either the items were inferior to what you already had (even in late-game loot since some of the best items can only be purchased) or you ended up with lots of salves and poisons. Now, if the game mechanics required you to use them, it wouldn't be so bad but I hardly recall using any salve or poison when playing in Hard difficulty. Maybe in Nightmare? Further, unless you are min-maxing and/or playing with a reduced party size, you don't need the best equipment to get through DA. Which results in a lot of gold lying around in the player's inventory. Admittedly, it is not possible to implement a good economy in a single-player game but nevertheless, I think some of these points can be addressed.

How? I cannot just cut down the loot drastically because players expect some reward for the fight they just won. In the same vein, I can't just give out rare and powerful items because that will trivialize the gameplay. There has to be a balance between the two and while there are multiple ways to go about it, I hope to deliver an enjoyable and useful system with BaL. I will cover the details in my next post.

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It's close to 10 months since I started working on Blood and Lyrium. When I started out, the story was pretty simple and I had hoped to finish it by October. Then, as I got more familiar with the Toolset and started 'living' the story during development, it gradually blossomed into what is now a far better story. There are still a lot of things I want to add to it but pragmatism dictates that the line be drawn somewhere. I've also spent a fair amount of time working on Craggy Island and that has been a good experience on the collaboration front.

I also started this blog, my first ever. The sole inspiration behind doing this was Challseus' Rose of Eternity Daily Journal. There were times in the beginning when I would easily get frustrated with the Toolset and I would be reading his daily updates and would think - Man, how can this guy do so much in the toolset on a consistent basis?!! And that too with a 4-hour commute! Many a time when I've faltered, I used to read his journal and get motivated to have another go at the Toolset and that's when I thought - it would be good to have a blog to record what I am doing too. And it has helped immensely. When I check the stats on this blog and see the number of people coming to read it on a regular basis, that provides additional motivation - there are people who are definitely interested in BaL and want to play it when it's done.

I've also come to realize some of the limitations that cannot be gotten around within a short duration - cinematics being the prime example of this. Still, I've persevered where I can and while there have been delays, I am still extremely enthusiastic about sharing this story with others.

I've mentioned in many posts that I want to release this before DA2 comes out; more accurately, around the beginning of February. Well, that is not going to happen. So, when is the new targeted release date? At this point, I really don't want to set another release date only to revise it again. So, it's going to be done when it's done.

To that end, the plan going forward is going to be simple - get the alpha out first. Then, streamline the work to proceed with an area at a time. There are times when I have jumped around when I've had inspiration strike only to go back to a previous area later and struggle to get back into the right 'mood' for that area. A simple thing, maybe but when all you have is a few hours daily, it is an avoidable time-sink.

So, what have I been doing on the BaL front these past two weeks? Dialogue and combat-testing. I've been writing dialogue like a man possessed - vast sections of quest dialogue have been overhauled and the companion profiles are starting to come through in conversations better. I have only a few more to go before the alpha is cut and I have already enlisted MysteriXoX to proof-read what I've written. A good story and great combat mechanics will fall flat if the player is not engaged enough to play through the module and dialogue is one of the primary means of engaging them.

Combat testing! That warrants a whole separate post and will be made shortly, along with some additions to this blog. Till later...

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As mentioned in the last update, I've been working on two things primarily - finishing up the scripting for Craggy Island and reworking the Evermist level.

The work on Craggy Island is almost done. We've added some VFX to the final area to make things seem a little more coherent. The actual VFX that was to be implemented is not present in the default VFX_base worksheet. For now, a similar VFX has been added and while it does look fine, I think the original one (fxe_mist_p) had a 'blowing-out' animation that's missing from this one. In the end, we might just have to extend VFX_base and use the VFX that was originally intended to be in the area.
There is also an annoying issue with the auto-level up template for the companions - just doesn't seem to work. I'll have to spend some time tomorrow going over that and trying to fix it.

This weekend, I spent a considerable amount of time on the Evermist level. Even if I do say so myself, it is starting to look much more like a proper village than a random collection of houses on elevated ground. I've taken pains to bring in some distinction to the various areas within the level - for example, rich farmers will have shingled roofs on their houses and the immediate area around them will look better with cobbled pathways and bigger houses, the poorer sections will have thatch roofs, closer-spaced houses, patch-worked walls.

I had planned to take some before/after close-up shots to show the difference but didn't have time yesterday night. Maybe in the next post :)
Here is a screenie of one of the streets that is near the entrance; still need to add a few more props but I also have to make sure not to overdo it. As it is, the level is prop-heavy due to all the constructed structures!

Oh, and I managed to spend only a few hours on WoW - enough to advance my gnome by about 7 levels. Reading about the latest patch on the WoW forums, it appears that the initial leveling process has been made faster ;)

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That's right! THE drug, going by what I've read and I must say, it's true to an extent!

I saw a BF deal for a free monthly pass for WoW and decided I'll give it a shot. I got one of those 10-day trial invites so I can decide whether to sell that pass or not and it looks like I *might* subscribe instead. I should have taken a screenshot of the first time I entered Eitrigg. I guess it was a busy time in the realm - there were scores of characters around! That first glimpse sucked me right in though I couldn't log on to that realm after that (almost always full!)
Instead I created a gnome mage in Norgannon and it's been a blast playing that little 'un. I don't know about others but I find the graphics extremely appealing. It's so colourful and lively, compared to DA.

The starting area for a gnome character

The other thing I noticed was that even for unimportant quests - simply to go to another place, for example - you get a detailed reason. Far more detailed than any of those Chanter's Board/Blackstone Irregulars/many other side-quests in DA. I really liked that there is a story behind all these fights against the Troggs, Rockjaws and Frostmanes.
The other important distinction from DA that I immediately noticed were the ambient animations. Here is a screenshot (badly taken) of a guy carrying another. He actually goes and lays the guy down on a makeshift bed and goes back and waits for another survivor!

Anyway, as much as I am enjoying this game, I am making a conscious effort not to play for extended lengths of time. I still have a module to finish; make it two actually. I am in final stages of scripting for Craggy Island and after that, it's just going to be bug-fixing (which we've already done a lot) and polishing. Hopefully, it gets out around Christmas; last I heard, VO is in progress.

Meanwhile, while re-working my Evermist level, I've also been taking breaks on and off (it feels like I've been working in the level editor most of the time!) and re-working dialogues to change references to the locations that have moved. I'm also working on fleshing out the setting with a lot of ambient dialogues during these breaks so it doesn't get boring - which is quite easy when re-working a level as huge as this one. I'm also making sure some of the buildings fit more into a village setting; an example is the marketplace which was very big and spacious under a huge tent-like awning previously. Now, the shops are more closely-packed and cluttered with make-shift roofs.

Re-worked market

Once I finish this, I have around 4 cutscenes I need to create in this area. That will definitely take some time! Till later...

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Things just got a little more exciting and a little more hectic! I've taken over a new role at work, managing the projects we are working on and with it comes a ton of admin activities. Being an individual contributor till now, I've never really appreciated the amount of work that actually goes into managing a large scale project such as ours and this was sort of a rude awakening. Still, I've jumped in with both feet and I've got to make this work!

On the BaL front, things are progressing slowly but steadily. The important cutscene Dahlia is working on is expected to be completed this week and I am recruiting a VO artist for the lines required for this cutscene. This will help in the visualization, I am told ( I tell you, I am a noob at cinematics!) and it will also give me a chance to get the whole voice-over related activities into my build workflow.

Are you the one I am looking for?

Currently, I am working on populating the different areas with ambient NPCs. Leeward, in particular, has this big campsite party that will have quite a few ambient NPCs and I am trying to find varied animations for them so they don't all appear as clones. This does involve creating new ambient patterns and I am trawling through the ANIM_base worksheet to see what I can cook up. After that, I have a couple more cutscenes to create (nothing complex but since I will be doing them, anything can happen!).

Then, comes the big activity - packaging and play-testing the alpha. I plan to do this on another computer to simulate a user playing it so that it's easier to identify missing resources, etc. This will also free up my desktop to tweak and run the lightmapping on the levels that need it - parallelism all the way! Now, if only I had 48 hours a day...

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The weekend started off pretty quietly - for the whole of Saturday, I was not able to work on BaL though I wanted to.  Sunday looked to be turning that way - we had the daylight savings kick in and I realized I actually hadn't gotten up early :)

Still, I managed to finish the level I was working on - it is a fairly small level and will be used in one of the area transition encounters. It resembles a small clearing in a forest with a path winding through it - the sort of area where you'd stop to camp. It's so hard to create the illusion of a forest though, especially one around the rim of the clearing. For one, there is no terrain darkening tool and I wasn't able to find a suitable texture to substitute for that. Second, there is, as far as I was able to determine, no way to remove light from a particular area. This is very significant for forests as trees in Dragon Age do not cast shadows.

The view from near the entrance to the area

For now, the level has been marked complete which means it is 90% done. I will probably do the shadows later when I have time. I also tried using negative lights for this purpose but apparently, they have some other purpose.

I also managed to finish (read: 90%) an important cutscene that sets the stage for the plot beyond the first couple of areas. It is still a little rough around the edges at certain points but it's functionally complete and that's all that matters for now.

Till later...

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One of the biggest time sinks in module-making in Dragon Age after level building is writing dialogue. Even when you start with a concrete story and well-defined NPCs and companions, writing dialogue is not so easy. The most basic issue, at least for me, is trying to keep in mind that I am not writing a story but an interactive adventure.

What does this mean? Let's take an example - I was writing a conversation today and at one point a companion says the following line: "I don't want to talk to you. Ask him what he wants". Now, this interjection is not completely necessary to the conversation but it helps the flow and builds on an already established relationship between the companion and the conversation owner. Only when I was reviewing the conversation did I notice the "him". A few copy-paste as links and plot flags later, the conversation was complete.
Now, the above is fairly simple but this is one area I wish the DA conversation system was a little more flexible and allowed us to use tags to reference race/gender/class/background/specialization/etc. It seems almost unintuitive to write multiple lines just to change one word.

The bigger problem (and unrelated to the conversation system) is trying to come up with dialogue options - the backbone of an interactive conversation. Now, in some cases, these options just flow organically. I was writing a conversation for a minor NPC and multiple choices at each node was so easy. Then, I started writing another piece for a companion and ended up being stumped. Offering choices while maintaining the flow of dialogue is extremely important - irrelevant options can easily destroy that flow and tone set previously.

I take pride in my writing skills in English even though it is not my native tongue. However, I've lost track of the number of times I've referred to an online dictionary/thesaurus to make sure I am using a particular phrase or idiom in the correct way. And I don't even want to talk about writing emotional scenes - I just plain suck at those, a fact I've come to accept. I spent over half an hour today writing eight lines, eight lines with no options at all and it's still not final. Anyway, the journey continues and hopefully, these efforts help to bring the story together in a cohesive manner in the end.

Lastly, good news for the DA community - the first installment in the Dark Times: Confederacy of Malkuth saga has been released. Check out the details in the official announcement thread. I haven't had a chance to play it yet (have set aside time during the weekend for it) but it appears to be fairly long and involved and most important, it is, as far as I know, the first significant addition to the Official Campaign...and this is just the first part! For those ruing the fact that Bioware won't be releasing DLCs for DA:O anymore or that they can't continue their Warden's story (seriously, what's with this Warden fixation? If you don't believe me, go check out how many threads in the DA2 forums refer to this), head over to the DT:CoM thread and fill that void up!

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Some of you might have noticed that the header image on this blog has changed ;)

It's an extension of the project image I posted over at BSN a few days back. Basically, I wanted to extend the width of the blog layout since even on my 14" inch work laptop, there were gaps on either side. When I did that, the previous header image didn't fit and I thought it is high time I change that image from a more generic DA one to something more specific to what I am working on currently.

It's a blend of three images I found over on http://abstract.desktopnexus.com/cat/fantasy/

On to more interesting stuff!

My 2D Art progress has been at 0% for a few months now - not something I was proud of, I can assure you ;)
Yic17, after seeing my October Monthly Report post, kindly offered to help me in this area. This was yesterday and I promptly added him to the developer group I created for BaL (for some inexplicable reason, BSN still shows discussions in private groups in the public profile feed - though as it turned out today, that is not always a bad thing - more on this later!) and created some threads to explain what I wanted.

One of the things that had always been at the back of my mind was to lend some distinction to the Dalish clans in my module of which there are 2 primary ones. One way I thought of doing this is to have customized clothing for each of them with their own logos/emblems/heraldry - similar to how you can see the Chantry sun in the standard Chantry robe in vanilla DA:O. In BaL, the player is a member of The Silver Claw clan and I wanted something along a claw-gauntlet hybrid for this purpose. Yic17 came up with some stunning designs in a very short time (less than an hour!). Here's a sample -

I was simply floored! Of course, a couple of them are too abstract for Dragon Age but the work is just fantastic! Now, I am confident that at least one area will show progress in the next monthly report :)

There's also been a slight change of plans in what I planned to do this month. Now, I have to do some research and finalize the workflow to get these images into the game's clothing and armor. I can't ask for help and refuse to do my part of the job, can I? Hopefully, it shouldn't be too difficult to do that.

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The past week has been extremely hectic - with the Scripting contest coming to a close today and my projects at work throwing up nasty bugs, I haven't had time to work on BaL as much as I wanted to. I have a couple of go-lives this month too - one on 15th and another on 29th so this is going to be another busy month! I have decided one thing though - no more Community Contest stuff till BaL is done. Well, unless it is an exterior level contest, in which case I can submit one of the levels I am currently working on.

I did manage to finish up my entry for the Scripting contest - The Cranky Harem and you can download it from DANexus or BSN.

A 7x7 game board with highlighting turned on when you place game pieces

With that out of the way, on to the Monthly Report.
In the October monthly report, I had mentioned how I need about 6 small exterior levels to serve as entry points into other areas. I am happy to say these are done! They are primarily reworked OC levels but it did take a fair amount of time to edit those levels and get the lighting right.

I am also close to completion on the first custom class for BaL. This will be the class the player will play. I know I have mentioned previously that the player will be allowed a choice of 2 custom classes but I've restricted it to one now. Why? The whole module now integrates the background of this class as an over-arching story within and will continue to do so in the next iteration of this module. The second custom class will now be restricted to a particular party member.

The prototypes for 2 other external areas are also complete and I will start building the levels this month. It's going to be a fairly intensive process, as level building always is but it should go much faster now that I am comfortable with this aspect of the toolset. Also, all the interior levels for the alpha release are done! I made an excel workbook to keep track of areas, creatures, conversations, etc and realized BaL will have 57 areas! I can tell you, it took some time to digest that as I had never quantified that - in my mind, it was always the the function of that area that was predominant.

On to the percentages then!

Story - 100%
Quest Design - 90%
Companion design - 40% (no change!)
Custom Classes and Abiltities - 50%
2D Art - 0% (again, no change!)
Level/Area Design - 90% (just one more level to go!)
Level/Area Implementation - 40%
Conversations - 30%
Scripting - 20%
Cutscenes - 10% (no change!)
Monster/Encounter Design - 0% (I should really start on this)
Custom Systems - 40%

Overall, the module is around 30% complete. I was hoping to make big gains in October but sadly, that didn't materialize.  Here's to hoping November is better!

Plan for November:

• Finish up the alpha release for testing - target: Nov 15th
• Finish the 2 prototypes exterior levels

I am going to keep it simple this time so I can report more-than-expected results next month! The things one has to do...

Till later!

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As part of the Community Contests initiative, I had submitted a level for the Settlement Contest. One of the comments reported by the judges was that terrain collision was not properly built (in all those sloping areas). That was something I had definitely planned to do - I could walk all over the place! - but I forgot. Yesterday, I was testing one of the night versions of my levels and forgot to build the collision for the water planes in that level. Sigh!

So, I decided to put together a list of things to do before calling each level complete. I've gone through the level editor and through my level building process and compiled this list. If I've missed anything, let me know - this is going up behind my monitor as a sticky and will be my level processing mantra from now on :)

If an exterior level,

• Build Terrain Collision where needed

If exterior level and has water,

• Auto-tessellate water planes
• Generate water collision geometry for all water nodes

If an interior level,

• Make sure Room Properties are set for each room

Make sure Single Player module is active

• Render Lightmaps
• Render Light Probe
• Place Start Point after naming the exportable area - if name is changed, delete and place Start Point again 
• Clear out the SpeedTreePackage Temp folder [for some reason, I've had the billboard tree issue only when there are files here - deleting these files and posting trees again always gives me good trees]
• Do All Local Posts

Have I missed any other steps?

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First, the news...
What is the most important happening in the Dragon Age modding community this week? The release of Baldur's Gate 2 Redux! The BGR team has put together one awesome module - check out the details here if you haven't had a chance. It's expected to be released later today and can be downloaded from their DANexus page.
 
If I were to pick one area of Dragon Age modding that I am really comfortable with, it would be scripting. It might be due to the fact that I do a fair amount of LUA and Perl scripting at work but DAScript itself is a fairly complex system with hidden nuggets waiting to be unearthed. So, when the Mini-Game Scripting Contest was announced, I was excited - finally, a contest catering to my strengths! I didn't have a chance earlier to spend time on it but this past week, I've been doing some prototypes at work.

The 8-queens problem

The game I am designing is loosely based on chess - no, not the chess game but logic games within the chess rules framework. If you are familiar with chess, you might have heard of or even played the game where you have to place 8 queens on the board such that they do not attack each other.

Now, there are a lot of variations to the above 'standard' game. In fact, a quick search will show you hundreds of math papers written on this subject dealing with unique solutions, solutions for generic NxN boards, 3-dimensional boards, n-dimensional boards (n dimensions! brings back memories of my Differential Geometry course...where nothing can be visualized as in the real world).

What's this? A triangle immersed in a saddle-shaped plane (which is a hyperbolic paraboloid) as well as two diverging ultra-parallel lines. Math! You gotta love it.

For this contest, I've put my own spin on it and attached a simple story to it so that the game can be played in that context. The number of variations that can be played are currently at 25. The real problem was putting down solutions on paper so that I can provide hints if the player is stuck. Now that that part is complete, on to coding. One of the most useful script add-ons released is, in my opinion, is Craig Graff's Variable Storage System. Terribly useful when you have to keep track of a lot of stuff and plots either won't work or are too cumbersome to implement. I will be making extensive use of this in my contest entry.

I am also resizing some models and changing them a bit to provide a good layout where the game plays out. I plan to release this as a stand-alone game too so it has to look polished enough. Will it win? I don't know but I certainly hope so. Will it be well-received? I honestly don't know. Some players might approach it as a chess game in which case it will lose some of it's charm. If taken purely as an interactive game, it might work out better. The model-work that I am doing is in part to distance the setting from the chess board as much as possible. Let's see if it succeeds.

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These past few days, for some reason or the other, I didn't feel like scripting at all. I know I have a lot of things to finish up on that end; hopefully, I'll hit the spot sometime this week. Instead, I've been writing...a lot, in fact.

First, I've started work on a concise story document that I will be able to use in the future as a reference when I need to discuss the module with anyone. This also helps me to view it from a high level and decide whether there are further opportunities to flesh out the story or add side-quests.

Next, I've been writing a lot of dialogue - completely new ones and changing/adding to existing ones too. One of the most complicated ones I wrote in the past week revolves around a game the player can choose to play - it has only a little over 1000 words but the amount of link-backs numbers in the hundreds.

It is an interesting game, I tell you...or rather, would have been. I forgot one tiny little thing - the Dragon Age engine will show only the first six options. And mine had 10 most of the time. I was kicking myself for not play-testing the conversation earlier. I was feeling more frustrated due to the back-end scripting that was also completed for the game but the testing was broken due to the choices not available to be selected. That could possibly be the reason why I am feeling a certain apathy towards scripting now. Oh well...

Now, I have to either (a) break the choices down into 2 sets, which would make the game extremely cumbersome or (b) find an alternate way to play it or (c) ditch the whole idea. Sometime back, FollowTheGourd posted an interesting idea for text-centric dialogues in the Alternate Dialogue Modes thread. I'll probably do a quick check with him to see if that allows for more options and if so, use it for this conversation. After all, even if I do plan to get my module voiced, I don't have to do VO for every single line. I'm thinking more BG2 style where the first line and important conversations are voiced but the rest are just texts. I think VO is highly over-rated anyway...

In other news, the judging for the Community Contest 2 - Prop Model finished on Thursday and the winners have been announced. You can congratulate the winners here and read about/grab the entries from the links on the Community Contest 2 Page. Show them your support, folks!

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... is a lot of work, I've come to realize.

The problem is that the conceptualization keeps changing when the cutscene is being developed and sometimes, that involves reworking a few seconds completely and then, making sure it blends in seamlessly. As an example, I had initially planned for an actor to pour wine from a cup he held in his hand but later, I felt it would be better to walk to a nearby table and use a bottle. A very simple change but the blending with the previous and subsequent animations took some work and not least because I am still not that experienced with the cutscene editor.

The first really big cutscene I am working on involving 4 actors

I also had problems with the cup (and later bottle) as I was initially animating them separately. I thought, what the heck, let's post in the cutscene forum to see if there is an easier way and presto! there is! Sunjammer and Eshme pointed me to the 'Link to Actor' option and SJ, in particular, gave a very detailed post that was very helpful.
However, there were still issues with that - for one, the Use Offset is not really that useful as you still have to pretty much set the orientation in a lot of frames (I believe that is called 'bracketing'). The other one was that DA doesn't really come with a decent cup - there is a goblet that will look totally out of place in a tavern and a huge mug straight from the Prancing Pony in LotR (which was another reason to switch to a bottle)

Anyway, the cutscene is almost complete - after another minor rework once I realized you can't have a conversation cutscene if there are dialogue options.

Till later...

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For those familiar with HoMM 5, you'll know what this means. A week when nothing really happens. I have been sick for the past few days and have hardly been up - I didn't mind it for the first couple of days since it was a welcome break from work but boredom slipped in pretty soon. It's difficult being lazy and doing nothing!

I played around a bit with the lighting to get it right for the interiors - still a problem; the exteriors look a lot better.

I did manage to finish most of the conversations required for the first act. Now, to put them all together and make sure the stuff works properly. The coming long weekend should give enough time to finish up Act 1 and move on to the next stage.

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The past week has been really fruitful; all the level layouts required for Act 1 of Blood and Lyrium are complete. I still have a few more props to put in but I will come back to those later. I am starting to get burned out on level-building!

I have started work on the dialogues and quests for Act 1. The major dialogues are in the starting area and the final area that I built this week and one of them is already complete. Dealing with two quests and companion and NPC interjections made it quite complex and over 2000 words - I am wondering if I should trim it down a bit (I admit, I ramble a bit when I start writing!)

I also finally started on the stages and cut-scenes. Though I was hesitant at first (the tutorials are so lengthy!), it was not that difficult. Well, I was mostly doing stages and a very simple cut-scene; once I start on the intro cut-scene, that will really test my skills. The major plots have also been put down and associated plot scripts written. Next step, once the dialogues are done, is the journal entries.

The custom ability implementation for Arms and Armor is still an open issue, unfortunately. I will have to get back to that soon though since Ambaryerno has made good progress in the design department. Check out his new sword models here.

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The ability coding for Arms and Armor is nearing completion though getting the new abilities to actually work is still an issue. For those interested, I have opened a topic - Custom Ability Implementation - on the Bioware forums for getting some help on this issue. If anyone has any inputs, post a comment here or in that thread.

Here are some tips for level-builders. I suspect almost all of these are common knowledge but I figure these will come in useful for someone at least!

Copy and change x-y coordinates (Interiors): Many of the models which are part of the same logical set (eg: Tevinter Interior Tileset - small wall, small roof, floor) have the same size on the x-y axis. So, if you want to line those 2 floor tiles up perfectly, copy and paste the floor tile and change the X or Y units by +/- 8 (depending on the direction). The same applies to the walls and ceilings. Sometimes, the length/width would be different than 8 but once you figure it out, lining them would be a snap!

Replace model file names: When building interiors, it is easier to build the skeleton using the same models for walls, floor, roof, pillars, etc. Once the skeleton is done, you can go into the model properties and change the model file name to the one you actually want there. This is easier than placing the new model there and copying the coordinates.

Cutaway Override in model properties: When you place a picture/coat-of-arms/torches/etc on a wall, going into Tactical Mode in-game cuts away the tops of these walls. The props placed on the walls look like they are hanging in space. To prevent this from happening, you can set Cutaway Override to FALSE in the properties for that model/prop. I didn't know about this before and had to realign a whole bunch of wall torches onto pillars!

Shadows without models: Let's say you want to build a dark pit or a dark circular area within a big room. Place a model of the appropriate shape (doesn't matter which model) right above the area you want to darken and adjust the model properties to set Export To Game as FALSE and Lightmap as TRUE. Place a light directly above it to cast a good shadow. Once you render lightmaps, you will see a dark shadow beneath the model but the model won't be present in-game. There is a bit of work to get it just right since the model can cast shadows from other lights too.

Here is a link to a detailed tutorial about lighting done by the BG2 Redux team. Post any comments or questions you might have in this thread.

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Welcome to my blog!

This blog will serve as a means for me to share information (and receive feedback!) on the module I am creating for the Dragon Age world, called (at present) Blood and Lyrium. At times, I might digress a bit to other games but that is another reason this blog is being created - to pull me back into modding when I take a break.

It happened before with NWN2 when I started creating a module set in Eberron. After months of accumulating lore and detailing the settings and working in the toolset for nearly 2 months, I took a break playing King's Bounty and Uncharted and never went back. Hopefully, this time around, that will not be the case.

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