Monday, October 29, 2012

Week 4 of October

I decided to implement two permanent death situations as early as Chapter 1. In one case, if you take too long (that is, if you die), you are found by someone who wants to eat your heart. In the other case, someone kills you in revenge for attacking him.

Since I've even gone so far as to provide clues in the dangerous dungeon puzzle and a nice means to keep any accidentally released enemies away (if you can run fast), this was the least I could do to feel like a proper sadist.

Updating my small list of tasks that I posted here. My big lists of tasks are still a nightmare.

1. Finish Blu quest - talk done and set up for finishing the quest, journal not done, intelligent fighting not done, alternate path with Blu joining not done.

2. Xaxo's quest - done.

3. Escape from G5, teleport and the activator, Arana's variables - not done.

4. Alliran chase scene - done (Brash's "intelligent" behavior, the best I could do, including the rescue of the player character if she dies here).


Sir Brash is supposed to lead you through this area, but if you fall behind (by dying), he really wants to save you. I'm still fine-tuning things to make it possible to go through the sequence without dying. Wearing an armor might help me. Or being level 2. :)

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Now I'm spamming updates. It won't always be this way.

Again, if it means anything at this point of secret development (since most of the character interactions and story parts are secret), I finished Xaxo's quest - #2 on the list I made earlier. #1 is nearly done, but I got a new idea how to complicate things with Blu, so I'll see if that's going to happen when I'm done with some more of the things I planned earlier. There are at least 5 more quest-like things to finish, some of them big and complicated, and that's only the quests. Still no announcements.


This is Xaxo. The screenshot is probably misleading, so don't assume things. Especially not that he is awesomely evil. If you met an awesomely evil higher demon, you wouldn't get out of there alive.

Poll Hacked?

I don't think it was really "hacked", but the results are gone. At least that's what I see. I don't see the old poll results on FallynRayne's blog either. Is anyone familiar with this issue? I failed googling anything relevant, I always seem to get something about some politicians.

It's no big deal right now, I remember the results, but if they got periodically deleted, that would suck. I wanted to have a real analysis of which characters were liked or hated in the future.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Monday/Tuesday

I spent the afternoon preparing to make some relevant screenshots, but ended up polishing areas and adding talks and new talk options. I worked on that first Inferno quest, which is still unfinished (it's probably my major unpleasant task merely because I made the talk structure so complicated, that it's a pain to connect the branches). I also worked on the Blu quest mentioned below and half-decided to complicate things for myself further by providing an option for Blu (a female gnoll) to join you for a short while, nothing too serious relationship-wise. There are a few other short-term companions that I haven't mentioned before. If it turns out that will complicate the flow of things too much, I won't make Blu joinable.

I finished her little talk for the quest anyway. And tested attacking her and died. She still doesn't use her bow in a smart way, as far as I've been able to test for now, with my character being dead. I would like her to run away and shoot, instead of letting Sir Brash shred her.

What happens in the screenshot below wasn't one of my planned tasks. It's an old talk with some new options, for those of you who want to get to know the characters before meeting them in person.

Sir Brash taunts Mark Rungari.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Thank You

... for your interest, it has inspired me to start a new session of working on the module.

Thank you to those who spread the word. The blog reports the main traffic source being the reference from FallynRayne's page. Thank you again.


Now I'm under pressure. :)

Everything I post here is a spoiler, so you shouldn't be reading, but if you wish to...

Part of Thayn's introduction.

I will try for another "week of unpleasant tasks". These tasks are certain quests and plot points that have been planned a long time ago but I've always avoided implementing them. I have a list of two smaller tasks and one huge, separated in two, and I will pick them with a random number generator. When I was doing this kind of thing in September, I was able to finish quite a few important things, but not one task for each day.

1. Finish Blu quest with journal entries and everything (it's a small quest, but it's bothering me).
2. Xaxo's quest until the end, cover all cases (you may be able to finish the quest objective before getting the quest, I will decide that soon).
3. Escape from G5, teleport and the activator, Arana's variables, Xaxo again (some of that is already finished).
4. Alliran chase scene (scripting Sir Brash to act smart or otherwise doing something about it).

Picking a random number for today/tomorrow... I got number 2. I thought the Inferno dungeon would take up a small part of Chapter 1, but it feels like it's taking a half of it, mostly because of the player options. There are different ways Arana can die and I have to keep evidence of them all to give the player correct journal entries and so on. Worst of all, most people will not want Arana dead, so why am I doing this? (Probably to avoid NWN2 situations with companions you hate forcefully joining you. You have the right to dislike any NPC, I won't force them on you unless necessary. A demonspawn is necessary because you'd be like crippled without one, especially so later, as is Sir Brash in the beginning, when you can't do anything about it.) The whole escaping Inferno quest can be written in a day or two of hard work, but we'll see about that.


Here is a screenshot of Inferno/G5 from the toolset. My Illithid Interior reskin, rocks reskin and some others, some placeables by PHoD.


Saturday, October 20, 2012

Update on demand

OK, I think I have a fever; I had a bad day with my totally pissed off brother, so I opened my email to whine to someone, when I discovered the messages about new (and first) comments on my blog.

And new votes about the romances? I wanted to delete the poll because potential players don't know the characters yet, but this is interesting. Syn got few votes, as expected at this point. He's a good guy after all. Too mainstream. I'm glad for the demonspawn, though. You people are in for some. Umm... I mean, some sex animations with goat-legs. Nothing else, I promise. He's not evil at all. ^.^

I was on a break from my module and just started playing Fallout New Vegas again. (I'm still confused. The woman-hating Legion sucks, but so does the NCR. And I'm too much of a goon to be the boss.)

This is the latest thing I've worked on (still unfinished), connecting the quests in Chapter 2, which are pretty much all works in progress. This is where you're supposed to begin the Cult of Ravage questline.

Your demonspawn sweetheart/stalker giving you uncalled for advice.

Looking at my last post, I just realized that I never mentioned something I did in between. Well, I mentioned that I was about to do it. I beautified the forest in Chapter 2 and made the amulet talk and an NPC's appearance work. It was one of my "unpleasant tasks". Not the forest, though - the huge talk.

Now answering readers' questions... At least some of them.

Since I am a one-woman-team, I can't develop a world history to match that of Faerun, so I'm not trying to. You will discover bits of information about everything within the module. If your character has enough Lore, she will "spoil" some little things for you by getting a knowledgeable dialog response. It's difficult to give all the needed information without dumping it on the player's head, especially the info on the demons and demonspawn, but the protagonist's ignorance is, in a way, a plot point. I hope this becomes clear later in the module (by that  I mean part 2 or 3).

Put in simple words, you have these types of creatures of importance:

Higher Demons - they live only in Inferno, except when somehow lured to the human world through a portal. Witches sometimes lure them out for mating, but this is rare, as any woman carrying a demon child is doomed to death upon its birth. When humans, dogs or some other animals eat a significant amount of (higher) demon meat, a handful or more, they become demonhearts. Higher Demons can't survive long in the Outside World, except in deep caves and ruins. They have super regenerative powers (that work best in Inferno) and are usually incredibly tough.

Lower Demons - mostly useless pests. They look like plants, mushrooms, insects... Not humanoid.

The Demonspawn - half humans, half higher demons. They are somewhat of a mystery - especially to the player character - but they are pretty much indestructible and eternal. They can be enslaved, tortured and physically and emotionally brainwashed for centuries, though. Some of them are imprisoned by humans, most of them by other demonspawn (because they are emotionally messed up by default). They also have a sort of a mother fixation. Eating a demonspawn is completely useless to a human. :)

Demonhearts - humans or animals who have eaten enough higher demon meat or another demonheart's heart. The more meat or hearts, the more powerful the demonheart person (stronger regeneration + strength, dexterity or constitution bonus). Demonhearts can die of old age (and become undead in some cases, but they can be destroyed) or when enough of their body is destroyed (primarily, the heart and head). Wounds that don't regenerate are rare, but they can happen. Fire and acid usually leave permanent effects, but that's of no consequence in the gameplay for now. To defeat a demonheart in game, you will just need to kill him or her and any other enemies to get to the heart (same goes for you, it's game over if your team is defeated when fighting an enemy who knows how to kill you).

As for religion, there is an official church, at least in the kingdom of Shermyr. It was probably inspired by GRRM's gods, but he definitely wasn't the first to invent that kind... They are named Mother, Time and Hunter, and there's the Fallen Goddess, Virgo. And a demon orgy. More about it in the module's Bible.

Then there are different cults. Some of them believe in the same Holy Book, but interpret it slightly differently (the details of the demon orgy seems to be where they all disagree, though I'm not sure if this information will be available in part 1 or later).

The playable classes are still being revised (by me). I'm afraid that I messed up the game balance, or that something won't work as intended, but the idea for now is:
  • Fighter pretty much stays the same.
  • Bard loses spellcasting, but gains more Rogue abilities to be more useful.*
  • Rogue gains some Assassin abilities.
  • Not sure what I'm going to do about Ranger or Barbarian or whether they will be allowed (I already did something, but perhaps Ranger isn't as awesome as Rogue now).
  • All classes get Persuade, Bluff and Intimidate as class skills.
* I may yet allow spellcasting. The player character is friends with a witch, and that is a plot point. But the player is not supposed to know everything that an average witch's apprentice would know about the world, which is also a plot point. With that made clear, there's no reason to forbid spellcasting, but it might not be very useful to sacrifice fighting skills for it, as the intended max level for the entire story is very low. (Maybe, but unlikely, up to 5 in part 1 and maybe, hardly, if you kill everyone, 15 in the end.)

Friday, October 5, 2012

Done Planning?

...at least for now, although that neat XML can always use upgrades. Enough has been planned for me to be able to start seriously working on connecting chapters 1 and 2 (arrival to the forest, arrival to Ravage, amulet).

I've been working on the journal entries for different G5 outcomes and nearly went insane. :)

Strawberries.
In the screenshot, I didn't get the other entry because I just started the game from here, so no conditions were met.