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.

9 comments:

  1. Very much looking forward to playing this module when you release it.

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  2. Glad you see people are still working on NWN. Can't wait to try this mod. Is ETA still somewhere around new year?

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  3. My oh my, if the options are kinda like that, I would probably go with option 5 lol :)

    Starting to like Sir Brash more - gah, looking forward to the mod :)

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  4. I'm afraid I'd lie if I set a deadline. I should have been more careful with what I wrote when the blog was secret. In theory, if my predictions are correct, it would take around 25 days of working all day every day to finish the first module, but I don't have that much time now. There's no guarantee what I'll be doing, since I have some exams to pass and working on the module requires inspiration. It's a good thing that my inspiration is always best when I'm supposed to be studying. I would love to finish it this winter at least. I'll post about it when I know more.

    Ravyn, really? Mark hasn't even done anything to you, yet. :)

    Brash talks a lot. It will be great for those who like his style, but not so much for the others. That's why there will be important choices about him later.

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    1. lol I know, but it just looks like the most fun option atm :)

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  5. I've been thinking about your desire to use food and sleep (for dreams) in your module. Maybe you could use a plot icon, "Food and Shelter" that addresses the need for food and makes mention of the need for sleep (along with penalties if you don't sleep). If the player doesn't have an icon then they get major penalties that grow over several days until death occurs.

    Maybe, if the player dies this way they come back looking like a ghoul until they find something that equates to food and shelter (a temp icon), so they lose the ghoul form. If the player doesn't get Food and Shelter in this state, they die permanently within a few days.

    You would have to design the module with the player having reasonable access to food and shelter, the player gets an icon in their inventory until some plot point occurs when they lose the icon. An example of this would be the player starts the game with a home icon, then the player is imprisoned, so the player has a prisoner icon, later a Brash's camp icon, tavern or inn icon, etc. Of course the player needs to make choices and what they are willing to do or pay to get that food and shelter.

    In this way you get to address food but don't have to micromanage the issue while having a tie into sleep/dreams that you want.

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  6. I can't make the ghoul transformation because I'd have to rewrite the entire game to react to the player's new form. Most people would become hostile to a ghoul freak permanently, even when she gets better, so there goes my story. Something that would make more sense the way I imagined the demonhearts is slowing down or losing regeneration. They get magically cured from a lot of things and hunger could be one of them, but that could stop their injury healing.

    In the end, permanent death should also be possible if I want to be bad to the players. Technically, they would become undead and lose their mind, so it's still a game over, but so far, the player character is never away from civilization for more than ten days.

    It's something worth considering, but it's also more unplanned work for me. I know talking doesn't have to exclude action, but there's a lot of talking I still need to write.

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  7. I wouldn't have wanted there to be much time or effort put into the ghoul idea; I figured it would just be a way for the player to come back from death after not having had food and shelter for a prolonged period of time.

    The more useful idea is the food/shelter icon because whether you're in a civilized area or not you still need access to both in order to survive. The interesting questions are at what costs are you willing to survive, or if you're willing to go further to live or even live well?

    Whatever you do don't get in over your head and good luck.

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  8. Ah, yes. The food is also a money sink for those who feel they have to stay well fed. Come to think, eating hearts should also remove the hunger. (Those hearts are not common, I'm just saying.)

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