DM Blog: Sceer

[Sceer]

Finally!

A very short update as it's 2 a.m. here. I've finally finished (well, lets say 98% complete) the new area going into ToM soon. I think it rocks. The images don't do it justice. All that is missing is a special script and a slight tweaking here and there. then it goes into the module and the DMs can start using it.

The captain's deck

One interesting thing (and something that took unexpectedly longer than I had hoped to devote to), what the ship that was modified from NWN2. Remember the old cargo ship that you get off at the start of your character? Well, I beefed it up. It's longer and wider for more combat room. It now has steps leading to the upper decks, more geometry in certain areas along with doors leading to the captain decks and aft decks as well. No tedious transition placeables to click to go up and down the decks.



The area has a few compromises I had to make, but I think it does the job well and feels fairly immersive.

[Sceer]

Hacking the Haks Part 1

So, I've managed to implement 3 new nice quality areas in two days. Not too bad. Now I turn my gaze upon the head, hair and weapon haks that I have been promising I'd take a look at. I apologize profusely for not being able to take a look at these haks sooner (sorry Carst). Next to scripting, area building is one of the most time consuming parts of ToM. And I'm a stickler for making the areas as optimized and natural looking as possible. Making an outdoor area like the Dragon's Tooth takes about 2 weeks. Making Old City took about 1-2 months (to be fair, I was slower back then and Old City was the first area that had to be designed around a building template. Lots of learning how the toolset functioned on that area).

So I downloaded and examined a few weapon packs. First off, what do i mean by "examine"? I don't just look at them in game, I open up the textures in Photoshop and look at the models in 3DSMax. Why go through this trouble?  You folks know the size of our module. Efficiency is very important. I'm a stickler for whatever I put into the module to be as optimized as possible so the game runs as smoothly as it can.

Here's what I found. The Elven weapons look great. But their poly count is a little too high to be comfortable (in some cases, 8 weapons out in the same area would equal the poly count of another ocmplete character in the area). Another axe pack had pretty poor quality textures (i wish some artists would consider using the textures Obsidian made, it would save a lot of valuable space and memory usage) . The Scimitar hak had good sized models but their textures were twice as large as many of the armor packs, which is highly unacceptable as it's a difference in megabytes in texture memory used.

All of this can be fixed, but it would take some (boring) editing time.

Now the head and hair haks. I needed to test out how they implement first. So I took Whatbrick's NWN2 "MotB" Character Customization Collection as a testbed and implemented it into the module as a test. I'm hoping some beta testers will come forth and test to see if they are selectable at character creation time and if there are any issues with them. If you volunteer, you can offer feedback here.

If it works as intended, I can start implementing the others head and hair hakpacks intot he module (finally!).

[Sceer]

Hacking the Haks Part 2

Ugh. The hair and heads. What a pain. While I was looking over each hak to see what it entailed, I noticed a few areas they could be optimized (of course). Plus, I also noticed that the current numbering of the various heads and hairs would cause conflict. So I was forced to record the info. in our wiki. I've noticed that a third of my time spent on ToM deals with documenting the server and all the various stuff around it.

"But Sceer. Why are you so hung up on documenting ToM so much?"

Ah, glad you asked. It all started way back when I was abducted inducted as a DM for our beloved City of Arabel. The server's numbers were strong so there was little DM activity present when I got pulled in. In fact, most of the DM team was in a lull. I was all alone left to my own defenses to try and figure things out. What I found out was horrible. There was practically no information to help me get up and running. I had no idea how to take the module, how to activate it, how to get into the server, how to name things, etc. When i asked the other DMs, I got a "It's somewhere in the forums, can't remember where though."

Over time, I managed to extract the information from other DMs and pull other bits of info. from the forums. But it was a Easter egg hunt for sure. Most of my time was spent trying to find the info. rather than working on what I intended to get done in the first place. Frustrated, I rolled up my sleeves and started to formally document all the little bits of information required to run the server and module in CoA. Wikis were not the rave back then so all the info. was placed in the forums. I check from time to time. They still have all the information I gathered there today. I'm proud to see they have added to it. I like to think that without that, the valuable information that was stored in the heads of previous DMs would have been lost, causing many headaches and detering future generations of DMs from playing.

From CoA, I did recognize that a forums format was not ideal for information storage and organization. So when ToM came around, I looked to various Wikis and settled on an easy to use, yet versatile Wiki. I think our Wiki is up to 481 pages now. It's pretty big. I'm kinda proud of it because we can store all the lore and technical aspects of the server, complete with pictures and data tables. Future generations of DMs can search the Wiki and (hopefully) get up to speed much faster than without it. That's important because ToM is much more complicated than CoA ever was.

But I digress. I've been taking the new haks I'm implementing and optimizing them and re-ordering their numbers so they do not conflict with what we have already. It's not an quick task as I have to go into some of the models and redirect their texture images to the new texture names.

Bless their hearts, custom content makers love to pile in BIG images to add detail to their creations, Unfortunately, too many of those will drag one's graphics card down to a crawl. Plus, it's just more stuff to upload and download. In optimizing these new haks (which i should go back and revisit all the previous haks and do the same), I've trimmed out about 35-40 megs of unneeded data, from bringing oversized images down to NWN2 OC standard sizes, removing unneeded alpha maps from texture files, trimming down tint maps to be half the size of their color maps cousins (a trick Obsidian used when creating their tint maps), removing some unused and extra files thrown in (you'd be surprised at what they forget to remove from their hakpacks) and finally using a more efficient .dds file format to shrink the images down even more.

I'm alsmost done with the hair and head haks. I have one more (a big one) hak to organize and optimize. Then, it's time to test it.

I also stumbled across a Tiffanys jewelry ad that featured some prominent antique key jewelry. I though "Hm. Those fit NWN2 style". So I scanned them in and made key icons to fit in with NWN2 icons and placed them into the module. I always felt we were lacking a few more key icons. Besides, it was quick and fun to do.



...and it causing the urge to redesign the ToM logo and ads I'm so unsatisfied with.

[Sceer]

Hacking the Haks Part 3

The heads and hair are done. Should be in the next update. That was a lot of work.

The heads and hair are not without thier issues, however. I grabbed the playable NPC heads. A few of them come with hair built into them and no options to tint. Down the road, I'll work on removing the hair and setting up tint files. In the meantime, if you choose a head that comes with hair, well, you're pretty much stuck with that hair and skin tint. Not ideal in my opinion. Might simply remove them altogether. But your hair and head options have been greatly expanded upon.

As I said before, I managed to whack off about 50-60 megs of data combing through those haks. It was a good deal of work but we (DMs especially) have to upload and download that data all the time. That builds up over time. I can confidently say that ToM is one of the most efficient NWN2 PWs running out there and a lot of work and time went into making it so.

I also have to apologize in that I never optimized the previous haks I implemented. I should have. Last night, I had a look at one of the other haks we had added earlier and realized that , yes, this hak too could be optimized. I cleaned it up and reduced it's filesize by half. POW! Another 20 megs removed.

So this is the reason why you folks are having to autodownload a lot of content when you log in recently. I'm cleaning things up. On top of that, the DM team is popping! We've been super super busy improving things left and right with more DMs digging into the module now more than ever before. It's great. It's a pain to downlaod, I know, but it means better quality stuff for all of you.

I'm also excited about what Nocebo has recently implemented. It seems such a small thing but it has a big impact on immersion and giving DMs greater freedoms when crafting quests. Nocebo is a rockstar. But I'm not going to spoil it for him. He might want to explain it in a blog or simply keep it quiet so as to not spoil any illusions.

I was delivering some stuff to the custom content makers, Robinson's Workshop and made a few images to show what we had done with some of their work. Heres a few pictures from some of the areas we've talked about before. Nothing new but still nice eyecandy to look at.

[Sceer]

Filling the Void

Right now, the DMs are pacing back and forth like caged lions. They don't know what to do with themselves due to the server being offline. I honestly don't remember when the server has ever gone down for this long before. It's just simply bad timing. Agrafes gets a quick opportunity to go out of town and right after he leaves, the server takes a belly flop like a chubby kid diving off the highest springboard in the pool. We've tried everything we can do on our end to revive it, but it looks like it'll take an act from Agrafes to get it's heart pumping again.

So we must wait.

Bubbles has gone into a sort of catatonic state where she mumbles fragments of plots while rocking back and forth. Hex has turned to cleaning up various stuff like some nervous mother helpless to fix the situation. Cognitive Chaos has set to dedicate herself to something that "kills PCs" (I don't know what she means by that). Harry simply sits in the corner and coddles his "blankie". Agent Orange and Limbo have both jumped in and threatened to put on their "Wonder-Twin" super hero suits (they swore they would never wear those suits again). Nocebo and Codex have dug so deeply into Agrafes' code that they both claim they've uncovered some sort of global Catholic church conspiracy. 88FingersLouie has gone back to listening to his Yanni album collection for plot inspiration. And Numb, well, Numb now holds three cans of beer in his hands.

Me? Well, it's the usual hectic pace for me. I now have the rare opportunity of not having to constantly update the server and attempt to break it all the time. My last attempt to break the server seemed to finally be a 100% successful! Woot! Progress.

A diabolical plot coming up gave me the perfect excuse to update the Tyr Temple to The Waiting 3.0!!! (drum roll). We've got so much lore and plot hooks crammed into just the Tyr Temple but have been unable to fully realize it. Now that the Waiting 3.0 is in the works, we can wedge that stuff in where it belongs. I'm kind of excited about it. It's always harder to make areas that are more specific, though. The process is coming about slower than I thought.

Once the server gets back up, I'll get back to work on fixing some of the broken heads and hair that desperately need my attention.

Here's a few teasers for The Waiting (3.0). The lighting is not fully complete yet, but you get the idea.

[Sceer]

Cleaning Up

Not much eyecandy to show you today. Last night was more work on the Waiting (3.0). I'm close to getting all the area groundwork done. Then I get to go in and fill in all the lore surrounding it. It's one of the parts I'm looking forward to the most.

In order to get prepared for that, I've gone back through our notes and the wiki (poor DMs, so tired of me chiming in about "the DM Wiki this!" and "the DM Wiki that!") and filled in some of the details that were missing or scattered about on our forums.  It's an ugly job but someone has to fill in all that info. If it were left up to the forums (as some of it still is), it'd mostly be lost by now.

(The Wiki passed it's 500 page mark today! Woot!)

I'm torn with my next task. I want to get to work on beautifying the OLM, but the new ToM logo has been percolating in my head for a bit and is urging me to spit it out. We need a new ad for the NWN Vault. Then there's the head and hair haks I need to debug. So much to do. So little time to do it. I swear I could do this as a full time job and stay busy 8 hours a day (I'm not far from that number now, actually).

[Sceer]

Giddy'up, Sceer! Yah!

I write this blog in haste. Forgive me, but The Waiting (3.0) cannot come fast enough. There's lots of lore that surrounds the Waiting. We've been beefing up all sorts of little things revolving around the Tyr Church, like characters, backgrounds, items, etc. Should be fun stuff.

I'm also so amazed at some of the cool plots and back stories that are being developed on other fronts too by the DMs. Most of the time, the PCs actually see only the iceberg tip of a plot or story and the underpinnings of these plots evolve into even deeper situations and events. We use the  plots not only to tell the story to the PCs but to also help guide us through the story as well. Stories can tell themselves and characters can practically act on their own if they've been developed well enough.

But the coolest thing is when the PCs interactions start to develop the plots. And that's where ToM is just starting to get to now. The history is starting to be crafted by events from not just the NPCs in the game, but the PCs too. It's very cool and very exciting.

As for stories, there's some cool stuff coming up. With so many plot hooks here and there just bubbling beneath the surface, my biggest worry is letting too much stumble out at once and overwhelming both the players and DMs in the process.

I needed to make some items in the game last night and noticed some icons missing. So I created some more as quickly as I could. You might recognize some that have been "NWN2-ized".

The Waiting 3.0 is expected to be due by tonight or tomorrow. But like I said, it cannot come fast enough for me. Lots to still do in many other areas. I have to race ahead of the DMs and lay down some groundwork so things go as smoothly as possible.

[Sceer]

Recharging the Batteries

The Tyr Temple drained me a bit. Most of those areas that require a great deal of detail usually do that. So I took a few days off from building to "recharge my batteries", get myself remotivated to tackle the other, pressing issues in ToM.

The last two days, I've simply jumped into ToM as a DM. It's funny, I feel guilty about doing that sometimes because there is so many things that need to be done in the toolset, from bugfixing, to adding more areas, to cleaning up and optimizing areas. Some areas were put into place as a placeholder for bigger and better things. These need to be reworked as well.

But DMing again was great and just what I needed. I was hoping to help Bubbles with her plot (she asked for some more DM help to manage multiple NPCs, which can get really hairy at times). When I got in to help her, her plot was already done and she was away from her keyboard I think, sitting idle. So I did what any Sceer in my place would do; I turned her into a chicken.

Then I spawned a bunch of other chickens around her so she didn't feel so alone. Hey! Don't judge me! Come to find out, we found a bug. You change a DM's avatar appearance, that DM cannot read their own chat. Who knew? So she was running around like a chicken for a bit, saying "Can you read this? I cannot see what I'm typing!!"

Needless to say, I was amused.

Every time I DM, I'm really impressed with the players I come across (like the group I DMed with last night). They all seem great with deep characters. It's what makes ToM so much fun for me. I want to find ways to help others develop that and play off of each others even more. I also got some ideas to start flexing interactions that don't simply involve solving the situation with a sword.

So now it's time to refocus what fires need to be put out in ToM and get to work making the server even better.

[Sceer]

BugFixing Hair and Heads

I've been getting down to business and fixing the heads and hair haks we have. I'm not finished yet, but the next update server update coming out will have a good chunk of the heads fixed along with some of the missing hair textures fixed. Yay!

You know, I think I can make some more meaningful heads. I'm not super happy with the lack of variation in some of them. But that's another issue that will have to wait.

I made a lovely head and hair assistant to help with bugfixing the hak issues. I like to call her "Mizz BadArse". What do you think? She is currently sporting one of the fixed heads and new hair.

"I fight for Revlon, Goddess of Perfect Hair!!!"

I was looking at the backpacks and noting that our belts don't work. I want to fix that AND add some more backpack styles for ToM. That would be cool, eh?

Alas, you pesky, meddling adventurers have forced me to derail my other pressing stuff and work on the newest pressing issue. Projects Scripted Quests and Project Faction Updating are pushed back to make way for Project Phlan Sewers. This project scares me in it's scope (which is why it's been put off for so long).

[Sceer]

Adventures in Advertising

One of the tasks I needed to do was continue the advertising of ToM on the Neverwinter Vault. After you post the ad more than 6 times, they require that you come up with another ad. This firces me to make a new ad. And, knowing Sceer, he can't let any opportunity go past him easily.

So I worked on the new logo while getting it together. I wanted the logo to feel a bit chaotic in order to reflect the setting. I also wanted to give the impression of adventure at every corner. Here's the result:


The low resolution version. A higher resolution version fits the size of a monitor screen.


And here's the resulting NWVault ad:



Honestly, I had high hopes for this one but I'm not really all that pleased with it anymore. The NWVault ads are so small that it really forces you to make your statement (and logo) as clear as possible. Making a clear and distinct logo that can scale down to almost any resolution is a sign of a good logo (and a good designer). I feel I failed in this regard. I also had a 3D version of the new ToM symbol (I'm actually proud of how the new ToM symbol turned out. I was never happy with the old one when I realized I inadvertently mimicked the the national flag of Turkey! Doh!). However, it didn't work out as well as I was hoping. It simply added even more detail in a detail crowded logo. So I dropped it and stuck with the simpler version. One day I will revisit it with greater zeal.

[Sceer]

Filling in the Lore

So it may seem I've been quiet. Perhaps. But my nose has been to the grindstone. For one thing, I've been doing a good deal of advertising for ToM. I've been setting up posts in various areas detailing ToM and getting some ads out there. I'm surprised at how much time it took.

But the biggest thing I've been doing for the last week is filling out more of the lore and propagating it to the server. I wrote and added 13 more ToMBooks(1)! I'm fairly proud of it as it was a goal I wanted to achieve for a long time. Most of the books have been propogated out to certain areas in the next update of the server. They will help unfold some more background of Moonsea, a few secrets and some hints of things to come.

Who knew the Temple of Tyr had such great knowledge in it?

ToMBooks are pretty powerful, actually. We've just scratched the surface of their awesomeness. There's some really cool stuff we can do with them. The next batch planned will kick it up a notch and make books even more important in the game.

But this batch is good for present. "Project Sewers", and "Project ARSES Testing" calls like the blaring of a thousand trumpets, demanding my full attention.



(1)ToMBooks. What are they? ToMBooks is the name we give to our modification of the Readable Books hak. Instead of reading our books through a simple item description, ToMBooks allows us to simulate reading a book through a customized user interface (as seen above) where you can flip through pages. It allows us to add more content to the books and give it more flair than the default system in NWN2.  ToMBooks can do much more than that, though. But I don't want to spoil anything.