I’ve been relatively quiet here lately, in spite of having several reader and player comments that I still want to respond to. Unfortunately, several aspects of my “real life” are demanding a lot of my attention, and probably will continue to in the near future. And I’ve been keeping relatively quiet to try to focus my attention on finishing the update to Sanctum 1. But I did want to take a few minutes to post an update on my progress.

First, the good news: this weekend, I finally finished an alpha test of my rewrite of “The Sight.” The “makeover” turned out to involve much more work than I’d intended, and I’m glad that it’s now almost over. A lot of the changes involved doing certain things “right” that I didn’t know how to do properly when I first built the module, but do now. A lot more, though, involved adding new content (especially new dialogue, scripts and areas). After a few pages of relatively minor bugfixes and another Alpha test run, I should be ready to post a beta version, hopefully by next weekend.

On that note, I’d like to ask if anyone would be interested in helping beta test the new version. Several players have mentioned an interest in doing so, and ideally I’d like to try to find several people willing to test out each of the different options that the new version provides. (The main ones are: easy/hard combat, male/female Robin, and male/female player.) I won’t post a final version to the Vault until the beta test is over, since I prefer to do short and private beta tests with only a few testers, and after I’ve shaken most of the bugs out of the module myself. If you’re willing to play a (mostly polished) beta version and email me some notes on any problems that you see or thoughts that you have, post a note here or drop me an email, with my thanks. 😉

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten to the end of my ideas regarding how to improve the module yet — but I’ve decided that I really do have to draw the line at this point at making any more significant changes. I did take to heart the comments of players who objected to Robin’s “harshness” in several conversations. I reworked them to try to make them less punitive, to let the player feel less pressure to “be nice” to him/her, and to allow for a little more “attitude.” I’ve also changed the way that Robin’s relationship “points” accumulate, which should make it easier for players to miss or pass on some choices for RP reasons and still “gain influence and fulfill the romantic aspect of the campaign,” as LadyN put it. But I’m passing on some of the more extensive writing changes that I had in mind (some of which I’ll try including in the next module).

And thanks in advance for any volunteers interested in beta testing!

Apologies in advance for my absence from the blog! I’m very grateful for the increase in posts recently, and for all of your attention and thoughtful comments on the modules. I do want to reply to more of those comments soon, but I’ll probably need a few more days before I can get time to do that properly. Work will be busy for me for the rest of the month, and I’ve been spending all my spare time trying to finish up the Sanctum 1 upgrade.

As for the upgrade: that’s now officially gotten “out of control” (my wife’s words) and turned into a pretty substantial makeover. That’s happened for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I’ve got a year’s worth of ideas, player suggestions, and improved knowledge about modding to work with. I keep wanting to include all of those ideas, and since I’d like this to be the final update to Sanctum 1, this is the time to make them. So here’s another brief (and non-exhaustive) report on my progress:

• I’ve updated Robin and Orion to use their improved blueprints from Sanctum 2, including Robin’s single class of Rogue. This should make them a little more effective in combat, and relieve most of the pressure on players to take (possibly non-primary) thief skills.
• I’ve moderated the combat balance a little, and also added and tested an option to make the combat even easier still for players who prefer that.
• I’ve redesigned the “picnic swim” cutscene to be more elaborate, and to make use of some features that I also used in Sanctum 2.
• I’m making great use of the features of a new tileset that I added for Len’s Lab, the Secure Area, and the Master Control Room, each of which (along with the lower level of the ruins) has now been rebuilt from scratch. And I added a new twist to make the “repair operation” a bit more interesting and elaborate.
• I’ve also decided to rather significantly expand on the functions of the “Holo-Theater.” I’ll won’t say any more now, except that this is what I’m currently working on, and it involves several new areas and encounters.

In the comments to my last blog post, Wynele brought up a number of very good points about the RP and romance options in Sanctum 1 — some of which raise questions that I’d like to get feedback from players on. WARNING: SPOILERS for both Sanctum modules follow.

Wynele wrote: “The PC passiveness. I’d like to see the PC cave a little less to Robin. I know for story reasons, the two must get along-but even the best of friends want to choke each other out from time to time…

“Some instances I recall off hand. The soul drinker… If you take the violent option (which I though was amusing and in lines with what a rowdy BFF would say) Robin gets angry to put it lightly… The “High handed bitch” remark should probably earn Robin an equally insulting retort. (or a good thwap to the back of the head considering he’s being foolish)”

I was surprised by this comment at first, and only partly because I disagree that Robin is being foolish in that scene. (Neither of you know what getting the venom in your mouth will do to you, and Robin wants a practical reason to agree to your taking that risk.) But I do think there is something to Wynele’s general point here: that the romances are generally written to encourage kindness rather than confrontation. Given the sometimes frustrating complexity of Robin’s romance in particular, that may not always be appropriate. And Wynele’s observation has already given me some ideas about how to address that, including how to improve that conversation in particular. Thanks!

However, after thinking about it, I realized that there’s probably more going on here, something that’s related to the difference between the male and female versions of the module. Sanctum 1 was originally written with Robin as a female character only. When I developed the alternative version last year, I pretty much copied the dialogue over verbatim, except for things like pronoun changes and a few edits for lines that obviously didn’t make sense when spoken to or by a male Robin. I was very interested in feedback from players on whether some of male Robin’s dialogue might not have worked well without some more extensive re-writing, but until now I haven’t seen or received anything to indicate that this was needed.

Now I’m not so sure. To see why, try putting the line that Wynele mentioned back in its original context: as a threat of violence spoken by a male PC to a female Robin who has just been fatally poisoned. Perhaps it’s more my own sense of chivalry than anything else, but I felt that warranted a harsh response — which was later inherited by the male Robin version of the module. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have just re-written this exchange differently for a male Robin. I took more cognizance of issues like this when I wrote Sanctum 2, since the dialogue there was developed with the fact that it had to work for both Robins already in mind. (For example, that’s why Prince Robin only yells at and humiliates the female courtier who kisses him without asking, while Princess Robin actually breaks the arm of the male courtier who does this.)

So now I’m thinking that a more extensive editing and re-writing pass through the Sanctum 1 dialogue may be warranted, to take more subtle nuances of this kind into account. And in line with this, I wanted to pose two questions. First, do players agree that this may be needed? And second, does anyone have suggestions about other exchanges to revisit?

Thanks in advance for any feedback —

Andarian

Here’s a short update on the progress of version 3.0 of Sanctum of the Archmage 1: The Sight. I’ve made a set of tweaks to the selection of available items, and to some of the areas up to and including the first level of the ancient ruins. And I’ve rebuilt the second level from scratch, to for the most part (though not entirely) resemble the upper part of Level 2 from the current version. Some parts of it, however, have been broken out into separate areas of their own, and I’m working on those now.

I’ve also included a (short!) configuration interview at the beginning, to set two parameters for the module playthrough. One of them, of course, is choosing Robin as male or female, and I have all of the dialogue lines and variables written and set up now to support that. The other is a flag that I’m going to let the player set at the beginning, to indicate whether they would prefer to play with difficult combat (as in the current module), or with easier combat. I’ve written some code and have reworked many of the module’s encounters to make use of this setting, which I hope will make the module more amenable to players with varying levels of appreciation for difficult combat.

SPOILER SECTION

Here’s an example snapshot of what I’m working through now in the way of updating areas. It uses this tileset, which I rather like — except that the low ceilings do create something of a problem that I don’t think I’m going to be able to get around. The tileset is an upgrade to this one, which doesn’t contain the enforced (low) ceilings, and which I’m probably going to have to end up using instead. I’m interested in feedback, so feel free to post comments (prefaced by a spoiler warning ;)) if you have any thoughts on this.

I announced recently that my last building task in Neverwinter Nights 1 (before moving on to Act II of the Sanctum saga in Neverwinter Nights 2) was going to be to do a final update for Chapter 1, “The Sight.” In particular, I wanted to merge the two “male and female Robin” versions into a single module that supported both, to fix a few very minor and lingering bugs and spelling errors, and to do just a little more “tweaking” to improve the combat and playability. I started that work last week, and it’s coming along very nicely.

It’s coming along so nicely, in fact, that since this will be my last building project in NWN1, I’ve decided to turn it into a major overhaul of the first chapter. It will be a full version upgrade (to “Version 3.0”), and I expect the updated module to be ready sometime in February. In addition to the aforementioned improvements, I’ve decided to completely rebuild the whole of the “Ancient Ruins,” which I was never fully happy with. I committed a classic “first time builder’s mistake” by making these areas too large, when I should have broken them into several smaller and linked areas instead. I’m going to do that now, and take advantage of the opportunity to use some very cool new tilesets while I’m at it.

I’m also tempted to retrofit some of the new features introduced in Sanctum 2 — such as the food and improved “bleeding” system. I haven’t entirely made up my mind about that yet, though, since I don’t want to delay getting started on Act II for too long.