Category Archives: 2 – The Quest

Posts related to Sanctum of the Archmage Chapter 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I – The Quest

A Quick Update

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest, Dragon Age, Sanctum: The Modules

I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the status of the Sanctum v3.2 update, as well as some news that may be of interest to readers of my blog.

Between the demands of my job, vacation, managing the AME, and some other projects (see below), my schedule has gotten very busy in recent weeks — and that has unfortunately delayed my efforts to get the Sanctum update posted for general release. I have only a few remaining tasks to finish before I can upload it, but unfortunately my available time is still going to be very limited for the next few weeks. Hopefully when some of the smoke clears from my “real life,” I should be able to finally get it completed and online by the end of the month.

The very talented Estelindis has graciously offered to develop some high quality custom NWN head models for the Sanctum update. We’ve been collaborating for a few weeks now on how to get the look just right for the various characters, and the results are truly amazing (if I do say so myself). Robin (both genders) and Orion are basically done, and Diana is currently in development as well. Here’s a link to a screenshot featuring (female) Robin’s new head and the use of the Romantic Animations Suite. Este, thank you very much for your fantastic work on this!

Although sworn to secrecy until recently, I can now also reveal that I’ve been a participant in the beta test for the Dragon Age Toolset since early this year — and I was invited to travel to Bioware HQ in Edmonton last week to participate in the Dragon Age Toolset Builder’s Event. I plan to blog at more length about that amazing experience when I have time — but for now, to see what it was all about check out the posts on the Bioware Blog here and here. I’ll only say for now that from what I’ve seen, the tools that Bioware is making available for Dragon Age are going to change the landscape of RPG modding. I’m very excited about it. Although I’m still committed to finishing “The Miracle Worker” in NWN1, I’m now giving serious consideration to completing Part III of the Sanctum Saga — The Alliance — in Dragon Age.

Thanks again to everyone for your patience and interest!

Cheers,

Andarian

One More Round of Testing

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest

I finished my playtest run a couple of days ago, and I’m making the rest of the required changes now. Unfortunately, though, the list is too long (and in some cases the fixes are too substantive) for me to just finish them and upload the beta test. Some of the new changes (such as the new shopping system and modifications to some of the items) also have the potential to alter the play balance, so I’ll need to make one more playtest pass through the modules after finishing to make sure nothing serious is broken. Unfortunately, that’ll take at least a few more days.

Shop Till You Drop

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest

I took a detour from playtesting today to add something that I’ve been thinking about for a very long time: a complete re-write of the merchant appraisal system. I’m a big fan of shopping and of using the appraise skill, but the NWN1 implementation of it was really awful. Here are my criticisms of it:

  • Appraise rolls encourage players to save and re-try to get better shopping statistics, especially since they are remembered from visit to visit until your appraise skill improves.
  • An unlucky second roll can actually cause your shopping adjustment to get worse when your appraise skill improves, which makes no sense.
  • Characters with a very high appraise skill can actually sell items back to the merchant for more than they paid for them.
  • Characters don’t get a charisma-based shopping adjustment, which I always thought would have been appropriate.

I’ve just finished testing the changes that I’ve made to Sanctum v3.2 to address these issues, and I think you’ll like the results. 🙂

Call for Beta Testers

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest

The long-awaited (certainly by me, anyway :)) version 3.2 update to Sanctum of the Archmage 1 and 2 is just about ready! I’ve finally finished building it, and I’m just about to start what hope will be my final playtest before making the module available for beta testing. It should be ready by next weekend if everything goes well.

I’ve ended up adding a lot of new features in v3.2, most notably Romantic Animations and Ridable Pegasi in Sanctum 2 (thanks to NinjaWeaselMan and Hardpoints, respectively). The ridable pegasus system in particular was an enormous bit of work, and required probably the most elaborate NWN scripting system that I’ve ever had to develop. Most of the rest of the improvements are smaller and more isolated, and came from going through my “dissatisfaction list.” These were a lot of little things that I never really liked or thought worked quite right, and someday wanted to figure out a way to “fix up.” Often these were things in the base game or in the CEP that I needed to work around, such as the (I thought) awful crafting system, or the custom CEP items that you couldn’t cast Magic Weapon or Flame Blade on because of the very inflexible way that the scripts were written. I’ve paintstakingly fixed as much of that as I could manage, and re-vamped the crafting system for exotic weapons and materials in a way that I think players are likely to enjoy.

The beta test will be closed and I’d like to keep it fairly small, so if you’d be interested in participating, please let me know. 🙂

AME NWN1 Finalists Preview on NWN Podcast

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest, AME, NWN Podcast

I just wanted to give everyone a quick heads-up that Tybae and I will be participating in a “streaming preview show” on the NWN Podcast to announce this year’s finalists for the AME’s NWN1 Golden Dragon Awards for 2008. For details on how to join us in IRC, and to listen live to the show stream, see our announcement here.

Also, just an update on the Sanctum 1-2 v3.2 work: I’ve finished my playthrough, and I’m in the process of making some fixes. Once those are done, and I’ve done another playthrough to make sure everything’s working right, I should be ready to set up a beta test. So stay tuned!

Also, check out my submission to the Vault’s NWN1 Screenshot contest:

Mount Cassandra Peak by Andarian

Ridable Pegasi Video Preview

2 - The Quest, The Miracle Worker

I’ve got most of the scripting and details worked out for including ridable pegasi in Sanctum 2. I’ve decided to leave both flying options in the module, so that the player can choose whether they would prefer Wind Walking or Ridable Pegasi as their means of travel to other lands. Here’s a video preview. (The size is about 34 mb.)

Ridable Pegasi Leaving Mount Cassandra

I’m still tweaking the details, but I think it’s good enough to show. I’m still having trouble with the wings not showing up during the mounting animation, but I think I can live with that for now. I was also able to use one of the custom horse animations to make it look like the characters were really flying off the side of the mountain. Unfortunately the only suitable one I could find also has the rider losing his balance for a moment at the start. It actually makes the scene a little more humorous than I’d intended, but I think it’s a small price to pay to actually see the characters fly off the peak and into the distance.

Ridable Pegasi Posted!

2 - The Quest, The Miracle Worker

At my request, Hardpoints has finally posted a ridable pegasus model that I can use in Sanctum of the Archmage! See below for a screenshot, and here for details and more screenshots.

I should be able to integrate them into Sanctum 2 in a few days. When I do, I’ll post some screenshots from it in-game, with our heroes riding them through the Wind-Walking areas. (Our pegasi, of course, will be white. :)) I’ll still need to figure out what to do with the Cloak of Flying, since it’ll no longer really be needed for the story; but that’s a minor detail. 🙂

Ridable Pegasus

Sanctum Updated for Patch 1.69 and CEP 2.1

1 - The Sight, 2 - The Quest

I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve posted version 3.1 of Sanctum of the Archmage Chapters 1 and 2, which is updated for Patch 1.69 and CEP 2.1. You can find the download links here.

I’m not 100% happy with the update just yet, since I’m still seeing some minor bugs in playing it (see here). I’m also planning a more substantial upgrade when Ninjaweaselman’s romantic animations and Hardpoints’ mountable pegasi are released. Unfortunately, I can’t spare the time right now to hunt down and kill those remaining minor bugs, and fortunately they’re ones that can very easily be ignored or worked around if one of them shows up. Because of the CEP Team’s unfortunate decision to reuse some of the same component names from CEP 2.0 to 2.1 (which has been complicating some players’ efforts to play CEP 2.0 modules), I felt that it was important for me to get a CEP 2.1 compatible version of the module out as soon as possible to support my players, and that this could not wait any longer.

NWN Podcast Interview

2 - The Quest, 3 - Mission to Rayche, AME, NWN Podcast

In case anyone missed it, I was this week’s guest on the Neverwinter Nights Podcast. Trey and I talked about Sanctum 2 winning the Golden Dragon Award for Best RPG, as well as my plans for the next chapters in the series. Here’s the link:

NWNP Episode 68 – Golden Dragon Winner Andarian

My interview starts at about 9 minutes into the podcast. I’m not sure why, but this time they decided to use a “listener greeting” from a non-guest instead of the one that I sent them. If anyone was looking forward to hearing my intro, here it is. 😉