Although I hadn’t originally planned to use NWNCQ or any of the original Bioware tilesets in Sanctum 3, I finally decided that I did have some areas that I needed them for. After some work on them I have to say that I’m very pleased with the result. Here are a couple of screenshots to show why. 🙂
Here’s a new screenshot from Sanctum of the Archmage 3: The Miracle Worker, Act II – Mission to Rayche. This one uses a fantastic new tileset custom developed for the series by the very talented Estelindis.
I was thinking that players might enjoy a story “teaser” from the next chapter. Here’s the text of a book of lore found in Sanctum of the Archmage 3: The Miracle Worker, Act II — Mission to Rayche, titled “The Legend of the Defender.”
Many thousands of years ago, a great war between the Gods and the Demons came to the world. The Demons had opened a door from the realms of hell itself, and their armies threatened to overrun the earth. In those ancient times most of the world was wild and unsettled, with the exception of two great centers of civilization. These were the Kingdom of Nuracinth (now the Northern Plains), which was ruled by humans; and the realm of Eldacinth (now the lands of Elde and Carlissa), shared by the elves and faeries.
The world then was still under the active protection of the Gods, and the army of Heaven prepared to meet the Hordes of Hell in battle. The races of the time were asked to fulfill their oaths of obedience to the Gods and to stand beside them in the Great War. Although men have long forgotten them, the elves still remember The Faeries, who commanded powerful magic but refused the Gods’ call. They retreated to the land of Faerie, and wove the sparkling curtain around it to forever cut themselves off from the rest of the world.
The other races were afraid and hesitated to fight. The Demon Horde began to ravage their lands and many were killed, until the Goddess Tianth finally saw and took pity on their fears. She appeared to Calindra, a simple warrior woman from Rayche whose spirit was true to the Gods and filled with courage and faith in The Divine. She spoke words of hope to her, and gave to her The Shield of the Defender, allegedly forged from a shard of the goddess’ own heart.
Inspired, Calindra rallied the elves and men of the time to stand with the Army of Heaven, and they met the Horde in the heart of Nuracinth. The Kingdom was devastated by the war and remained barren for a thousand years, and even now only the hardiest of nomads can survive there. But the Army of Heaven prevailed, and Calindra — protected by the magic of the Shield — herself slew the Captain of the Horde. Thus the Demons were driven forever from the face of the earth.
Over the next thousand years the Gods left the world to return to the Heavens. Before they left, they established the Church of the Divine as a covenant with those who had shown their faith by standing with them in the Great War. They promised that they would always hear and answer the prayers of their clerics, who to this day wield the magic of the Divine in the Gods’ name. Because of this covenant, the races of men and elves have become known as The Children of the Gods, or simply The Children for short.
The Kingdom of men had been devastated by the Great Battle, and in its aftermath the rulers of the lesser realms that remained vied for dominance. Calindra had become a hero among The Children, and she tried to use her influence to help unite them into a new great kingdom. But the leaders and statesmen of Ancient Nuracinth were gone, and the rulers who remained were men of lesser stature. They tried to use Calindra to their own advantage, and to expand their power by drawing her into their petty wars and intrigues.
Dismayed, Calindra eventually left them to return to her homeland of Rayche, there to wander the countryside as an adventurer. She vanished from the knowledge of history, her final fate unknown, and the shield vanished with her. But according to the legend, it still lies somewhere in the world, in the last resting place of Calindra the Defender. And it waits for the day when its power will be called upon once again to strengthen the hearts of the people against a great evil.
After some last-minute tweaks, the Sanctum of the Archmage version 3.4 update is finally online, and the Vault pages have been updated to include the new links. The major change, as I’ve blogged about recently, was the addition of Chico400’s NWNCQ, which significantly upgrades the appearance of the Bioware default tilesets. The update also contains a number of additional features (including some new high-quality player-selectable heads, some new special abilities for Robin, and some new items), and of course a number of bugfixes.
Here are a couple of new screenshots to whet your appetite (for more, see my earlier blog post here):
UPDATE 9/22/2010: My schedule’s gotten busy this week, so I’ll probably have to postpone updating the Vault pages until the weekend. However, v3.4 (final) is available in the meantime from the links below for anyone who’s already installed v3.3.
– Andarian
Here’s a pre-release beta for version 3.4 of Sanctum chapters 1 and 2, for anyone who’d like to try it out. It only contains the updated parts and assumes you already have all the components needed to play version 3.3. Once I have feedback from a couple of test players that it all seems to be OK, I’ll upload the new version to the module page.
Sanctum v3.4 Beta Final Release
You’ll also need the following NWNCQ haks from here:
Sanctum v3.4 “Patch Hak”
The update affects both chapters, although it has more of an effect on chapter 1 because it uses more of the baseline NWN tiles that NWNCQ revamps. There are a few bugfixes and a couple of new features to look for, including a new entry on Robin’s “special ability” list that may come in handy. There are also about a dozen new hi-res player heads now available, chosen from Salt’s Female Head and Estelindis’ KOTOR Head packs.Also, make sure to check out the “cape-making” and cloak-to-armor conversion ability of the Cloak of Flying if you haven’t already. It’s been in there since v3.2, but I found and fixed a serious bug with it that made the cape feature disappear once you’d converted it
.
I hope you enjoy the update — let me know what you think! – Andarian
Aderyn recently asked: “By the way, how is the Sanctum 3 going now? Please update soon!”
Sorry to keep you in suspense! The reason I haven’t updated in a while is that there are a few things that I’m currently working on that I want to complete before doing so. In particular, Estelindis and I have been developing some very unique new custom content for the module. When it’s ready for screenshots I think you’ll find it was worth the wait. 😉
Shuurai recently offered the following thoughts about continuing the Sanctum saga in Neverwinter Nights as opposed to Dragon Age. Since they might be of general interest, I thought I would post my own thoughts on that here.
“Just to throw it out there, I too think it’d be cool if the entire series was kept in NWN1. Despite the age of the engine and it’s limitations, I personally find the interface to be much better than NWN2 and even Dragon Age. That said, the most important thing (to me) is the story, and I think this one will be strong no matter what the platform.”
I very much appreciate the kind words about the story (thanks, Shuurai!). This is an issue that I’ve been torn about since the first module came out — first with NWN2, and then with Dragon Age. As some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity last year to be invited by Bioware to participate in the Dragon Age toolset beta and Builder’s Event. So I’m very familiar with what Dragon Age has to offer the series, and I’ve been very impressed with it from the beginning. I think it was designed much more for the kind of story-based modding that I’m trying to do with the series than was NWN, and that I could do a great deal more with it as a result.
So to be honest I really would prefer to switch to Dragon Age as soon as possible, for that as well as other reasons. For example I do strongly prefer the interface and game design, and the Sanctum world never has really fit well with the D&D ruleset. But I’m in the awkward position of being in the middle of the saga and having a lot invested in building the mods in NWN1, including an established player and fan base there. Those are things that I can’t just disregard.
If I come into enough free time or can recruit enough DA collaborators to help, then I may port Sanctum 2 to DA as a test. If that’s successful I could then port the rest of Part II (“The Miracle Worker”) as well. I think I could handle that for DA-only players by including a video “prologue” telling the story of Part I (“The Sight”). If that works out then I’d end up with Part I as a NWN1 only mod, Part III (“The Alliance”) as DA only, and Part II ported to both.
Either way, though, I don’t plan on building “The Alliance” in NWN1. But I also really don’t want to stop building in NWN1 until the end of “The Miracle Worker”. That’s when the story will reach a point where I can at least give NWN1-only players a sense of closure with the series, even though it will be continued in “The Alliance.”
And, I hope, in a series of novels to pick up the story after that. From the beginning, the Sanctum modules were intended mainly as an experiment on my part: a way of exploring the new medium of CRPG modding as a means of telling the backstory to those novels. So with any luck, it’ll be a long time before I have to commit to giving folks a full sense of closure with the saga as a whole. 🙂
I thought I’d post some preliminary screenshots from Sanctum 3.
Nicodemus’ Tower
Highpeak Castle
I also noticed that I hadn’t done anything with the screenshots on the module pages for Sanctum 1 and Sanctum 2 since before the v3.2 update. I’ve updated them to (among other things) show the new Pegasi and companion heads.
A player asked me the following regarding a recent post about my plans for Sanctum 3. I thought it might be of general interest, so I decided to re-post it here.
This is probably my own terminology more than anything else, but by “companions” I mean long-term party members who are tied to the overall plot. In Sanctum, that’s Robin, Orion, and Diana. By “henchmen” I mean party members who join or are “hired” mainly for combat support and story flavor on a specific quest or quests. Since I made you leave one of your three companions behind near the end of Chapter 2 (and don’t worry, you’ll see them again in Chapter 4), I felt that it would be a good idea to let you be able to “hire on” some temporary help in Chapter 3 if you need it. There will be five such “henchmen” available in different areas and for different quests. Although they’re intended to be more “henchmen” than full “companions,” they’ve already developed very vivid personalities in my mind that I want to try to translate into the module as well. Two of them will also be potential (though not long-term) romance options (one male, one female).
There’s now a page on my website for the upcoming module:
Sanctum of the Archmage 3: The Miracle Worker, Act II – Mission to Rayche