An Update on Building

AME, General, Sanctum: The Modules

It’s been a while since my last blog post, so I wanted to give everyone an update on the status of my building activities for the Sanctum of the Archmage module series.

First, a bit of good news. Some of my readers may know that I’ve been splitting my time for the last several years between a full-time job, working on a graduate degree in physics, my work for the AME, and of course building the Sanctum modules. I’m happy to be able to announce that I’m now on the verge of being able to close out one of those projects. Just a few days ago, I completed my final requirement for graduation in January (a paper that I should be submitting sometime within the next week). Perhaps not surprisingly, this has been occupying most of my focus and attention for the last two months. So if all goes as expected, a major block of free time should begin to open up for me to begin building again in November.

My next step will be to complete the final update to Sanctum 2, and then to move on in earnest to Sanctum 3. Although my new ridable pegasi are now working in Sanctum 2, I still need to decide exactly how to handle a few issues regarding how to work them into the plot. Should I give the player a choice between Ridable Pegasi and Wind-Walking, or get rid of Wind-Walking altogether? How should I handle it if you get your mounts killed in battle? Should you be able to summon new ones, and if so how frequently? (If anyone has any advice or thoughts on that, please feel free to opine. :)) I’m working out those issues now, and trying to write the scripts I’ll need to make whichever solution I decide on work seamlessly in-game.

I also have a couple of final tweaks and updates to make to the module in general, such as (for example) updating the “Flooded Cave” battle. I had some very good feedback on that battle from a player, which made it clear to me that I need to make a serious effort to hack the standard monster AI for that encounter to make it more realistic.

Finally, there are NinjaWeaselMan’s Romantic animations. I corresponded with him recently, and the updated version of his hak (which will include some additional animations that I need for my update to Sanctum 2, such as hugging) should be ready in about 2 weeks. I’ve got the code ready for these animations now, so hopefully I should be able to just plug in the final version of the hak when it’s ready.

I hope to have a beta version of Sanctum 2, version 3.2, available sometime in November, and (hopefully) to be able to release it next month as well. And then, after that, it will be on to Sanctum 3!

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. 😉

Sanctum 3 Will be in NWN1

3 - Mission to Rayche

I’ve been procrastinating about making and announcing a final decision regarding when and where to build “Sanctum of the Archmage 3: The Miracle Worker, Act II” for a while now. So far I’ve had what I thought were good reasons for the delay. There was my discovery of one more (unexpected) requirement for the Master’s degree that I’ve been working on, which prevented me from graduating in May; some health problems (nothing serious, but which I do need to deal with, and at least partly by taking the time to get more exercise instead of sitting in front of my computer all the time); some changes and new responsibilities at work; another potential new project (which I can’t say any more about just yet); the AME 2007 awards cycle; and a desire to actually spend some more time with my wife. In short, real life has been intruding, big time, on my desire to get started in earnest on building the next chapter.

I’m not willing to delay my writing and building any longer, though, and I’ve been thinking a bit about how to do them while still managing all of these other competing demands on my time. So for these and other reasons, I’ve decided to finish “Sanctum of the Archmage: The Miracle Worker” in NWN1 after all.

As I said, part of my motive in coming to that decision is because of the schedule constraints that I described above. It is unquestionably faster and easier to build in NWN1 than in NWN2, especially for someone who is already as familiar with NWN1 building as I am. There is little chance that I could finish the next chapter this year if I switch to NWN2 now, and I don’t want to disappoint my players and start to lose my audience by delaying it too much longer.

But some of my other reasons for deciding to do at least one more module in NWN1 have to do with the incredible new content that’s becoming available with the 1.69 patch, which went final last week. Here’s just a partial list of new 1.69-based content that I should be able to include in Sanctum 3:

  • The Community Expansion Pack, v2.1 (CEP 2.1), which is now released;
  • The Seasonal Forest Tileset by Lord of Worms, which just won the AME’s NWN1 “Best Tileset” award for 2007 despite still being in extended Beta. Take a look at the stunning images captured by Estelindis for the AME Awards Video (starting about 11:30), and I think you’ll see why I’m excited about the prospect of building scenes with it.
  • Romantic Animations by Ninjaweaselman. This is a variation on his “Intimate Animations” suite (which won the AME’s Best Custom Content award for 2007), to include kissing, hugging, and even dancing animations of extraordinarily high quality. It’s currently in a closed beta (in which I’m participating). I’ll be able to integrate the romantic animations into Sanctum 2 and any later modules that I do in NWN1. And the dancing animations will allow me to realistically script some upcoming scenes in the saga that I had very much wanted to include, but that I had previously resigned myself to having to do without.
  • Ridable Pegasi. For more on this, see my previous blog post. I’ve already replaced the existing pegasi in Sanctum 2 with the new models, and if a ridable version is ready in time, I’ll include those as well.

There are a number of other new custom content projects in the works for NWN1 that I’ve learned about recently, such as plans to develop high-poly head and body models. I’ll blog more about these when they become a bit more public. But these discoveries have definitely given me confidence that NWN1 still has a good bit of life left in it, as a game and as an ever-extending environment for CRPG modding. The fact that other top-notch CC and module builders like Fester Pot, Savant, Lord Rosenkrantz, Ninjaweaselman and others are still building in NWN1 only reinforces that thought.

I want to emphasize that this doesn’t mean that I’ve set aside my plan to begin building in NWN2 at some point. My intent right now is that the last part of the saga, “Sanctum of the Archmage: The Alliance,” will definitely be developed in NWN2, or perhaps even co-developed for both games, if my schedule ever frees up enough to allow it (*crosses fingers*).