A Neverwinter Nights II Mod by Jon and Dennis Graf

Monday, May 25, 2009

Long Holiday weekend



Took a few extra days over the Memorial Day weekend and when not doing yard work managed to spend some time with the toolset. Finished a new swamp exterior which ended up with the exact feel I was going for - and that doesn't happen all that often! After reading a post at the community site, I spent considerable time experimenting with ambiance - the end result being that I began populating my Oasis area with folks doing various things besides just standing around. Ended up using 3 different methods, but all are "playing nice in the sandbox". And I'm learning - which is half the fun. Still have a considerable way to go, but the more I do, the quicker it goes, so when I tackle the next area, it should only take about half the time. 

Began work on a new external area for a side-quest tentatively called "The Inn of the Twelve Travelers". Perhaps next post I will have some screens of that ready for viewing. In the mean time, I have included some shots of the new Swamp.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Map up and "running" in Game


Sorry about the long delay between posts. Have been busy at a steady (if somewhat slow) pace. I finally finished working through Sunjammer's tutorial on World Maps. What a great tutorial. It is well written, clear, and went without a hitch. I started with the Map I had used in the intro movie of Price of Honor. Dumped it into Photshop, and cropped the area I needed - then sized to 647X647 pixels. Next got rid of all the roads which wouldn't have been there at the early setting of the mod. Removed all the text, as I wanted a different font. Finally I added some color tinting to the mountains, forest, and lakes. Dumped it into Illustrator for the background, site locations and titles. Finally added a background and compass arrow. Then exported as a TGA file. From there I just followed the tutorial substituting my file for Sunjammer's. The great thing I discovered was that if you forget something on the map (which I did), you can just go back to the Illustrator file, make the change and export the file with the same name and answer yes when asked if you want to replace the previous file. Game doesn't seem to know the difference. Which means I can work on the map as I go - adjusting to plot changes as they come up. I have included a early screenshot of the map "in-game". Its fairly close to what I was after - especially considering my limited computer graphics skills.

Other than the map, I have been busy editing the sites from POH that will be re-visited in Winter Promises. I'm just about finished with that part. Then I will begin work on at least two more new exterior areas that I need. I have already started work on the conversations, and quite a few rough drafts are in place.