2013 March, Adventure Building Challenge

[Legacy_henesua]

               Then I think you have your work cut out for you. '>

Get to it! We want to play it in all its glory.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               Starbright and Aurelia are back... Sanity is not.

PHoD ABC Episode 2 - The SILVER SPHERE

When scholar Aurelia and her assistant Starbright, of the Astral Library of Mysteries and Peculiar Studies, travel to a tranquil realm in order to investigate a harmless local phenomenon, they are puzzled to find themselves beset by Exploding Penguins and Manic Depressive Cows...
It soon becomes clear that the entire realm is in the grip of a devastating psychic field which causes people's darkest fears and worst nightmares to take on lethal corporeal form. As the chaos and destruction worsens, the two scholars must face a plethora of the most demented horrors imaginable, weather the chauvenist contempt of rubbish, so-called heroes, evade outrageously big bugs and confront a terrible enemy from the distant past...

Required Haks:-
PHoD Silver Sphere
PHoD New VFX

Continuing the simple, straightforward "storytelling" series, SILVER SPHERE contains absolutely no worrying traces of normalcy, sanity or rationality. Guaranteed strange at all times.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par PLUSH HYENA of DOOM, 10 mars 2013 - 05:55 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I've got a committee exploring the possibility that I participate this month.

In the meantime while "they" deliberate, I am working on a module:

Working title: Merchant's Apprentice
Seed: Treasure Map

The rough idea is...
Main character - the PC - is somewhat like an indentured servant of a ship captain and merchant. The main character resents this, desiring freedom.

One night while the ship is docked off a desert shore, the PC is called to the captain's quarters, and given a task. Take a boat, head to shore, make contact with a hill tribe to trade with them for their incense (tree sap aka frankincense)

PC is given a map showing roughly where the hill tribe and where a nearby fishing village is, command over one of the marines for protection from bandits, a desert cloak to keep the heat off and act as a disguise, and the name of a contact in the nearby fishing village. The captain will bring the ship to the fishing village by the night of the full moon - two weeks from now after conducting trade in the nearest city. Essentially the captain needs the PC to conduct the deal because the captain's presence could alert a rival tribe that wishes to control this trade.

Don't want to spoil it by giving out more info... but maps play an important role in this, and I intend to push the adventure off the reservation described by the synopsis. I probably won't be able to finish the adventure described by the synopsis by the end of the month. So I'm working on something that is a choice the PC can make once they get off the ship and have had a taste of freedom.

---

A problem thats been slowing me down (other than spending the first week on Seamless Area Transitions) is that I made the mistake of over ambition and imported a great deal of Arnheim into this module. I did this because it is set in the same world. The captain is from Arnheim as are some of the crew. Other members of the crew including the PC are from Orsenna. The adventure takes place in the Orsennan Empire, in a place resembling Yemen of the real world which gave me an excuse to read up on Arab traders and sailors both before and after Islam. The frankincense trade across the Arabian peninsula goes back to ancient times and has long fascinated me. Aspects of this even show up in Jared Dimonds book, Guns Germs and Steel, in the chapter on Africa and discussion about Asian immigration there and the Asian crops there which appear to have been there for over a thousand years. Anyway, I am pulling in some Arnheim flavor, religions and other aspects of the setting, and game rules.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 15 mars 2013 - 08:55 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               *kicks the manual instead of reading it*
Frigging fragging Gestalt Custscene....
I'm falling behind schedule as I work on these camera movements. The story looks great written out screenplay style, but getting a cutscene to behave is another thing entirely.

Frickito Zippo Z-Dialog....
Had trouble with getting Z-Dialog to simulate a conversation between two NPCs in the background, so went with the lame-o BW conversation style this time. (I'm doing this in a cutscene and allowing the PC to step through the conversation line by line.)
I have way too much trouble punching out the backbone as I obsesses over the details along the way. My biggest problem.

Here's what I have so far... not the final PC appearance. Right now just a placeholder.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               I'm starting to see why I've never release a finished NWN module: designing combat encounters is the bane of my existance. Besides not having the system mastery to make fun and balanced fights, I feel like I'm cheating if I don't put the same amount of time and effort on enemy appearances that I do on henchmen, and thus end up giving up on an encounter before I even have half the enemies ready. I might just be hiding my laziness when it comes to combat design with this, but it's a lot of time and effort for something not a lot of people will notice...

I've been trying to come up with a new concept for the month's module that involves fewer characters to customize the appearance of and less combat, but with time running out I might be left with nothing *again*... I'm curious whether anyone else has my issue with creating enemies, where they get wrapped up in the details (like stats and appearance). I suppose I could always solve my problem by using stock enemies and/or appearance models that can't be customized, but it feels kinda wrong after spending 10 minutes making each henchman outfit...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Beware! The Gobblers are Coming!

TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               Ten minutes? I spend a good forty minutes sometimes with customizable enemies... and then somtimes decide they don't look right and thus throw their gear away and start again... Fine when suiting oneself but a bit less practical within a time limit... In a way it's a good thing to have virtually no Custom clothing parts in these ABC things I'm doing, limits choice and thus limits the amount of time I can waste agonizing over futile fashion statements. That's why I used piles of Undead Animals last time... though things got a bit more complicated this month even though, in the end, the main villains were the twisted sinister "Toadfaces" from DEMONESS TALES who thus didn't need customizing...
That's the trouble; to make a Module look good, it's all in the details, both with respect to Creatures and the environments. I take hours and hours over placing Placeables half of which most players will likely never even notice save as part of a general ambience. But without the subconsciously noticed details, the ambience doesn't work.

Anyway, having already had four times the amount of time I did last month, I've finished SILVER SPHERE for now and handed it in.
Now I'm going to fall over for absolutely NO reason.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par PLUSH HYENA of DOOM, 18 mars 2013 - 02:58 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               OK, you've twisted my arm. I am declaring a module. There is not a cat in (you know where) chance that it will be anything like finished by the dealine as I am still working on the story, but I think I have enough to show the beginning. It is to be somewhat of a pastiche of a well known book and film. The title is "The Bobbit – Episode 1 – Grabbed by the Gobblers". However, do not expect a slavish adherence to the original. For example ->



This silk rug is the cause of the start of the trouble. Oh and the seed is (isn't it obvious already?) Treasure Map. CC TBD.

TR 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tarot Redhand, 18 mars 2013 - 11:21 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               With the lack of time (and effort put into it), I'm going to push back LOTD Episode 1 yet again. It was all fun and games until I got perfectionist over it...

Gods of D+D willing, I'll be working on "Cave Defense" for the rest of the time we have for March. It doesn't have a fancy description yet (the module being imagined entirely in gameplay terms), but here's the details so far:

- Uses the "Real Anti-Hero" theme (the PC is a goblin protecting his/her cave from those jerkwad adventurers). Future expansion may even fit the "Into the Abyss" theme.
- Tower defense-like mechanics. (The player sets up traps and projectile trap launchers and summons allies to stop the adventurers.)
- (Planned feature) Rewards for efficiency (you can keep some allies/structures or earn better ones based on how many allies survive and how quickly the adventurers are killed.)

Currently there is only one map to play on (the tutorial) and only one trap type (arrow + launcher) and two ally types. Hopefully this will change, as I now know what I'm doing. What I really need are win/lose states and a way to start the level through player input. It'd also be nice to find an alternative to the default waypoint walk for the adventurers and allow the player to pick up misplaced launchers...

Edit: Almost forgot the teaser, complete with backwards launcher:


               
               

               

                     Modifié par jackkel dragon, 21 mars 2013 - 03:17 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_simomate2]

               I would try this, but its probably too late, yes? Does this happen every month? Because I'd certainly be interested in next month's challenge.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               @simomate2 just to bring you up to speed. the over-arching thread for the ABC (10 pages), the thread for last months challenge and the thread that points to the poll to select the "seeds" for next months challenge. If you take a look at these you will know all the joy and woe of what you might be getting into if you choose to have a go next month.

TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               We are holding a challenge next month. Please join us.

Your assessment that it is too late this month is probably correct depending on how much of a perfectionist you are.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 21 mars 2013 - 01:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Quick (more like lack of) progress report. For "The Bobbit" I have decided to work in what I call scenes. A scene is a major area with smaller areas branching off. These smaller areas are destinations in themselves and do not usually lead to anywhere else.

Well I am still on the 1st scene (told you there was a very warm kitty's chance) having only got the major architecture done. Seems that there are a number of unforeseen time eaters. For example, I placed a group of custom chickens and wanted them to wander aimlessly like the impression given by real chickens. I remembered the built in function x2_spn_rndwalk that seemed to fit the bill. For those that don't know this built in script (that goes in the onspawn event of the creature) does all the normal housekeeping for spawning a creature and then makes it wander aimlessly about. The trouble that I found is that it is not really suitable for small creatures as the distance travelled does not scale. so the chucks were running upto 10 meters in one go instead of maybe a max of 1 meter. So if I want wandering chucks, I'm going to have to write yet another script. It's doable, but in the remaining time? I have my doubts.

So how's everyone else doing?

TR
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_CaveGnome]

               Not doing too well... Here a sort of progress report: I have the major areas, the convs, the plot journal, the trading post, the merchants all functional, but my movement/travel system is being harder to get working as i want. The encounter/animal generating is not operating (in last ressort i can use Bioware default), and my bartering system is embryonic. I am trying to reevaluate the project and will probably end with something much simpler and rough. I had some cool ideas like an autopath compas for returning to the Trading Post, but this will not be for the first release. Obviously i was too ambitious.

Update 26 March:
Movement/travel working!  Encounter/animal/monster generating in progress... Final goal area useable, but much, much less sexy than my initial planning.

Update 28 March:
Encounter/animal generating done. Sound work done. Signpost system done. Reworked the final goal area, that's better now

Update 30 March:
Simple bartering system done. Module uploaded.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par CaveGnome, 30 mars 2013 - 07:19 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               Well, since all the cool kids are making status reports...

Cave Defense is actually going way better than I expected. I finally got a debug version of a "win condition" working, so I can tell when the player clears a level. Right now there's not really a way to "lose" the first level (though it can become unwinnable), so I might consider making something for the player to actually defend (right now the enemies sort of walk in a scary way down a hallway, turn, and walk back).

I also have the merchant that sells gear and defenses and starts the level set up, but it has the annoying habit of helping in combat (it's unkillable). I may have it teleport away until the battle is over to avoid that kind of weirdness. Right now the conversation paths are ugly, but all but two (tutorial and go to next level) work.

I think the hardest part will be making the module interesting to play... you start at level one with no gear and only enough gold to buy a few allies and traps.  This means that, despite unlimited respawns, you'll still be mostly watching your summonded help do all the work (or not, if you die and respawn at the map start while the combat goes on). Now, this first level is explicitly called a "tutorial" and thus is just teaching the mechanics... but when those mechanics involve a lot of prep work and not much actual gameplay... I don't know.

I'm going to continue working on this first level until the main gameplay elements are fully working, but I think that if I succeed I'll be able to make new levels as quickly as I can design areas and new enemies/allies/traps. With luck, there might be more than five minutes of gameplay in my submission.

P.S: Launchers can be picked up and reused now. I will listen to no whining about how the game doesn't explain which way the Launcher will face when placed.