The Demon Melody

2011-09-02T00:45:00.001-07:00

Just in with a bit of news

The demon melody is now a comercially planned project by Miko Games.

some 6 months ago I decided to try a game engine called unity and I fell in love. that led me into learning 3d modelling and now we are creating funds for making the demon melody a reality as a comercial product.

so far we have created a database of 3d models for game use and prototyped a few game mechanics for TDM and a few smaller games.

the TDM project is on hold for a little while while we create the funds neccesary for creating such a game.

once I have any TDM related screenshots I will post them here.

Roger

squashing of bugs and changes

2011-02-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

been squashing bugs and redoing some stuff withing the campaign. the campaign folder have been a nightmare because something withing it seems to causes several crashes (ie things work when not connected to a campaign.) also due to tester feedback I'll be changing some elements of the mod.

I'm still working on this in between real life obligations and musical work

Hoegbo

the toolset junkie

tests and musice and reelase woes.

2010-12-20T02:21:00.000-08:00

So the tests and bug fixes are running as planned.discovered a few gamebreaking bugs as soon as the other people started running through the module. I hope theese will be fixed asap. and Ill be ready with the release some time in january/february all depending on the bugs and how well I have organized myself I feel I got a good thing going with my spreadsheets and all that. but still this part is pretty new and the project is fairly large so Ill be crossing everything that can be crossed in hopes that this testing will be as painless as possible.

This brings me to something I have been thinking lately. I'm about to release the first module as a demo of the rest of the campaign and if people do not like what they are playing. will it be worth it to relase the entire campaign as oposed to just releasing the areas,blueprints, scritps etc.
I've been spending nearly all of my time the last 2 years to build this behemoth. so if the few people still playing nwn2 modules wont play this one its gonna be sad. but then again I wont be forced to test the entire thing if it fails. then again if its reception is in the other en of the scale and people like it........... time will tell.

lastly as the others have been playing I have been making more progress on the musical side of things and I'm enjoying the time spendt with the composing. most of it is orchestral and some of it is just ambient cinematic soundscapes wit ha rythm or a particular mood. I was thinking about making a orchestral metal song for a particular boss fight just to see how that would work in a fantasy mod. I think I shall try and start doing that as soon as a particularly nasty crash to
desktop bug is fixed.

I've bee n talking about a trailer for nearly as long as I have been making the mod. now I do not think Ill ever finish that. even though I have the video recorded. My chaotic nature will be the end of me one day :P

The sum of way to many parts

2010-12-08T02:27:00.000-08:00

so I have assembled the areas streamlined the conversations for the first part of the campaign. it saddened me to se some very large conversations being scrapped as they would not fit the new paladin theme.

What gnaws on me the most is the skill checks, for as you know, paladins aren't the most "skillful" of people. however I think the companions will make up for that with their interjections and opinions. after last nights play through I felt the companions felt more alive as they would offer opinions tips and attack bonuses for certain situations. I've gone to great lenghts to make sure that the skill checks wont be felt as a loss.

The first module I will not feature the Overland maps. those are a bit more work intensive and I still got some testing to do on the OM spawn system. however there should be a good indication on how the rest of the campaign will be. the first module is linear with a few sidequests as a option so it wont feel completely linear. I want to avoid the horrid running 20 meters,then cutscene and repeat until the players go insane.

as for role play options I hope I have made enough Personality responses for the player. from pious to gruff even poet warrior quoatations.,and of course the neutral response. I wanted to add the personality traits so that there might be oppurtunities to certain quests and items , ie. Being a lore interested paladin might grant you some bonus lore skill or certain rare tomes with unique properties. the items wont be overly powerfull but they will be helpfull and most importantly fun.

all of the weapons and armor you get are custom blueprints with original hak content I gather most people are tired of looking the same in every module.

as for fighting style I have made it so you can use any weapon type. as the holy avenger will be of a weapon type of your choosing. be it 2 handed or 1 handed. tjhough admitteddly a paladin with sword and shield will be slightly better due to the itemization and paladin mechanics.

Im on the internal testing part now and I hopwe that I will have some beta ready material around christmas time so if anyone wants to volunteer as a beta tester then I'd be happy to have you.

here is the current to do list module 1

-brush uo on some texturing on a few areas.
-complete testing a few custom skills more throughly .
-load screens
-perhaps/mayby make the bloody trailer
-finish up the vocals on lains song (a song called little red bird in the language of Manx)
-a few more conversations on the end of the module needs a check up
-finish playing the the module without any game breakers.
-fix the bugs I found.
-post it

Release , the how to.

2010-11-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

SO i HAve in the last few weeks been thinking about how to best release the module. in series or all in one go. Personally I feel that the 8 connected overland maps that make up the continent of Haedrin cannot be split up sucsessfully so I have more or less decided to release in one go , however for the beta Ill drop module by module on to the testers (once and if I find some willing to spend that amount of time to test the mod).

I've made my areas for Lance botelles , better the demon module. and should start working exclusively on my mod from here on out. taking a break from testing and convo checking was a needed distraction.

I hope to have some new screens from in game cut scenes as soon as I have delivered the areas to lance and gotten the thumbs up for them. also I hope to get some video and music up soon.

the new to do list

2010-11-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

the last few weeks I have been alternating between being busy and doing areas for "better the demon". but now I've nearly completed the areas and should turn to my on project again.

as I posted earlier I have stripped everything in the demon melody to jsut the folders exported all the areas convos etc into a temporary folder and started adding them into modules again. so far I've done most of the first module. so theres still 25 more to go.

so this is what I gotta do now

reasign all the 669 areas to their respectiv module

Go over and streamline the convos for paladins. this is a lot of work.

decide what script system makes it to the beta

finish scripting the odd cutscene ,events and boss fights

add flavor and more interjections

polish the older areas if time permits

playthrough and set a xp scale rate for the module.

add the stuff I forgot into the to do list.

decide what to keep and to throw away.

aside from making areas for "better the demon" I have also outlined a new overland encounter system. this I hope to eventually put up on the vault (hopefully by christmas) it will require settig up encounter areas with waypoints and creating an encounter trigger or two at the area but I believe this system will be easier to use than the Obsidian. I've also modified the "AI" to be a little harsher and use tactics in random encounters. I personally found the random encounters in soz to be to much of the same monsters running towards you. the random encounters will require something more rather than just charging in.

When you charge some dungons you first may need to clear its exterior before you can reach the inner sanctm of it and start harvesting legendary artefact. this requires you to have the player castle and have mustered a sizable force of troop. this requires you to berach through defensive lines to get to the dungeon door. this is done by conversation but I hope to make it more dynamic by adding a gui for it. you can delegate the assault to a sergeant (which you like in the oc have to meet and recruit. and or have the right faction for it) the different leaders have different things they can do well so depending on what you put them to d your leadership points change.leadership points is a resource for managin and recruiting new soldiers.

There are certain feats like leadership that will affect this to a small degree , but not to a point where it is neccesary to have it. The palading castle won't be exactly similar to the OC one with upgrades and stuff. rather it will work as a hub for quests, battles.you can hire/muster troops be it mercenaries or legionaires. as well as it will function as a storage facility. There will be outlaws charging the vastle from time to time and you can either deal with it yourself or get the other officers to fix it for you.

The module is of a bizarre size. Currently about 222 hours of total finished gameplay (roughly calculated from the spreadsheet). I know I have to redo the XP rescaling seing as my paladin is about lvl5 (or so)

I hope I can get the content into manageable chunks as I run through the qareas and mods looking for stuff to remove. but at any rate I feel like I have made all the stuff in the original PnP available. which was my initial goal (albeit it has changed form a few times , the core is the same)

busy busy

2010-10-13T02:34:00.001-07:00

The last few weeks have been really hectic. mooving and rebuilding my home studio. the latter part turned out really great. the moving into the apartment is a bit so so. as there are some work needed on the chimney and some slow pokes at a store that cant seem to get the stove I bought from point a , to point b.

inbetween all of this I've been trying to make som areas for lance botelles module "better the demon" this has been a fun experience. I hope to do this again in the future.

I have put of the next few weeks for his project. so I can start out on my own project again. I cant wait to start fiddling around with the mod.

I have beeen planning (mostly in my head) how to best make the modules flow in conjunction with the overland map. and I'm trying to keep load times at a minimum. however load times may be something I'll have to sacrifice for a better work flow of the module.
I jsut got my other computer up and running along nicely with my studio, and with it I ahve once more access to the complete module setup,26 in total before the optional stuff. the haks are up to 11(all less than 200mb in size to avoid bugs) damn you RWS for making so much cool stuff :D that being said I also have a lot of custom armors in there. I think I can justify the hak size when its compared to the scale of the mod itself

I've also written up armor and weapon tiers to better distribute the loot across the modules. I'll be implementing theese as soon as the areas for "Better the demon" is complete

Moving to a new apartment.

2010-09-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

I just got a new apartment I'm moving htere in 2 weeks time so needless to say the comming month might get a little amputated. The only thing that gets priority is an area I am making for Lance botelle over at http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/ I'm hoping to get it done next week (initially this week but everything suddenly turned upside down with the new apartment)

so what have I been doing mod wise ?

well I have continued figuring out what to keep , what to add and what to change/remove.

so far it has gone well. I rewrote the beginnig of the mod as aparently it was too dark and evil for some real life friends that played it. however I managed them to get really upset about some of the "evilish" characters thaat I included. one of the two that played compared the hate she had for the academy headmaster to that of the nurse in "one flew over the cookoos nest"with jack nicholson. I hope other potential players will have similar experiences then I'm a happy salmon.

I also encountered a few OM bugs. sometimes the spawned encounters would not despawn or stop chasing the players. this is probably me forgetting some scripts in the blueprints but a bug I'll save for later. also sometimes up to 3 instances of the same encounter would spawn at the same time.

additionally I have restarted playing the mod now adding Kaedrins prc pack which will be a requirement to play the mod. the additional classes makes for some awesome encounter tweaks for me. and I do love tweaking encounters :) my paladin is now level 4 and jsut started on the OM stuff.

the party limitations is at the writing moment 4 (3+PC) there should be 2 companions at the camp at all times (you can place the camp on safe spots on the OM )there are some companions that are non-human and will make cause a grand stirr up if the walk around the streets without disguise. theese can be left to guard the camp when you need to enter a city.(tere must be 2 in the camp at all times) you can find disguises for the non human companions.

the to do list as I see it now the next month or two(depending on ho long it takes me to settle into the new apartment.

finish of the last conversations in the begining of the mod. then take a look at revising the gnome race quest to the paladin flavor. can you stop the gnome robot uprising ? :O

Some streamlining thoughts

2010-09-09T03:32:00.000-07:00

After deciding to make TDM a 100% paladin mod some thoughts surfaced.

the paladins does not have the greatest of skill selection. this is something I have considered to do something about. apart from having the companions/henchmen bring out their opinions and know how at certain points of the story. I have been working hard on the companions making them feel like a part of the team and making them as believable as I can. to me building a team feeling is paramount. still some work to go there but I'm getting there.

next is character customization and roleplay options. I'm stil streamlining Player responses tweaking them into betterness (because perfection is such a ugly word.)

now I have focused on different types of responses an I'll try to the best of my abilities to keep them. a lot of the already written responses will be kept. But I feel I have to rewrite some, to give them more of a "paladin" flavor. I try to give several options in player responses to portray a number of from the zealot to the neutral to the near cold incarnation. I aim to make the paladin in this module pretty versatile. a lot of inspiration coems from the maimed god's saga. a great mod in all respects and the main influence of making this a paladin mod.(that and the fact that I ahve subconciously made the mod from a paladin perspectiv to begin with)

you should be able to specialize in most weapons available in the game. I'm working on adapting blueprints for several holy avenger type weapons. includeing flails,maces, bastardswords 2handed swords ,axes etc. what types I'll eventually decide on I'll take when I get there.

on a side not regarding gear. all magical armor and weapons have unique names and have some lore attatched to them.

Back from spain

2010-09-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

So I am back from a lovely trip to spain. a million experiences richer. gotta love that country :D

so I am back modding again and I did a playthrough of the first part . found a few spell and grammar issues. some conversation strangeness and a few "oopsies" in a few scripts. but should work properly now I also redid the start slightly to better fit the paladin stremlined story. I am also playing with kaedrins extra paladin spells (I LOVE THIS ! ). Right now my play through toon is LVL3 and I'm having a good time playing it. and as I play I am also seeing if there is content I can remove or reuse (ie the other class related quest areas and side quests, along with items and sidequests.

at the moment the biggest issue I have is the OM. I found some scripting boo boo's there I need to fix along with some geographical changes that I feel is needed to make the world and some events feel more believable.

I also had a blast with the bounty hunting side of the mod. each town has an imperial offical that will take proof of capture/death of outlaws and turn it into gold. I started the Bounty hunterquest until I found a game breaking bug in the area enter script of one of the areas which causes the game to crash.

side quests/paths are something I have given a great deal of thought to. if you complete some of them like say bringing a known murderer to justice. there is a percentage in all the cities to spawn a npc(s) that will recognize the deed for better or worse. ie other outlaws seeks to take you down. relatives of the murderer's victims seek you out to thank you etc. theese character should spawn only once. though in my case I managed to spawn 3x encounters after cashing in a captured small time thief.

I noticed most of the adventure is outdoors as I feel more confident in making exterior areas rather than interiors.

so the paladin only have so many skills and skill points. this makes the companions a bigger asset. and this makes their role (in my opinion) stick out a bit more. for a moment I thought about leaving some of the companions out of the mod. but I figured that , that was one way to add depth to the mod without adding more work. I made some events that will unfold in certain areas depending on who you have along for the journey.

Changes so far; I redid the start a little and the story slightly to make the paladin only. I have playtested tis and it works. and I am pretty satisfied with the turnout.

the challenges up ahead are skill use many conversations I have written are heavy on skill use. so the plan so far is trying to se if I can use party chat and make the dialogues unique to certain party members. though at the writing moment I have no idea so I'll nag on the IRC or test it tomorrow.

Another dramatic change.

2010-08-23T05:17:00.001-07:00

I was playing the mod last week as a paladin roaming about a few areas and seeing the mod in game. and I realize that having 15 class paths is jsut to much work I ahve more or less finished the paladin quest and the mods overall theme and play style suits paladin better than any class. and after playing Tiberius's awesome The maimed gods saga. I decided to follow in his footsteps and exclude the other classes. TDM is now a paladin only mod.

why did I do this ?

well if I kept the original thinking of the 15 class paths I would never finish this mod. Kamal has been testing his mod since january and I fear I would probably use twice the time he has used since I am a complete toolset newb(and always will be).

the second thing is that I mostly only know how to play paladin and I am strugling a bit with making the other classes interesting. this lead to me finishing up the paladin quest first.and when I played the paladin and compared it to the spirit shaman quest (which is half done) I figured it was best to jsut leave those out.

at the same time I left the Race quests out and limited the player to be human only. this suits the world and me better with regards of the workload.

another reason was the flow of the paladin quests evolved around the guardian deity Aeos which has a prominent place in the main story (especialy at the level range 20+)

this means a lot of work and test time has been cut off and a release should come alot sooner than initially anticipated. now If I only could force myself to upload some music.

speaking of music I have gotten i touch with a vocalist that I hope to "hire" for some of the TDM score.

in other news I've compiled most of the story in their respective modules and I finished mod number 26 today. some restructuring will have to be done since some of the areas I made were class quest areas or race quest areas.

I am also working on implementing Kaedrins class pack to get some more paladin spells and implement them in the building so that the spells etc can be used from convos or other quest related stuff. Oh and If I get time befoer the testing starts I might beef the Paladin stronghold and its quests a little more (since I dont have all the other strongholds to worry about anymore) but time will tell as I am quite pleased with the current stronghold.

alot of the custom content I had hoped for has not been implemented but theres still a few guys hanging around this project , Thanks dark :D

thoug in spite of all the setback there I hope the mod will be jsut as interesting to play as if that content were included.

now , I'm off to spain for about two weeks so I guess I'll be pretty excited to get back to modding once I'm back home

music and stuff

2010-07-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

so its been a quiet few weeks more or less , started to go through the mod from start to end to tie up any loose ends I may have forgotten. and I've finally got a working portable studio of sorts to start on some real composing again. I've made some half decent tunes. nothing special just that regular orchestral cliche filled stuff. I ahve also been thinking about jsut starting to release the areas from the mod with a regular interval but I probably could use a second set of eyes to test the areas. so if people reading this wants to give some a go let me know :D

the comming week I'm going to focus more on getting the flow of the story telling a bit moe I founds some oversights in the recent check up. and probably add some more content to the forest OM which I discovered I more or less havent added any content to at all apart from the story related bits .

I ahve also added a fair amount of NPC's to the game jsut to fill some areas. and made a few specialized spawn/npc handling based on Amstradhero's dynamic population system.

nearly all of them pickpocketable. some with random reactions on what faction you ahve reputation with and or general reputation standing.

I may have talked about htis earlier but each village ahs its own reputation that you can use to get cheaper wares and special quests. there are alot of villages so theres a lot of stuff to keep track of which of course requires its own gui screen.

I'm not on my own computer at the moment so no screens this time maysbe I'll edit this post later today.

and again if someone wants to be an area tester I could use one to jsut get a second opnion before I releas on the vault.

vacation time and quest's

2010-06-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

********may contain spoilers********

so the time has come for me to take a vacation. nothing fancy. justa visit t my family up north.so I'll be focusing on other stuff than modding.

but there have been a few rainy days lately so I have gotten a fair deal done. amonst them a lot of dungeon building. I have now nearly made all of the optional content for OM dungeons. and a few optional and hard dungeons based on class. not related to hte class quests but are there to add some "flavor" to the class choice , I a ranger hunting a wounded animal or follwing strange tracks may lead you to a well hidden cave. or as a rogue / bard overhear a some rumors about a old tower now buried in quicksand or similar. theese dungeons will have some interesting and unique gear available.

then I also have the random dungeons you may stumble acrosss. like ancient towers , old forts or jassa-ri outposts. which will have its own stories and events unfold. some even starts a few quest chains.some dungeons I've tried to add options on how you enter how you enter will have sm impact on what goes on. there is size differenses in some of the random optional stuff. some dungeons have several levels. the times you stumble across ancient dwarven fort's you may have to runn through some caves and mines first particulary there is one large dungoen of just that sort. that goes on for 4 layers. but the end reward and the story I believe will be a compelling reason. to finsh. also if you have dungeons that will have darklands events and dreamscape events. theese will be triggered if you have the apropriate feat and or/the azure star.

The azure star is probably worth mentioning. this is an Artefact which you get at the very beginning that scales with level/ spirit power this part of the main quests and this item cannot be removed. this item will have stats partly based on your class. the azure star will also be the key in unlocking spirit energy and and darkland related feats. the spirit shaman has a few interesting uses as well for the spirit energy system.

the spirit energy system is directly darkland related and can most of the time only be used in darklands. there are ways however to channel those powers into the prime plane but hey are unlocked as the main story goes on. I have balanced this system fairly well and I feel confident that I have made a system that does not interefere with my low magic policy.

Also in other news , Apep the maker of The magical miscelania pack, has completed the Item sets for TDM this is great new for me as I can start distribute them as loot for their respective dungeons. I also look forward to his v 1.5 realease of the MMP. this has been a great asset in my module as there are tons of interesting blueprints there.

right now I am assembling the dungeons into module structures and tried to keep module loading at a minimum. this has been hard as there are quite a few areas that needs connection.
so far I ahve made individual modulesfor the overland maps and their dungeons I have 10 om's i total including the continent of haedrin, the grand ciy of Aesir and the Jungles of the ancient tribes. The city OM is turning out quite nice though a bit heavy on the areas. so the single module load is high, thinking about splitting this again into a 2nd module.
I also have a module for the fishing quest , beer quest and a wine quest. each will eventually lead to a item revard and a nice addition for the stronghold.

about the strongholds. I have split the stronghold between the different classes:
-the divine classes will get a hidden church in the woods
-the druids,spirit shamans and rangers will get a forest grove.
-fighters and paladins will get a fort near the northern wall.
-sorcerors and wizards will get a Grand tower in the highlands.
-rogues will get their own hidden cave.
-bards get their own inn.
-swashbucklers will get their own "beached ship" home
-in addition every class have the option of becomming hte governor of the pirate island. if they play there cards right.
-warlocks wil lget a dungeon with summoning/binding circles.
-monks will get to restore a ancient monastery in the mountains.

the pirate island is also a hidden area which requires a few quests to be tied together first.
but the rewards , oh the rewards:D

the areas like the sorceror/wizard tower will act according to class, ie wizards tower will ahve more books scrolls and more wizard like. and sorceror more sorceror like
same with figters/pala fort paladins will have more religous undertone and events.
same for the druid spirit shaman , and ranger etc etc etc.
I wont go the nwn2 route of building etc but there will be desicions to make. and you will need to manage the troops/hunters/others in order to make your fort be able to handle the hindrances it will face. the way you treat your fort will have implications on the main story. this was a hell of a job and I will never ever do something like this ever again (well unless it would be cool to do so in another module.) there will be points in the story where you are called to the fort and you need to deal with incidents. just like BG2

back to the module setup. the classes will have their own mod with the quests areas. those mods are split into nature, divine , rogue and magic. as some areas overlap and there are some unique. this is to keep the mod count and load times as low as possible.

the encounters in the City OM is greatly influenced by what factions you work with and against. some random encounters wont be combat but rather random story elements or plain unique sights/ humorus encounters.

there will be a lot of factions to keep track of. as each city you travel to is more or less a self governing "city state" with lords that have their own agende, htat does not include the newborn empire of Aesir. which more ore less consists of Aesir itself and a few more cities/villages.

thos cities not affiliated directly to aesir will have their own faction and reputation attatched to them. so choose your friends wisely or find your self at the wrong side of a drawn sword.
there is a few quests that will alow you to go deep into the political intrigues.

Combat is something I have given a lot of thought after playing a few community mods I've drawn sme inspiration from some of them. I am particularly as I probably mentioned before inspired my J.E Mckellar's Last of the danaan. the encoutners especially boss battles will require some thinking in order to survive. some encounters will have invulnerable foes , like when you are trapped in a cave with a spellhunter. the spell hunter cannot be killed by you , but it is injured and will aply hit and run tactics to bring you down. the caves are dark and the spellhunters are hard to spot. you will have to run through the caves loking for a way to kill it before it kills you. there are several ways to end him depending on class skill checks etc.
some bosses requires you to split your party in order to do some stuff simultaneously or at different locations.

Puzzles there will be some puzzles and riddles since this is something of a love /hate thing I have some medium easy ones in the main story and some really hard optional ones , once again effort equals the reward ;) .

the Skyships probably will be heeds walkable ships for now. though I still need to raise the skeleton for overland travel or find another way of making hte skyships seem "real".
the skyships will ahve combat options in a spelljammerish way.

this post is probably a large wall of text that very very few will read if at all. though I hope if someone reads this that I've managed to get some interest in this mod. especially since I hope to crank out some stuff soon.

I've also managed to crank out a few more songs for the soundtrack. and soon I have the complete sound library available to me again (before the weekend actually) so I might upload some more songs to the vault.

the mod will end up being a huge story driven campaign with sandbox options. you will have a lot of options to travel along and explore as you go deeper into the main story which will remain somewhat dominant.there will be paralell stories being told along with the main and alot of branches from it that will have its own end. this is so you can choose to avoid a lot of quests if you replay it or just want to see the story to an end.

Companions:

Leyla: human rogue, starting companion. a trusted friend through your childhood that joins you on the adventure. she smarter than the average villager and does well in anything she tries to do. she always thinks things through and is rarely ever without a plan b.
she is notoriusly restless and impatient. she always has something in her hands like a coin or something similar to keep her hands busy.

Joshua: Human, Fighter. Starting companion the other part of hte trio that makes you ,leyla and joshua. Joshuea is the village Blacksmith aprentice. his unusually large frame coupled with his stamina and strength makes him more able for the more labourous work. he wants to live a simple life as a farmer one day. he is immensly loyal and and unlike leyla follows every law to the letter. his most prominent features apart from his large size is loyatly and sense of justice.

Hrotgar, the White.Minotaur Ranger, 2 weapon fighting style. An albino minotaur of the Zathrum tribe. Hrothgar is a kind minotaur with a rather "rough" sense of humor. he may or may not have a growing addiction to a certain mushrom. he is on his Maruk-gel. this is a initiatiion rite for young minotaurs to join the society as a warrior. they are to find a prey or a evil that needs to die and embark on a journey to slay it. he is very secretive about what exaclty he is looking for only that he will know it when he sees it.

Galina the cursed. Gnome warlock. Galina is a tormented warlock that does not what or why she has the powers she has. she has nightmares and sometimes she has blackouts that usually leave her in a burned down village with small hills of distubingly twisted corpses. she is a recluse and rarey speaks to people , she tries to avoid people and populated areas. the past events have filled her with guilt and she wants to take her own life. however each time she tries to end her own existance she has a blackout.

Murin StoneHammer.Dwarf, cleric. a Cast out King of a long forgotten dwarven clan hiding from the demon's gaze. a revolt as a result of a few bad years after burrowing into a pocket of lava led to him being exiled. he was blamed for the the entire incident and cast out. since dwarven laws forbid the killing of another they chose a more indirect aproach. he has since wandered the mountains trying to prove his innosence. dealing with some friends still on the inside of the dwarven halls he strives to prove that he was sabotaged. he is like most dwarves a bit grumpy but immensely loyal to friends. and will go to great lenghs to protect what he cares about.

Salem: Halfling, Paladin. after seing his clan killed he swears an oath to cleanse the world of evil. his devotion so strong it thundered across the planes. he was given the gift of Aeos as the first paladin in the world. unless the player has chosen that class/fate. he is silent most of hte time and only speaks when he have to. sometimes he may give into his anger. in order to become a full fledged paladin he must prove to Aeos that he can controll it. he sees a potential in you to be able to fullfill that quest.

Gorak:"earth genasi" Druid. thousands of year ago he was fleeing for a jassa-ri hunting pack hding into the stone wall of a cave near theym. the jassa ri camped in that cave and to avoid being discovered he hibernated into the stone. in present day he has slumbered so long he has forgotten alot of his skills and lost much of his memory. he rembers his tribe and that he was on a important mission to the capital. to meet with the ruling council there. he joins you in hopes rediscovering more about himself.

well I guess this will ahve to do for today :)
this has been an amazingly fun project and incredibly time consuming.

summer summer summer.

2010-05-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

I'm guessing this year will be no different from last year. the good weather drawing me from the toolset work. which might be a good thing. since the rainy days were really creative and inspiring :)

so what I have done now is finished of the OM areas random encounters for each of the 8 sections of the main map and conected the cities. travel will be done by either overland travel or if you wish to save time. caravan travel where a given percentage will be set to trigger a random Encounter. you can join as either a paid Caravan guard or as passenger. the encounters will vary slightly depending on what you choose to be. there will also be ship travels to and from the cities with harbor's.There will be ship battles. and finally when the players discovers the airship. you can fly all over OM. the Area enter script detects if the players travel on the airship. and despawns the colision blockers so the airship can fly anywhere. unless ...you hit a dragon or something else entirely. I have also started connecting the other areas for the main story and tied them to the OM.
Now I gotta finish the Aesir OM and the jungle OM and I should have a month or so to connect areas. Other than that I am hoping to eventually get some more dungeons ready. for the OM random encounters. but now I have spendt some time on the computer, so I gotta head out into the sun once more.

oh and I'll add theese screens

OM's are done

2010-04-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

The overland maps are almost done now. and I'll be starting the tedious task of connecting the areas to the 8 interconnected overland areas. after that I'll be adding the triggers and setting the encounter ratio. since the overland maps are so "large" I find that the encounter ration in SOZ will jsut be silly. there is also a lot of elevation in my OM and tons of "off the beaten path" areas to find.

then I'll start on the 2 final maps Aesir and the jungle OM. MAking a city OM is something I really look forward to. I hope to be able to make a few interesting encounters :)

Aesir is a large city located on the cliffside, facing the ocean. there is a steady climb from the lower areas like the slums and commons at the lower parts, to the merchant and arena district in the middle and the Temple and Imperial palace areas at the upermost peak looking outwards to the ocean. I hope to make a decent sense of scale when running around the OM and that will be a challenge. to properly combine the scale needed while keeping the map efficient and not to much of a resource hog.

so I've been helping out on a PW (Alventyr)as well. making a 4 part city and a grave yard. as well as lending areas from TDM to Alventyr. I'm rather satisfied with what I've made so far and I hope to have finished them off by the weekend so I can start doing TDM stuff again.

the next thing on my to do list after finishing off the last 2 OM's is shaking loose some of my dungeons and tweak them a bit. that I think will be fun. I could also use anoter generic dungeon or two to tweak so if anyone has any they are willing to share or know of something on the vault I should check out let me know.

Iguess I should show some screens of what I've been doing lately so here they are.

I could not fir everything into one post so for the complete galery go here :

http://picasaweb.google.com/roger.hogli/AlventyrScreens#

http://picasaweb.google.com/roger.hogli/GeneralWIP#

http://picasaweb.google.com/roger.hogli/TheDemonSMelodyWorkInProgress#

scroll all the way down for the latest screens on the 3rd link.

some work in progress screenshotes.

2010-04-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

here are some work in progress screenshots of the Overland maps I have talked about.

theese areas are nearing completion and ready to be connected to the previous TDM areas.

and after that I'll be filling out sidequests. and coloring up some NPC's and the mod will be playable again for the first time in 8 months ? , at any rate a long time.

mind you that theese screens are work in progress so not all texturing is completed but the general shape of hte stuff should be there. this is one of 9 connected overland maps you can run through I hope to eventually get the areas youtubed when they are done. then I'll upload all 10'ish overland maps with the "encounter" areas or battle areas. they will on release be completely scripted and playable if you fancy that.

NB : Work IN PRogress screens , theese screens are not representative of the end result.

I still ahve a lot of texturing and coloring to do and the grass will be replaced.

The screen above,shows the side of a OM that I havent copied the material from the other OM's

the om's will work pretty much and be as seemless as the areas from "the Last of the Danaan" which is a great ranger mod btw and heartly recomended.

Overland Map's

2010-04-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

I've now started the interesting building of the overland maps.

once theese are done I'll connect the different areas and have a playable mod again.

Ive done a lot of work redoing some early conversations (taking out Faerun references adding animations to cutscenes etc)

and I have started to compile a definate lit of whats needed. I've also sucessfully added books into the mod. I have a dedicated writer writing short stories for The demon melody. theese have turned out great so far.

another thing I am I encountered was the original journal system's shortcommings when dealing with a large amount of quests. And a large amount of quest's at the same time. SO I have gotten Dark/Darksider to make a custom one for me. I had to find another way to od the quests as the original system wasn't able to handle the amount of quests I have in TDM.

Now to some more important stuff. the layout of the encounters.

I've always felt that the standard spawn 4 monsters of type x and kill. it also isn't coherent with what the dungeons in the mod are all about. Every single dungeon have its own place and history in the lore. this is to make the individual places somewhat unique so you do not get that oblivion feeling of "having "been here before". Also what you do before you enter a dungeon may in certain cases lead to the dungeon being harder or easier. this will be based on skill check and/or conversation options. This may be making sucessful skill checks to get inside a dungeon (and the word dungeon is used loosely) without being seen or heard, to to be able to surprise the the inhabitants of the dungeon. making dungeons slightly different depending on how you enter the dungeon. My intention was to make this as lifelike as possible.

another thing is the encounters when you enter there will be more to the fights than just casting the spell or swinging hte sword , you may end up having to chase a particular enemy to stop him from alerting others. Or perhaps activating a doomsday device.

There will also be scaling of the enemies you meet. but only to a certain degree. this to avoid having a lvl 30 kobold as I feel a kobold with end boss hit points is kinda silly. so I have categorized the various level ranges and scaled the the enemies according to category so that the said kobold can never go beyond lvl4 for instance.

another thing is that you can come a cross dungeons thats intended for lvl25+ at lvl 4. you can also run around the entire set of overland maps but you have companions that will give you a tip or two if you stray into high level land. same goes for quests if you should get lost in the myriad.

of them.

now I ahve never talked much about how the mod will be like. originally it was a linear monster now its more like a sandbox adventure. the originall career's are still in the mod and still optional.

as well as a added new career. Bounty hunter. you can get bounties from various wanted posters and bounty hunter offices. when you travel the world you may stumble upon them in random Overland encounters or dungeons. this leads to a reputation gain to the bounty hunters. but if that reputation gets high enough ......well ...lets keep that a secret :)

now I guess I have written enough for this time. I still got more to write but thats for another time.

Work work

2010-03-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly settling into my new life and gotten some work on the mod. mainly some conversation proofreading and bug fixing. After easter I'll finally get hold of the disk with Demon melody on it.

then I plan on releasing a few more screenshots of a few more areas and start the final work on the Overland map and the final cutscenes and music. then I do believe I should have a release on my hands. oh and trying out a machinima intro thing. though thats probably done while the eternal play testing is going on. I have updated the features list many times and this probably wont be the last.

-Skill use galore. every skill is usable in one way or the other. use perform to escape guards and more

-Custom world, complete with gods and a lot of lore. and much of it will only be learned if the player

-hundreds of areas

-overland map , several overland maps one for each region and a overland map for Aesir the largest city. the city feels immense.

-Large scale battles. huge battles some use the nytir system some are custom scripted with a few special events planned.

-custom soundtrack, and effects, some voice over.

-Choices you take have concequences for the world you live in.

-unique quests chains for each class.

-unique Race quests. after you leave the first areas the choice of race will greatly impact how you will view the world. racism is a fact and being a dwarf or elf might not always be as easy. then again being a dwarf comming to the Iron cities of your kinsmen will surely make a impact (i hope) again the differences in race choice is huge.

-tons of sidequests , become a master fisherman, or perhaps a bounty hunter. even a master trader or politician is withing your reach

- gain control of a sky ship and travel the world

-gain control of a player owned building.(varies with class and race)

-linear story with sandboxing options

-depending on playstyle, estimating about 60 hour play.

-deep companion stories

-the companions interact with eachother. developing their own bonds some of them influenced by the player.

-immersive dungeons with their own story and sidequest's both story related and sandbox dungeons will feature some uniqueness to what happened.

-Darklands, a world that connects to the material world. this world has many secrets

as well as a place where you can view the past, cross material world hindrances and much more.

I will edit this post with more features as I remember them all.

this may seem a bit too ambitious , but its mostly there and done. the mod currently have more than 400 000 written words ( roughly estimated, and not done yet) more than 400ish areas (I lost count) going over more than 13+ modules(not including overland maps).

there is still a bunch of stuff I need help with so if you have some toolset skill let me know by email

roger.hogli@gmail.com

Music, bugs and postponing the release a bit.

2010-02-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

jsut in with a update. moving to a new place goes slower than I first anticipated (people without sense of time should never ever be alowed to predict it) and I will probably use a month longer than I initially thought. but theres not much left to do before the release. luckily

So I have made some songs for the OST , a few battle themes, a few character themes. and still working on the orchestration for the Theym theme. and the theym outskirts theme. got a real hefty song to go with the RWS Dark ruins Tileset.

also in the works are the voice overs for the intro of the mod. I just gotta revise the manuscript a little.

so I have been testign and making some music. testing the mod 20 times through to make sure nothing has fallen through is a lot of work. but I am getting there. though slowly.

so far I am quite satisfied with the results and getting specially tailored music into the mod makes a lot of difference. firstly its new and secondly does so much more for the atmosphere.

There are going to be a few vocal tracks playing. using the various languages, including Gaelic, Irish and Manx. I also hit gold and found a few sanskrit chants which made some dungeons scary.

Further more I am quite pleased with how the class and race quests ended up.

there is one for each of the 15 Base classes and you will be introduced to them fairly early in the game. this were cumbersome to make and horrid to test. add to that the Race quests.

Humans, Elves, Halflings , gnomes and Dwarves ahve their unique quest and perspective of the world. they may start out from the same orphanage. But their experiences in the world will vary a bit for each race. This means there are no Half orcs , yuan-ti ,grey orcs ,tieflings for the players. I may end up supporting more races in the future however.

As for the module itself I will release the first part in a while once the music is done and I have made sure the 20 class/race quests are working properly, along with some bug testing.

the first part should keep people at bay for 4-6 hours depending on choices. its the smallest mod of 12+(may increase with the overland maps thats not yet completed)

its a large download , which is why I am making the 1st mod available separately so people can decide to download the rest. Bear in mind that the first reelase is a open beta version

After the release of the beta I will start collecting feedback and try to steer the mod in a direction that will make it more enjoyable.

Then the work with the Overland map will start I already have had soem greathelp from Kamalpoe, and believe I can make the overland map interesting.

I ahve always liked to explore and learn stuff about the world I play in as well as learning stories , sagas and myths. and most of all dungeon exploring, thanks to games like morrowind, oblivion and Fallout 3.

The demon melody will feature a vast world to explore. the lands are full of ruins to explore. and each of the ruins have its own story to tell and its own place in history. you will learn more about the world you live in by exploring them. and of course there are hidden treasures lost to time in most of them. Some of the dungeons can only be found by exploring memories in the darklands.

this brings me to the darklands. you will be able to frequent the Darklands during events and rifts or by another way I cannot reveal due to spoilers. As I have deskribed the darklands before

"take Shadow Mulsantir, add a dream, a wee bit of limbo and put on repeat" Darkland memories are a great way of getting to know the events of the past. I hope this to be a feature people like.

so items , what can I say there , low magic , trying to make stats to not break buffs so no +12 doomsword of mayhem. instead I ahve opted for customscripted items. some scale with skills/level , others may be part of a set granting bonus feats/abilities and so on. some items may be cursed and some items so cursed that you need to start a separate quest to rid yourself of it. so save often :)

That brings me to skills, I love using skills even though it makes a conversation a lot more complex and larger than if not using all those skill cheks. I ahve also distinguished the use of skills that change the outcome to not so much include the main quest. but the other ones may end up quite different depending on skill. pretty much every skill is used. an example being crafting skills to make small gadgets that can get you out of certain situations. performance to get away from guards wanting to drag you to jail. and so on.

so that leaves me to comment on the companions. there will be several with a complete backstory and a quest. and yes there are romancable characters, theres even cusom made music for the events that follow should you want to go down that route. the companions will react to situations and events as per their personality. this may lead to some interesting stuff happening within the group you have. I am pretty satisfied with the companions some are rather unique.

now this mod has been a lot of work and there will be alot more. but I am confident that I will haul this monster to the vault before WW3. I am well aware that some of my design choices will make some people not want to play it. but I hope this mod will apeal to some.

the New TDM is a lot more sandbox oriented than the original one was. and thats a good thing.

if there are any comments or questions about the mod give me a message I apriciate any input

or help offers:) (especially from 2d artists and a 3d artist to make me some skyships)

bugs, bugs, bugs, testing, bugs, screenshots

2010-02-04T07:47:00.001-08:00

Its getting close now for the first release. got a ton to test and alot more to bug fix.

lately I have been struggling a bit with hte area enter scripts on some of my areas which are starting to be quite the complex beasts. this mainly due to me adding hte 15 class quests. alot of work has gone into them. hopefully they will be enjoyable. I forgot to add some items related to the class quests but I'll have them up and running in no time.

so whats left ?

-bug fixes , the Area enter scripts needs a look into , a lot is going on there. forgot to add teh area exit scripts to destroy stuff thats not needed.

-Grammar/spelling

-a few items I forgot to make the blueprints scripts for.

-testing of the scalable items.

-deities .2da

-the music(still lack a battle theme but started one last night.) pretty satisfied with this part.

-testing.

all in all it goes with a steady pace and I feel I am getting closer each day.

and now by popular demand some screens taken from the toolset not in game.

progress report

2010-01-11T03:54:00.001-08:00

been working a lot on the demo the past few days and I am starting to see the end and finalization of chapter one.

Chapter one will be the introduction to the world of haedrin. where you get familiar with some sub plots and main plot. most quests are complete and I have managed to transfer the entire first part into the new world from the FR setting.

the first part will serve as a demo/first chapter part. I'm gonna look into how I'll do the releases after the world map is done. maybe I'll continue to release in chapters. who knows I've given up on predicting theese things.

so whats left before the first release.
-some scripting, including 2 boss fights and. not many original scripts were bugged.
-more work on a few cutscenes.(possibly testing the new voice over tool from 010101something).
-some polish on the the areas.
-spell/grammar check :)
-if possible 2d art for the intro (though I think it will be cool either way).
-Testing, this will be offered to the people at hiddentales.com the first time around.
-going to add more conversation options to certain convo's , skill check galore.
-and lastly finish the soundtrack.

and with the time available to me I guesstimate mid to late february for the end release.
though that may vary as I am still a bit in limbo with my house and a job.

and should there be a gifted scripter / 2d artist floating around the web with to much time. give me a poke. I could use some help.

Hoegbo

the wheels are turning again.

2009-12-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

so I completely redid the starting area and nearing completion on that.

it turned out great , however some events need some scripting tweaks. I'm very pleased with the result so far.

the new setting let me add some initial ideas that would have been impossible with the FR setting without having to "do things wrong" with regards to lore. having a custom world means that no one can argue :)

I've also stopped working on some of the heavier script system like circle magic and Turn based system. I will still have large battles , but in real time. I've changed my focus to making the mod chronologically instead of completing sections of the mod. So I did an al reset and removed a lot of unnecessary hak content. I also chopped the mod into bits or chapters if you like. however wether or not I'l release in chapters is undecided as of yet. the prologue of the mod was originally planned as a demo and still is , as I get to finish the area and script related issues I have I'll upload it. I also need to finish a few songs.

some of the areas I have made I'm thinking about uploading to the vault mainly the areas that didn't make it to the finished mod. like Theym was before the redesign.

I've also been drawing a map in a software called Artrage it looks like the doodles of a 4 year old but I think my sister is able to help me out on the map. I've also ben toying with overland maps. but as of yet I'm not planning on doing them. unless I suddenly et a lot of time on my hands. which is unlikely. I read in a forum post somewhere about using Overland maps as a city map ,where you can go to the different districts and have the odd random encounter pop up. this would solve a lot of issues I had with Aesir in its original form. and I can probably use the original aesir areas with some modifications for that purpose. but thats still in the future.

I'm gonna write up some backstory tomorrow in a new post , detailing a bit more of the world of Haedrin.

the new TDM is going to be slightly less complicated in terms of scripting systems as I rather would like to focus on some story related stuff. however It will still be one epic journey

Hoegbo

The return

2009-12-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

So I've been having a lot to do and I have been having a lot of problems with the mod but I'm finally seeing the end of it all and. moving half way across the country and getting a new job. thats alot of work. I was hoping to get a trailer out , and I got some killer voice overs for it. but its on a bit of a hold for now as I ahve made some serious changes to the mod.

after much trouble with events and areas I found the boundaries of what the toolset is able to do. at least within a reasonable time frame. so I took a sort of reset on the module.

I pulled the mod out of the Forgotten Realms setting. but kept the story etc as it was (more or less)

it turned out better in my opinion. I'm changing

gonna return to updating this blog more often once again.

The fragmented one

2009-08-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

It was all so easy back then. No shades of grey, all was just black or white. Good or evil

If I had known then what my actions would bring my beloved Cormyr. I would have chosen death.

But fate wanted otherwise,

and darkness fell upon my beloved country.

Who could have known that my knowledge of Toril's mythology, could be this dangerous.

The gods themselves tremble. And I can do naught, but wait for his mind to slip.

And hope to maybe make my wrongdoings right.

Dare not close your eyes demon, for I am waiting!

-Sefram

A few small hicups. and a spoon of sugar to mend it

2009-08-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

today I spendt a few hours in the toolset

so I hit a real game breaking trouble maker. the Docks area of Aesir crashed when I spawned in some stuff. apparently I have been using way to many triggers. 600ish in that area alone. but brianmeyer was really helpfull and got me on the right track with answering some questions on nwn2 chat. so now I have deleted most of them and added a Area HB. seems to have done the trick. I also removed Amstradhero's dynamic population system which is a let down but it would have been to much with all the additional triggers that I need. so I need to look more into what to replace it with.

I also split up Aesir into 4 modules now. may become 5 modules. this is to make sure that the ram requirements wont go through the roof, and eliminating a few untimely crashes. I also was able to

eliminate a bug when going between the jungle areas. its been a productive 2 hours: )

now I am going to alternate between bugfixes,music, and continue to connect the dots. hopefully I can get some more people to join in on this endeavor. oh and I almost forgot the trailer. gotta get a voice over for that one. just added a few posts here and there. I also have spoted a few people I want to ask to do some voice overs.

I also finished a few songs. and redid the trailer material slightly. the project is going along steadily even without the toolset. and now there is one week left until all baator breaks loose.

its gonna be one accelerating carrousel of work being done from now on.

CC release from tdm and the road ahead

2009-07-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

so I have been having my son over for a week now , and what a week it has been.

I am looking forward to the next and last week with him. truly remarkable how kids make time fly.

lately I have been able to do some minor stuff like making the rough layout on a song or two for the mod. I am trying to the best of my abilities to capture the atmosphere of the mod.

and I wont reuse anything from nwn2 and its expansions. I didn't manage to get the trailer done by the time my son arrived so it will have to be completed after he has gone.

I also took the time to finish up the Skydome pack I was using for The Demons Melody. a total of 11 of them. I hope some people will be able to use them. should be on the vault sometime today hopefully. the only crap thing about hte upload was that I packed the wrong hak. I uploaded the ones which I did not retouch. so the lower part of the sky will seem a bit stretched if you aren't using skyrings.

Speaking of skyrings. I am looking into making some skyrings of my own. in case you have no clue as to what I am talking about. skyrings are the silhouette of mountains , hills or other landscapes you may se in some mods and the oc + exp. I want to experiment a bit with these so I am going to try a few blender model out. hopefully it will work :D

lately IU have been spending alot of time in a community called "Tavern of Hidden tales"

its a forum for player developer interaction and I must say I quite like it there.

a lot of friendly people and starting to be a few developers as well.

also as there is a week and a half until I am starting to crank in the last things thats need to be done. from here on out its gonna be full speed ahead. I want to get this project out this side of the year , however thats optimistic. there are still figuring out which npc's will get voiceovers etc. but thats still a few months into the future.

now I am going to go all out in recruiting people to help out with various tidbits. I want to get this one done so I can finally play some modules and PW's myself.

as always feel like you want to add something jsut give me a heads uop I am starting to see the end of this project and I want to play it from start to end in its complete state myself

Details ,music, and

2009-07-21T03:59:00.000-07:00

So I haven't been doing much at all on the mod lately. however I have been fiddling about with some music. And I am pretty satisfied with the trailer music so far. The trailer however I decided to rerecord some parts as I found out that Xfire Had a way to record video for free.

s I am hoping to get the trailer pieced together by friday afternoon as after that I will have my hands full with my son. there I will finally have some pictures of the finished Aesir , some other areas I haven't shown screenshots from. the trailer will feature custom music , the companions will be showcased. and most importantly clips of the game play. and a hint of voice overs.

So I now have a trailer and a completed main story part , why don't I release.

well I wanted to at a point as I was a bit tired of the toolset. but having the past month away from it has reignited the passion for it.

now I have trouble restraining myself from adding to many concepts into the mix.

I have smething special in mind for each playable core class and the war wizard and Dragon knoght prc. the latter is required if you choose a military career.

did I say career ? yes I did. I am going to allow players to choose a career, like a military , merchant ,crafter, and thinking of adding a politician / noble career as well.

I also redid the player created characters part a bit. when creating them you get the option of giving them traits. these traits influence the characters behavior and responses accordingly.

I also have a rework of the party chat interface on the to do list to combine it with cut scenes.

I always felt the cut scenes were lacking a bit of interaction. so this is my personal remedy for it. well back to SoZ character creation. the main focus will be upon the first player generated character. and all of the class related "special " abilities I will add will be for that character only. it was a slow day at work yesterday so I got to test some theories and such there. and I have completed a list of specials for most classes. I have been testing some of them and those I have tested seem to work fine. yay for that :)

for now the Turn based strategy mode is a bit on hold but the inclusion of this feature looks VERY ! promising indeed as I have recruited my good friend SK to help out on it. this is a must have feature for me. it seems like we will be featuring Nytir's battle system in both strategy mode and "normal" mode. Nytir's work on that system is formidable ,and most impressive.

Details

as I grow ever more confident in the toolset I find my older areas to be sub par , so I am going to have a look at giving them a face lift. I want this mod to be good in every aspect.

now about the music , I am really excited about this as I have recently done some upgrades.

so the mod will feature a singing choir. I kinda look forward to when the first person figures out that the choir actually sang "cormyr" I am giggling like a schoolgirl in anticipation.

this mod , I think . be a typical mod. first of all it seem to take advantage of the full level range 1- 30 which is quite different from what I envisioned wen I began the mod. the areas in the mod are very large. not amny areas are smaller than 16x16 and the largest is 32x32 with a height variance of 95(for those of you that use the toolset)

there is a lot of work to do in this mod still , and I will most likely hack at it to have as much detail in it as I can possible make. and I am already starting to dread the horrid debug/beta phase that I most likely will start around christmas time. however with the rate of which I think up new features or find something that have slipped by me on the first read through on the original notes , it may be a bit later. but I hope to have it ready by then

in the mean time I hope to find more people to help out so I can focus some more on the music and features of the mod

until next time CHEERS !

Hoegbo

Monkeys and typewriters

2009-07-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

what a long strange road this has been. I started out modding knowing nothing at all about anything (mod related) that was hmm lets see in late february ,early march. since then I have been going at it day and night to create a module I would like to play myself. now I see that I am soon able to release. However being able is not the same as should , as it is now the mod isn't much more than exploration and the main main quest. I also want to go over the 200'ish areas to see if there is room for improvements. Which there most likely is. now as I have entered my toolset free month(s) I am going to actively look for a 2D artist to do some artwork for me. the trailer is due soon. and I hope it will inspire some people to play this mod.

I was thinking about just releasing the entire thing and be done with it. but I jsut cant leave something unfinished. take the Theym NPC's for instance I still haven't finished their quests. in adittion to completing them I need to have them evolve as you progress through their quests and for those who didnt't know here is a spoiler.

*SPOILER*

They will join up and evolve through the game take different paths from the findings in your quests. some paths will be a little different depending on what actions you choose. the hard part here is writing the dialogues as the player have known the npc's their entire life. this is quite intricate and difficult to write. but I hope I will make it somehow

*SPOILER END*

I have made this mod as I want a game to be played. so I ahve tried to make the story interesting and have a few interesting fights.

Also I want to make the player created characters more interesting. I was thinking about having the players select traits for them. as in happy , careless, rude , insane, etc. however this requires an insane amount of work. and probably will be scrapped but at leas I am thinking of something.

there is a lot of things I want to implement but I am afraid to burn out on the toolset.

so its a good thing I am doing the music. which will be released at the vault among other stuff.

I wont be adding the insane amount of conversation choices as I originally thought. I felt having more npc recognition the npc's being more responsive. however this is to each ones taste.

and as I said I am making this how I want it to be.

now I have written enough for today , I think I hear a movie calling me over to the tv.

Main story COMPLETE!

2009-06-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

so what does this mean you ask ? well that means that the mod is playable from the start to the point where the mod ends. all conversations for the main story is complete (the wordcount is silly)
I got the urge and just decided to get the main story complete and use it as a skeleton to flesh out the rest of the mod. due some troubles I had regarding the many factions that currently exists in the mod.

so what left ?

the music.
some sidequests.
some boss scripts.and estetic scripting (vfx)
the overland strategy mode and the gui for it. this is to my knowledge a new way to use the overland map and haven't been done however a lot stil needs to be done
voice overs. b(I have started on some demon voice overs, something that has made the family dog afraid of me)

and the trailer is still on the just add music part. so I'll have it up in 3 weeks or so.
Maybe I'll upload upload a 30 sec teaser tomorrow or something.
I am pretty excited about this (as always) as this should prove the module will be released as it is as playable as it is now. there is probably a lot I could drop out in the mod to make it releasable faster. however I do not want to compromise with this project.
Now I am going to slow down a bit for the summer. as I said in the previous post. a lot of stuff happening this summer. an having some time away from the toolset is only healthy.

well I am going to sign off now and take a toolset summer vacation (well sort of )
I will update the blog and post on the NWN2 modules forum from tuime to time.

Adjusting for summertime. milestone, more than 50% done

2009-06-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

the summer is now on for full and I have to slow down the modding a bit. I have upcomming weddings , large birthdays and my son is gonna stay with me for an extended period of time.

Which means I have less time for the mod. However I am more than 50 % done with it and parts of it are playable. Beta for the first part is hopefully coming up soon and I have started scoring the orchestral tracks. The music , as I am a musician, Will literally play a large part in the mod. I have been experimenting with scripting and I have gotten some interesting results. a part of what I have been trying to do is scripted underscoring. and I have been successful. I did a test a few months a go where I created a set of musical blocks that goes together with some scripting I made it possible to change the mood of the music when selecting a conversation option , needless to say this requires some effort to do, but I am going to implement it in at least one conversation.

I have also spendt alot of time coordinatin factions. and I probably will continue to perfect it.

the player will be given options on joining several factions in theym aligning with one will have positive and negative consequences. there will be rewards for joining factions and climbing to the top. I am not going deeper into this as it will be too revealing. I have been trying to keep quests consistent to the campaign and tried to get as many of the optional quests to have some impact on the main story. I feel if you take the time to explore the optional content you should be rewarded.

The more I complete the more exited I am about this mod. It is a good feeling seeing areas you've worked hard on get populated and interactive. I really cant wait to get some responses on TDM.

I am not even gonna guess at the hours I have spent in front of the toolset but its a lot.

some times have been somewhat frustrating when script that compiles doesn't fire when they are supposed to etc. but most of them have been solvable. some I had to redo but I managed to get the effect I wanted.

now what is left to do. pretty much the main story related stuff. Still alot of work there as I mostly have done side quests and npc's I am thinking about scripting more monsters as I believe this is fun to have monster that do other stuff than just run to you and attack you. I need to tweak the grouped monsters AI.

but most importantly the custom UI needs to be done. the Journal needs rework in my opinion and I will redo that. and adding some ui for the battles and a few more stuff I haven't revealed yet. beucaus I am not sure it will be worth the time to implement or not. but we will see

also I am in need of a 2d artist to do some custom cutscene clips. etc

well I think I said most of what I wanted to say. just gonna add that the development during the summertime is going to be slow. due to real life. (no more 16 hour days of toolset mayhem for a while.)

One disappointment ,some more expansion and a little gui work.

2009-06-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't gotten much work done the last week. this is because of 2 things.

1.) I have been trying to figure out how to get ridable horses. this ended in a huge disappointment as the work required equals getting TDM complete. so its a no go, however I have managed to get npc's riding horses , but I am unsure of weather or not to include them , probably I wont.

2.) I have been trying to learn XML so I can create the custom gui required for some of the many Very Large scale battles in TDM. and I hope to get some Good looking ui windows up and running soon.

I have play tested the battle in game and its in my opinion alot of fun (I spent an entire evening on this. ) I have used nytir's battle system located on the vault. its highly recomended to try it as there is a test module included.

I thought I was done with Aesir Earlier this week then I discovered some minor thing I wanted to tweak when I played through some quests. s oI am hoping I will complete it by the end of the week. I used about 15 hours playing through random Aesir content. and I have not included the part before aesir. that should bring current game time up to aproximately 20 hours. during the summer I am going to work a bit slower as there is a lot of stuff happening. This project is perhaps the most fun large scale project I have ever started. and I plan to see it through despite some people believing I wont. I am close to halfway done :)

ready for the music.

2009-06-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

Got a notice about the studio is being reassembled. that is god new because then I get my dear samples and recording gear back. So the trailer is within reach again. thats gonna be a relief to see that I have gotten this far.

I have been doing some AI tweaks on some bosses. I hope they will be a s fun as they will be hard (well to a clumsy player like my self they are hard) and I ahve prepared a small surprise in the mod.I do not think it has been done before.and its gonna be interesting to se how people react to it (if anyone plays that far)

I have been gotten a lot of scripting done. that is it feels like a lot. starting to have a nice collection. otherwise it has been the usual add content here add quests here add more placeables here. speaking if the latter . I added quite a few morel placeables to Aesir. I liked how it turned out. I am quite happy with the entire city and I hope to not hate it to much when I am done.

the first part of the mod is going to be beta tested hopefully by the beginning of next month. I can't wait to hear the reactions and to see how many bugs there is to fix. well I etter get back to the toolset to see if I should get something else done before I go to sleep. its now the interesting stuff wl be made.

features

2009-06-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

here are some features of the mod.

a trailer will be out in july.

-Cormyr based module with purple knights and warwizard PRC's

-good aligned only story.

-crafting ( mozt likely SoZ style , but looking into a simple custom system)

-Strongly story driven

-Single player/multiplayer mod

-SoZ style character creation.

-Party chat.

-100 % custom soundtrack by Tinyroom Audio.

-custom voice sets.

-voice overs for major NPC's

-immersive NPC's that will evolve as the game plays out

-30+ hours of game time (rough estimate at the moment, most likely its longer)

-lots of atmospheric exterior areas to be explored.

-dangerous dungeons with traps and puzzles. some might even hold long lost artifacts.

-100's of areas

a small poll

2009-06-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

Added a small poll to see where people like playing.

the poll won't have me change anything in the mod

its just to see what other people like.

and then Back to work.

2009-06-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

so I have returned and have started working on the mod "full time" again. still ways to go on the story board and I am thinking on how I can make Aesir seem fluid and come to life. I have to make sure that the events in Aesir doesn't get to monotonous or too boring. so far its going good but slow. this is done in parallel with writing the storyboard down into a digital form. ( I write like a doctor so I have to read the papers once or twice)

thats pretty much it for now , tons of work to be done. and I am off to do some

toolset free week starts ...............NOW !

2009-05-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

so I have a week away from the toolset and its going to be a good week from teh looks of it .
sun and ice cream all the way.

today I recived a superb conversation from AUBite. I think the quality of the mod with him joining me to form a team is the greates thing tho have happened to this mod. I can now focus on more toolset related stuff. that is after I get every handwritten piece of information into a digital form. so thats my current objective. to lay down the story and backrounds as well as suplying maps for AUBite. he will have a lot to say on how the story evolves around what I have already made from the original PnP. and I think the story will improve on having a extra set of eyes focusing on the story.

however having a super scripter a 2d artist(for the worldmap(s)) and a 3d guru
would also be good to have a bit further down the road.

but as of now I can see the speed of the mod development skyrocket (well in my mind atleast)
and possible pushing the release a bit earlier.

encounter philosophy.
as much as the story is the main thing in TDM. I want to make the numerous fights interesting as well.this is something I have been thinking alot about. I do not want fights to be trivial. but not impossible either. balancing this is hard but I seem to have found a balance by testing them with different party configurations. some of my battles will require a lot of scripting. to add flavor to it. one thing I did not like with the OC was that most fights were simply "I hit you , you hit me" kind of fights. if you meet a named character in TDM. you can bet he is going to use tactics against you. evil characters will fight dirty. and hopefully I can make it so that players won't find them impossible either.

The fey ri

2009-05-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

so I promised to show a picture of the fey'ri here they are.

the siloutte

so I promised to show a picture of the fey'ri here they are.

I only use the standard elf , add a bit of tails and the wings galore pack. and lastly the lineage 2 armor pack. voila the fey'ri . however I might make them a bit different if I get find some better armor or perhaps some wings more like the horned devil's

this is what I wanted it to look like:

http://www.iwozhere.com/SRD/images/MonFaePG73.jpg

A week off the toolset.

2009-05-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

yep its comming a whole week "away" from the toolset. and I look forward to it. I have spendt the last few hours figuring out some mind boggling scripts. some worked some did not. but they I will get what I want to happen , to happen. technically i wont be away from the toolset it will be traveling with me however I'll only be getting a few hours a day which is basically "away"

in other new I have a new helper. AUBite. he is going to contribute as a writer and possibly a voice over actor. I have seen some of his writing and it bodes well for TDM. Now all I need is a genious at scripting.

so what have I been doing ? , well I have spent sometime in the studio. making music for another mod.(well 30 minutes) and started mocking up some orchestral arrangement for the first few locations.perhaps I will upload a snippet soon. also I did some work on the trailer.
not so much work in the toolset but running 24/7 toolset mayhem marathons is draining to say the least. I have done a little toolset work however. as I said I ahve done some scripting and fixed some mistakes in one of the earliest areas.
aparently I have written alot about nothing. Again. but hey Its my blog :)

Overland map.

2009-05-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with the overland map. and I am not able to make it do what I want.

neither am I willing to spend much more time on it as there is so many other things in need of doing. so I will stick with the original plan of a oc like map. however I am not content with what I am using now. So I am using it as a place holder until I get a 2d artist to create something entirely differently.

right now I am just taking a step back and looking at what I have I opened every area in all the campaign mods. it tooks some time. reviewing some of the areas I found some areas needing some minor tweaking(mostly the "chapter one " part but I do not view it as any time sink to slow me down.

Now I am going to create a hak with the custom stuff used. and I found a lot of nice stuff on the vault. however there are still a few things I'd like to find. like a dragon knight armor

I also forgot I have to create the cormyrian warwizard PRC class. but that can be fixed later on.

well thats it for my little update gonna head into 2da land now.

Milestone Reached, all areas done. what next

2009-05-20T12:18:00.001-07:00

All Areas are done. all exterior and all interiors areas are done. it has been painful, it has been frustrating. but I am finally there. I still have some banners and custom content to add to the areas but that I will do when I start on rebuilding the TDM HAK file. which I should be doing soon

as well as doing the Overland map tests to see what I wanna go for. Overland or OC style. thats gonna be a interesting challenge. so this is what I have left.

1. getting the map done.

2. organizing the hak, and custom content

3.writing conversations and scripting

4. voice overs.

5. The creating the soundtrack (I probably will do this in between conversations and scripting)

6. BETA ! I am not gonna guess when I will be done.

and of course getting the trailer done.

still a lot more to go ,but I am confident that I will be getting there eventually.

as for next week I'm gonna not gonna spend much time near the toolset as I am hanging out with the offspring. and I do need a vacation away from the toolset.

I hope to have some version of the overland map ready soon.

well thats it for me tonight I gotta run off to work again.

2009-05-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Aesir complete.

2009-05-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

So I completed aesir today. this large city is now complete in the sense I have placed the npc's and completed the areas. some npc's even have conversations to them. well a little at least.

Aesir is large. its where a substantial amount of the play time will be here. I just hope it isn't to large.

there is approximately 54 areas (give or take a few) in the city so there should be more than enough to do there. I am more than satisfied with the city as it is now. I have added a lot of optional lore for those who want to really get into the history of the city (several books npc's etc).

also for those who want. there are several factions in the city to ally with or turn against.

when we played the original campaign in PnP version I gave the players an option of going the diplomatic way or the more violent way. they managed to do a bit of both. and I hope I can make the TDM mod in the same way especially the slums area is very interesting (from my point of view) this way.

Now I am going to do the following. finish up the dungeons. and that I think will be tons of fun. I was reading up on them jsut before I started writing this. I am going to redo the dungeons slightly from the original campaign. the dungeons will be dangerous and will have something for every class.

I also am a fan of "boss" battles , this means there will be lots of custom scripted baddies. so if you see something like Gang leader or Chieftain prepare those potions :)

well thats it for now I gotta run of to work

Slideshow: added

2009-05-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

Added a slideshow to better show off the screenshots

The longest journey.

2009-05-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

today I have been creating interiors. a bunch of them. I am almost done with aesir castle district. and there are still more that needs to be made. ( I estimate about 60-70) and I am tired of making them. thus I whine about it here :). but on a more serious note . thigs are actually progressing smoothly and I hope to have interiors done by the end of the month. being able to mod at work is a huge advantage. I also noticed I have spendt about 1200 hours on TDM so far (including the stuff I did before the Hard drives died) which is alot. that number leaves me wondering on how much I am going to spend on TDM. most likely twice that amount or even more. if anyone is interested I'd be more than happy to have someone assist me on interiors.
I'm really starting forward to getting a trailer out. only hinges on the studio getting on line again so I can start on the sounds, music and voice overs. eventually I will be needing people to do some voice overs so if anyone reding this would be interested let me know. (though this bit is still some way down the road.) I am also going to add a gallery of screenshots. which will include many new exteriors. and some screenshots of already known areas that I jsut didn't make public.

well thats my spam for today I still got a "few" interiors to do. so back into the toolset for me

Some Background on Aesir.

2009-05-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

heres the background on aesir as requested. I'll mark the first line of the actual description of the city with red colored text on hte first sentence.

around the year 908DR Samdar Aeris Leaves Halruua. not being partiuculary good with magic. and not having any real interest in it. He became a outsider among his countrymen. His father, a wizard and diplomat from Cormyr had married into Halruuan nobility. (which of course led to him being replaced from his position). His father Gaedyn Aeris had told him countless stories about the legendary knights and wizards to Samdar. of course being a wizard he hoped that his son one day would return to cormyr to wear the purple garments of a war wizard.

at the age of 17 he ran away from the constant harrasment for not being able to use magic. he was considered a trouble maker and violent. this was due to his facination for the purple knights. prefering sword to magic wasn't much accepten in halruuan society. he left a note explaining his thoughs to his parents. who eventually grew to understand his predicament.

At the age of 20 he was already a hardened fighter. by joining a merchant guild, shortly after leavin halruua, as a mercenary guard. he was taught the way of the warior by some of the older emplyees. After 3 years (from age 17 to 20)of being a mercenary he went on to cormyr to fulfill his dream.becomming a Dragon knight.
the boat he took from westgate took him to a small fishing village whose name is lost to the ages.
there he met a young girl standing under tha branches of a tree waiting for her lover to return from the sea. The girl said nothing only stared with a searching gaze upon the waves that washed ashore. the tree she wans standing under was sait to once be a treant wanting to ahve his final resting place near the sea. it was also said that the tree's branches grew over the girl to to shelter her from the rain.
During his stay the village was atacked by bandits. he swiftly dealt with them while assisting the fishermens defence of the village. by this he quickly became a local hero. he left a week after the incident

He went to suzail the capital and his fathers birthplace. And was strucken by the city's splendor.
he went to the suzail Dragon knight headquarters and passed every test gracefully. He had started his road to climb the ranks to eventually become a dragon knight. He proved himself in many battles and after 5 years he managed to become one of the youngest knighted dragon knights in cormyr. He was then granted land. He asked the king if there was a possibility to be granted the land near the fishing village he once visited. The king was pleased for someone to ask for this area. the fishing village. after the Birth of Sembia earlier that year a more defined cormyrian presence was needed *(See footnote

Here begins the Actuall stuff about aesir
He was granted the land and started to build a castle on the top of a hill in the rocky areas around the fishing area. With him the king had sendt Egèan Danuri. A fellow dragon knight they were to split the responsibility of making the southeast of Cormyr a better place. they shared the castle and the funds, and quickly became very good friends.Danuri was in charge of the local areas around way of the manticore a major traderoute.and Aesir was in charge of the local afairs and the "diplomatic" problems.
Having learned etiquette from his Halruuan life he quickly managed to tie lasting bonds to the surrounding nobles,farmers and hamlets around him. this led to the area around the fishing village to become the most prosperous in the region. eventually he built walls around the castle and including the fishing village.

The woman he had met so many years earlier. now called the silent widow. stil waited for her lover after all theese years. Aesir took a strange fondess to the girl and visited her as often as he could. after the construction of the walls the villagers voted to name the newborn city Aesir. which is the naem it still carries. the docks were built and ships started comming in from all over the dragon coast and the inner sea. during this period a mechant guild built a headquarters in the docks.soon the need to expand came and aesir ordered the building of another city district. the commons. the commons was originally thought of as a market center for inland trade(as the docks was for waterway trade.) unfortunately this was never realized as Aesir was found murdered in his bed, chest cut open and heart removed , alongside him lay a black rose reeking of sulphur. Aesir's fondess for the silent widow had over time evolved into love. Because of this he never took a wife. He died without any children in 935, 47 years old

Aesirs death left a vacuum in the new city's power structure. Danuri knew he was not fit for such a task so he established a ruling city council to deal with the beurocracy. he went on improving roads. hte commons were used as a dumping ground for the middle class. as the nobility claimed the castle area for them selves. a wall was built between the docks and the castle district. this left the city with three clearly defined districts and classes. where the poorest and the dockworkers lived in the docks, the middle class hauled up in the commons, and the upper class in the rocky hills of the castle district.

the nobility of aesir tried to change the name on numerous occations but never succeded due to the protests of its inhabitants.
Egèan Danuri was ultimately striped of any real power, carying only his name and the influence that brought him. which was substantial due to his family's history. the Danuri family Dragonknights was there at the birth of cormyr as a nation. and thus carried a lot of weight at the cormyrian court. He nobility felt his precence at the council meetings were not needed as he rarely was there at all.

during the late 50's a new area sprung up near Aesir. this area would later be known as the slums. people deemed unworthy of living inside the walls of aesir were thrown out ( only a nobles claim of a theft was enough to get one of the lower classes thrown out)
later the slums were filled with refugees from wars and people wanting to find a better life for themselves in a city. skirmishes between guards and inhabitants of the slumms were getting more and more frequent during hte 1360's this lead to the merchant guild giving up on the nobility to act before everything got out of hand. they build a small guild hall in the slums. they organized mercenarys and locals to create a guard unit. however the merchant guards had not much success in calming the masses. after building a wall around the district the inhabitants of the district calmed down. nobles tolerated the slums because of two things. the pleasure houses and a way to get their hands on stuff they otherwise could not.

in 1364 the current members of the danuri family Thaelan and Gregorius was accused for treason by the nobility. the evidence for this was presented to king azoun. who imidiately striped them of all property and titles as dragon knights. He also Sent out a reward for anyone who could capture them alive.
When the inquisitors came to pick them up they had fled their mansion in the castle district. and noone has seen or heard from then since.
in the years after the danuri brothers was striped of their rank. the taxes increased and budgets on repairs ,soldiers etc was cut. The merchant guild has heard rumors of large sums of money being transfered from the capital to the Aesir. this to help the strugling city with repairs.
The merchant guild has requested insight in the city's book keeping. but has been answered only with silence. the slums have grown more violent than ever and the entire city is at a boiling point.

this is where the adventure starts. I hope my wall of text didn't hurt you :)

Milestone reached.

2009-05-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

Just now I reached an important milestone. completed some of the 50ish exteriors for the mod.
now I head to the tedious task of creating finishing interiors. I already have a good portions of interiors. so I guess the next milestone will be acomplished pretty fast.
the work on the custom sound set for ree's minotaur is also almost done. I have also started some work on the trailer and I have som materials for it . mostly lacking music at the moment.
the trailer will feature some of the voice overs included in the mod.
the part I fear the most is the beta testing. I'm gonna have someone test the first few hours of the mod in the near future. I personally enjoyed it ,but then again its tailored to my taste :P

I hope there is some interest in this mod, as alot of work has gone into it . and alot more is going into it.

Interor motive

2009-05-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

So I am doing the final few exteriors. and I am going to start on the interiors. I much prefer doing exteriors for some reason. they are easier. but I am looking forward to do some of the dungeons I have drawn. gonna have those skill checks going at a fairly high rate.

did a few scripts after completing a highland area and a few conversations in Aesir. so I dont fall into a apathic state of exterior building. I also revised some of the original story to better suit the CRPG version of the PnP story. I think it changed into something better.

I also am considering slashing down some of the mods content. as the mod is starting to grow and is becoming a fairly large download without the custom stuff.

well anyways I throw in a few screens again from a new area. its a highland exterior located near Thunder Peaks.

Jungle fever and Milestones

2009-05-10T23:55:00.000-07:00

Now I am close to a milestone. Complete the exteriors.there are close to 50 of them at the writing moment. varying in sizes and locations some of them are complete with quests and and ready to be tested(I have aproximately 3 hours of gameplay ready). just now I am close to finalizing a "jungle" that I am quite happy with. I liked running around in it atleast :)
And come late June I will have a trailer ready. the trailer is delayed due to some studio equipment in need of repairs. and of course it will feature a taste of the original score from The demons melody.

Here are some screens from the area I am currently working on

Still need too finish up this part of the area

Mysteries await the ever enduring the ever adventuring default drow

What secrets does the pillar hide ?

pffff this needs more work

Thank you RWS for making these awesome models

Still got some stuff to do on that area. adding more tree's to make it seem overgrown. And just play run through it a few more times until I like the flow and feel of it.

I also enlisted the aid of another writer to create some generic conversations etc. this should help out on some of the massive workload that this mod requires.

Getting there is half the fun.

2009-05-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

My progress seems to have taken a leap and I now have quite a few exterior areas. I still haven't logged a single hour in the sound studio.

some areas I have completed in its entirety, some still needs work. Most of my areas allow for some exploration. Since that is something I love to do myself. one concern I still have is the sheer size of the mod. but I guess I can host the mod myself should it be too big for the vault to handle. Today another piece of custom content grabbed my attention. The RWS monster pack. It has some monsters I just had to include :) . I completed the city of Aesir. its a large city consisting of 4 areas and several hours of gameplay. the four areas are :

docks ,slums, castle, commons and including a sewer stretching across the 4 areas. I am pretty content with the end results.

now I'm trying to get the last areas finished and I am hoping I will have them ready by the end of the month.

and now for a screenshot of some work in progress.

this is the area I am currently working on I got a few more floaing trees to deal with and some more coloring.

Aesir, heart of southwestern cormyr

2009-04-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

A little update on my progress. I am in my final phases of completing Aesir. the largest city in The Demons Melody. originally it was a single 32 x 32 area. but after I lst that exterior I remade it for a more dynamic feel. its now split in three areas. the docks , the slums, and the noble quarter. I just now filling the area with npc's and commoners. and quests. alot of quests. both optional and main quest related. the work goes on pretty nicely and I think I can go back to worrying about starting to make a trailer for the mod. also I went away from not using any user made content. and I have now added some Robinsonworkshop stuff. and of course Ree's minotaur. which by the way is the reason I strayed from my initial thinking of not adding a hak to the mod.

here are some screnies from my work in progress of Aesir. I still have alot to do in terms of
texture , coloring and adding placables.

A statue of the city's Founder Lord Aesir Royal Dragon night of Cormyr 1st class

A View of Aesir's Tomb

Map Of Aesir docks

The Docks

A rooftop view of the Docks districk's West side

Its not a hole in the road the road is gone.

2009-04-05T19:21:00.000-07:00

So I hit a major snag. most of my areas scrips and conversations are gone.

how did this happen .. don I take backup ?

of course I do. I backup regularly my work onto 2 different medias a usb memory stick.

and a external HD. both of them died just recently. this is what happened:

I was reinstalling vista as there was so many problems and mr know it all support at Microsoft told me to reinstall. so I did. I copied my collected works onto the usb stick and the hd in different folders. I start the reinstall and vista installation crashes. what also happens is a power surge in the USB bus due to faulty hardware. where the USB memory stick and External HD is still connected.

needles to say none of them works anymore.

However I am more determined than ever to get the module up and runnig. and will start working on it after easter.

the good new is (if you call it good) is that the stuff I have in written form as conversations and story. are still in a binder located on a shelf in my working area. so I will update the page and hopefully will bring some decent new next time.

Triggerhappy, and in it for the long run.

2009-03-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

so now I am at the point I have looked forward to and dreaded at the same time.
I have started scripting and fleshing out conversations full time. using a SOZ party creation I don't have to add more NPC's than I already had in my original PnP campaign. creating storylines for them etc. however , the immense amount of conversation options makes up for that. right now I am fleshing out the introduction/story conversation you trigger when you enter Theym (the starting town). I have made a conversation option for most classes and I'm adding some more later.
I also added some other class/race specific events to the first town. so far its going pretty well. I enjoyt thinking up theese kinds of things. just hope I am able to add some moderation as well.

4 x players tons of fun.

2009-03-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

today I created a party of 4 and did a quest in the starting area. created a party of 4 which is max user created characters. I created a dwarf warrior , halfling rogue , human cleric, and a elf ranger. Apparently I need to add some more difficulty to as the first hour is too easy gonna flesh out the conversations and add some more side quest to the starting areas.

most areas are now complete by that I mean that they are mostly done. I will probably do some more texturing and throw in some more placeables. also I havent made any custom lights yet. except for torches and fires. also I need to add sounds to the areas but thats for a later day.

as for music .....I really should get some time logged in the studio soon (something that should sbe written on my gravestone).

Near completion on areas.

2009-03-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

Most areas are now complete. I have a few areas I will revisit, retexture and recheck for flying trees etc. But thats after I have completed some scripting / conversations. which I will start on this weekend. WEE. I guess I should start getting some music and VO done soon.

anyways milestone of areas is going to be reached by the weekend. the little rascal slept a lot while visiting so I got some stuff done. as I said I will be starting the conversations scripting and preparations for the trailer this weekend. (trailer wont be released until I made some music for it.)

Also I was considering releasing a small 1 hour action mod with the background story of one of the NPC's in demons melody. If I do It will be released late april early may.

Screenshots part 2

2009-03-21T07:39:00.001-07:00

and here are some more screens

all the screenshots are work in progress some areas are due to be retextured and reworked slightly in the future.

just like I work with music I let the areas I maker lay for a week or two or three. then I check them out again thoroughly with a fresh and clear mind and do the necessary adjustments.

I still got a long way until I have any playable / releasable.

Finaly , screenshots

2009-03-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

After getting a feeling of presenting nothing but air. I give you theese following screenshots of areas I am working on (not complete)

Mod trailer.

2009-03-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

I'm aiming at getting a trailer for the mod up and running by the start of next month. just gotta stay of the toolset long enough to create a trailer song:P.
havent gotten much work done now as my son is here. hopefully the cloroform will make him sleep longer so I can get some work done :D
If anyone except my self is reading this blog I have this request.
if anyone feel like they can contribute with some custom content. anything at all be it prefabs textures artwork or any 3d placables/trees. it wil be welcomed as I do lack some cusstom content. if you have something you have that you want to share. then give me a shout at
roger.hogli@tinyroomaudio.com right now I could use som Banners with the cormyr "logo" on them.

2009-03-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Got alot done today. completed the exterior of the main quest hub. + a few more areas placed some NPC's around but not something I|m focusing on. as I want to get the areas and the placables withing the areas done first. its going well and if the other areas I have planned goes as fast and turns out as good (well with my skill I think the areas would pass as good)

then I might be able to complete all exterior areas by mid april.

the next week will be slow one as I have my son visiting. and time is better spent with him.

Found a NPC package at NWvault.ign.com AWESOME ! saves me some time.

I am considering adding some more prestige classes from the forgotten realms 3rd ed. book

The crude to do list

2009-03-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

this is a rough list of things that needs to be done.and the % completed

Story:

100 %

Areas:

10 % complete, still need a lot of interiors and if possible getting some custom 3d content done.

possible date of completion. at my current rate. approximately beginning of may. all depending on how long my son vil visit me.

Music :

20 % complete , I have some songs originally intended for another game in the same genre laying about.

Conversations: ca 5-10 % complete. first part of the game complete. and I have got a lot of notes from the PnP version of the story.

NPC's:

about 50 % done would be nice if the appearance wizard would stop crashing.

Scripting: with my basic knowledge of C++ and the apparently awesome community I cant see much problem in this part. first part completely scripted.

Quests and optional stuff:

got a lot to do here 1-5 % done.

Its decided so.

2009-03-15T11:23:00.001-07:00

After fiddling about with the Neverwinter nights 2 toolset for a while. I have decided to actually make something playable. and so far so good.

A little about the project:

the setting for my mod is placed in cormyr , not too long after king Azoun IV's death.

The rightful heir to the cormyrian throne is still and infant. and in his stead his aunt Alusair cobarsky rules.

With more to do than resources to do it with, the Alusair has turned to adventurers to help stabilizing the turbulent country.

this is where the Mod starts.

The mod is based on a story I made for the PnP version of D&D 3rd ed.

when done the mod will have the following features:

-An original story set in the kingdom of Cormyr in the Forgotten realms campaign.

-a semi linear story line.

-SoZ party creation, there will be companions ,but only for story telling parts.

-a soundtrack featuring 20-30 minutes of original music.

-A good aligned only adventure.

-more TBA

as I am still making the mod I am open for sugestions.