Obey me, Hawkwind!

I am starting to get used to the NWN2 toolset. It is, in fact, very similar to the one of the first game, although the layout has been completely overhauled. Good.

I am still working on Stonegate. Rather, in fact, I’m experimenting with it, learning the SDK as I go. I have designed a couple more rooms. Although the layout might be changed a bit, I think I got the general idea okay.

Stonegate will definitely not be a tutorial area anymore. It will serve as an entry point in the world, story, and atmosphere, with various questions raised and answered later ingame. It is a dark, oppressing place, and will serve to pressure the player in knowing that the situation in the outside world is indeed grim, however, he (or she, since we will be able to have a female Avatar) will not see this outside world before a short while.
The beginning of the game will be, in a way, hand holding. But nothing like the hand holding you see these days. If we stick to the original plans, that means we have three dungeons before you get to Britain. Those will be short. Stonegate is mostly harmless and will be mostly devoid of enemies. Once you are out of Stonegate, you will reach a cave, and at the end of the cave, a teleporter to Britain’s sewers. What I’m unsure about is if I put the cave directly below Stonegate, or outside of Stonegate. The original docs seems to imply you get to the cave without even getting outside. A departure from this would not be much, and has its advantages. I can give the player a short peek of a dark gloomy world before letting him explore it a bit further. Yet, the plan is to stay as true to the design docs as possible, so it may not happen.
After the cave, you will be teleported to Britain’s sewers, which hold many exits, so it will not be very difficult to get out of these. And then, here you are, in Britain, free to explore the town. You will be locked inside the city until you get your first companion, Shamino. Once this is done, you will be able to access the mainland of Britannia. And as for ships, you will get access to one very early in the game. So early I am not sure it is worth it to have a port system that transports you from town to town for a fee. Maybe I will skip that.

Back to development. As I was saying, so far so good. I have a couple of very simple issues I have yet to solve... It truly has been a while since last time !
For example, Hawkwind refuses to talk to me. I wrote a simple placeholder dialog file, assigned it to the character in the toolset, and yet, ingame, Hawkwind just stares at me when I click on him, oblivious to the fact I’m the Avatar and that he just teleported me there a couple of seconds ago. What a snob. Oh well, fixing that later.

I also have another issue. I envisioned the beginning of the game with the Avatar lying on a bed. The game would be on first person mode during the virtues question (and only in that part, just for style). We would see Hawkwind sitting on a chair asking them. I figured I’d deal with the fixed camera later and start first with the Hawkwind sitting.

So there we go (quoting from memory)

object oHawk = GetObjectByTag(“Hawkwind”);
object oChair = GetObjectByTag(“HawkChair”);
AssignCommand(oHawk, ActionSit(oChair);

I have put this on the EnterMap thing to get it at the start of the game, yet Hawkwind does nothing. I also tried to put it on OnSpawn for the Hawkwind character to no avail. I guess Hawkwind is not an object, but for some reason, I couldn’t find the GetNPCByTag command. I need to investigate more on that this weekend.

Speaking of which, this weekend I will put together a design document. I have been pleasantly surprised by people volunteering to help, and I realize that there is no current framework for us to work together. I will put together a small .DOC file, probably a forum or mailing list, and maybe a wiki to ease our work together. I can also host a 24/7 FTP (I do have a NAS). Once this is done, (probably this weekend), I will contact everyone who has showed interest and ask if that interest still holds. The first thing we’ll do is probably put up some kind of thing to know who is working/want to work on what.

Anyway, I’m at work so... back to work, I guess.