Tuesday, May 6, 2008

ItFR : Secret, secret, I’ve got a secret

By E.C.Patterson

I’ve been able to get some good, quality time with the toolset during the past few days, especially on Saturday. Grandma took the girls with her for most of the day, which gave my wife and I some free time alone… which we each spent on our respective hobbies ;)

I spent much of my time that day working on some of the secrets that will be part of Into the Forgotten Realms: secret door, secret compartment in nearby object and secret compartment in the floor.

The latter two are working great, but I’ve had one important issue with my concept for the secret door. See this thread for the details. It seems like I’ll have to implement the tried and true “VFX spawn” method or the alternative “Placeable door spawn” method. Too bad. I really had high hopes for this secret door concept of mine.

I’ve also been able to flesh out, in my mind at least, the backstories of three of the four companions, as well as the one of your “nemesis” (known as Gaion), including their respective “secrets”. I still haven’t come up with an interesting backstory and motivation for Thelvar, the fearless Turmian cleric of Tymora (otherwise known as Mr. 3T ;) ), but that will come when I turn my mind to it.

And lastly, I moved the design of this area forward quite a bit. This is an interior area made with Kivinen’s roofless version of the cave tileset, retextured with the texture RWS used for the chasm tiles in the Deep Halls tileset. I’m not sure if the glow spider will make it into the final version, but I really like how its glow map looks. :)



Oh, and I also made some useable latrines ;) (with the help of Heeds' ActionSit). No these are not essential to the mod, but they should trigger a funny bit of companion interaction, if you don't sufficiently value your privacy... ;)

I now plan to be off the toolset for the next couple of nights (if I can resist the urge...) to beta test Dennis Graf's Price of Honor. I'm looking forward to that.

5 comments:

Wyrin said...

I've not looked into it but FalloutBoy posted a rehash of the secret door scripts a while back that might be useful..?

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Scripts.Detail&id=1126&id=76

Jclef said...

Those caverns look great, man!

At first, I thought you were doing one of those "Exterior-Interiors" with the Black Skybox, but I see now. It just looks Really big - which I think rocks.

IMO - keep that Spider!

EC said...

J: Thanks my friend! For reasons that very well may become apparent when you play the mod, I couldn't do an Exterior-Interior here, unfortunately. Kivinen's roofless tiles do give a sufficently convincing illusion of an expansive cave with an infinitely high ceiling.

Wyrin: Yes, it's looking like I will have to use that sort of solution. Thanks.

mooncalf165 said...

Been checking this blog for a while and I felt I just had to comment on this one....useable latrines?
Sheer genius.

All the best,
Nick

EC said...

Haha! Thanks Nick. I'm glad you like the idea. It will be sort of an easter egg kind of thing.

I'm pleased to hear that you're a regular reader. We really enjoy hearing from everyone, so don't hesitate to say hello again!

Cheers.