Biting the bullet

This interior area in Trinity has been giving me headaches and very low FPS since the beginning (between 9 and 26 fps in a benchmark test) and I finally decided to do something about it.

I looked at whether it was due to poor custom tileset optimization, or abundance of point lights and VFX. Adjusting Fog clip didn’t have any impact, nor was the clipping even noticeable in game! Lowering draw distance in the game settings though helped a lot.

Finally I accepted that the poor performance had to do with size really (no doubt the fact that the place was packed with objects of all sorts helped…). The area was 24x30 or so. Didn’t think it would have been much of a problem given it was an interior area.

So I finally came around to the idea of cutting the area up in 3 parts, and now am getting fps in the 23 to 81 range. A better experience for everyone.

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Besides that, I’ve been working lately on setting up pretty cool fights with fire ants, ghosts and a death tyrant beholder (different fights, not at the same time). I attached some popping VFX’s on the ghosts’ death that give a lot of spirit to the fight.

Also been working on some gameplay mechanics and custom items. After suggestions from players in this thread, I decided to make a statuette that summons 2-8 pseudodragons (when I used to play PnP, pseudodragons were THE coolest thing) and a gem that you can imbed in any of your weapons to turn it into an elemental weapon that will deal random elemental damage, complete with appropriate VFX.

I’ve got a bunch of other custom scripted items done and in mind, in addition to many custom items that use conventional properties. Besides at the outfitting store in the staging area of the mod, most items to be bought or found in Trinity will actually be custom made. I always find it nice when playing when I find an item I’ve never seen before.

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In other news, I’m leaving on vacation for a week in Mexico, this Thursday. After the harsh winter we had last year, my wife and I made a promise to ourselves that we’d try to escape it this year, even if just momentarily. The whole family is going to an all-inclusive resort (the first time in my life!) on the Riviera Maya. I am not bringing my laptop or any notepad of any kind. ;) See you all back soon!

No one likes to play alone

This will be old news to those who visit our site, but I thought I’d finally officially post the results of the poll we conducted some time ago on preferred party size.

Sixty-eight people responded to the question (a great turn-out!): “In a solo mod, what is your ideal NWN2 party size?”. And the results were:


Two results of special note: no one likes to play solo, and a larger proportion of players like to have 3 companions to adventure with.

Sure seems like the folks at OEI got it right in SoZ with their party of 4 player-created characters, doesn’t it.

Trinity is built around a party of 5 and you start off with the full roster of 4 companions. While players will be able to dismiss any of them at any point in the game without breaking conversations or quests, the mod will be balanced for the complete party and a good part of the banter and interjections will rely on all party members being present. My recommendation then will be to play with all companions, on a first run-through at least.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably go with 3 companions. But now, I’ve grown too attached to each of them and can’t see myself cutting anyone from the roster.

Storm of Zehir Walk-through

I just wanted to let everyone in on what we've done over at The Thieves Guild.

We finally finished our Walk-through for SoZ. I've also listed a few very helpful links to other great resources for OEI's second expansion to NWN2.

Storm of Zehir Walk-Through

Storm of Zehir Trading Guide

Storm of Zehir Item Data Base

Sorm of Zehir Crafting Guide

Storm of Zehir Cohort Guide

I hope y'all find these guides useful.

I know this post has absolutely nothing to do with the awesome stuff GPS is working on, but now that we've finally got these done. I wanted GPS and friends to be the first to get their hands on it. ;D

Happy New Year!

We wish you and yours health, happiness, and success for the new year, and some good NWN2 fun too, of course.

With the expected release of a bunch of mods from NWN2 bloggers and a slew of others for sure, it’s shaping up to be a pretty good year for NWN2 fans everywhere.

Have fun!

Two-thirds of the way there

In spite of what the lack of recent updates might seem to indicate, I’ve been steadily plugging away at Trinity these past few weeks (and enjoying it :) ), in between sessions of Storm of Zehir (and Mass Effect… and enjoying that too), and have managed to reach the 67% completion mark for the mod.

Mostly it’s been work on gameplay mechanics (means of blowing things up, for example), creature blueprints and combat encounters (making use of several community-made creatures and items in the process), scripting a complex convo and the like. All in all, not much I really can show or talk about in detail without getting into spoiler territory. But here are a couple of new screenshots nonetheless, to liven this blog post up if nothing else. By the way, the hood in these shots is courtesy of Arsan and was exactly what I needed for this NPC. The community does put out a lot of great stuff.

All told, about 84% of the assets of the mod are in varying stages of production right now. I hope to get SirChet a partial but playable version of the mod in the near future, for a first reality-check on story-flow, gameplay and duration (and to see how many serious bugs he can find! :) ).

Now, if you've been pining to walk in one of Ayrin's areas, you'll be happy to know this just came out. I'll certainly check this out ASAP.

SoZ – Less CAN be better

I started Storm of Zehir last week and have been having lots of fun. The level of detail put into the areas is particularly impressive, so is the ingenuity and creativity deployed to build in such an enormous number of skill checks. I also got much more of a kick than expected out of building my own 4-member party and am finding the party conversation system more fun and much less burdensome than I was afraid it might be.

As for the overland map, that’s been interesting too. It sure is a great way to tie together disparate quests and adventure locations and give a feel of open-endedness to the game.

But, boy, those hostile encounters do zap in like madness. That started to become annoying very quickly once into the game, more than anything else ever in NWN2. So I found the script that controls the probability of hostile spawns and applied a modifier to it to reduce the rate at which they are teleported onto the OM. That worked and I can breathe now and not feel like I’m playing Space Invaders or something like that.

If you feel that way about the OM, you too might be interested in downloading the tweak I uploaded to the Vault recently.

We also uploaded the GPS No-Ring UI mod some time ago and have apparently made a few people happy. What more could you ask for.

GPS gets into UI modding

Well, sort of. It’s not quite what Lance is doing, or what these guys are up to with their Call of Cthulhu PW.

But it’s a little UI tweak I’ve wanted ever since I was making the Trinity trailer, and with Daronas’ help, we got it done.

GPS’s no-ring UI mod removes those unsightly selection rings you get around your currently controlled character and your selected enemy, that are especially intrusive in strategy mode. It also removes that star that appears when you click the ground to move. Look at the before and after shots to see what I mean.


With this, you can get a perfectly clean screen when the GUI is hidden: great for filming gameplay footage with FRAPS, for taking screenshots or for total immersion while playing.

It can make for a better playing experience when the GUI is up too. One reason I seldom played in strategy mode outside of combat was because of that permanent ring around my character.

It was a simple tweak to do really (override 3 images with null ones), once we figured out what we needed to modify and how.

The no-ring UI mod will go up on the Vault some time soon.

I’m also working on a few tweaks and add-ons (including TonyK compatibility) for my favourite custom UI, Lite UI. Anyone else uses this UI? The add-on may also find its way to the Vault some time in the near future.