Neverwinter Nights Hordes Of The Underdark

[Narcisa Flierl]

Thisproject to port the Hordes of the Underdark cRPG continues. At present I'm still working on the 2nd level of Undermountain. This weekend I did more fleshing out of the east area, building some more rubbish placeables to scatter around and laying down visual effects, lights, and sounds to create the proper environment. When I build these areas, I try to make them feel like small parts of a much larger dungeon, so there are blocked off corridors due to open pits or metal gratings, platforms with doors on the other side of a gap, and so forth. I was tempted to add another area to the mix, but for right now I decided to stay focused on the existing content. This version of undermountain is generally dank and gloomy with islands of light being provided by torches, braziers, fires, and magic. It's much darker than the original HotU dungeon, which seemed excessively bright. Hopefully that won't be to much of an issue for the players. There's always magic glowing rings available at the start of the game.

While implementing the cleric Linu's recruitment location, I discovered that there is a whole separate track of party member conversations that I need to add. A number of the script elements for this game are buried in the standard stock scripts, so it's been a matter of burrowing through the code and finding out where it leads. In this case, it turns out the companion conversations used prior to being recruited are separate from the party member conversations; a switch that is handled in one of the stock henchmen include files. These separate conversations are probably going to take another week or so to finish, but they are needed since they handle the cases where you alienate companions.

There are quite a few differences between how companions are managed in NWN and NWN2. These have led me, for example, to some content cuts from the conversations, since you won't need to ask your party members to do things like cast spells or change their primary class. (I'm actually setting the condition to gc_false for those branches, just in case.) I need to spend some time figuring out what I need to convert from the old henchmen scripts to the standard NWN2 companion scripts, which could take extensive work as I'm finding out. Plus, now that most of the party members can be recruited, I need to set up the party management interface in place of the NWN method. I'm planning to make it a NWN2 OC style party management. Most of the conversations will be OC style, rather than SoZ, and use the NWN conversation interface.

Thank you, Dwayne. Has it been that long? I guess it's come far since then... with much further to go. I'd estimate the project is about 25% done. But hopefully it'll pick up speed once the first chapter is complete.

It would be great if someone was able to do SOU for NWN2 and someone else do one of the NWN1 SOU to HOTU bridge modules for NWN2. That would be a amazing addition to your module. I would love to play the whole campaign in NWN2.

Yes, it's definitely do-able, and (I think) the builder gets the bonus of having conversation sound files available for the companions. All it takes is somebody willing to put in a lot of time and effort. I picked HotU, rather than the first two, mainly because it was the most well received of the three and I thought it might prove interesting to convert a high level module (which it is). There are also several other premium modules for NWN that might make interesting conversions.

Most of the party conversations are complete now, with the exception of Tomi's, which I'll be getting to in the near future. But the 2nd level Undermountain build has being side-tracked a bit by the genie in a bottle. He can be potentially around for all three chapters, requiring conversations, scripts, icons, and three separate store builds. Plus there are a bunch of unique NWN item types in his store that are not in NWN2, so I'll either have to port those or include substitutes. Still, this might be a good place to add in some custom blueprints from elsewhere -- he does travel the planes looking for items to sell. I figure this part will take a week or two total to complete.

I'm just about done with the genie stores now, after which I'll give it a test drive. Most of the work was in the chapter 2 & 3 stores, which required creating a slew of magic item blueprints. Searching for these required hunting for the type using the NWN explorer based on the tag, then finding a match in the HotU item stock. (For a few I had to use the GameBanshee web site.) In some cases I decided to ramp up the DC on some of the On Hit effects a little (anywhere from DC 16 to DC 22, depending on the cost) because they were still at DC 14 to save (which at high level is pretty easy to pass). They're well up there in price -- typically 100-300Kgp for Chapter III. It's been fun, but I'll be glad to move on.

Down the road a bit I can go back and add some more new items. There are other stores that need a little enhancement as well. The ones in Waterdeep seem dreadfully dull, for example. Also, I haven't touched crafting yet -- it's not exactly my favorite game feature, but I know some people like it. I can always implement that as an add-on enhancement when the core game content is complete. There's a workbench for smithing in Argali's smithy, and Sobrey's magic shoppe has a magic and alchemy bench. Perhaps I'll scatter a few higher level recipe books in Undermountain... and I could have some in the genie's store and other shops.

Well, once the PC gets to hell, there is already a smith who can give you whatever bene's on your gear you want. Doesn't he also appear in the Drow city? So crafting may not be a big deal in this case.

Risolvir (I think thats his name) is in both the Drow town once u get out of the Undermountain DG and ALSO in hell. y typical playthrus involve going to the vampire monk citidal , leveling up a bunch with the infinite respawns , and then killing the Draco lich for all its oodles of gold/treasure. THEN going to the smith and bumping my weapon up.(:

I've just finished up the 2nd level east area and now I've started working on the south -- the two are connected by the Djinn. The last of the companions, Tomi, is fully set up with blueprint and his conversation. I'm sure glad to get those wrapped up, 'cause transfering conversations is very tedious. Most of the blueprints are finished with this area, so it's time to start building it out. There's one special Drow chest that I need to decide what to do with. I might reskin one of the existing models with Drow-ish textures. Otherwise it looks mostly mundane so I shouldn't need any new models. But we'll see...

There's not much else to report at this point. It was a miserably hot summer so I haven't spent much time at the toolset, or 3D modeling for that matter. I'm hoping to pick things up again now that it will start getting cooler.

Deep within the Undermountain dungeon are the temporary quarters of the Drow sub-commander. He managed to bring along a few homely touches, including a portrait of his Matron at right. The chest on the table has a reskin in the form of a visual effect.

Work on the level 2 south area continues. I've been building some additional decorations -- mostly spikey bits for the walls and some floor stains -- to add to the environmental clutter. The level is close to 50% completed now; just the last two areas to go plus the central area cutscene.

Looking ahead, I think for the third level of Undermountain I'll use the RWS Deep Chasms tileset, since it seems the closest fit to the original NWN area. I'm planning to spend some time going through the tileset to make sure they're all in good shape, and add some new variants as needed. That'll keep me busy for a few months.

I wrapped up the 2nd level South area with all the triggers, encounters, and decoration in place, so now I'm moving on to the North. That's the last of the four areas on the second level. One key element is a bridge across a pit. I've created the tiles for this, and now it needs a pair of door frames intended to impede progress. I've been fiddling around in my head with some concepts for the doors -- basically I'm thinking of a pair of rock columns with a tall iron grating in the middle. After that I'll start on the area proper.

As a separate activity, I started my refinement pass through the RWS Deep Chasms tileset that I'll use for the 3rd level. It's a large set so that's probably going to take a few months. I'll be fixing a few UV map and walkmesh issues, as well as fixing a few parts to address potential (in-game) texture swap issues. There will also be some additional variants for the purposes of variety, since I'll probably also be using this set later on in the second chapter. Maybe I'll work on a texture swap as well for the deep underdark regions.

For each area I'm doing a sweep through all of the NWN placeables, looking for any that are non-static and include inventory. This step is pretty tedious, but I haven't found a way to avoid opening up each and every object. The non-static placeables I put into blueprints, transferring over and modifying scripts, and/or building/adding custom content as needed. Next, I set up templates for trigger regions and encounters, the former of which usually also involves transferring scripts. The last step is to copy any emplaced creatures, where I build blueprints, scripts, and create any custom items they require.

Now I can start filling out the area. I begin with the doors -- making sure they have the same tags, scripts, and properties as the doors in NWN. Next is the lighting, where I am trying to put light sources in the same locations, although sometimes it makes sense to relocate a few. This version of Undermountain is generally gloomy, so lighting is important both for atmosphere and often for navigation. (Light sources are recommended for visitors.)

Usually at this point I go to work on the decorations, adding visual effects, sounds, placeables, and water as needed. It seems like I spend a lot of time adding clutter; little placeables and effects that are there just for visual effect to make a scene look a little busy. Finally, I add in the creatures, blueprints, and encounters. I do a final pass, adding in more random debris where needed, filling in blank locations, and tweaking elements like the lighting radii and sound levels.

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