Back. With a frustration.

Rumors of my passing have been greatly exaggerated.

A lot has happened. For instance I've graduated and I'm a normal working adult now. Which means after working from 7am to 3pm I'm free to do as I please and I actually have the money to do as I please - well, at least some of it. Thesis was a major headache until I gave in and changed its subject into one that focuses on video games. It was worth it as I got nearly full scores on it - thus I recommend anyone to bravely write their thesis on video games even though you or someone might think it's not serious enough of a subject. If you feel passionate over it, the reader will feel it and you can only benefit from that.

I'm a librarian...buut I've managed to study some really basic programming of several languages during my free time and I'm pleased to inform you Neverwinter Nights 2 scripting is not all that mumbo jumboish as it used to be. Sure, it's complicated, but it's relatively easy to see what any given part of the script does. I'm still not good at writing them from a scratch, but I can see what ready scripts aim to do.

Reading scripts, having patience and studying the SoZ modules was rather vital to my CotL campaign. Back in 2010 (wow, it's been four years) I used similar methods, I'd copy and paste from SoZ and poking the things with a stick to see what's going to happen. Some of the overland map functions worked, but some didn't. It drove me pretty crazy when I had no idea why some random battle transitions worked and why some didn't. Turns out I should have just imported a few scripts and really read through them. I used to know I had to name my road encounter's waypoints as wp_road01_player_default etc. without any idea why I was doing that. Turns out ginc_overland_constants defines these tags for each terrain.

I'm still not sure if you can create more random encounters than the basic nine SoZ introduced without writing bunch of lines into om_terraintypes.2da, ginc_overland_constants and ginc_overland. While I think I have a more keen eye, more patience and perhaps some wisdom, I'm not very patient. Especially since the toolset's editor for 2DAs is horrible and Excel keeps messing them up. I've found that Notepad++ works okay, but still I'm getting some issued with adding some rows for some reason, could be just that I'm sloppy.

Anyhow, I'm back. I've fixed a ton of bugs and weird things my mod used to have - a lot of them were misspelling and just forgetting to set some variables or arranging them correctly. Finally worked around the player not being able to use spells in the first module as well. It's not perfect since it only adds a arcane spell failure to all spells, but it's something. I was hoping to add a custom animation and a spoken line whenever player tries to cast a spell, but alas, there is no OnPlayerCastSpell to call on the area/module properties. Shame really. It might be possible to use the OnPlayerDefinedEvent or something, but I haven't studied that yet.

The important thing is that I'm back and I think I know what I'm doing now. Bugs have been fixed, dialogue has been tweaked, areas have been given a facelift. Now I'm ready to create more areas! I need only, oh, about 6 random battle areas and a bare minimum of 15 areas plus another town to create. It's a good thing the toolset is like a close drunk friend you have. Sometimes it acts all funny, but with years of experience you knew to keep those back ups in case your module got corrupted etc.

What I'm really bummed out about is the lack of information on the toolset functions and the tips given to players on how to create actually good looking areas and interesting interaction. I've been speculating on should I make some tutorial texts or just some general tips on some of the more abstract or advanced stuff of NWN2 modding. There were none of the kind I was thinking when I looked, but then again the game is old...so I'm not sure if I'd just be writing them for nothing. There are some tutorials on how to build exteriors, interiors and some ready packages to use for overland maps, but there are no guides that tell you how you can create that overland map yourself. There are no guides or tips on how to make interesting exteriors that look natural with only a bit of extra time involved.

I guess I'll still think about it. There's so much I could ramble about those things. But for now, I'm signing off! Be at peace knowing that CotL might yet see the light of day.