Just a quick little tip on building exteriors.

I was doing some exterior designing and thought I might share a few tips. This might be old news since NWN 2 is starting to be ancient, but I know designing exteriors is not easy. Something looks good, but when you switch your camera angle you will go "oh what the, oh, jees, that's not good, oh, what, no" or you are happy with the layout, but when you test it everything is HUGE or tiny.

1. Turn your camera a lot when you work with the terrain tools. Player will see the landscape from all directions, and so should you when you're working on it.

2. To get a proper sense of the scale add some NPCs standing around the area (at least the part where player will be moving in). This will prevent a lot of too steep hills and such.

3. Don't follow an ordered pattern when creating natural areas. Generally the more random your first draft is, the easier it will be to make it look like real terrain. Just... try to avoid flat surfaces as much as possible, unless there is a clear purpose for that in your area.

Reaaaally general, I know. Still, I thought I would throw these out there.

Polishing my sloppy areas & random stuff about setting the mood.

Being the obsessive compulsive artist that I am, I felt I couldn't start designing the beach random encounter before I had finished polishing the ship wreck area. Immediately when I opened the area I was appalled by the beach and the transition between the beach and grass. Tsk tsk, I thought and got busy.

Now the area has more small hills, more palms, shrubs and plants. The rocks were given some green tint so they wouldn't blind everyone with a bright white light. Transition to the grass is still not perfect...but it's better (it used to be a rather violent change with a straight border). Now I'd only need to populate the area...ahem, maybe next time, or some day. Creating NPCs is one of my least favorite things to do. Right after editing long 2DA files.

Also I tested the new mountain road encounter area. It's pretty as hell, dare I say so myself. It's actually a shame it turned out so well and it will just be a fleeting moment during the whole campaign compared to everything else. Maybe that's okay. The main reason I'm doing this after all is the joy of creation, to better myself and to create various set pieces that convey a certain mood I'm looking for. Atmosphere is maybe the single most important thing to me when doing game designing or when I'm examining a game. That's not to mean I don't care about the mechanics and the story, I do, very much, but I'm just being honest here. Also you CAN create a terrific mood through mechanics, story and dialogue; I'm just relying heavily on area design, sounds and music.

I'm actually starting my IT studies next fall just so I can actually learn all the basics. My school luckily has a game lab and a chance to focus on game studies. Thus I'm hoping to actually make a full fledged game in some years. A game that is pretty much focused on creating mood and emotions, all while telling a story. Very ambitious etc. and I need to look out for the scope. I'm a prime example of poor judgement when it comes to scope. Just look at Crystals of the Lost. Playing the "prologue" part of the game takes most likely two to three hours, depending if the player decides to snoop around and do some side quests. And I immediately follow up with a choice between three quests, of which two were rather tiresome to make with all the scripting, planning and conversations, the third one was almost purely combat focused.

That being said, there is a LOT to be done, so I better go start my design on the beach encounter area.

Brace yourselves, more vertical areas are coming.

If you are anything like me, you might have noticed how most areas in NWN 2 OC and the mods are relatively flat. There is an easy explanation: the more vertical differences your area has, the more harder it is to edit in the toolset. I think such areas are a welcome change in the game though. I'm not going to overdo them, but I'll have a few areas with some verticality. Like this mountain road encounter area I'm currently working on.

It's satisfying to notice how one can still remember the important hotkeys and where all the settings, properties and blueprints are. I was worried for a while that there might be another learning curve ahead of me when returning to the toolset.

Which I'm sure there is. I just haven't noticed it yet. I will most likely revisit the areas I'm designing now and give them a bit more gloss and polish once I've recovered my touch. 

 Mountains are rather boring, so I don't expect this area to blow anyone away. It is also a very small part of the overland map, so players will most likely do only a little combat there. However avoiding spawning enemies on the narrow road should be rather hard, so I'm fairly sure players will get to see it often enough to make it worthwhile to create a separate road encounter for the mountains (flat road on a mountain path just doesn't feel right!).

 Now if I could only make the Bellbay area look a bit more like a real town... It's hard to clutter up the streets. I see no reason why a town would have an abundance of barrels and crates on the streets after all. Anyhoo, that's it for now.

Still working on the overland map

The overland map is taking more time than I thought it would...on the other hand I haven't had much time to work on it. At least I'm starting to develop some kind of routines now that I'm getting used to school again. Which means I should start having more time for modding - I'm also thinking of quitting my stressful part-time job to have more time for this and rest of my life! (:

Anyways, here's what's happened since the last picture upload. I've pretty much finished the texturing on the map, but I still need to make finishing touches once all the placeables are in place. Also, 90% of the map is grassed and shaded. As you can see, there are plenty of forests, jungle and mountains to explore! I'm getting restless while working on the overland map when I have so many good areas waiting to be created on the map (such as Witch's hut and Aboriginals' camp). Both will be "optional" areas that won't be directly integrated into the main quest actually.

Look forward to the finished overland map at the end of this week or in the beginning of the next one! But hey, here's a new picture - you didn't read any of that anyways, so just marvel at it.