Friday, June 20, 2008

Stuck again.

The enthusiasm of my last post didn't last long. Since I wrote it, I made zero progress but ran into too many problems again. Again of technical nature, and I've never been so close to dropping the whole thing. I'm just so sick and tired of being stuck again because of things I simply don't understand and cannot for my life fix myself.

So, whiny Casa, what is it this time?

I think the initial reason for this post is actually that it took me hours again to tell my router to *#%&ing post the testserver to the internet... Lol, yes, that was the last thing in a series of annoyances. Some day I'll have to host this module, and I know that will be the horror. I'll have to take care of a MySQL database. Hell, I still need an hour until I figure out how to log into the MySQL database, and don't ask me what all this geekish shit inside it means. The same could be said about my router... well, not really, I know a little about what a router setting should mean, but that doesn't make the router do it. I'm absolutely sure there's a geekish gnome living inside my router showing me the middle finger each and every time I change a setting. "Not now, a**hole, it's dinner time. I'll change your settings tomorrow".
That's the third gnome house I'm currently using, and all the guys in each of them must have been relatives.

Okay, so much about the things outside of NWN, the small everyday annoyances of digital life.

Inside NWN, I'm currently having bad problems with scripts and custom content again.
SM is working his rear off, but it doesn't make me feel any better hat I can just sit here and watch while he's again doing things for me.
The problem itself is tied to the whole xp system again, NPC and creature behavior, and to make it short, my creatures and NPCs currently stand around and do nothing. Nothing means, I can go to a hostile creature and kick it's shin and it stares at me blankly. NPCs forgot how to talk, and... well, it's highly frustrating when the last thing you worked on was adventuring areas and NPC dialogues. Because at the moment there's absolutely nothing else to do for me than working on encounters and NPC dialogues, but.. sigh... I can't.
What was left to do was a few interiors I planned for a haunted village. But no, NWN shows me he middlefinger, I can't place any doors in any of the tilesets I wanted to use. Back to 2da work? The last thing I want to do right now.

Well, those are the few major annoyances I ran into lately. There's more though, dozens of details like the toolset telling me it's missing scripts I know it shouldn't miss, or that some mystic containers are full and can't accomodate any items anymore (never ever placed or used or looked at a container yet), and so on.

To make a long story short, I'm having a bad headache since my last post, and I'm totally frustrated because I can't just do what I want to do.


To kill some time and frustration, I played a little bit in Dammendrech and finally finished Mass Effect.
Mass Effect left me very disappointed, but it's nevertheless a game I'd recommend to everyone if it hadn't that totally ridiculous DRM scheme with activations.
The storyline is a clichée, mixed together from various sources, some more, some less obvious, and the whole game is again aimed at the US teenager who's dream of life is becoming a hero in the army and saving the world. Blech. However, the presentation of the game is awsome, the cutscenes wonderful, the voice acting and visual quality of the actors totaly sucks you in. I just hope they'll make the storyline more interesting in part two, leave out the horrible sidequests and change the DRM.

7.5/10 for Mass Effect (presentation 10/10).

Now, Dammendrech. That's a NWN2 world I sometimes (or often the last couple of weeks) play on and that has become a temporary refuge for me. It's run by a few people I know back from Vives, first of all lowfatpretzels who I played with quite often and who dragged me there, and the admin and head DM and head builder and whatevernot Vulpina, who's Vives chars I had run into sometimes, but never got to know well.

Now Dammendrech is a RP server that suffers from a lot of the problems I mentioned in older posts, last but not least it has a ridiculously harsh death penalty that would drive me off immediately anywhere else. From the game mechanics, a lot of it is exactly what I'd like to avoid in my module.
Nevertheless, it's a nice server. Why? Well, great attention for detail, very nice building (within the borders of NWN2's ugly graphics of course), a believable and unique setting that avoids stereotypes, very few silly effects and magic and all.

And first of all, the people are nice and relaxed. It's extremely newbie-friendly, DM attention is guaranteed and always positive, and it's constantly changing and being worked on. That's probably what really makes a server worth playing, and of course I'm again stealing ideas and try to learn.
Well, enough of the praise, actually there's still a little lack of content and some flaws and all, and I often found myself not knowing what to do with my char when noone was on. Besides that, if you want to check out a NWN2 world, give that one a try, it deserves a little attention.

Well, now while I wrote this, SM sent me a new mail telling me that my module has definitely other bugs in the system than his test mod, which was very reassuring and of course I can't wait to track this next one down. Yay.

F... it. :(

2 comments:

Michael A. Sinclair said...

Don't give up, man. We'll figure it out. But in the meantime, you need to find things you can work on to keep your inspiration up. Lots of the busy work is sprucing up areas with placeables, working on lighting, writing conversations (even if you can't test them right away), and so on. Plan out a couple of quests for level 1 players, make a faction for them to join, and make some books with some interesting history of your world. You've got lots you can keep busy on, even if it's not the exact thing you want to be doing.

Michael A. Sinclair said...

Well, though we fixed the problems already, I still figured I'd give you some news to cheer you up: The CC Exterior is supposed to be updating in a few days. This release will apparently have less features, since they've gone back and redone tons of stuff. On the other hand, it will be compatible with all future versions, which will be adding the better stuff. So as soon as it updates, you can grab it and begin building.