Making an area 1 - YATT from a dummy for dummies

It's winter now and the toolset fingers are itching again, but after such a long time it's not easy to find a start for something creative. One of the worst things in the Toolset for me is hitting "New Area" and then staring at that plain boring grassy default field, not knowing where to start. So sometimes I need a little help, like a random base that gives me ideas. And this post should be a step-by-step tutorial on how to get such a random base, from a complete dummy for himself as a reminder/diary and for other dummies who hate learning new geeky stuff and best get an idea of something by looking at pictures.

Let's grab the YATT plugin for the NWN2 toolset and get some ideas, huh? 

So, YATT has been around for years and some people have been using it for a while, like nicethugbert with his area prefabs on the vault, or Cipher in his Game of Thrones PW (where I first thought "I want to do that too!"). There are some tutorials out there, and a thread on the old Bioboards that explained the usage very well, but I couldn't find that one anymore. So I'll start a new one here. 

Basically YATT is an import plugin that makes you a nice terrain out of height maps. Height maps, that's some Black&White images that tell you where the terrain is deepest and highest, a hole in the ground is pitch black while a mountain top is white, and in between you have grayscales. You can paint those yourself in Gimp/Photoshop if you want to, but I don't, so we let someone else create our map, and that's an external terrain editor. There are many, but I (like most others) use L3DT Standard edition, last but not least because it's free. If you later want to paint your own maps and have a program add erosion and realism, you might want to check World Machine. But I just need some basic ideas and usually get lost too much if I experiment too much, and after all we don't want to forget the actual area design, so I'll leave that out. 

I've been playing around with YATT a bit since then, but never got any satisfying results because back then I never learned how to get textures into it properly. So I ended up with a nice random terrain, but it was all grass and I couldn't be bothered to paint textures on it. Because that's another tedious job. I like texturing, as I like painting, and I have a tablet and learned graphics design and all that, but still... getting the texture base done before going into detail is tedious and no fun for me. And last but not least, as good as you might be, YATT seems to achieve much more natural and realistic texturing if used right.

Now to the step by step guide, and mind you it's very basic and I just learned this myself, there might be better ways and tips and tricks I don't know of. If you know them, by all means let me know! 

Getting started. We need:

- YATT of course. Bookmark the page, you WILL need those numbers you see there.

- L3DT Standard Ed. (I'm using the latest Developer build, but it probably doesn't matter)

You also should very soon decide on how big your area should be. For landscapes like the ones we create here large areas make sense, and don't worry, I have never had much problems with large areas in NWN2. I'll just go with 28x28 in this tutorial, because I was thinking of a large snowy area to get lost in. If you want to build huge cities with many placeables, you might not want to go that far, or if you're really spamming grass like crazy like I often did. :D

Install both - I hope you remember how to install toolset plugins? If not, there's a guide on the YATT page, don't forget to enable 3rd party plugins in the toolset options. L3DT is a simple installer. 

So, we start with L3DT once it's installed. Run it and you'll see a boring grey screen and not much else. What we want is to create a new project under File. Select it and we'll get the wizard.

 

We'll just follow along going with the recommended options for now until we get to the screen below:

This is the step where you can play with settings. To get new ideas, you'll always want to get back here and change stuff just to see how it turns out. Play with those default climates and change parameters for fun until you get either a nice surprise area during the following steps or you get a feeling of what parameters suit you best. Don't worry about the textures, if you make an Arctic region and then think "doh, that terrain would suit a rainforest much better!", no problem, we can change all textures later. Anyway, we adjust a little and then hit next.

In the above screen you see what we need and what not. Just go with me here.

Same here, I have actually no idea what this is all good for, let's just move on and hit okay.

Now you can watch L3DT do it's thing for a minute or ten depending on your CPU. Get some coffee, have a smoke until....

.... you get that above pic. Hooray, a nice minimap picture! But to really get a feel for it, Hit that small 3-D button above for a 3D preview. Hint: Move around using WASD, E and Q to change altitude for a better look, and when you're done hit ESC to go back to the former map view.

Satisfied? If not, just try another one with other settings. Play around, this is the point where we hope to get some new inspiration. If you're finally done, we need those numbers from the YATT site and enter the tedious geeky stuff we don't like (do you?). Look at the pic below, remember we settled for an area size of 28x28 in this examples. Can you tell me what pixel size the height map has to be? And the texturemap?

Right, you knew that the height map for an area of 28x28 should be 265x265 pixels! Because the YATT site told you. Well done! While we're here, also write down that texturemap size below, which is.. yes? Hmm? 1408, good!
So, now we switch back to L3DT and look at all those small buttons above our image indicating what we currently look at. We want to look at the height map, so click that button.

We want to export this map now, a right-click on the map is all we need to get there. Now, let's get serious for a moment, this step is crucial: File format must be changed to .bmp and you have to check resize for export and change the numbers to 265. Save the file in a place where you can easily find it later, give it a name that makes sense (e.g. arctic01_height.bmp or whatever).
If you only care for a base terrain, that's it. But we also want the basic texturing done for us. So, we switch back to the texture map and right click on it, and this time we choose Operations -> Alpha Maps -> Generate maps. We get the following screen which already gives you an idea of what alpha map is responsible for what texture, and you might want to take a note on what NWN2 texture to use for it later, but that's all optional. You can simply hit Next.

Now we get the next geek screen, just hit okay.

We end up with 4 new alpha maps in our main L3DT window. Time to export each one of them again just like we did with the heightfield earlier, BUT with a different size. Remember? Right, we save as .bmp resized to 1408x1408, well done! Save each one in the same place as the heightmap earlier, you can rename or not whatever suits you best.

Now, let's look at what we have. I saved my L3DT project in the same folder too, so there's a bit more inside than just the exports. I marked the files we need, make sure to select the .bmp files, not the .png with the same icon. And with that, we're done in L3DT.

Okay, let's start the NWN2 toolset. I prefer doing my YATT experiments in a plain empty module/directory that is only for YATT and nothing else. Better import a good area into my main module later than being sorry after hitting a wrong button and overwriting an existing area or whatever...
Anyway, start YATT from your plugins menu and go directly to File -> Define Input Images. We're looking at the following image. I'm sorry for it being partly German, but you'll figure it out easily. I marked the two image lists we need with a red dot, start with the height map and click that small file button on the right:

In the next window, we need to add our heightmap we created before. Hit that Add button (in the image below "Hinzufügen"...

...and then on the right side open the heightmap image we saved earlier. And now another crucial step: We need to adjust the maximum height! This is also a subject of experimentation, but a general rule of thumbs I read in other tutorials is that 85 works fine in most cases, at least for a first test. If your area is looking too flat later, you know where to change settings.

Now when that's done and you hit okay, it's time for the texture maps. This works pretty much like before, just that we add 4 images to the list instead of just one. Our Alpha 1-4 maps.
The other main and crucial difference is that as you can see in the pic, there's a point "texture" and the standard NWN2 dirt texture is assigned to it by default. This is where we define our textures, and you have to make absolutely sure that each Alpha map has a different texture assigned to it. Don't worry too much about it being the perfect texture now, just see that you don't assign the same texture twice.

In the end, your window should look similar to this, a list of 4 .bmp files, each with a different texture. Close.

Finally, back in the main window, we should change the Texture Overflow Action to Merge. Simply because the default "Prefer Last" option has buggy results.

When all that is done, it's time to hit okay and then... woot!... go to "Area" and hit "Build Area from image(s)". Oh, Stop! First make sure there is NO area opened in the toolset already, or it'll fail. Okay, that said, go ahead.

Now we watch YATT work for a moment. It will create a new area called New_Area_1 or something. When it's done and nothing happens anymore in the YATT window, close it and open your new area. *drumroll*

Oi! Now what is that? Nice terrain but silly Casa got the textures all wrong! Oh well, let's start o... NO! Don't fret!

Because Obsidian is so awesome, we got the texture swapper in the toolset! In your Terrain palette, Textures, remember? This will make it all good!

In case you don't know how it works, just hover your mouse over a tile and you see the textures assigned to it in the textures palette (see above pic). If you swap a texture now, it'll be replaced in the whole area. So let's open the texture swapper.

Now swap textures as you like and see what happens. Just be careful with one thing: Never swap two different textures for the same one, or you lose a texture layer. Make sure you always have 4 textures.
After a bit of swapping I guess I ended up with a result I can live with. Nothing great, but it'll do for the test.

Now we can place the start thingy, bake it and run.

Well, not so bad for a start. Look at how nice the minimap looks! I bet it'd look ten times better once I replace the stupid default daynight cycle. Oh, have I ever mentioned that you should NEVER use the default daynight settings? It looks crappy! If you want to create a nice atmosphere, spend an afternoon with making a new default. I know it's tedious, but... hell, the original campaign would actually look not THAT bad if they just had a better daynight setting... while you're there, also always make sure you tint your water... ack! Okay, before I start ranting too much, that's it for now. Maybe I helped someone, maybe not. I'm just glad I finally figured this out and I'd also appreciate any additional tips from the Pros to optimize this workflow. Casa out.

Picking it up again... I hope

No, Middleforest isn't completely dead yet. It just smells funny.
After all my failed attempts at doing some techy stuff (first the scripting, then creating custom content) I simply had to take a long break and do other things. There's real life for one, and for the lonely evenings some other games to try out. After all my Singleplayer adventures like Skyrim etc. I needed my roleplay/interaction fix again and tried both other NWN2 PWs and some commercial MMOs just to get an idea where I'm going and what my aim is. After a long time I came to the conclusion that my goals haven't changed and my basic ideas for a PW are still good ideas.

There's no alternative to Neverwinter Nights multiplayer if you're looking for immersive roleplay in a multiplayer game. No MMO can even get close, and nothing will come in the near future. While some MMOs have an interesting concept ( TSW ), they're still MMOs and you will never find the same quest qualities and roleplay quality as in a NWN world made by and played by people who are looking for the same thing. I actually liked some MMO ideas, Age of Conan wasn't half as bad as I expected, but still you have the same boring and meaningless hack&slay, dull quests and, sorry, stupid players. Rift, a game that got nice reviews a while ago, was on a Steam sale and I grabbed it for like 7 Euros. I couldn't even make it past the first noob quests, the dialogues and endless respawns are mind-numbing.

So no, MMOs are not what I'm looking for. I always wanted to have Middleforest lots of things that make it feel like a singleplayer game at times. A very good example is Dasaria, another NWN2 world. I haven't played long enough to go into detail about the setting, world design and combat stuff, but their initial quests for new players are perfectly done. Cutscenes with emotes, great dialogues, quests that are actually fun to play (Vampires!). A huge thumbs up for that, Dasaria guys! The only nitpick I have is that the quests are repeatable after every reset, but well...

As for area design, that's where I aim for more, and from all the worlds I tried Vulpina still makes the nicest areas. I wish more modules would go into so much detail and love for atmosphere. Couple this with Dasaria's quest/writing quality and you're already close to perfection. One world that I tried early on that had also some very nice areas was Legacy - Dark Age of Britain. One big problem I want to avoid in Middleforest though is that you notice that there are different builders with different styles. Other than that, it also has something I like: A unique level system with roleplay focus. However, I don't like permadeath servers, so there you go, Legacy, have fun without me.

Anyway, all this only makes me want to pick up building again. Of course I will run into the very same problems as before, mostly tech hurdles and the lack of a scripter. Also, as hard as it is, I will have to rebuild Rungholt. I never build for lowend systems, especially nowadays anyone with a mild interest in games will have a setup that works for NWN2 at a good quality. But hell, Rungholt makes my own comp melt, and I don't want to know how it feels with many players around too. So, it looks like areas have to be split up, smaller quarters etc. Which is actually quite nice for the atmosphere. But yeah, lots of work. Fortunately, at least area design is fun.

.. and another laptop post

No, this is not turning into a hardware blog now, no worries. I don't want to show off my gadgets either, not that the thing up there is one. It's again NWN2 related, trust me. :)

So, what about that lappy up there? Well, it's a cheapo laptop, Europeans will know what Lidl is (a supermarket) and what kind of hardware is sold there. I didn't buy that thing either, my dad did. Unfortunately, my dad passed away early last month and left me with the burden of all his stuff (no sympathies needed, we hadn't much contact, although I'm not exactly happy about the sudden loss).

Well, anyway, that lappy up there was his and it's as good as new since he obviously had no clue how to use it. It's recent enough to be not complete junk too, something like 2008 or so. Well, my first thought was, I don't need it. I already have a lubberlee lappy (see last post) and a big comp for all my stuff, so... sell? It's not worth much, I almost considered giving it away as a gift.
Then it occurred to me... when I was working on Middleforest, wasn't one of my big worries about running a PW having to get a dedicated server? One powerful enough to run the server application, but still with a low power consumption that you can hide away in a corner and forget about? My initial thought was getting a used Mac Mini, but even a used one costs money I usually don't have lying around. So... here's the solution, my new Middleforest dedicated server! Say Hi server! 

I already wiped the HD and installed a fresh NWN2, now I'm in the geekish process of reinstalling MySQL and NWNX2. All nothing compared to the router issues I'll have again, I'm sure. Anyway, this takes away a big burden from my past building plans, and I can leave a server up and running for test purposes now while building or playing elsewhere.

I'm still wondering about the specs though and would be interested in what other people with PW experience have used as a minimum server machine for NWN2. This lappy features a Pentium Dual Core T3200  processor at 2.00 Ghz (actually an entry-level Core 2 Duo Merom with no level 3 cache), which I figured should be enough for a server (my thought was that any dual core would do). 2GB RAM might or might not be sufficient (maybe someone has insights?), the HD runs at 5400rpm like most laptop HDs, not sure if this will affect performance. I doubt I'll ever see 20, maybe not even 10 regular players at once, so I doubt I'll need MMO specs. Anyway, if someone has NWN2 server experience or some tips, they'll be welcome.

Custom content, LOTS and LOTS.

Have we all survived the winter so far, yes? A while ago I actually thought I'm a winter person, lots of thoughts and inspiration during the dark season. In fact though, I couldn't get myself to even open a single area during the last month (good riddance, December) and spent most of my time with long rants, as the blog proves. What I managed to do though was updating some haks and cleaning others, and only now I'm actually starting to make use of the new stuff.

Speaking of that, and my older post about autodownloader problems, I need to rant a little again. When you read through the various Persistant World-related posts at the Bioware boards, one of those things you constantly hear is that you should go with the times and use the autodownloader-ready haks from the vault as is, so players don't have to download the same content twice. Sounds fair enough, but the reality looks more like builders having to manage a neverending list of haks (who wants to assign, say, 72 individual haks to their module?), having to find out which content overrides which, and if the next of tiny hak #57 update won't conflict with larger hak #62 below. If it does and, say, a new model in hak #57 suddenly overrides that awesome model in #62, it's time for fixing. But hold! And that's the problem number two, you can't fix the original hak, you need to pull the content up into a custom hak, because the next time the autodownloader is used the fixed hak would be overwritten again...

And that's the next problem I already ran into sometimes... a good example is Heed's PC Tools. The original hak has a bug, and there are two different fixes for it. One is a fix within the hak itself, the other is a fix in the script. Now, both fixes seem to work, so some builders used the hak fix, the others the script fix. The result is, if you go server hopping, chances are good the PC Tools are downloaded and replaced over and over again, or even worse, if you come across a server that doesn't use the ADL, players suddenly can't use their PC tools there anymore (because they played a different server before) and can't figure out why. It took me a long while too to figure out why all of sudden my PC Tools in Middleforest stopped working, even though I was sure I fixed them... after a long time I remembered being serverhopping and found out I had a different version, but hell, that took me some days. Anyway, fixing these things is a major headache because more often then not you first have no clue why things suddenly go wrong, then you need to track down the culprit.

Next thing is, bloat. I shouldn't really rant about bloat, given the size of Middleforest's current hak set (it exceeds old 3C). However, that doesn't mean I just grabbed everything fancy out there and made a giant compilation, no, I DO care about the content and it's quality. Some of the largest haks I use are armor compilations for instance, and a huge amount of outfits in, say, Aleanne's or the Always Summer clothing haks simply neither fit the setting nor do they meet my quality standards anymore, they are bloat. I recently cleaned up all the clothing haks and was able to reduce the size by over 300MB, plus making room for other outfits again.

Last but not least, I do believe that a 500MB download or even a Gigabyite (hey, I'm not there yet!) is not too much for a PW anymore. These days kids download Gigabytes of Free2Play games all the time only to install them once, try them out and delete them again. Singleplayer modules are a different matter though, if I made a singleplayer game, I'd carefully choose every single model and only add what I definitely need in this or that scene. For a PW project though, I think it's important to have a good base which gives you much of building freedom right from the beginning, because you intend to use it much longer. A PW admin doesn't try to attract players for a single quick playthrough, but for a long-time game with an open end. I think players who are really interested in a certain Persistant World understand that and don't mind a single huge download, especially in times of terrabyte harddrives and broadband interwebz. But massive hak changes later, while the server already runs, that's much more painful.

Anyway, that's why I decided for a custom Middleforest hak set. Mainly because I don't have to manage more than a dozen haks, because I know pretty well what content is where in case of trouble, no sudden hak updates that break something, and because I can decide what of a hak's content I want to use and what not.

Moving on to what's inside the haks. So, why has nobody ever told me that there's a NWN2 conversion of one of my favourite NWN1 tilesets at the vault? Tsk. Now that's one of my latest additions, and even given it's higher fantasy content, I must say I'm quite pleased with how good some of the buildings fit into Rungholt's elven quarter (and not only there). I love Tupoun's City hak, but as nice as it looks, a whole city only built with it doesn't offer that many surprises anymore. That's where the CODI buildings can really make a difference, I think.





There are some minor problems with them though, that's why they need to be used with care. First, they are not tintable. Not such a big deal because the City Hak buildings are and can be adjusted to match the CODI buildings. The next, bigger problem is that the buildings apparently don't block the line of sight, which can lead to game mechanical issues. There's also the point that they don't fade the same way as the NWN2 buildings, I'm not sure if that will lead to big camera troubles or not - in the toolset it was a little strange though because they fade out at some angles and I'm always scared I accidently deleted one... anyway, still a wonderful addition.

The next thing that kept me busy last weekend was skyboxes, and that's not a success story. Initially, I got very excited about them - they are very easy to make technically, and Google helped me to find some panorama skies that look great in game.
Before you know-betters ask, no, it's not the fact that Obsidian decided for some utterly silly double-image-wrapping thing... what's that, the non-know-betters ask? Oh, the image is used TWO times on the skybox in game, so if your image has a sun or moon or tower or other landscape feature, it'll show up 2 times in game, once in front of you, once behind. Yeah, silly. It's okay with a mountain, but not so much with a sun. However, no, I found images that work well enough.

No, the big big problem is that the stupid skybox doesn't change in game. You might have a skybox option in every single day/night cycle stage, but nuh-uh, if you want to use different skies for different times of the day, forget it - the game only uses the default one. That's not the worst, the worst is that the game has no options to actually darken or brighten the image, so if you have a bright blue sky picture during the daytime, you'll have the same bright blue sky picture during the night. Bye bye immersion.

As you can see below though, I found a way to darken the scene during the night still. It doesn't look like midnight, but at least like nightfall, say, 9pm. But, this is only made possible by using the bloom options and lowering them a lot. That means, a player who doesn't use Bloom doesn't see any of it and still faces a bright sky. Plus, lowering the bloom options that much not only darkens the sky, but every highlight in game, including all light sources like torches, fires, the nightvision effect. Long story short, it's unusable for a PW, a weekend wasted. Anyway, just to show you what could've been:




Yeah, I shed a tear about that... the default sky now looks so terrible to me...

A last thing I found at the vault recently is not a hak, but some scripts. Thanks to my excessive Fallout playing, I grew fond of the idea to have a realistic resting system that, doh, uses beds. Yeah, no "I feel so exhausted, let me kneel down for 10 seconds" anymore. Na... I like the idea of having to look for a nice place to spend the night... a free bed, a rented bed or a simple sleeping bag. Additionaly, (I admit I got that from an adult mod in Fallout, but liked especially that functionality) I want to animate the process properly. Not just click-rested-done, na, a proper animation has to go with it. And, if you use a sleeping bag in the wilds, the chance to get disturbed by a thug.

And hooray, it's already been done long ago by Patcha! Isn't that nice... now, the problem is, Patcha's system contains a little too much, I only want some of the basics really. I know many players cringe when they hear "bedroll", the first thing coming to mind is HCR with the mean resting restrictions. I don't want that, I'm no friend of rest timers, rations, partial or no spell/feat/hitpoint refreshment and all that. I just want something more immersive than kneeling down for a few seconds, that's all. Anyway, yeah, that's the plan for the near future, I hope I can use Patcha's scripts as a base for something more simple and convenient, however knowing myself I'll cry for scripting help again as soon as copy and paste won't do it anymore.

Well, so much for now, as you can see I haven't given up building completely yet.

P.S. I almost forgot, after all my Fallout tallking lately I must point you at Mr. Nixon's project here. Looks awesome, I'm sure I'll keep an eye on it.

There are no words...

.. to describe all the feelings this message causes in me.
Seriously... I want to go on a killing spree, I want to break stuff, I want to...
What the hell do you want from me, autodownloader?
Yes, I admit I've been a bad bad Casa and decided to clean up my Middleforest module. That means, I exported all areas, made a new module by the same name, with all the scripts and blueprints and stuff, reimported everything, used the exact same module properties, used the exact same settings for the autodownloader, assigned the exact same servers, assigned the exact same files to them... WHAT THE FUCK?!

Seriously, I hate hate hate hate hate this thing. It cost me 4 hours so far, all the settings are the same as in the old module and all the files it wants sit on the server just waiting to be used.

Rant day: Obsidian, Fallout, Communities, Influences

It's time for some long ramblings again, please forgive me. I should make some general games blog someday, but there are too many of those already. However, this is sort of NWN2 related again, and also very much to my Middleforest, because believe it or not, I'm getting a lot of influences and ideas from other games, even if they seem to have nothing in common with NWN2 or medieval fantasy.
Like, say, Fallout.
Well actually, Fallout has a few things in common with NWN2, first off it's a Roleplaying Game and last but not least the developers.
And that's reason number two for my rambling today, Obsidian. The first one would be talking about the game itself, and the last reason is a post by fellow blogger Alazander over here.

Now, how do I get all this together? So, Obsidian, where do I start?

Over in the Dammendrech chat, they're usually called Obtusian or Obsidiot and whenever something goes wrong on the server, the first line is "It's an Obsidiot game, what do you expect?" and they are generally called incompetent. Well, there's so much truth in that, but the point is, Obsidian is actually a likeable little studio with a lot of potential and a lot of flaws and bad luck. And Fallout New Vegas is an ideal example for this.

Let's first look at Obsidian's game list, maybe over at the Wikipedia because that's my bridge.
That list isn't long and as we all know, mostly sequels. What had all these sequels in common? They were kind of... lacking. What were they lacking? I'll come to that.

The other thing we see is that Obsidian was founded by and employs people who made some legendary games, last but not least the original two Fallout parts (Black Isle/Interplay), Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate together with Bioware etc. Also not to forget members of Troika with now legendary flops like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or Arcanum. Today all veteran roleplayers still start drooling over these names.

So... what the hell is wrong with Obsidian? They always seem to make "okay" sequels that are said to be less good than the first part, and they are legendary for their game bugs.

But let's be fair and objective for a moment, because I'm getting a bit tired of all the Obsidian bashing. Their games have some serious flaws, but also a lot of strenghts, and with Fallout New Vegas I've found the best example. It shows both sides very well, and the comparison with Bethesda's original Fallout 3 works incredibly well. Because this time, fortunately, Obsidian didn't try to reinvent the wheel on the engine side like in NWN2.
That earned them some bad reviews and "outdated" remarks, but actually, I guess it saved their arses. At least they couldn't mess it up completely. Because yes, it's true, they aren't good at making a smooth engine, not at all.
But the main thing they aren't good at is another, and I think this is what earned them their reputation. It's not the programming, but the Art. I think Obsidian is made of geeks, geeks of the sort like the old veteran roleplayers who claim at some game forum that they don't care for anything else than the text in the game. They still enjoy their text-based RPG from the late eighties and don't need visuals at all. Unfortunately, they have to go with the times, try and... fail.

But now, let's get to Fallout 3 and New Vegas. First off, they are both very high in my favorite games list, but one's the clear winner.
All you need to know about the difference between the two games is the two opening scenes which were also used for trailers. They tell almost everything. So, lean back and start with Bethesda's.




And here comes Obsidian's:



Okay, do I really have to explain it or is it obvious? Does nobody else have this "Meh" feeling after the New Vegas one? They use the exact same game engine and tools, but... is it just me, or does Obidian simply have no clue how to do arts? Atmosphere?
Bethesda's is spot on with the atmosphere, it's rich in detail and sets the dark, gloomy mood for the game. And the music by the Ink Spots was the best marketing move anyway, although I hear kids hate it.

Obsidian though, you just get the idea they try to compete... but they can't. And they fail miserably. The very first seconds are okay, but then the camera moves to the New Vegas Strip and poof... immersion gone. There's no detail, nothing... a perfectly clean, plastic Strip that cries out "I'm rendered!", then comes that soldier guy who's there for the same reason as the one in Bethesda's: "I need to look totally badass so the kids buy the game". Nice try, he's okay, but after all that plastic look of the Strip he can't save anything anymore. Only nice touch: The headshot. It's sort of funny, and that actually is the point where they did something right. But then... I just have to post a pic...



That's the point where they probably lost the young ones completely. Are we watching Toy Story (1)? Obsidian, please.. before you do something like that, don't do any cinematics! You scare off the whole gamer crowd who buy graphics cards beyond $70... it's not that it's not high end, it's that... it's just bad! And let's remind ourselves this is a pre-rendered scene, not ingame graphics... the point is, ingame the characters look actually more realistic than that. Let's move on...


Do I have to say more? This area up there... how can you use it for the intro that is supposed to get players into the mood, how can you use this camera angle, how can you NOT throw some Photoshop filters over it or just use artwork... seriously, I'm not saying that Obsidian should use high end graphics, not at all, that's not the point... it's just that you can get better and more immersive screens in a 10 year old game. And really, it's not nitpicking on one pic here, it's the whole trailer, isn't it?

Lastly, let's take a quick look at Obsidian's recent first own development, Alpha Protocol. As everyone who's a bit interested in games or in Obsidian's doings outside NWN2 should know, this game flopped. Badly. And that was my first impression right from the first screenshot I saw... that it will flop badly.
Ingame graphics are not everything, I agree, and a good game surely doesn't need high end graphics. But there's a certain point at which the bad art design actively ruins the game... the story suggests a serious moment, but the graphics are so unintentionally comical that you actually have to laugh about it.

As an example for small mood-killers you might have seen too... Dragon Age, romance scene... it was supposed to be a really romantic moment, and the game is so well written you were really in the mood. Then they start this "sex" cutscene in those ridiculous undies with rather weird animations and I actually snorted my coffee over the table. Now, in Dragon Age's case it couldn't ruin the game, it was just a bit funny.

The problem with Obsidian's games is, they are worse. And according to all reviews I've seen about Alpha protocol, I think that was what ruined the game completely - the bad marketing surely didn't help too, nothing from the ads to the game box was in any way atractive. All of the reviews said the story's quite great and the game is surely worth playing... if you can ignore the horribly outdated graphics and the comical animations. Most said that some combat animations were unbearable. Reminds you of another game? Maybe NWN2? Let's look at the Alpha Protocol trailer for completition, there's some ingame scenes at the end that don't look totally unbearable, but by no means unique either.



Now... would you say this trailer gets anyone into the stores? Even to a torrent site?
To tell you the truth I was almost praying for Obsidian that this game wouldn't flop, that there would be people less picky than me who'd buy, play and enjoy it. Didn't happen. I was even expecting Alpha Protocol to be the nail in Obsidian's coffin. Glad that didn't happen though, not yet... maybe New Vegas saved them... but who knows how much of the cake will actually be left for Obsidian, given the first big name on the box is still Bethesda.

Now, enough of that, onwards to New Vegas. Maybe I'm an oracle or something, but my gut feeling has yet again not failed me. I like my guts, they always tell me the truth, and they did about this too.

Because, surprise, I totally loved the game. Obsidian failed to ruin it, quite the opposite, they made it a small masterpiece and definitely better than Bethesda's Fallout 3. And that was the first feeling I had when I heard they'd develop it. Why?

1. They have an engine ready and can't screw up by making a new one, so that's out of the way.
2. They don't try to change the graphics, pheeeew.

Game magazines gave them worse reviews for keeping the old engine, and yes, on metacritics Fallout 3 scores better than the successor. But hell, well done Obsidian, keep your hands off things you don't understand and work on your strong side. That's the writing. And hands on, on the storytelling side, Bethesda cannot compete.

Fallout 3's wasteland was a great place to explore with so much atmosphere and detail and stuff to do that it outshone the big failure it was on the story side. It had stories and quests, sure... but my, most of them were really lacking. They were short, didn't have much detail, many of them were not much better than your usual Fed-Ex quests.
The main storyline was linear and could be completed in a rush, it offered, wait... one or two choices at the end, and your general influence on the world was quite black & white.. either you do the good thing and earn something good for it, or you do some bad thing and be a bad person.

Bleh.

Now, my personal Fallout 3 trauma is this person, she's called Clover:


Clover was my favourite companion in Fallout 3, and I hate travelling alone. Not because they add to the firepower, just because I like company. I loved the dog too, but the dog didn't speak, so I ran my Karma all the way down to being horribly evil just to get this "crazy slave girl (ingame advertisment)" as a companion. I mean, who wants to travel with a Paladin in heavy armor, please...

Now, the actual trauma is, I could've sticked with the dog.

Miss Clover here could've been a really rich person... she's a little masochistic, very sadistic and was the private slave of the big badass slave trader in the game, one of two girls (Crimson & Clover, haha). She could've had stories to tell you can't imagine, or just doing random fun stuff that actually fit her "crazy" reputation.

She doesn't. She has exactly three one-liners as voice-overs and the same amount of dialogue options to adjust her companion AI. She's a robot. A dog.
Actually, the dog barked more than she had to say. And don't think it was just her, no... all companions in Fallout 3 are that "rich". They are.. aimbots? Meatshields for lazy players? Something like that. It was just sad, but it's one major point of Fallout 3: Even though being a RPG, it's clearly aimed at the shooter crowd a little too much.

What I was hoping for when New Vegas was announced was that Obsidian did exactly that: Leave the working base alone and work on those parts Bethesda failed in. And Obsidian delivered.

Here's one of my favourite companions in New Vegas, Veronica. Veronica is extremely nice and a little bit silly, babbles a lot, even unasked. She has a long background story including a girlfriend (another companion is gay, in both cases you learn it just from a side remark they throw at some time and nothing else follows, which just adds to the realism of the fleshed-out backgrounds). She has her own long questline just like all of the eight companions you can choose from, and was generally a pleasure to have around. She wasn't Clover though, but still, she was fine.


The companion example is just the most obvious one, but Obsidian really played out all their writing strenghts in New Vegas. As for the setting, the Mojave desert, it's not as detailed graphics-wise (surprise!) and hasn't as many "Oooh" effects as Fallout 3, another thing some reviews mentioned, but it's certainly not ugly and still has a lot of surprises.

You really just have to force yourself over the badly done intro and the first hour or two, and suddenly, with the first sidequests, you notice how rich the world is, and how incredibly well the writing is done. Main storyline? Ah, forget it, the sidequests are rich ones. There are some that are just told in a few computer logs and scattered pages, and yet some players put up movies of them on youtube and go on about how great they are.

Some places tell the sad stories just with a room and scattered placeables, you walk in and imagine the big story behind it. But not to forget NPC dialogues... even the small sidequests are often told like a main quest in any other game, characters you meet all have a unique personality and feel truly alive. And last but not least, there's one thing only Obsidian could do: Bring the humor from the original Fallout series back into the game.

That's not to say Fallout 3 didn't have any humor, there were some funny parts in it too, but most of it was actually in the area design, not in what you actually experienced.

New Vegas though does it spot-on, and I can even see Obsidian's writers leaning back with a huge grin thinking "see kids, that's how it's done". There were many parts that were incredibly funny, but yet again told in a way you take the whole story still serious. Fallout 3 had cynism too, but it was too gloomy, too serious. New Vegas is more lighthearted and yet more immersive and realistic as well, never silly.

That's one thing the trailer actually transported well, the one point. Both have the martial looking guy in armor, made to attract the shooter kiddies I guess. But Bethesda's trailer is just gloomy, while, well... the headshot in Obsidian's is sort of funny, and everything is a bit more colorful, and I assume it's meant to be.

Both games have the same violence level and animations, but in Fallout 3 it feels worse because the game feels too serious. In New Vegas there's always that slight hint of humor and being over the top on purpose. Fallout 3 takes itself damn serious, New Vegas doesn't.

I could go on and on about how much Obsidian improved things here, like the unforeseeable consequences of your doings that are at least on par with The Witcher, and in this case it outshines all the negative parts. A few hours in the game and the miserable trailer is forgotten. The area design is not on par with Bethesda's, but since they mostly use the same stuff, it's not bad at all, and lastly, it's different enough to clearly set the game apart from it's predecessor. Where Obsidian tried to retexture things (like, new outfits), it actually is bad, mostly. Not bad enough to ruin it this time though, and there are already mods out that fix these things.



Fallout 3 needed armies of super mutants to scare you, in New Vegas you should better be scared of these little buggers or giant insects...


Now, as for the Obsidian part, here's some sort of conclusion.

Obsidian needs a big brother. Like Bethesda, Bioware, whatever.

Or they really really have to work on their Art and Programming department, although, I think art is the real problem. Yes, Obsidian's games are buggy, but hands on, Fallout 3 was and still is a bug-ridden crashy beast too, I'd call it much less stable than NWN2... just that it runs smoother as long as it actually runs is a major advantage.

New Vegas is of course buggy as hell too... but really, most games are. I played Stalker, I tried to get others to run that failed completely, Obsidian's games are certainly not as clean out of the box as Bioware's latest, but they are not the worst I've ever seen. What they really really need is atmosphere, players are much more forgiving if the crashing game looks immersive and well designed... see Fallout 3, it crashes like crazy but people are forgiving because they're soaked in.

Now, the big news of the weekend was Bethesda's announcement of The Elder Scrolls 5, ask Ben.
While I'm not that much interested in it really (never got warm with Oblivion, even though I tried multiple times), it means one other thing - Bethesda will probably not work on Fallout 4 for a long time, even though it's an extremely successful license.
Now, but since Obsidian already made a successful New Vegas, and Bethesda has a new engine ready for TES: V... one can dream, no?
In fact, I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if Bethesda and Obsidian would cooperate for a much longer time, and if Obsidian's in trouble as a studio, why not even buy them up? A fusion would be good for both sides, together they could do awesome things. Wouldn't surprise me at all if that happened.

Last. I mentioned Alazander's Blog entry above, and I'll get back to that now before I fall from my chair after this monstrous post. The different communities and why we should stick with NWN2. After exploring also the Bethesda modding sites, I think that fits in here well.

Agreed, on everything. NWN1/2 is a special case in this whole modding community pool, and even if we forget about multiplayer, I don't see any alternatives. Even more, I think NWN2 has matured a lot and it's a great base for everything.
Seriously folks, and I mean you, NWN1 veterans, you dropped off way too soon and never really gave the game a chance after the second patch didn't fix everything. Give it a go again... the game is a very good and stable base, it has remaining bugs, but hell, NWN1 has too.

The overcomplicated toolet is actually easy to use once you get the hang of it - I tried The Witcher's Djinni, Fallout 3's Gecko and Dragon Age's toolset so far and everytime I ran back to NWN2 quickly. For multiplayer, I don't expect any alternative anymore. In the long future.
Atari is in the middle of a lawsuit over DnD, so forget it, and all the others will never give us Co-op and PWs for free. The future of commercial online games is only in MMOs with micropayments, I don't expect anyone to throw us a bone anymore.

I wish people hadn't given up on NWN2 so fast, it offers the same modability as NWN1 and much more freedom in design, and now, 4 years later, everyone should be able to play it fine on lower end hardware.

And there's the communities Alazander talked so much about... there's none comparable to NWN's. What he says about Dragon Age is what I also see over at the Fallout and Oblivion modding sites. Take my complaints about Clover up there... I bet if NWN had had such bad companions, it would've taken a few months and someone would've put up a mod that adds dialogue to them. At the Fallout Nexus you will find mods that make them better in fights or turn them into japanese lolitas, but anything that adds immersion and story? Forget it. Don't get me wrong, there are some great and good mods for all these games, but they are all weapon stuff, technical, retextures... an immersive, playable module? Same thing as Dragon Age. Technically possible, nobody bothers. They want some ultra sharp textures, naked Anime companions and a cool machine gun (I'm not opposed to good technical mods nor some nude skins *cough*, but really... anything else?).

Anyway, in case you wait for the next big thing to come, better stop... everything after NWN2 failed to deliver so far, so why not look at this little diamond in the rough again?
And if you ever had the same impression as me - NWN2 looks just ugly... that's Obsidian's area design, they have the tools, they can't use them. But you can.

Rumors of my demise have been... etc.

(warning, post contains mild pixel nudity)

Ha! Thought I gave up, didn't you? Well, I won't do you that favor yet. I don't want to say I was terribly active since my last post, but I did a little more than it might seem still. Not everything, or let's say, as good as nothing of it I considered worth a blog post yet, though.

When it comes to area building, I reworked a lot of the existing ones, but you wouldn't see that on a screenshot. For example, with a bleeding heart I split up Rungholt into 4 quarters, because it just seemed so unplayable to me as one giant area. And, it's not half as bad as I feared. However, the performance gain was only half as much as I hoped for too, so... well, that's one. On screenies it still looks the same as before.

I made interiors too, a whole start/introduction base. I'm quite proud of it, but you know how interiors are, they look boring on screenshots, so I didn't bother.
What else... loadscreens. Expect a lot of forest loadscreens in game. Again, no screenies, surprise surprise.

But now, with some screenies that might make some of you literally facepalm, a huge timewaster project of mine lately - the evolution of my nudie stuff.
Oi, you might say, silly Casa, that old pervert, only has nekkid elves in mind anymore.
Wait! It's not that easy. And first and foremost, it's not about nudity, it's about clothing. So let me try to explain my old skin project again, because now I've made a lot of progress with that.

The point is, there's a lot of custom clothes for our characters and NPCs over at the vault, clothing haks almost everyone uses, like, say, Chimneyfishes Always Summer. You know the kind, short dresses showing a lot of skin, some look a bit silly, some are actually quite nice and useful. All of them have one thing in common, they are based on a nude skin, Zylch's Nude.

So, let's keep in mind: Nude skins are not only for running around nekkid, nude skins serve as a base for all those clothes that show a bit of skin.

Right, next step. There are a few problems with this base. First off, it's a bit old. I know, I'm nitpicking, but the quality of Zylch's base is really not up to date anymore. Edgy, low polygon, and very washed out textures. That people who made clothing textures on the base re-jpg'ed the skin over and over didn't help too.
Then there's the problem with some personal taste, like, let's say, a skinny elf girl might not want to carry around those huge bombs... you know. Not to mention the male base by the way (yes, that exists too!), I won't lose another word about it. So, first problem: Quality.

Okay, you might say I don't care for the polygons and washed out textures at all.
But the main problem I've had with all these clothes is: There are other races than humans in the game. Some of them don't have piggie-pink heads. Some of them have blue heads. By default, not by the skin tint you apply as a player on character creation. So if you make a Water Genasi and equip one of those nude skins or skimpy dresses from the existing haks, that looks crap. Totally. You can't tint the ugliness over, no way. Please see the screenshot of the Yuan-Ti further below if you still don't know what I'm talking about.

I know, many people don't care, they claim they started with text-based adventures in the mid-eighties and don't look at anything else than the chatbox anyway. Well, I like eyecandy and some sort of immersion, and I like the head of my character appearing to be somehow related to the body beneath. Huff. Rant over. *exhales*

So, what can we do about the head transplantation? Make retextures of every armor, for every possible character out there? Impossible. But... we can start with trying to make at least the nude bases that cover a lot of the various heads.
Still a hell lot of work you say? Yes, it is, I can tell you because I've done it.. even in various variations for male, female, small chest, large, etc... it's a bit crazy, I know. I started with this when Jester posted his new nude base to the vault, a base that exceeds Zylch's in quality by far. Not only that, he also included different variations and a proper male base, so almost everything is covered. Well, besides dwarves, gnomes and halforcs, but that's nothing new, they never got any love before, why would they now? (actually, I'd welcome them and make skins for them right away).

Anyway, Jester delivered a high quality base, and what's even more fantastic, a solution to make new dresses without having to replace/paint on the actual nude base.

Okay, that's the part I was never able to explain to anyone until they could see it in game. So... the idea is, you have the nude skin, plus a base to make dresses on that does not use the armor slot, but the belt model instead.
Sigh... let me try it like this. You make a new armor in the toolset, you choose a nice little dress, done. To add detail, you change the armor parts then, like boots, gloves, and belt. Now, with Jester's base you make a nude armor, and change the belt part to a whole dress that overlays the nudie skin beneath. Where the belt dress is transparent, the nude skin still shows.
So, that solution opens the possibility to make the base of the outfit the player's own custom nude skin, and the whole dress he/she wears just goes into the beltslot overlaying that base, so the uncovered parts still show the original skin color. Ack, dammit, just look at the pictures.

Sadly, it wasn't just as easy as that. The first big problem was, while you can easily make dresses that show up as armorpart: belt, it was impossible to make an actual item that goes into the belt slot. Just didn't work, technical limitation, NWN2 engine doesn't want that. So back to the drawing board, and Jester played around a little and discovered the gloves slot would work. So, finally we went with a gloves slot solution that works perfectly.

There's a second option though, a scripted one: Run a script that changes armor_part_belt to a specific number, like, when the player equips an item. Sounds like the best solution, no? Haha, if NWN2 would actually do that. But no, NWN2 doesn't want to. There is a NWNX plugin that supports this, however, not everyone uses it, wants to use it or has an idea how to set it up. So, the solution for n00bs like me is using the gloves slot.

Anyway, let's illustrate that whole thing now so you finally get an idea what I'm rambling about:

The first pic here is a comparison of the nude bases. We use the greenish elf head here because it shows the effect Zylch vs. Jester's base and my custom skin best. I think you'll agree the quality has slightly improved and it looks more natural, yes?


Fine, this next pic shows how the skin lands in the player's inventory, so they can actually have it too, not just NPCs made in the toolset. I made a big mirror in a bathroom here that lets the player choose between the various options (and there are a lot!). On the left is Jester's default nude base, already looking quite fine, but not actually a match for the greenish elf, as you might agree. A few clicks further through the dialogue and our little elfie has found one that matches better.


And now our poor little elfie is all naked and will catch a cold! We must prevent that and give her some undies!
As you can see in the pic, her undies are just pretending to be a dress, game-mechanically they are gloves and wander into that slot. The nude skin stays where it is and is not unequipped. As you see in the small inventory pic of the character, our elf has it a bit warmer now.


Well, and the Undies are currently the big side project, actually. They take a while to make and I'm still a noob when it comes to texturing, especially with normal maps I'm still fighting a lot. Below you can see a little collection of working test undies I made so far. But don't think it'll be limited to undies, there are a lot of options to make whole dresses with long skirts, suits and whatnot. It just takes time.


And finally, the last pic to convince some that might be on the edge still... I think this comparison shows the difference best. Left is the underwear as it is currently present in... uh.. Chimneyfishes? Aleanne's? Not sure. The poor Yuan-Ti lass looks quite wrong in it. Right is my own conversion of the outfit to a gloves-slot dress, worn over the Yuan-Ti nudie skin.


Phhheeew... that was a long rant. Anyway, yes, this whole thing has taken a lot of my time lately. And a thousand cudos go to Jester for being incredibly helpful in the process. If you like the whole idea, run over to the vault and give his (1) stuff (2) a high vote, he deserves it.


Besides that... oh yeah, I made some areas too. Did I mention it? I know there might be one or two people in the world who are not interested in nudity, so for those freaks, I'll try to gather some screenies of the few (or rather, two - and it even rhymes) exterior areas I made completely new. This first one is, yeah - call me a copycat - a ship, and even a starting ship. It'll probably be the intro to Middleforest. BTW, what made it impossible for Obsidian to make some f....ing sails? Hello? White Sheets? That difficult? Apparently, because they have multiple ship models, but no sails. Well, a creative builder taught me tapestries and curtains do the job too, if you don't look too hard at it... Oh, and btw, it has underdecks.


Well, and this one... the screenies don't do it justice, but I'm terribly proud of it. I just wanted to try out the RWS cliffs and somehow ended up with this area. Hope you like it, I do.