Update on the Mod's Current Development

I mentioned some of this already in a few comments, but I owe it to everyone to make an official detailed posting. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing the speed-of-progress I would like from my mod, so rather than leave everyone in suspense and do a disservice, I'm temporarily suspending the mod's development until I have something substantial. I'm not cancelling it, I'm just suspending it. As I look at the months flying by based on my prior post dates, I'm realizing my development is not proceeding as quickly as I'd like, and I'm feeling embarrassed by the downtime.

This would be the part where an author makes excuses, such as they have a wife (I don't), kids to take care of (nope), or a dying relative (nah, I've been pretty lucky). I've been healthy, enjoying life, and my boy Trump even won the election. By all accounts, life is good. The blame is mostly because I didn't anticipate how difficult juggling multiple mod development can be, namely for Crusader Kings II. It's like writing multiple novels at once, only each novel requires a different tool to publish it (Clausewitz for CKII, Aurora for NWN). What's worse, I've built up a following for both titles, and people on both aisles asking for updates, lol. One distinction I can't ignore is the number of potential users -- I could mod for a currently active game with a vibrant growing community and have my mod enjoyed by up to thousands, or I can mod for a game with a small community and possibly have it enjoyed by a few hundred.

When I first started this mod, NWN Vault was still online and Lamb's Demonheart mod was still in development, so the game looked very attractive to me. Now, not so much, but considering how much work I've put into the story and what I've done in-game so far, it feels like a tremendous waste of time to quit on it all now. To put what I've done in perspective, the average Goosebumps novel is 22,000 words, and I've currently typed over 3x that much, yet I still have a long way to go. Oh, and I'm writing for free, and unlike a book author, writing is only half of my struggle -- the hard part is making it all work in Aurora. I've realized now why most mods exclusively focus on hack-and-slash, lol.

I'll offer an update when I have something concrete. Just to reiterate, I'm not cancelling the mod; I'm suspending it. I promise the next update I make on this blog will be a substantial one, because I'm exhausted throwing out minor posts just for the sake of reminding everyone I'm alive. Hell, maybe I'll just wait until the entirety of chapter one is complete, so I can redeem myself. Once I do that, I can finally start promoting the mod.

I hope no one has a history major in fantasy.

Greetings again, everyone. Admittedly, since my last post, I've mostly modded for Crusader Kings II, of which I released a Game of Thrones portrait overhaul pack (download link here, if interested). Plus, work at the printing plant has picked back up in preparation for the Halloween and Christmas book printing season, as we're getting hit with literally a record number of book order requests.

I've been touching up several areas of the script, and I finished a new area. I've taken my character through the paces of a few scenes to ensure everything feels satisfying. For example, with regards to the dialog, I'm cautiously avoiding info dumping the reader with too much history -- a mistake I feel the Age of Decadence PC game commits. I want my world to feel alive, but not at the expense of it reading like a history book. I initially introduced historical details to the player slowly across the main script, until I discovered something I laughably overlooked as I was modding my scenes -- random NPC villager dialog! I overlooked this because my direct inspiration was from Japanese visual novels, which don't have the luxury of utilizing random NPC conversations, but with NWN I can include my history as optional content, told through the lives of NPC's. I can also create in-game books for readers who want to further embrace my world's subtleties. 

I feel the difference between my mod and Age of Decadence is Age of Decadence sometimes force feeds this history to the player. My approach is more subtle and optional. For example, one NPC mentions he's paranoid by the Rooks standing around the city, like statues, staring ominously at everyone. From here, you can engage him for more details and offer your own opinion, or just ignore him. These conversations will provide insight into the world, while providing clues to the tension surrounding the city's inhabitants.

My world isn't Faerun or borrowed from anyone else's. I made it myself, and while I don't have the time to put as much detail into it as the Forgotten Realms would, I needed it to be my own world due to certain advanced technologies and bastardized Christian religious views to make my story work. I wasn't about to selfishly force these plot points into an existing world, and again, I didn't want to get caught up in world history. My focus is on the characters. I understand a certain amount of history must be told to make my world feel believable, but once I feel I've fulfilled that quota, it's on to the action. This train of thought is something I borrowed from Black Lilith adult visual novels, where the character's universe is loosely introduced to frame the content, but for the most part the focus is on the characters and what they do to one another.

I'll try to showcase more of the conversations in my next blog post, and expand on the character section in this blog. I don't want to reveal all the characters, but I have a few more locked down that I've discovered are too major to ignore that I'd like to discuss.

Obsidian and Paradox's "Tyranny" and how it relates to my mod.

This isn't an update, but I wanted to talk about a game currently in development that has me excited because it is very reminiscent of the approach I'm taking to my mod. It's called Tyranny, and it's a joint project between Paradox Interactive and Obsidian. It utilizes Pillars of Eternity's graphics engine, so it shares the look and feel of a Neverwinter Nights game with the classic isometric RPG perspective. It's not often games explore evil as a central concept, and even fewer have tried it without parodying it (*cough* Overlord). Tyranny might be the first genuinely evil and serious game I've come across.

Now you're probably thinking, "There are several games you choose to be evil. How is this different?" According to what we know from the website and a developer diary, when you start the game, you discover evil has already won; the good guys lost! Second, you have a position of high authority within this evil faction. Most developers would have started the player as a slave/rebel and had them work their way up to overthrow this evil, but apparently, you won't be doing that. Furthermore, a person of your lofty status should be powerful, so we're promised we won't be killing rats. After all, your character contributed to evil winning in the first place!

So how does this relate to my mod? There are similarities, but because it contains some detective story elements, I've made the factions and character motivations vague. The Church of Knox has misconstrued evil inclinations, but they try not to wear evil on their sleeves. The Church's intentions are justified under the pretext of keeping it's citizens safe, but at what point does safety and security begin to restrict the very people they're trying to protect? Your character's stuck in a political whirlwind of conflicting interests, and while I can't be specific due to spoilers, I can say it's not as simple as Church vs. heretics. I imagine Tyranny's characters (whoever they will be), are similar to some of my characters who will exploit others and abuse positions of authority. Furthermore, your character in my mod can be quite evil, and Malakai actively encourages this behavior. I will start the player off weak and at lvl 1, but this is important to create a sense of vulnerability and to put the player in a position of being exploited, otherwise the player could simply fight their way out to escape their problems. Finally, my mod isn't about good vs. evil, because there was never good to begin with! After all, aren't all humans inherently evil? You can take that argument up with Adam and Eve!

Obviously, Tyranny is made by a group of people, so there are certain ambitious I can't match. Tyranny incentivizes multiple play-throughs, but my mod will be lucky to get 2-3 play-throughs. I'll probably have most of my major decisions come near the ending half of the mod to cut down on excessive branching paths. Reputation, journal entries, and alignment adjustments will calculate what path your protagonist takes. There will be bad endings along the way to keep the player on their toes, but I can't afford the time to branch out from each bad ending.

But hey, here is what it all comes down to: My mod has sex. I doubt Tyranny can do that without cutting away from the action, but if I'm wrong, I applaud them. Pillars of Eternity didn't even have romance, and was a major reason I quit it. I understand they didn't include it because Pillars of Eternity was a Kickstarter and they wanted to focus on gameplay, but it doesn't change the fact it didn't have romance! Maybe the video game industry can one day mature enough to reach the realm of TV, like Game of Thrones. The people who don't want sex in games don't have to play them, period.

Game of Mods. Plugging away on chapter one.

Hello everyone, hope you all are enjoying Game of Thrones season six debut! I'm continuing to build up the first chapter of my NWN mod for its eventual release. A lot of it is still in bits and pieces, but the first scene is done in its entirety, which I'm glad because it might be one of my hardest scenes in the mod due to  the use of cinematics and character movement waypoints. I also have a sex scene done in its entirety, which I may include at the end of chapter one. I've also completed a number of the maps/locations, and the script for chapter one is entirely done, so at this point I'm just plugging my resources in.


Speaking of chapters, now that I've further refined the script and created more of the in-game content, I'm reversing my decision on releasing a demo. Now, the demo will be chapter one in its entirety. I'm doing this for two reasons: First, I don't want people to replay through the content twice to test my mod, although I appreciate everyone who offered to! Second, chapter one is basically the introduction, so I know it won't contain many profound branching options, so it makes the most sense to get that content out of the way before I start going crazy with the rest of the story. The less stuff I have to worry about transferring to chapter two, the better. With this in mind, it's possible chapter two will be one big giant final chapter. Considering it's the year 2016, I want to see how much content I can cram into it before people's computers croak, or my own as I work on the editor. I mean it's crappy Neverwinter Nights graphics, how bad could it be, right? I believe Demonheart's author, Lamb, broke hers up to make it easier for her to work, and not necessarily for user performance reasons, so I think as long as the mod is editing fine on my end, I can make it as big as I want.

Chapter one consists of the protagonist meeting the main cast, traversing parts of her city, the lore, and various miscellaneous events to further define the type of character you want to play. I'm still open to improving upon the chapter after its release - based on feedback - but the story is final.

Meanwhile, my script file has become so big, it's hard to scroll through it! I predicted this would happen, so I made a table of contents at the top with bookmark shortcuts linking to different parts of the file. That procedure worked for a while, until I noticed having a single file made it awkward for branching decisions! Navigating certain non-linear segments was becoming a nightmare, especially when taking a break and revisiting it later. It was affecting my writing enthusiasm! To counter this, I converted my single script file into multiple files; then, I used Microsoft Excel to point to the different files, forming what visual novel enthusiasts would recognize as a decision tree. It's been a great resource to organize my thoughts, and I figure after my mod is finished, I can provide the file as an optional walk-through. It's helping me navigate my script, so it should help others navigate the game.

I promise this won't be a hard mod. Any mod or game requiring a walk-through is not good game design. I don't like players getting lost or confused, so I'm providing detailed journal entries, adding landmarks to the areas (fountains, statues, etc.), and keeping the main quest as the focus. There won't be many side-quests, and when there are, they will focus on the main cast and be short, and certainly not fetch quests. Going back to what I said in an earlier blog entry, I want to keep the story focused and treat the player's time with respect, especially because there are mystery elements to the story, and I can't afford for the player to forget who the characters are because they were too distracted killing rats from a random quest giver.

I'll end this entry by saying I've been dabbling with an under-appreciated PC game called The Age of Decadence. It reminds me a bit of my mod, favoring character interactions over combat. Depending on your class, the story changes dramatically, with many choices and consequences; however, that part is too ambitious for my mod, considering I'm a single developer! My only issues with Age of Decadence are it's turn-based combat and the women are ugly as hell -- they look like men! It's pretty sad when Neverwinter Nights graphics are superior to some of today's titles, but it's also refreshing to see good game design and stories take precedence over graphics. Maybe developers will one day distance themselves from the Call of Duty clones and work on real games!.. Or not.

Aurora is such a tease.

The struggles of modding this beast persist. It's been a happy Christmas and New Years, so time for an update!

I've developed a few new areas, conversations, worked on load screens, and added more characters. I have bits and pieces completed for several scenes, but not enough to string them together. I do, however, almost have the first scene completed in its entirety, other than an annoying issue where a door doesn't want to talk to me. (It's official, I'm going crazy).

My biggest setback is tackling various advanced challenges of the Aurora engine, such as cutscenes or nuisances outside the confines of the engine. For example, the door in this image is too far away to engage in the conversation because Aurora is a whore, so I had to work around the issue, trick the player, and insert an invisible object placed closer to the player using a door's portrait. In another example, an NPC wouldn't die to a fireball spell in a cutscene, so I had to simulate it by timing his death with the impact of the fireball, because I guess cutscenes give special treatment to NPC's. I had to reload the mod about nine times before the timing synced up. By the way, the two images in this post happen early in the mod, so I don't consider them spoilers.

I feel confident 90% of my mod's vision can be accomplished within the construction kit, but that other 10%  is concerning me. Sadly, that is the part I must address first. After all, if I can't finish my mod's most challenging aspects, then why waste time accomplishing the easy stuff, only to hit a brick wall? I understand I could change parts of my script to avoid brick wall moments (and to an extent, I probably will), but it's aggravating knowing there are things the engine is capable of that I simply don't have knowledge of.

Unfortunately, knowledge of NWN modding is more elusive today than it was in the past. Before I proposed this project back in April of 2014, IGN's Neverwinter Vault was alive and well. It was the ultimate resource for NWN modding. It ceased to exist of that same year around the end of June. My timing couldn't have been worse. The NWN Community Vault was released to rectify this, but the loss of forum posts littered with technical knowledge wounded me, unless their forum is archived somewhere I'm overlooking. It would be like someone creating an ambitious Skyrim or Fallout mod, then mid-way in they're told the Nexus is permanently down. If the NWN Community Vault hadn't been born, I definitely would have cancelled this mod, as I refuse to mod a game without a dedicated community site.

I feel like I need to speed this mod along, so I'm going to be more transparent regarding my setbacks, as I'm not going to get any of it done procrastinating on the issues. If any of you would like to collaborate with me on any Aurora engine questions I may have, let me know. I'd love to find one or more people I can bounce questions off of, who I will, of course, credit in my mod. Regardless of no assistance, I'll continue development, but I'm just saying the sooner I tackle my questions, the sooner you guys get your mod. (Damn, I'm turning into Malakai. I sense a shift in my alignment.)

Clarification on Malakai's personality.

I hope you all are enjoying Fallout 4. I know I am! As I prepare my demo for an eventual release, I wanted to clarify an important detail that's annoying the hell out of me. Some of you may remember this screenshot I released earlier of Malakai speaking to the protagonist. As I continue expanding my story script, I'm already regretting that screenshot, because there's an important change I'm making to Malakai. No, I have no qualms with his condescending tone, or the fact he's an asshole. It's the word he throws out at the end -- whore.

The word itself is fine; however, I noticed several characters are calling the protagonist a whore! Drunks, orcs, bandits, sailors... If I'm not careful, her father might call her a whore! I feel like it's getting comical, and a word can lose its meaning when it's used too often. There are a few other similarities I'm noticing outside of the screenshot, but overall, I'm sensing this clash of similar personalities is driving Malakai into monotonous territory, so I'm changing him. He will still be a condescending asshole, but I want to emphasize he's also intelligent, calculating, and manipulative. I'll save the trashy immature one-liners for NPC's who only think with their dicks and not their brains (clarification #2: Malakai thinks with both).

Those kids really love Star Wars and Frozen.

I've been trying to keep these updates going, but my work schedule has been pretty hectic. I work at a coloring book manufacturer, and our busiest months are before Christmas. The upcoming Star Wars movie is also complicating things -- a day doesn't pass without printing either Star Wars or Disney's "Frozen," making this my busiest year on record, and requiring a lot of working weekends. For better or worse, after the Christmas rush dies down, there's almost no work, and I'm practically laid off, so that will be my peak modding days.

Regarding the mod itself, I'm focusing on the early content because I want to get something released as a tech demo, of sorts. Obviously, the mod runs fine for me, but I need a few people to test it so I can iron out any requirements or anything else unforeseen. I've received some great comments about how I can best tackle this, and I've decided I'll do a demo covering just the first half hour. I'm keeping it short because I plan on having you guys play through it again when the final version (of chapter 1?) is released, rather than worry about transferring decisions, calling it a prologue, etc. When you rush through the mod on your second play-through, I suspect it will only take a few minutes, lol. I suppose that is one advantage to a text-heavy mod is that it makes it quicker to play-test. Looking at my script, if I were to create a prologue, it would last about three hours -- not small enough for a demo, and not big enough for a separate release, in my opinion.

On an unrelated subject, I recently finished my mod for Crusader Kings II. It's a static portraits mod, meaning you can substitute your own images as portraits. This has been done before by others, but what I've done is released template packs, art files, and information to train others who want to achieve the same results. Plus, I'm sharing this link so anyone can connect with me on Lover's Lab, if you happen to use that forum.
www.loverslab.com/topic/52211-ck2-static-custom-portrait-replacer-ver-098-244-horse-lords-compatible/?p=1310789

Opinion on forced true neutral starting alignment?

One thing that's disappointed me in several NWN role-playing mods is how irrelevant the alignment system is. Sure, your decisions have an impact on your alignment, and certainly there are good vs. evil decisions, but your alignment seems to rarely be referenced. If your evil, shouldn't certain NPC's be a bit intimidated and submissive towards you? Likewise, if you're good, shouldn't they be more friendly and assertive? Obviously, a character's reputation plays a part in this. After all, NPC's must know some of the protagonist's good or evil deeds before they can decide how to behave around them. This means, early in the story, it's okay to dismiss the protagonist's alignment, but later, your alignment should mean something! The issue is it's hard for a developer to gauge the magnitude of a player's overall deeds when a player locks himself into Chaotic Evil or Lawful Good to start a game! It's made worse when the player commits an evil decision when they're already Chaotic Evil -- your alignment can't be any more evil than that, so the impact of your decision feels a bit negated.

Onto my point: I'm considering adopting a Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic approach where the player is locked into a true neutral alignment. Decisions will impact their alignment over the course of their story. A starting alignment provides me a base-line, so I can better direct some of the content.

This alignment restriction also makes sense from my story's perspective. Your character is a young woman who has lived a fairly sheltered life under her father's roof. As she exits her final year of home-schooling, she's uncertain about her future as her father pressures her into joining the Church of Knox. She knows very little about what lies beyond her city's walls. Many of her adventures were spent inside the pages of fictional story novels. Due to her inherently benefiting from her father's wealth and prestige, she lacks a morale compass regarding concepts of money and power. Basically, it's impossible for her to be Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil, because she doesn't know what good or evil really means.

I find the protagonist's lack of understanding interesting from a character-study perspective, as she will be tested by various authoritative figures, most notably her Church's instructor, Malakai Varus, who isn't shy about taking advantage of her. Several more opportunistic characters will await the protagonist. How you confront them will shape the kind of woman she becomes.

Anyways, I'm aware some people hate being forced into a starting alignment, so I'm open to your thoughts. Of course, it's your decisions that will matter the most and not necessarily your alignment. Your alignment will simply be one of the consequences reflected by your decisions.

Game of Thrones is love. Game of Thrones is life.

I recently finished watching a little show needing no introduction called Game of Thrones (GoT). Prior to scripting my story, I admittedly had never seen the show. I decided to discover what all the fascination was about, and like everyone else, the show left a huge impression on me. I imagine it also left an impression on the author for the NWN mod, Demonheart, by Lamb, as she shares the avatar for Melisandre in the board game version of GoT. I love the show's tension, ironies, and plot twists, evoked in the most mundane or inopportune moments. I enjoy how indiscriminately GoT kills its cast, keeping viewers on edge and reminding them no one is safe. It's a world governed by deception and death, exposing the dark side of human nature.

I've learned my universe shares certain similarities, so marrying some of GoT's concepts seems only natural. GoT has caused me to give my script an extra pass, and I've realized some of my mod's conversations lacked tension. I don't consider this a set-back, as most of my scenes already were pretty tense, but some needed a bit more spice. GoT is unique in that it respects the time of its audience -- I want to do the same with my mod. Seemingly boring scenes should invoke emotions, and most characters should have accentuated personalities to make them memorable. Even if you think one of my characters is an asshole, pussy, sadist, or straight-up idiot, at least it invokes an emotion. Maybe you'll be hoping that person dies. Maybe with your choices, he or she actually can!

There are a few things GoT does I will refrain from, as I feel it doesn't fit the context of a mystery adventure. First, having too many major characters muddles a good mystery. I am striving for lots of characters, but most are minor, and are there to make the protagonist's city feel alive. Second, switching narrative perspectives is rarely used in mysteries. For example, how often does the narrative switch away from Sherlock Holmes, or Phoenix Wright? The fun of a good mystery is stepping into someone else's shoes and experiencing things exclusively from a fixed perspective. Thankfully, most NWN mods use a fixed narrative anyways, so this will feel natural to the player.

If you haven't watched the show, just watch it. Don't let the amount of episodes scare you away from it, like it initially did for me.

Clarifying why updates are slow, and why I created this blogger.com page

This is a bit embarrassing, but hey, it's part of the modding experience! When I first created this blog, I did it with the intent of initially setting it to offline mode so I could tinker with blogger.com. I knew I eventually needed a blog or website, but at the time, all I had was my story script and character biographies, meaning I had nothing substantial to share. Regardless, I was excited to create one. I thought, "No problem. I'll create the blog, then set it offline as I continue developing my script."

I created the blog, then something unexpected happened -- I couldn't find a way to set the blog offline! Sure, I could have deleted it, but I had already spent several hours on it. My solution was I'll avoid mentioning the blog! Surely no one will find an unannounced blog page for a video game over 10+ years old! Well, we know how that turned out! I believe the floodgate opened up from my avatar link on Demonheart's "followers" page, but let me know if you all found the blog elsewhere.

At this point, my mod's development took a sharp turn. In an effort to provide blog content, I embraced the opened blog and switched from less story scripting to more visually oriented content. This is a dangerous practice. After all, you shouldn't start directing a movie without a complete script, just like a modder shouldn't mod without a finished story. I began providing content for a blog that wasn't ready!

So this is where we stand: I'm sitting on a huge script that continues to grow, but I'm paranoid at transferring most of it to NWN because of what might change. At the same time, I want to provide you guys with updates. What I'm thinking is providing more updates on my ideas or approach to the mod. Then as I work my way up to incorporating more of my script into NWN, I'll start sharing more juicier content. I know seeing blog posts without screenshots is boring, but I'm realizing now it's better than not posting any updates at all.

Examining Objects. Potential Prelude Chapter.

Here's some greater detail from my last post when I mentioned 80% of the mod's objects are interactive. Clicking on almost anything results in pop-up text above your character, giving insight into your character's thoughts. This includes even mundane objects, that may or may not be related to investigations. (Note: If items are in your inventory, you must right-click them and select "examine.") I could have adopted the lazy route of forcing players to right-click, and then click again to "examine" for all objects even outside the player's inventory, but that's an inconvenience. Instead, by simply single-clicking objects, it makes an otherwise tedious process more stream-lined. All of this interactivity was inspired from Phoenix Wright, where I fondly remember the series having a running gag over the discussion of mundane ladders.

You'll know an object's interactive by hovering your mouse over it and seeing a blue silhouette. To make things easier, I recommend mapping a key to the "Tool Tip" command in the "Misc" section in-game. When you hold that key down, all interactive objects become highlighted. I don't remember what the default key is, but whatever it was, I hated it, so I recommend mapping it close to W,A,S,D.

All of these single-clicked objects come with a technical price: Each object requires a unique script. This likely increases area load times, but I have a fairly strong PC with my new SSD, so the load times seem fine to me; therefore, I'm not the ideal candidate to test this mod's specification requirements. I think what I'll do is release a "prelude" chapter, serving as a technical demo. This prelude would span the introduction, and finish the first investigation. It would take maybe 1-2 hours for a player to finish, but it would provide me valuable info, including whether the load times are acceptable, if the mod's dependencies on other mods are working, general feedback, and whether the mod simply works. It would also give everyone an idea whether this mod is right for them or not, because again I have to caution there are adult and evil/dark themes.

Even though it's a prelude, I do plan to have decisions, meaning I'll have to worry about carrying the decisions you've made over to the next chapter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone were to finish the prelude mod, only for me to build upon that mod and turn it into a "chapter 1," they'd have to restart the mod from the beginning, since their saves would no longer be compatible. I won't allow that to happen. That's akin to punishing players for play-testing.

AAA - Areas, Armors, and Animations

Long time no see! I know I haven't been updating much, but I have been working on the mod nonetheless. I've been jumping around on creating many things. I have typed out enough of the script where I know for a fact what will be in the mod, so I've finally begun settling on things, otherwise this mod will never get finished!

I've adopted an arsenal of programming code using past mods for inspiration. The one I'm most proud of is the sex animations (obviously). I'd show an image, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that here, even though I did flag this blog for being "adult only." The animation was harder than I thought, involving locking the player to the ground to keep them from moving, equipping nude "armors," and getting animations to line up. I'll also occasionally employ standard fade-to-blacks used in nearly every other adult NWN mod, if I lack the animations for what I'm wanting.

I'm also creating a lot of the areas. Ironically, I thought level design would be easy and boring, but it's actually immensely challenging and fun. I have to ask myself if placing each and every item makes sense in the grand scheme of things. For example, the shopkeeper, Tyrus Amerigo, is obsessive-compulsive over security and lock-picking, so his shop and bedroom is tailored to fit his persona. Kraus is a scientist and inventor, so his place is a junkyard of various technologies. Each of the main characters has their own room in the Church, so every character is getting similar level design treatment. This was inspired from Dangan Ronpa for the PSP/Vita (very fun mystery-solving game).

The Church of Knox is the main hub for your character in-between missions. The ground floor, in particular, is visited several times, with each visit changing NPC conversation patterns and NPC locations. Think of it like a town in Diablo, only the NPC's aren't always in the same place and I spice things up each visit. These are great opportunities to delve into the minds of characters, although most of it's optional. The ground floor is divided into a cafeteria, training room, merchant store, library, laboratory, private meeting chamber, and military training ground. You'll see how all these areas play a part in the story as you progress. (Note: Not all areas I mentioned are in the image. That's because some of those areas you'll rarely visit, so I don't want the player to load them into memory again and again and again...)

Starting armors you can select

The merchant store, operated by Tyrus, sells equipment sanctioned for use by your Archbishop, Malakai. The problem is Malakai's an asshole, so Tyrus is contractually required to only provide armors Malakai deems you fit to wear. This, of course, means sexually suggestive attire. The armors are provided by the Church, meaning it's all free. Feel free to grab all the armors! I'm a fan of options, and unfortunately NWN doesn't provide a character armor preview feature, so I just said, "To hell with it." He also sells free color dyes to further personalize your armor's colors. (Note: Everything else costs gold, including potions and the option to enchant your armors.) I'll feature extensive use of the enchantment option, so you can scale your favorite armors later into the game. Eventually, you may have to swap these out for a different selection of heavier armors you'll find later in the game, but I'll be sure to have these heavier armors cost the same as enchantment stacking the depicted lighter armors. I'm doing all this because nothing pisses me off more than finding an awesome looking armor, only to discover it has garbage stats.

Speaking of items, as an Inquisitor, you'll use items to convict others of heresy. The overall experience is similar to the DS/3DS Phoenix Wright games, where you present a piece of evidence contradicting a statement and catching someone in a lie. This means exploring your environment for clues. About 80% of all the objects in this mod can be clicked on, displaying a pop-up text above your character's head. If they're in your inventory, instead, you may right-click and "examine" them. I've swapped out many mundane item descriptions to tailor the mod to investigations.

These investigations are fairly small in length, and are not all you'll be tasked in doing. To keep things from getting repetitive, you will enter combat, and many heretics will not die quietly! Of course, romance is present, with certain characters operating differently to extort what they want from you. In particular, one powerful character who I have yet to introduce will blackmail you, forcing you into making payments, otherwise...

That's all! I have more to share, but this post is long enough as it is, so I'll save it for next week.

Migrated to an SSD. Finally adding scenes from script.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! It's been a while -- time for an update.

First, I acquired my first Solid State Drive (SSD) for Christmas. I had to backup and migrate my old data to the SSD. Everything went well and the SSD runs great. It's a Samsung 840 EVO ~750GB. The data transfer speeds are insane compared to my old spin drive. The data below is my spin drive. The data above is my SSD. I'm not 100% sure what the numbers in this benchmark screenshot mean, but the graph indicates huge improvements! Judging by my speeds in the NWN Aurora toolset, this means less painful load times and faster modding.

Since the last update, I've mostly been implementing additional resource files. I have all the portraits settled on and installed, including new characters I haven't mentioned yet. I'm writing some in-game books for lore purposes. I also added custom loading screens and increased the number of playable classes, so you can now play as a Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian, or Paladin, as opposed to only Paladin. Finally, I think I've settled on a soundtrack. Depending if NWN Vault accepts the mod with this soundtrack, I may have to release two versions of my mod -- one with the soundtrack and the other without. I know for a fact the Nexus won't accept this, as they're anal on copyrights. I tried uploading a Skyrim anime Berserk soundtrack mod to the Nexus, which didn't work out, lol. Anyways, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm keeping the soundtrack a secret until release.

I'm finally taking some of my script and creating scenes. Until now, all my in-game content pertained to resources, so it's nice finally seeing things fleshed out. I must stress it's important I nail down the script and resources first, because working with the Aurora conversation editor is cumbersome. I'm waiting for it to grow on me, but it hasn't, lol.

As I expand my script, I am concerned about a promise I originally made in my FAQ I may backtrack from, especially since I'm a one man crew. I said, "I'm striving for a Japanese visual novel approach. Unlike most western games offering a huge decision near the end (ex. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), the Japanese visual novel approach provides major decisions near the middle of the story. Each route branch caters to a specific in-game character based on your past decisions." There's a problem with this I didn't account for: Japanese visual novels typically aren't detective stories. For a good detective story to work, it needs a strong conclusion. Ultimately, only one path will truly satisfy the player, as it is the only path where you discover the main culprit.

I think this is how the endings will work: One path is the true ending. This ending further branches into extended segments with whoever your romance option is. Your romance option is decided by choices you've made and scenes you're witnessed unique to your romance. Any other endings are "bad endings," generally involving rape, sexual slavery, etc. The problem with the true ending approach segmenting off into these romance endings is I must put it near the end of my mod and not the middle, because once the culprit is captured, all sense of suspense is lost, and I want to avoid degenerating the mod into a sappy love story. Romance is definitely a strong theme, but my hierarchy of importance is still mystery > sex > romance. I'll create a flow chart for those interested in seeing all the endings.

Hopefully, I can keep this blog more updated. I work a full-time job, so I'm trying to juggle this behemoth of a project while I can. Part of me wonders if I should have quit a long time ago, but I'm too deep into it now and I'm excited to know what you all will think of it upon its release.

Mystery writing is tough, hah!

I'm finding I have a strict habit of revising many of my mod's mystery elements. Ideas I initially thought were good, turn out to be "okay" at best. Every transpiring day, I'm thinking about the mod in some way, and the constant shuffling of ideas is difficult. I'm having a stronger respect for people who write mystery novels. It's definitely tougher than I thought!

To mentally prepare myself, I've been grinding through hundreds of episodes from Detective Conan (aka Case Closed) for inspiration. As an Inquisitor, many of the mysteries you solve are short and concise, similar to the scope of a Detective Conan episode. Others will be mysteries lingering over the duration of your adventure, casting a perceived shadow over the cast of characters. These lingering mysteries generate doubt and turmoil amongst the cast, and you may find yourself having to pick sides. Everyone can be a potential suspect in the mod, including yourself, so be prepared to defend your own interests from characters who doubt your intentions.

Of course, if this was all the mod had, I think it would be boring. This is still a sex mod with dark mature themes, but it's that very reason I feel the mod has something special to offer, otherwise I wouldn't have started this project. What will be interesting is whether I can balance seemingly mindless sex with mentally taxing mysteries. Get that on-and-off switch ready!

Characters section and script development updates.

http://darkpaladinsofknox.blogspot.com/p/characters.html

I've updated the characters section with a massive list of characters I feel are locked in. Much of my script involves most of these characters, so I'm confident they won't change much, if any, hence I'm sharing them. I may add more characters as I finalize them, but I'm taking a cautious approach, because my mod has several murder mystery elements, so I must be careful not to trap myself in plot holes.

You may notice a major trend with some of my characters are dark ones with questionable motivations. This is not a coincidence, as I was inspired by Demonheart. I enjoy characters the protagonist can't fully trust. To achieve trust in a character makes them boring. I want characters who make the protagonist uncomfortable, so if they unsettle you, mission accomplished.

As I continue to expand the script, I'm now up to 32,000 words and counting. In comparison, that's about half the length of Demonheart chapter 1 (69,000 words), so if I use that as a reference, then I have a rough idea where I need to cut my mod short to break it up into a second part. I feel like I'm nowhere even close to telling the full story, which is good because I want to provide as much content to you all as possible.

My script is getting to the point where I'm going to start developing some of the actual mod now. I have a few random scenes I've created for testing purposes, which work flawlessly, but it's time to start taking advantage of the script and providing some in-game screenshots.

Ideas galore.

Creating a mod catering to a mystery genre is daunting. The deeper I finalize all my characters and scripts, the more problematic it becomes avoiding plot holes and other minor discrepancies. I find myself revisiting old scenes I once thought finalized and tweaking minor details. For this reason, I'm still hesitant to release more character info, simply because I'm tweaking them so damn much, but I'll still try to release it soon. As I add more content, it's also becoming increasingly likely I may have to break this mod up into separate chapters/modules, but we'll see.

On a side-note, I recently picked up Divinity: Original Sin (aka DOS) for the PC. It's interesting to play a modern day top-down RPG, and I had hoped to gleam some inspiration from it for my mod. DOS draws some parallels with my mod, although this was purely coincidental. Your characters are templars who hunt magic users called sourcerers (I swear I didn't misspell that), similar to my mod's inquisitors who hunt heretic magic-users. One of the very first DOS quests involves a murder-case. I love murder mystery elements in RPG's, but I always wish they'd push the envelope more, hence one reason for my mod. Of course, I also wished more games would explore dark adult themes, but you know the way the ESRB rating board is. That's the beauty of modding--uninhibited creative freedom for my characters to say and do whatever they want.

I'm also pounding through the popular Persona 4: Golden PSP Vita game. Its major theme includes a murder-mystery, involving a serial killer, leading to an epic "who dun it" confrontation with the culprit. If I had known a murder mystery was the game's central theme, I would have played the original a long time ago!

You could say playing these games is detracting from my modding time, but as a graphic designer, I also know the importance of research and inspiration into my target audience, and I'm convinced my mod is improving daily from these sources. I'm regularly getting struck with "eureka" moments, where I find myself picking up a pencil and jotting down quick notes of epic scenes.

More characters and a screenshot section soon.

I have most of the basic script and ideas in place. I'm continuing to add to what I already have to make the conversations feel more genuine, memorable, and bring the best out of the characters. I'm very happy with the direction of many of them. I already knew which characters I'd be using a long time ago, including their names and personalities, but I'm continuing to build on their motivations and how they interpret their roles and desire for the female protagonist.

I think once the next update or two is set, I'll begin sharing the blog to the masses. If you're one of the few who noticed the blog already, then congratulations on stumbling upon it, lol.

FAQ section added. Vacation incoming.

I've added an FAQ section that hopefully answers most of the community's questions. If there's a question someone has that hasn't been answered, leave a comment here or email me. Please understand nothing is currently final, so everything is open to change. Some questions I cannot answer if they're detail story-related, since I haven't completed the script. This mod is still several months away from completion, and I have a full-time job, so be patient with me, lol. This isn't something I want to rush out.

I will also be taking a vacation this week near Alaska, so expect updates much later.

New blog additions

Added a banner and a mod "progress" section giving a vague idea where I am with the script, word count, and in-game content. Keep in mind this is a very wild estimate. I'll try to update it every few weeks. You can also now subscribe to my updates via email.

I'll eventually update the blog with a screenshots section, more character bio's, and an FAQ.

Blog now up!

I'll be posting updates on my module on this blog from here on. The blog itself is still under construction. I'll officially announce the blog to the masses once it's fully done, but for now, enjoy the content as I add it.