Project Update: ON HOLD

Sorry for the lack of updates. I recently have been recovering from a flood that we had a few weeks ago here in Washington State. I thankfully live on the 3rd floor of the building I live in so nothing project wise was lost. I did however lose my vehicle. I was also unable to get back into my building for a few days as well. Dealing with that and of course the holidays have been keeping me quite busy.

The scene from my balcony:

THIS PROJECT IS NOT CANCELED. I WILL finish it. It is merely on hold.

I have decided to suspend working on it and work with the team making the Realms of Ultima.

I feel Realms of Ultima is a VERY good thing for the Ultima Community, and ultimately a better mod to have finished first. Plus, I hopefully would be able to borrow many assets of this mod, once it is finished.

I will let you know when this mod will resume. I'll try to tell some of the various other Ultima news sites when I am back to finishing this.

Thanks to those of you following this blog and your encouragement for this project. I GREATLY Appreciate it!

For now I encourage you to visit Realms of Ultima!

Moonshade Catacombs area finished

Sorry for the lack of updates, but rest assured progress continues.

Area built and is exactly the same layout of the original. I still need to write 1 script for this area (The Magic Harp), but am having difficulty coding it. I decided that wasting any more days working on this is not productive, so I will address it later (I think I know how to tackle this).

Next: Furnace

The original Furnace area was around a 48 x 28 tile set, which is something you do NOT want to do in the NWN2 engine. I will sadly have to break this area into 2 areas. I need to play through in the original game and explore and figure out the best way to break it up.

Can't wait to code/script the Test of Purity!

Sample Music

I have sample of the music I am working on for this mod: Music

Please note this is an ALPHA mix and needs some remixing, but it should give you a good idea on some of the music... as well as some of the original voice files from the game.

Hope you enjoy.

The Mountains of Freedom finished

The area layout and dialogs/scripts are finished for this area. Some of the scripts need a bit of polishing but they all work (sadly, I was able to re-create a bug that exists in the original with one of my scripts, it however is fixed now...amusing). I was able to keep about ....99%? of the layout the same as the original, but again, the Ultima game has some tile sets NWN2 does not have. I also had to come up with an idea for the endless tunnel. The way they archived that in the original is not even possible in the NWN2 engine (loading tile sets while playing), but hopefully I have a happy resolution to that.

Some screen shots:

What did you call me?

The Black Sword thank to
MWM Ultima Black Sword Hak

The RWS Deep Chasms Tileset:

A very sad ranger

I am now working on all the updated states/conversations in Moonshade after you come back from Freedom (sadly, it is not that much).

Moonshade trial finished

Sorry for the lack of updates... I.. Uh.. spent some time playing Mask of The Betrayer as I needed to see what was new in the tool set and such. Wow! What an excellent game! This is by far, the best story/game Obsidian has done to date. I enjoyed it immensely. Thank you Obsidian!

I also have my game in DOSBox now up to this point as well, so now I can continue on working on this mod.

The trial in Moonshade is scripted, and the area built. I did not work on scripting the meeting with Frigidazzi, (all the dialogs and different conditions are finished) as this is when "Adult" content starts popping up in the game. (Actually there is another in Monitor, but I have not finished that one as well). I'm not sure how I will handle this, but I am still committed to making the game 100% like the original (as possible as I can with the tool set). I'll visit this later.


Up next: Freedom!

Monk Isle Finished

All the dialogs/Plot items are now finished for this area. After that I...

I put together a new computer: A dual 2.4 GHz Intel processor, 2 GIGS RAM, and a GeoForce 8600GTS.

I started a new game of Mask of the Betrayer and... HOLY CARP! I never realized how incredibly beautiful NWN2 was! I had basically an old computer that met the minimum specs (and with a shader 2.0 vid card), and NWN2 ran fine, but agonizing slow. Anyways, wow... having a decent graphics card makes NWN2 shine!

I made meticulous backups of all the work I had done so far, and no problems there. Everything loads in the toolset (so far) and is ok (keeps fingers crossed). EXCEPT, I had forgotten to make a backup of my current play-through of Serpent Isle in DOSBOX. It will take me a few days to get back to where I was, but this will also allow me to check a few various states of quests/items I had not checked, but now can.

As soon as I get back to where I was in DOSBOX, I'll be working on the dialogs in Moonshade.

Mad Mage/Northern Isle finished

All the dialogs/Items are finished (This is a plot specific area). I spent probably WAY too much time on this area, mainly because I needed to be sure I understood a few concepts on the NWN2 engine (especially creating a hak pack and custom TLK). After a couple of days forum reading I was able to figure out what I needed:

Custom loading tips:

Custom Portraits:

Custom Icons:

(I also have custom load screens as well, I just did not have a screen shot handy). I am pulling all the Icons/Portraits directly from SI (via Exult Studio). Also I made sure I understood the scripted waypoint system (i.e. Vasel/Erstam walk back and forth and performs tasks/animations) This all works fine now.

Also MokahTGS uploaded the Realms of Ultima Content Pack - Icons which included some SI specific icons! Thank you MokahTGS! :)

You can visit MokahTGS's site: Realm's of Ultima

Up next: Monk Isle