Doubts (public) Developmental log

[Fury]

A thousand yesses fell silently from my lips as I looked upon this vision.

[Doubtful]

As a demonstration of my unerring ability to double my workload...

Decided to redo a fair swathe of a near-complete map, come evening time I tweaked all the lights to create what I considered a nice feeling.

After a few hours and feeling satisfied (but slow), I realised that f.lux had switched to night mode just before I started the lighting and nothing I was looking at would be how it actually looked!

*facepalm*

Anyway, here's a teaser of the map at night. (still rough thanks to the redo, no texture or colour work done yet)

[Kaybrie]

Is that Sundren city? Or Avanthyr? I can't quite tell.

[Doubtful]

Sundren City, a new place to hangout.

There's a lot I'd like to do with Avanthyr, but unfortunately I won't have the time to get it all done this time around, maybe later in the year if the reboot is a success.

[jarlexel]

A friend I brought over to Sundren is a builder on another server and she said she could never make things as beautifully as they are here. You can login to other servers then login to here and you're like "Wow"

[Doubtful]

!

A friend I brought over to Sundren is a builder on another server and she said she could never make things as beautifully as they are here. You can login to other servers then login to here and you're like "Wow"

This is largely down to Maevan who was responsible for the bulk of the mindblowing areas and who truly set the bar for the servers mapping quality.

More recently Toupon also creating some great zones such as the sewers, Icewinddale and the expanded Argyle area. He also created a lot of great quality custom content for those zones!

[Fateful Encounter]

That looks amazing Doubt! Can't wait to see the new areas in game.

[thaelis]

That area looks pretty nice, I like the fine detail. In the background it kinda looks like a stepped area? Makes me think of this...

http://www.enjoythessaloniki.com/wp-...ora1%20(2).jpg

[Doubtful]

It's sort of inspired by a few of the smaller piazza areas in the older bits of Frascati and wandering around in various parts of Rome.

[Doubtful]

Every time I think "Oh, I don't know what I was complaining about. The NWN2 toolset and engine isn't that bad..." something terrible happens.

Today, walkmesh baking. For 6 fucking hours.

The worst bit, it isn't over - There's still huge areas of my current map that won't bake out functional, and this is only one of a few maps I've got with the same fricking issues. Either unwakable tiles or the walkmesh deciding that the next step ends in infinity.

Just... Right now, I hate this shit.

[Doubtful]

Sometimes it's the little things,



With this, it was the walkmesh. The 6 hours mentioned above were down to this tiny corner. In the end, it took even longer to get a resolution to the issue, and even then it's far from perfect. The toolset is a cruel teacher, but as a colleague used to say - "If you've learned something, then it isn't a failure."

Like the previous picture this areas just had a crude blockout pass with the ground textures and no vfx yet, but I thought I'd share. Also going to give the lamps a once over - Got a better solution in mind.

[Saulus]

Sometimes it's the little things,



With this, it was the walkmesh. The 6 hours mentioned above were down to this tiny corner. In the end, it took even longer to get a resolution to the issue, and even then it's far from perfect. The toolset is a cruel teacher, but as a colleague used to say - "If you've learned something, then it isn't a failure."

Like the previous picture this areas just had a crude blockout pass with the ground textures and no vfx yet, but I thought I'd share. Also going to give the lamps a once over - Got a better solution in mind.

I love what you guys are doing but shit like that is exactly why I am loving UE4 so much. Potential is limitless you just need to work at it.

[Doubtful]

I love what you guys are doing but shit like that is exactly why I am loving UE4 so much. Potential is limitless you just need to work at it.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'll joyfully espouse the benefits of working in UE4 over the accursed NWN2 toolset.

The problem is largely one of content though. NWN2, for all it's faults is a largely functional game with a mix of classes, features and all sorts of the shit that makes a game playable. Additionally it's full of mapping content, textures, placeables, monsters and all that crap.

UE4 is obviously in a different class, but to create anything at all you need to make it yourself from scratch (takes ages) and/or buy bits you need (gets costly very quickly).

While I'd love, love, love to be making a PW in UE4 the turn around time for such a project would be colossal (years upon years! it'd make Age of Decadence look like it was a weekend job). Be easier if I had a team, but how do you organise such a thing?

Unless you've got a hell of a lot of cash to pay everyone for the risk of no return then you've got to find volunteers, but that gets real awkward if you're aiming for a commercial release down the line or want to become a proper studio (science forbid we'd ever become the type of people to do the whole 'we can't pay you so consider it experience!' / 'do it for your portfolio' thing).

Kickstarter's a no-go unless you're already established with a good track record (even then, that's no guarantee of success) and/or have an exceptional (and I mean truly, truly exceptional, not 'my mates down the pub thought it sounded good') idea and a fucking brilliant business plan with great presentation to back it up. The days of people being able to fund startups on the back of just an idea, a shonky alpha/FMV and a few scribblings are over (if they ever actually existed).

If we could herd the best of the people who've ever worked on Sundren and other servers/vault into the same setting, somehow convince them to keep a coherent art style (shitty anime heads and armour, I'm staring at you. And later I'm going to stab you to death while you fumble your keys in the carpark), somehow drug everyone's water supply to prevent the idea schisms that seem to often occur and keep the ideas realistic then, in a year or two, we might have something to show.

I'd love to say I'm working on a PW, but even in my wildest fancies I'm not fool enough to undertake something like that as a single project - Even broken down into unconnected parts the undertaking is huge just for single player, let alone fusing my brain with multiplayer/server side stuff. (as an aside, I did once write most of a survey to try and see what style of PW people might like, I got bored after a bit though and it just became an exercise in rampant sarcasm. I'll see if I can find the link for a giggle).

So, sadly, for the forseable the best we have available to us to sate our small-scale, non MMO, RP style persistent world is something like NWN2 in all its buggy, glitchy, under-performing glory. So I'll fight back the bile when after placing 200 placables it starts crashing to desktop on bake, or spending hours trying to draw the perfectly shaped walkmesh cutter so that entire grids of walkmesh don't disappear (and you know it'll crash while saving after you've managed to get the shape right and baked), I'll suffer the headaches of being unable to learn from the best sources because most of the information is on sites with dead image links or the old Bioware site, and I'll do it because we've still got a community and we're one of the final few hangers on in a gaming environment that's going to remain neglected by developers for many years to come.


/rant.

[Saulus]

When I started Sundren I was faced with a vast array of NWN1 PWs that had so much content for so many years, how could I compare?? Well it's a simple saying, every thousand-mile journey begins with the first step.

Anyway, I am going back to my M.O. when I started Sundren which is to rely solely on myself for getting everything done. I'm learning the joys of UV mapping and brushing up on 3ds max currently.

[kovah]

On the subject of volunteers I would like to raise my hand as one of the members* of this community that wouldn't mind devoting some of my spare time doing whatever menial work I am capable of. That said, is there anything with what y'all badass coder/designer folks do that those of us with considerably less knowledge would be able to help with?

I'll never be a designer or engineer or all that creative - it's not my M.O. But I can type fast and I dabbled in MUD building and took a semester of C+ once upon a time. (that'd be late 90s for both)

And I mean for either project: Sundren or an all new PW.

I can't be the only one here that has free time - we're all here cause of this game. =) Now, does anyone else want to devote their free time to menial bs busy work? Dunno, but I play EVE Online so it won't be anything all that new for me.

Maybe this is really just a dumb thing to ask. I don't expect to be able to help that much, if at all. I guess I'm really saying that I appreciate what y'all have done here and I'd love to be able to help with anything that you folks intend to tackle in the future. I've dreamed of a full multiplayer Forgotten Realms world since I began reading them in the mid 90s. Sundren has been the closest thing to that thus far. So, if nothing else, thanks for that and I'm looking forward to the next version.

o7


*-Okay, so not an ACTIVE member by any means but I've been reading this website pretty much daily for 6.5 years now and occasionally logging in to drunk rambl.... dammit, it happened again...

Carry on.