Amraphael's House of Curious Things

Nowadays I seldom look back into the ZORK-RtGUE page at NWVault other than if someone has made a comment (which isn't too often). But when I looked a noticed that of the single, first release there had been 1980 downloads(!). It must mean something as 1980 is the year when Infocom's first release of ZORK I. But it's still not so strange as staying on #11 on the NWN2 Top Modules after gem's like Trinity and Misery Stone have been release. It's a niche module. dammit!!! No one should download it! Only old hoarheads like myself. I'm really glad though and would like to thank all the nice people who did.

More on the numero-thingie-topic. Yesterday it was my 3333th day as at my company. And I got fired :) I had it coming long time, eventually. Doing the right thing for the right reasons comes with a price tag and a corporate silver bullet. And it felt great and probably was how raise dead spell would feel- I'm tired but glad to been brought back to the world of living.

As a regualr OotS reader (you should also be one) I has to quote Belkar (who is my second favorite character):

"I can see now that everything I want out of life is right there, I just need to reach out and grab it. Everyone tried so hard to block my path - and in the end, all they really did was to force me to learn how to climb mountains.
- All the better from which to pee on them."




Thanks for reading boy and girls
/A

Hi
time flows and soon it's February. I'm floating around reading blogs and forums about new modules, discussions about DA:O vs NWN2. Between work and sleep I play DA:O, playing with the toolset without any real direction to go. I also laborating with the NWN2-toolset. Moving the lines of impossible to see where everything breaks. I'm trying to help some fellow builders whenever I find time. And I've started to play SoZ with my wife, still playing the OC with my gaming group. Finding that I really miss having a purpose with building. Zork took so many hours of my life and I will never do anything so stupid again, but there's a big hole after it.

I'm really happy to see that Bouncy Rock and jclef has got Misery Stone out and it would probably reach the NWVault any moment now. I'll grab it tonight and start feasting on it as I'm home alone. Great effort BR guys!
[UPDATE]

Here's a screen shot I took a early on in the game. So far everything is so damn polished and beautifully scary as I ever could have imagine this module to be.
[/UPDATE]

Now to what I happen to notice. It was ages since I visited the NWVaults NWN(1) section and I browsed around to see if there's something going on and noticed that during 2009 there was 158 community module releases!!! Lots of them seemed to have been received very well. Then I had to take a look at the 2009 NWN2 modules. They were 57 and a not so small amount were tests, prefabs and concept modules. Seems that DA didn't kill the old NWN at least. It was nice to see that there was lots of new NWN1 modules 2010. I'm thinking about installing my old friend and maybe try out some of the D20 modern modules.

About DA. I've started a new game and played Mage for a while but got back to my original Fighter campaign. I think I've changed my mind. The re-playability isn't so good after all. And I don't find myself so interested in the add-ons and the Awakening Expansion pack. I still have a tiny hope for an Multiplayer addon in the next generation. But I feel slightly empty on that part too. A bit like after watching movie Avatar. Nice experience, but then... shouldn't it be something more...?

What new game will I eagerly long for now? What forum and blogs will I visit and read all nights. Will I meet new friend and talk about building new exciting stuff? What adventures will I dream about playing a part in?

As you may know the NWN2 GPS module, Trinity is soon to be released. If you don't know about it check out this blog! I've been one of the lucky to be able to play this one before the release as part of a just-before-release-test and I just have to say it's a real blast. I won't ruin anything by telling what it's all about but so much I can tell it's an instant classic and one of the best composed NWN2 modules I played so far. E.C. Patterson has done a great job making it challenging, interesting, fun and even very good looking with lots of details, custom content and new ideas. As a bug hunter and helping hand I wasn't too brilliant as I didn't find any big problems or bugs. It could be that E.C. had done a great job washing out all issues before pre-releasing it to us testers, of course :) It felt really solid.

Anyway this is what I recommend you to start out the new year with. Keep your eyes open, download it and play, You won't regret it. And as always. If you download it - vote for it!

Tomorrow I'll start playing it again and enjoy it from a player only perspective.

Happy New Year to all of you!
/A

The snow is here! -13 degrees (8.6F) so the trees are glittering of frost. We've struggled with transporting a huge silver fir through the house and it's now unfreezing itself in the living room. I don't kidding it's the biggest damn tree ever to enter this house. Tomorrow we'll dress it so that even Liberace (click here younglings)would have been embarrassed. And at Thursday it's the day of the year. Yeah, I know, everywhere in the western world you celebrate on the 25th but here in Sweden the big day is the 24th. One theory is that the partying at the yule sacrifice wasn't so popular among the church's people when the religion shifted from the multi-god to the mono-god system so it merged with the fasting tradition that ends the 24th. That way the practical commoners could both party away on ham, beer and other nice things and be pious. You know, don't shift horse mid-stream. Who will punish you most Thor, Odin and the other guys for not eating pork and being drunk or the new kid on the block, big J, for not being a clean living individual?

Well what I really wanted to say is:
Where ever you are, whatever you celebrate this time of the year - Have a great holiday and play many games, both digital and... the other stuff what it was called back then!

/Amraphael

Just wanted to share three painful screenshots from DA:O. My character is a real loser when it comes to combat skills, well most of his qualities are really average. I like him, he's sort of like myself :) It's even worse he's a crush on the evil chick Morrigan. In real life it took me like 20 years to understand that I should avoid that kind of girls. I doubt my character we'll learn before it's too late...

Just wanted to show you some shots from another area I've been working on for Wyrin's White Plue M0untain-module. Forests are really difficult to create in my opinion. I you take a look at a real forest there's tons of bio-mass everywhere and you can often only see a couple of meters ahead. This doesn't really work when playing because it makes it impossible to navigate and pours syrup all over your graphics card's processors. And that was what made up the rules for this area. It should feel as a huge forest valley with high hills around. Lots of leafy trees so it takes a while to search through for goodies and encounters but still be somewhat easy to navigate. So I made it a bit sparse and had to use fog and a short far plane to keep the performance acceptable. That works fine when running around focused on other stuff but when looking at the screen shots it seems a bit flat because of the details fading out about 20 meters away from the PC. I also had a slight walkmesh challenge with the stairs and platforms around the abandoned tree houses, but they were very fun to make and turned out pretty well I think.

When going through taking those shots today I realized that I should ask Wyrin to let me go over this area again when he has populated it with the interesting stuff. I saw lots of small issues with hovering trees and grass. It really needs more grass and boulder piles too. Some strange textures and coloring that made my skin itch. Then it should be a really okay experience when it comes to looks and feel.








Thanks for reading
/A

I've been pretty silent about NWN2 lately. As everybody else I've been busy playing DA:O and besides that working my shiny butt off starting up a new office for our server hosting guys in the southern parts of our elongated country. But I've been doing good and interesting stuff too as I got the chance to help Wyrin creating two new areas for his upcoming White Plume Mountain module. It's nothing fancy but it had it's share of complicated walkmeshes and making a 16x16 area feel a lot larger without eating your computers performance as snack. Here's a few shots from the Serpent Hills area complete with a poor mans re-textured petrified serpent. I think it looks okay and the colorful soil/rock of that area matches those wind-swept, misty mountains. The serpents is really huge and it's mid-part crosses a slow cold stream while it's tail has some strange building carved out. I'm sure that Wyrin will fill this area with nasty encounters and action-packed fun for all that dare to explore it. I had a really good time creating it as it's so relaxing to do.






Thanks for reading
/A