Amraphael's House of Curious Things

Finnish CRPG: Legend of Grimrock

2012-02-12T13:34:00.003+01:00

This brings back memories from long lazy summer days in 1987. Me and a friend played Dungeon Master on his Sharp X68000-something for hours and hours making our parents hope that we would soon return to playing pen and paper games at the kitchen table so they'd understand (something little about) what we were doing.

This spring Almost Human Ltd of Finnland will take us back to that experience with their upcoming Legend of Grimrock. They promise us a dungeon crawl game with great atmosphere, puzzles, combat and RPG elements. I'll give it a try.

Take a look at this teaser:

And compare it to this old favorite on a Atari ST:

Krater - An upcoming Swedish ARPG

2012-01-28T16:52:00.003+01:00

It's great to see that the Swedish indie studio FatShark has an action rpg on the workbench. It's called Krater (crater in Swedish) and it takes place in a post apocalyptic Scandinavia. Their own description tell us that:
"Krater is an top-down roleplaying game that combines the combat mechanics of action-RPGs such as Diablo 3 with the top-down tactics of the classic old-school Syndicate and the world exploration of Fallout 2.

Extensive crafting (craft unique abilities, weapons and items) and character persistence where both injuries and experience work in conjunction are key elements to evolve your team over time and get ready to enter into the end-game."

It will be released in 3 episodes, the first during 2012 and it makes me especially happy when they claim it will support both single player and 2-player co-op. As I understand it they will try to involve players as early as possible so getting the hands on a beta testing key would be pretty easy.

/Amraphael

The Age of Decadence

2012-01-21T16:21:00.003+01:00

This could maybe something wort keeping an eye on. It's a very rare thing, finding out that there is a turn-based fantasy RPG in developement 2012! Will it be good? Will it be interesting? Will it be playable? Will it be released? There's one one thing to know and that's wait and see.

"Centuries after the fall of the empire, the world still rests in an uneasy balance, where even myths and fables deceive. A name on an ancient map brings back the memories of the distant past, turning a myth into unclear reality, and casting the player into political games built on years of discontent and ignorance of the past. Exploring both the legends and the land, you will have an opportunity to learn what truly happened in the past before the war turned civilization to ash or remain ignorant, believing in what you are told. You will be able to make powerful alliances, faithfully serving the interests of your patrons, or manipulating them to reach your own goals. You will have to find out where the map leads to and what is waiting for you at the end. That's where the future of your world and your own future would be determined."

It's called The Age of Decadence by Iron Tower

2012 Gaming

2012-01-15T19:56:00.002+01:00

Me and my wife finished NWN2: Mysteries of Westgate during the holidays. It was a nice module, well made and the story was okay. We encountered a few bugs but only 2 quests remained unsolved.

What should we play now? I bought The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim and thought we could play together taking turns being back seat players shouting and helping :) Skyrim looks great even on my really old PC but it wasn't fun. No it wasn't. Neither of us liked it. I'll probably play it some more and then give it away to a friend. Then my wife said. Please can we play Icewind Dale II again? It's almost 10 years since we played it. She saw that I've been testing it on my iPad. So today we started to play it and it's so damn fun to play. I've installed all possible mods and fixes and run it from our SSDs. Nice looking, fast and a blast!

/R

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T15:30:00.004+01:00

I wish you all a happy new year!

My wife got a iPad2 from her very generous husband :) and one of the first questions were - can we play Icewind Dale and NWN? Below is some pictures of what I've been playing with during the holidays. I'm using Splashtop Remote on the server and Splashtop Client on the iPads together with Air Mouse on the iPhone so we can use our phones as joypad/keyboard. Icewind Dale II works great, NWN works fine but NWN2 are fully functional but too slow for fun. The pictures are in portrait mode with on-screen keyboard but when playing it's much nicer to have them in 800*600 landscape. Can't wait to try out Temple of Elemental Evil.

/Amraphael

Merry Christmas to all of you!

2011-12-23T23:07:00.003+01:00

It's the warmest December in at least 43 years! No snow, apples on the trees - but still it's Christmas or Yule as we of the old folk say and I'd like to wish you a good weekend with lots of food, friends, family and stuff that makes you happy!

/Amraphael

It's a wizard!

2011-12-07T21:05:00.003+01:00

or monk... or a bard... or... oh no(!!!) a paladin!
To tell the truth we don't really know yet but I'm happy to tell I'm now the proud father to a adorable 4 weeks young lad named after a well known wizard.

He has somewhat passively attended his first few NWN2 sessions and a DnD board game evening so we have great hope that he stays away from bad things like football and hockey in the future :)

On the gaming front my gaming group has started to play Against the Cult of the Reptile God by Clyordes and me and my wife are halfway through Mysteries of Westgate. Both modules are solid fun!

Thanks for reading!
/A

Got iPad - want to play Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale?

2011-07-25T13:49:00.002+02:00

I don't say it's easy but speaking for myself I'm willing to go some distance to be able to play my old favorites on my new favorite toy - my iPad.

The solution is called GemRB. It is an open source reimplementation of the Infinity Engine ™ which powers the original games and all the existing mods/TCs. Available ports so far: Pandora, Haiku, Maemo, ReactOS, SyllableOS, AmigaOS4.1, Android AND most important for me - iOS!

Sounds great huh? Okay, if you want to try it you'd better know what you're doing. It includes jailbreaking, transfering software via SSH, setting the right rights and some configuration and of course some original game CD's. You can read more about it here.

Happy pad-RPGing!

/A

BTW:
1. My wife and I just finished SOZ. 18 months of weekly gaming and every single quest and little XP sucked out of it. Great gaming I'd say. Now on to MoW!

2. Our NWN2 gaming group are soon to finish Legacy of White Plume Mountain. I'd guess we have 3 quests and 2 sessions left. We have loved every single hour of it.

3. Playing L.A. Noire on the Xbox360. It's awesome! Yes!

That was a close one!

2011-06-18T12:07:00.002+02:00

I opened up the toolset just to fix some jumping points as a bug workaround so we could finish our White Plume Mountain campaign and I started to fiddle with a small area and some creature AI-scripts I've been pushing away to a remote corner of my brain. It's not anything fancy just some fake co-operative behavior from the enemies side.

When the amount of monsters are down to 4 two of them starts to circle (opposite directions) the strongest PC or companion while the other 2 attacks the weakest.
If theres 3 monsters one they pack together attacking the strongest PC. One doing the circling but tries to do nasty weakening stuff when he gets a chance (as when the PC targets another monster) the other two alternates between attacks and moving away.
When they are down to 2, one of them attacks while the other one heal and buff (trying to heal the partner in crime if possible) then they shift. Combing the behavior of circling, moving away and attacking, makes even a weak group of enemies a real challenge and makes the combat fun from a tactical perspective. I just played 40 minutes or so and I think a player might get the idea and see through it so it should probably be about 10 different and maybe random combat dances to chose and combine for it to feel really intelligent.

Then I came to my senses and shut the computer down, went washing my hands and face. Toolset-fever. That was a close one!

/A

(sorry about the English, I'm to lazy to try to read through and correct)

ZORK - RtGUE hits the NWN2 Wall of Fame!

2011-05-05T09:41:00.006+02:00

"The community has created some very cool content for NWN2 and now it's time to honor more inductees into the NWN2 Hall of Fame for the month of May 2011 as decided by the community. Congrats to all the authors on their awards!"

I'm sort of honored but, I have to admit that if they had not changed the base rule from 5000 downloads to 2500 , ZRtGUE would never had hit the wall at all.

I'm in good company because one of my favorites also moves to the HoF:
Trinity by E.C.Patterson and Gaming Parents Studios
Congratz!

It's a bit sad to see my work vanish from the Top NWN2 Modules list on the front page of NWN Vault,which was a damn good advertising spot for my small niche module.

Thanks for reading
/A

Dragon Age 2: Fiasco on multiple levels.

2011-03-12T13:23:00.003+01:00

The headline says it all. Summary:
Bought it. Played it. Sold it. All within 48 hours.

But why? (a bit longer explanation)
For a start EA is bad company for Bioware they treat their old fans and new customers as money milking cows only. On top of that their forum polices are random and really hostile against critical voices. Then the complete DLC rip off, the complete focus on merchandise, comics etc. I have no problem with making big bucks on things but I believe EA draged BW into things that completely took the focus off the game. I wouldn't even call it a finished game. It's a very pretty box with impressive advertising. Nothing more.

I have bought every single Bioware release. Some of them as NWN, IWD and BG I've bought multiple copies of for multiplayer purpose. I love the worlds they've presented and the stories they told. But DA2 is a laugh in my face for being stupid enough to willingly handing over my money for the game.

My language is not English (as you may have noted) but I really suffer from the dialogue and the often unbearable party banter. It's like an porno movie conversation, but worse.
The quests as far as I played was 90% like reliving WoW. A few were okay and had some interesting ideas but not much more.
The combat is a total disapoinment. Were are the cool animations, the tactical choices they talked so much about? It's fast but boring. Just hack and slash all the way and when you killed the last badie, they spawn a bunch more and guess what's happening when you have killed them? Yeah, a new bunch.
The background story could have been interesting but it's like commercial TV. All the breaks destroys the mood and you soon forget what you're watching.
It's really ugly. I could take that if it was a good game. Everyone talked about how pretty it would look. But if the engine is so good why did they let a bunch of monkeys use the LSD supply before doing the design work?

Isn't there something good then?
Of course there is. The music! It's great and I really love some of the tracks.

So should you buy DA2?
If you like the BW classics, Mass Effect and even DA:O: No don't do it, spend your money of something you like. Buy your mother a present, eat a good dinner. Buy the Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. Or take a chance with Dungeon Siege 3 (who knows it may be an okay hack and slash)

This is not a review just my own frustration over one of my favorite game developers doing a bad job and the publisher screwing me big time for getting my money without any effort.

Thanks for reading, as always
/Amraphael

Two NWN2 projects to keep an eye on!

2011-02-02T08:30:00.002+01:00

There's still some ongoing projects I eagerly waiting for such as Lance B's Better the demon. But here's two relatively new project that I really hope will reach goal.

The first one is Kamal's Shadow Thief: Crimor. A rouge play module focused on all the sneaky stuff that rouges do. He seems do build i very smart and fast using lots of prefabs and things already made for his Path of evil campaign. This one hits a weak spot in me. I've played with a similar idea for a long time but never dared to open the toolset afraid of the amount of work ahead such a project.

The next project is in early production. It's a modern D20 Fallout Persistent World by Mr Nixon. So far it looks great and I hope to see more soon.

Thanks for reading!
Amraphael

Keep in touch

2010-12-17T10:16:00.002+01:00

Hey,
is anyone still out there? I think it would be nice to keep in touch with some of you that used to read and comment as I regard many of you as my friends.
Here's my FB profile: http://tinyurl.com/2wa438x Please add your nickname in the request so I know who you are (to filter out spammers and such). I usually post in Swedish but theres always Google Translate.
Here's my e mail: http://tinyurl.com/385yews

Otherwise due to a friends personal problems we have not been able to play WPM for a couple of week. Instead me and my wife have been playing Castle Ravenloft Boardgame (thanks for the head up Maerduin) and it's an easygoing and fun dungeon crawling experience. The ruleset is a very simplified 4E and it's perfect if you want to lure some skeptics into the dungeon of fun but it's also good fun for more experienced players that just want to kill some time. Of course Boardgame Geek has lots of information about it.

[image pickpocked from the net]

Thanks for reading
/A

Dungeon Siege 3 - A new Diablo?

2010-11-11T13:00:00.004+01:00

I my search for some future gaming fun I've been keeping my eye on Obsidian's upcomming Dungeon Siege 3. First I thought it was a great idea to merge Obsidian's experience of CRPGs with the pretty but shallow DS-series. Not very much has been released about the game but so far I'd say they stick with the old recipe and serves us a Diablo++. That's not a bad thing. I had some fun hours with Diablo as with DS and DS2 but it's not something I get "Give me, give me, give me" over. Here's the first gameplay video. Nice looking but please OEI give us a new a Planescape Torment or Icewind Dale-kind of game and story! We really need that.

See you all!
/A

Going back in time: The Temple of Elemental Evil

2010-10-28T11:10:00.002+02:00

Bought this classic of the Interweb yesterday. The price was ridiculously low, just $5.99 (about 4 Euro).
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_temple_of_elemental_evil
I've installed it on a tiny virtual Win XP machine so I can play it easily whenever and where ever I want. And it's a blast. It took me a few moments to get used to the 2D view but now I can't stop playing it. I have a really short memory so the story seems fairly fresh. I also noticed that GOG has NWN1 Diamond for download for just ten bucks.

Aw man, I must work a little bit too. Please, just a little bit more...

/A

LoWPM continued

2010-10-27T10:37:00.003+02:00

Our weekly Legacy of White Plume Mountain - session continues... Yesterday our little group gathered on the plains west of Soubar to rest before entering the Dungeon of Swords. I believe the Encounter Level is about 13 or 14 and our group is way below that. But we like it rough. The area outside the dungeon were really beautiful and challenging. The terrain and the smart placing of encounters forced us to work out a good strategy to keep my sorcerer and our rouge alive. Remember, we don't have any good fighters in the team. Our cleric has to take on all the hard melee combat on her own. After a long hard fight we cleaned up the area and did some foraging and loot collection. We also needed to spend some gold on resurrecting our rouge and our beloved packhorse before we could rest. Then we entered the dungeon which first level was very nicely designed and had some really difficult encounters. I didn't take long for me to use up all my spells and I was really glad to have my sling +1 and some bullets +2. It took quite awhile to capture the first level and we decided to go back to camp and fix our wounds until next week. This little session took 2,5 hours which is in my opinion a perfect length when you play with friends on your own LAN. This also mean that we will have lots of Tuesdays with LoWPM ahead. And that's great!

Thanks for reading
A

Legacy of White Plume Mountain

2010-09-15T08:54:00.002+02:00

Yesterday we played Legacy of White Plume Mountain by Wyrin again. Our little gaming group of three started it last Tuesday but most of that 3 hour session was dedicated to creating our characters and strolling through the starting area, Soubar. Our party consists of a Female, Wild Elf Sorcerer/Arcane Scholar a Male, Human Ranger and a Female, Grey Orc Cleric. We also recruited a pre-created Rouge/Bard to help us open some locks and disable the traps.

The first impression of the starting area was. Ah, nice looking! Lots of details! Interesting NPC's! When starting to talk to the NPC's we realised that what's probably small talk for a single player is a bit frustrating in multiplayer. Everybody has to see all dialogue and when three people read together and decides what to answer together it takes LOTS of time. Going through all the conversation options with every NPC that had something interesting to say explains why we could spent 3 hours on leveling up to start level 7 and exploring that single area. The dialogue is well written and interesting, but way too long. In a writing course I once took ( I failed) they said the difference between a good writer and an excellent writer is the amount of words the excellent one doesn't need to write to tell the same story :)
Well, we spent all our gold on weapons, armor and trinkets and yesterday we left for adventure (with lots of side quests in our journal) and the main quest. I won't spill any spoilers here. The first side quests and encounters we had were well composed. Unique oppnents and good loot. Very well done, mr Wyrin! The encounters were challenging and I especially like the use of spellcasters I've missed from the BG-series. Hopefully we'll see more of them next session. I have to mention the encounter areas. In SoZ they were really boring, but from what I've seen in LoWPM, design has been giving some extra love.
The only negative thing so far is the battle music that doesn't give the feel of danger, heat and combat and the long, long conversations.

Another thing that isn't this modules fault was that some outdoor areas (including the overland map) was presented like this on one of the computers(image not from LoWPM, and this is not a snow area) :
Today I've tracked it down to a NVIDIA-driver problem. The solution may be downgrading the driver to an old version.... Hopefully we've solved it until next Tuesday.

Thanks for reading
/A

NEWS: Neverwinter a new game by Cryptic

2010-08-27T07:31:00.006+02:00

[UPDATED]
I had a watchdog put on the domain name: playneverwinter.com and it has triggered a couple of days ago so this may be old news for you.
The (old) news say that Cryptic Studios maker of City of Heros and Champions Online will be producing a new game called Neverwinter. The release is scheduled for Q4 2011.

"100 years have passed since the Spellplague consumed the world of Faerûn. Neverwinter, a once majestic city of magic and adventure upon the mighty Sea of Swords, is still being rebuilt from near total ruination. Even as new wonders of stone and iron rivaling ancient works are being raised by the hands of man, dwarf and elf, dark powers beyond reckoning vie for control of the land...

This is a world that promises death for the meek, glory for the bold and danger for all. This is the world of Neverwinter."

The key features as far as I see is:

Multiplayer
Persistant world
Some kind of toolset (or level designer tool, codename Forge)
4th Edition
Multi-platform (but not console)
3 races (Dwarf, Elf, Human)
5 classes (Cleric, Wizard, Figther, Rouge, Ranger)
Synchronized release with the first of a trilogy of books by R.A.Salvatore(?)

What do I think? Nothing yet. Let's wait and see. It's definitely not what most of us want if we could wish, but it doesn't have to be a bad game because of that.

Thanks for reading

NWN2, ME, Alpha Protocol and personal stuff

2010-08-20T08:26:00.005+02:00

I've been freed from work for the last 7 months. It's a fabulous thing to do when you are just above 40. Especially when the company pays 100% of your salary and I get my 10 years saved holiday pay too. I thought I would spend all the time with my old friend the toolset. But no. I have been working on our house, fixing the garden. Even meeting old friends in person. I've cooked a lot and done lots of things I'd forgot that I liked to do. Now the autumn comes and I'm surprised to find that I have a tiny little urge grown inside. I don't really know what to do with it, maybe I continue to work on my short adventure.
In two weeks I start my new job and it'll be a tough start. I start alone with a bag of gold pieces. I have to find at least four companions (or henchmen) and lead that little party to richness and fame. But first I have to find us a few good side-quests. Sounds familiar?

Okay too much personal stuff. Me and my gaming friends are still playing NWN2 OC. It takes so long to play it in MP. It's great that it is a many hours experience. Playing 4 hours every week and I think it's a better game than when I played through it myself. Me and my wife is going over SoZ squeezing every little XP out of it. Only chapter 3 left. With my other gaming group we play Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna. I'm still not sure what to think about it. It feels a bit odd too me.

I've played through Masse ffect and Mass effect 2 on Xbox 360 and I really liked it. ME was good. ME2 was excellent. Those games were the first ActionRPG's I ever played to the end. AND playing ARPGs works on console! Who would guess? Then I picked up Fallout 3 to a really low price. It didn't do it for me. I don't like the gaming system and the stiff story. And I didn't like the GUI. so after playing a few hours I sold it for an even lower price.

Last week I picked up the console version of Alpha Protocol. The first impression was - Ohh, Ugly! It felt like an cheap Mass effect clone at first. Almost the same controls with the small differences making it slightly harder to use. The GUI has to many levels making it slow to use and such. The animations are really ugly compared to ME2 and even to DA. Then I started to play and after going through the intro part I started to wonder how much I'd get if I sold the game. An evening when a NWN2 session was canceled I sat down in the sofa and started to play my first mission in the middle east. Wow, great fun! I tried to be a sneaking, stealthy agent but turned out to have no talent at all and I became a brutal killing machine. Why sneak around when you can boost up your assault gun and fill your pockets with grenades and go berserk? Later on I had to learn how to take it easy. But I'm hooked on AP now.

The negative thing is that the focus is on Action. The RPG is more about being quick to chose alignment in conversations (there are a count down timer) and spreading the Skillpoints in a more or less random way. You are very limited in the character creation part. I would like to adjust my characters looks, stats, background AND GENDER! Why not a female agent? It's really a boy's stereotype game but why cut of a big part of the potential customers. ME2 have lots of female gamers. I suspect that AP have a lot fewer.
I have about 30% left but so far I can say that I give AP 9.2 of 10 compared to ME2's 9.8.

What's next? Oh how I wait for Mass effect 3. I'm also looking forward to try DA2 but more for the action parts of it as I suspect the RPG portion will be less than in DA. There's also rumors about Bioware hiring people to handle single-player to multiplayer conversion(?) and that is a good sign. Another rumor is that something is happening on the Neverwinter-scene. Atari (waving my dirty-finger) mumbles about something new after the lawsuit and has registered several new domain names: For examle Save-NeverWinter.com It could be smoke though.

Thanks for reading
/A

Strange things might happen - a Zork entry

2010-07-06T12:08:00.003+02:00

I'm not a frequent visitor of my own NWVAULT entries, but yesterday I got a head-up from a guy that had some problems with the manual install of ZORK -RtGUE.

THERE IS ONLY THREE (3) VOTES LEFT UNTIL THE MODULE HITS THE HALL OF FAME! ! !

I suppose they have changed the voting criteria or something but I remember writing something about that it never would climb the top 10 list and never, never ever be a hall of fame module. In fact I should be a bit sad because it says something about the state of the NWN2 community. But not today. Today I'm quite happy to have got so much positive response.

So if you have played ZORK but not voted. Please do it. Help this classic a bit and make a fellow modder even happier.

Neverwinter News:
http://nwvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=57757

Thanks for reading, as always.

/A

I'm not dead - not last time i looked at least.

2010-05-07T17:36:00.002+02:00

No modding at all. Not that I have given up. I just had so many other things to do. Playing for example. Have been playing and finished Mass Effect 2. I enjoyed most of it even if I suck in the action parts. Got better towards the end though.

Still playing Dragon Age both on console and PC, but after MS2 everything looks so pale and stiff. Playing NWN2 OC with my friends (I'm surprised that I forgot so much of it) and have started to play Slowdive_Fan's Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna with my other NWN gaming group. I've ordered Fallout 3 and Assassins Creed 2 so I have something to fill the late nights with.

I'm playing/testing Wyrin's upcoming module every now and then but I'm a lousy tester because I don't find any big problems. It shows great promise and it's the next module for me and my friends.

Not working have some big ups. Gardening, painting, renovating the house, meeting people, relaxing and being an overall better person. And as the money still show every month life is pretty good. I've some ideas on what my next professional project will be so I'm not worried. But there's still three months of lovely freedom left.

Writing on my book is a different story, not a singe line yet. :)

Missing blog-chatting with all of you out there!
/A

Small ZORK update

2010-03-18T10:15:00.003+01:00

For the fainthearted, that don't like or dare to run my fine automated install script I've added manual install files to the
ZORK - Rediscovering the Great Underground Empire entry at NWVault.

/A

Still playing

2010-03-14T10:45:00.003+01:00

That's right. I'm still playing with my little module. It's pretty fun to do things I've never done properly before. The combat scene at the keep is really challenging but in my opinion too short. I really would like the courtyard battle to take about 5 minutes which is pretty long when fighting. But I believe the balance is right as my test party are worn down and once in three times someone gets killed. In a super short adventure like this one it's important to keep up the action and do everything very well. One funny thing is that my test companions started to talk to me. No I'm no crazy! They just started to say things like this;
"I don't like that you keep calling me Level_5_Cleric_without_Raise_Dead. I want a real name!" and;
"You know, I'm a real thief and I think you should consider me as a vital part of this adventure..."
So now they have names like; Irelove, Hollyshard, Grahand and Belitin and will all be available as companions. Even if they don't have any fat conversation trees attached to them, I like them. Good friends that are nice to travel a bit with. I even like the grumpy wizard, Beltin. It's kind of fun that he's so boring that he almost fades away in the snow.

That's all for now
Have a nice weekend
/A

About NWN2 orientation rounding

2010-03-06T08:51:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I wrote a little about my problem with walkmesh alignment. I suspected something with the heading value being screwed up when saving or baking. Then I read the BCKII manual, Quoting:

" The NWN2 toolset rounds the orientation (in radiant, not degree) every time you save the area or the module. When you reload the area or the module, the rounded values are applied. For example, a rotation of 90 degree will become 90.000206 degree. Since it is not perfect 90 degree, it will cause the Imperfect Alignment problem above."

To add to this I've noticed that when I adjust the heading again from for example the rounded "90.000206" to "90" the size of the placeable is automatically adjusted to "1, 0.91, 0"! When building Zork in version 1.21 I can't remember seeing that.

Now of to build a hidden archer object that fires from the window slots of the keep.

See you!
/R

Area design problems

2010-03-05T08:11:00.003+01:00

After finishing the encounters in prison and writing some poor conversations that just contains the key-lines, I started to work with the Keep-area. I decided to go with an early winter setting as I thought it would be fun to make. The castle is built with bricks from the BCKII-hak. Then I started to get problems. The tiles won't line up as I want. It seems there is a rounding problem with the orientation/heading values. That causes walkable placeables to no line up perfectly and the walkmesh are brokesn. It only shows up when saving the area so I didn't really understood what was going on at first. I'm not really sure how to solve it as I really want cool orc archers running around the roof and the PC's being able to go up to take them down close combat-style. Below is some early shots.

Thanks for reading, as always
/A

All aboard the crazy train

2010-02-28T10:30:00.003+01:00

Hello,
my name is Amraphael, I've been a toolsetaholic for many years... I've been sober for months, until yesterday. I just wanted to waste some time before going over to some friends for dinner. Now I sit here with two areas and some well balanced fights. And I feel the rush.

Below you see some screenshots from my failure to stay away from a new project. On the positive side (as all addicts say) I have limited the project by finding a suitable short adventure to put those areas into. I found the old Base of Operations in a drawer and I think a module of 40-60 minutes play would be possible to handle. A classic for adventurers team, very sparse conversations, 6-10 areas, starting level 5 - ending maybe level 6. No crazy custom sh*t (may fail heavily on that). I saw that there is one DM-version of the same adventure on the vault, but it doesn't matter to me. The story is always the same - find a reason to clean out the bad guys. Get the gold. Get the XP. And have some fun. And I won't even take a look at that other module. And I will really regret it when I have to spellcheck the ever so thin conversations and descriptions.

Believe me friends, it really hurts to do this. I was supposed to write children's book right now. And I should be fixing the contract with Spotify and our record label so that we get paid for that cursed 20-years of unreleased material album...

Thanks for reading!
/A

What will you do now?

2010-02-17T08:13:00.003+01:00

Hey, somebody still dropping by this blog to see no new posts?

I'm curious, what will you do/play after NWN2?

Of course 2010 may be the best year ever when it comes to delivering modules that has been in production like forever. But when you have played all modules you've been waiting for, delivered your carefully constructed module, and finished Dragon Age?

For me the last 12 years has been a chain of playing, waiting and socializing, playing again

- Played BG and waited for the Sword Coast-expansion
- Played Planescape: Torment while waiting for BG II and Icewind Dale
- Played BG II, waiting for NWN
- Played NWN for a long, long time (built lots too) while drooling after NWN2
- Played NWN2 and sort of waited for DA:O
- Still playing NWN2 and DA:O
- ...

But now I don't really know what to wait for or expect.
Please drop an old "on the dole"-CEO a comment and let me know.

Thanks for (still) reading!
/R

Numerology and personal matters

2010-01-30T08:02:00.005+01:00

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

NWN / NWN2 and other things

2010-01-21T14:31:00.005+01:00

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?

Keep your eyes open!

2009-12-31T11:48:00.002+01:00

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

Some kind of greatings

2009-12-19T17:28:00.006+01:00

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

Ohh, that hurt.

2009-12-12T15:28:00.003+01:00

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...

Area design part 2

2009-11-28T10:47:00.005+01:00

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

Area design part 1

2009-11-21T15:42:00.004+01:00

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

Lots and lots of LSD I'd say...

2009-11-09T22:00:00.003+01:00

If you never read the book The Hobbit by JRR Tolkin be warned. *Spoiler ahead*
*Shaking my head* A pointy ear icon singing about another pointy ear icon. This is... was... sick! I can't take it anymore.

In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire.
With his long wooden pipe,
fuzzy, woolly toes,
he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him

Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
He’s only three feet tall
Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Now hobbits are peace-lovin’ folks you know
They don’t like to hurry and they take things slow
They don’t like to travel away from home
They just want to eat and be left alone
But one day Bilbo was asked to go
on a big adventure to the caves below,
to help some dwarves get back their gold
that was stolen by a dragon in the days of old.

Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
He’s only three feet tall
Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Well, he fought with the goblins
He battled a troll!!
He riddled with Gollum!!!
A magic ring he stole!!!
He was chased by wolves,
Lost in the forest,
Escaped in a barrel from the elf-king’s halls!!!!!!!

Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Now he’s back in his home in the land of the Shire,
that brave little hobbit whom we all admire,
just sittin’ on a treasure of silver and gold
puffin’ on his pipe in his hobbit-hole.

Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
He’s only three feet tall
Bilbo (Bilbo)
Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

DA:O - I'm hooked

2009-11-07T18:23:00.003+01:00

Been playing a few hour now, the Noble Warrior road, and here's my first impression.

The graphics is great but less than I expected. It could be because of my slightly old graphics card but I run everything on highest. The textures look a bit flat and blurred. Not that it matters so much. Worse is the exterior areas. Many trees look really strange (not in the good way) the grass is flat and the overall terrain is not so good as in many NWN2 modules. Just take a look at the area below this ruin.

But as said. It does not matter. Not at all. The game got me instantly. The controls feels like an beloved old glove. Everything is familiar and I know exactly what do to without thinking too much about it. I get feelings for the characters I meet and the voice over is really good compared to the other CRPG's out there. I even got some adrenaline rush from the first fights. Something I noticed I like very much is that distances in the different areas both indoor and exterior feels correct. Of course they aren't really, but they feel so. In many games rooms are so huge and there's lots of empty space everywhere. The ambient life is also convincing in a way I've never seen before. It feel like when I played Baldur's Gate for the first time but in a more mature way that's suits me very well. My wife couldn't stop looking over my shoulder complaining that it should have been a BG-style multiplayer option (I agree on that). And she said that this is what NWN1 and NWN2 should have been and I agree again - don't dare to disagree with her ;)
Other small things I like is the sortable inventory, the tactics option for handling AI-behavior and the camera control.

And I like, hope and wish that the "single player"-folder indicates something for future expansions.

My PreOrder Dragon Age has arrived!

2009-11-05T12:45:00.003+01:00

Today a little package showed up in the mail. I pre-ordered Dragon Age to have it first of all kids on the block and I had it delivered to my work. Unfortunately most of my friends bought it in the store before me... Well, that life to night I'll be playing it until my eyes bleed. With just a short break for some polishing of an area I've been working on for Wyrin's, White Plume Mountain module.

Call me a fool but I ordered both the PC and XB0X 360 version. The PC version for the toolset and the 360 for playing in the living room on a large screen. Expensive, of course, but I can afford it as I don't go skiing or partying three times a week or buy new clothes every month (even I my wife would like me to). I also want to support Bioware for making great games in the past and hopefully a superb game this time.

Back soon on with a first impression report

/A

Another great module on it's way!

2009-11-03T16:41:00.003+01:00

If you missed this post I recommend taking a trip over there and see for yourself. Wyrin D'njargo, the multi-NWN2 Golden Dragon Awards winner and Hall of Fame guy is back, announcing The Legacy of White Plume Mountain, and it will support multiplayer as well as singleplayer. It'll be a blast! (Okay, I might be a bit, but just a tiny bit, biased)

Dragon Age may be upon us all, but NWN2 is far from dead yet. Lots of great builders are about to release their modules after months and months of hard work. This winter will be great!

/A

Hey, this is really cool!

2009-10-24T18:24:00.002+02:00

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

Got this in my email this morning. Saw the hardware last year on a medtech fair and my first thought was. Cool, someone should make a PnP RPG for this.

Well, I'm not completely worthless...

2009-10-22T18:35:00.003+02:00

I forgot that I use to say to my employees that if they feel crappy and not good enough they should go home and sleep on it because tomorrow puts everything in a different light.

I should listen more to myself...
So when I came home after work today I collected myself and made a new module, and an area with the same name and size as the old one. Then I started to drop the files, one at the time into the corrupt modules folder until I could load it. I got lucky on my third attempt. It was module.IFO that was broken and that only the water in the area is beyond rescue.

*doing the super hero dance*

I think I know someone that will be happy to hear this...

I'm a complete loser!

2009-10-22T15:05:00.000+02:00

*Extremely animated, arm waving, screaming and crying*

I have worked on a complex area for some long hours. Lots and lots of crazy walkmesh tricks finally worked perfectly. I saved it in directory mode and got my self into the bed. Yesterday I opened up the toolset to find that it's empty. No areas, not placeables, nothing... The files are all in the directory and has valid sizes. Tonight I'll try to make a new module with the same area names to see if I can trick it into reading my old files.

Not to myself:
Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save. Backup first, then save.

BTW. Dragon Age looks cool, the sales and marketing guy are really flexing their muscles. If the QA and story writers are 10% of that this will be a killer RPG (if it wasn't for the lack of MultiPlayer)

Back again

2009-10-07T15:03:00.006+02:00

No big news on the module building front. I sort of gave up on combat balancing. Then amazing things started to happen:

I fell an hit my head really bad
...and my knee cap got some pretty mosaic
I got the famous flu. 16 days in the bed
Then I had a bicycle accident where I hit my head - again
Four broken ribs
Two broken fingers (on my right hand) and a cracked wrist
Lots and lots of more pieces in my knee cap mosaic
My shoulder has a hairline crack that feels like tooth ache
I got really bored and resigned from my job - sort of - because that evening I found myself mysterious employed again and felt strangely cheated.

Yesterday I had a small opening ceremony for my long awaited home office. It's really cool and useful and I did some left handed toolset activities. Well, it was mostly some looking around at my pretty areas. I'll give the combat balancing a second chance.

BTW I saw that ZORK was #10 on the top modules. That is really surprising and a bit weird. Probably just because the Ironic God of Statistic was bored. But be sure, it'll never hit hall of fame :)

[EDIT OCT 8 2009] That didn't last long. Now the module is down to #11. Please vote to make the impossible possible :)
[/EDIT]

/A

Cut them down!

2009-09-17T17:22:00.002+02:00

What have I been up to lately? Nothing much at all. Have been sick and home for almost three weeks(!). Fever, headache and such. No, it's not the famous flu, there's still a chance to catch that too :) The last week I've been so well that I've spent three, four hours with the toolset. Without a clue about what I'm doing I've built a sewer with some creatures that my thief Lyssa and her companion Armon Swift can chop into pieces. I must admit that combat balancing is my very weak spot. I have not a clue how to do it as I never DMed PnP just played (always complaining about the balance of course). Maybe there is some calculator that I can put in my single character or all of my party's characters on one side and on the other I put for example an Ogre and the calculator says: "Well my friend, there's somewhere between 10-15% chance that your character dies"

Oh well, I just play with the toolset. It's kind of fun experimenting with walkmeshes and such.

Here's 2 screen shots from a raid against an underground Orc camp.

Thanks for reading
/A

Just a thought

2009-09-01T08:21:00.004+02:00

Looked at the island (below) this morning and wondered, how can so many houses fit into this small area. The population must be at least 250 people and about 150 visiting sailors. How do they make their living. Not farming for sure. Then I understood... Evil things. Piracy. False coining. Foul magic. The people living there is nice people for sure. The work hard, raise kids, take care of their elders (except the grumpy ones, thrown in a bottomless pit) but their moral standards is quite different. Lots of them does not even realize it because they are just like their neighbors.

Don't know why I've thinking about this. Maybe because I have a slight fever and still feel a bit sick. After thinking a bit more I came to the conclusion. They are just like us when we compare us with others.

They are all normal people, except the ones wearing a chair on their heads...
That's better! Bring me some strong dark ale!

Have a great day!
/A

Screenshots

2009-08-29T11:06:00.003+02:00

Hi,
I don't really know if people have found their way here. Maybe it's just that I've not yet published something interesting. So here's a couple of screen shots. And NO, I'm not working on a new module or PreFAB. I just need something to do when relaxing from writing on my book. Something that goes really slow. I need more discipline!

NWN2 stopped working after patch 1.22(1586)

2009-08-25T12:16:00.004+02:00

[EDIT]
.NET 3.5 is my hero! Found a non-related post on the NWN2-server and I took the chance and installed it. To my surprise it fixed the problem. Now I'm on it again!
[/EDIT]

This is so strange. A couple of days ago I installed SOZ and everything worked fine. So I decide to upgrade now that the Hotfix for 1.23 is out (1765).

Now my game says something:
"Cant start program. Please try to re-install"

I immediately took some actions

Uninstalled and re-installed NWN2+MotB+SoZ from scratch. The same result
Installed only NWN2 and upgraded. The same result
Did a manual patching from NWNVault (damn boring job). The same result
Installed NWN2+MotB+SoZ, but no patch 1.20(1541) It works fine!
Did a slow upgrade patch by patch until reaching patch 1.22(1586) Again the same result
I undo and downgrade to 1.20(1549) and It works!

I'll go crazy! On my wifes computer. Exactly the same hardware and configuration, everything works fine. ARRRGH!
An no, going back to 1.20 is not an option. Must find solution, must find...

I'm a crafting idiot!

2009-08-24T19:50:00.005+02:00

While into confessing (read my last post) I have to admit that I've a really hard time with crafting in NWN2. It's too damn complicated and not so fun as I understand that lots of other players think. Especially when playing together with other. "Hey, you lousy wiz, stop fiddling with that bench! Let's go gnoll bashing instead!" or "What?! Is that all you could come up with? A short sword of eleven poo that glows...brown. Stop that crafting and let's get our hands bloody!"
Or I'm I only too low INT to get it?

Have a nice day everybody!

/A

Let me tell you a secret...

2009-08-22T14:55:00.003+02:00

... I installed Storm over Zehir today. Yes, that's the truth, I've had the disc laying on my desk since the day it was released here and I did resist installing it, because it would tempt me to use the new content in Zork. Now I'll update my wife's computer so we can play Trial & Terror together over LAN.

Uploading new Hand held Light source pack

2009-08-16T14:07:00.003+02:00

This is no big release but I'm sure that a bit light in the darkness will be welcome. It's a new version of my light source pack. I'll include the item icons for free :)

Soon at the NWNVault...

Finished playing Tomb of Horror Revisited

2009-08-15T09:41:00.003+02:00

Last night me, my wife and a friend finished Tomb of Horror Revisited by BM Productions.
I'm sorry to say that I can't really understand the 41 votes and an average score of 9.2

Okay, it's both single and multiplayer. That's worth a lot. It's a pretty good conversion of the PnP adventure and that's worth something too. But in my and my party's opinion a really boring module for CRPG. In a PnP setting the DM can give that extra a long dungeon crawl needs but this mod does nothing of that. It's just forever re-spawning monsters, not so interesting area design and lot's of separating the party by teleporting them somewhere far away from each other.

On the upside, there's few bugs, a walkthrough and... no I can't find anything more. I'll give it a 5.0.

Okay, what's on the play list for our small party now. It's Indira Lightfoot's Trial and Terror.
Here's a shot of my fighter/berserker/weapon specialist with a funky crown on his head and my friend the crazy cleric. My wifes character is away shopping, of course... (or stealing). Just played a few hours but I'm already in love with this module. Nice looking, interesting, challenging (and I don't even like +15 high level adventuring).

See you!
/A

Uploading the Placeables pack to NWVault

2009-08-11T19:14:00.004+02:00

It took quite some time to prepare them, but now there's a pack with a total 110 parts from the ZORK module awaiting approval on the NWVault.

[EDIT]
It's up!
Here's the download link.
[/EDIT]

Some previews:

/A

Placeables Pack 01, slightly delayed

2009-08-10T11:13:00.002+02:00

After talking to a fellow NWN2 builder, I've decided to split the pack in several parts:

Rugs
Paintings
Sewer Pipes
Strange objects
Hand-held light sources
Trapdoors
Airship
...and maybe something more

The reason to this is to make it more useful to builders. I'll also provide a complete pack with all and everything in it. As usual it takes a bit of time. Especially to create the blue-prints and checking that script and conversations for the usable placeables works correctly.

Thanks for the patience!
/A

HAK-pack hell

2009-08-03T19:14:00.003+02:00

I've started to pack together the placeables from ZORK-RtGUE and move the around in the placeables.2da as I have an area between 8000-8999 reserved. Of course they were in another range when building the module so that's lots of work and really easy do miss a texture or something. It should be up at the vault within a couple of days. Here's the content of Pack 01:

/A

Okay, what's up now?

2009-07-31T16:15:00.002+02:00

It seems that the release of Zork hasn't brought up any huge malfunctions for people. I hold my breath for a week or to before I trust it to fly by itself.

Next week I'll start to extract the custom content for a massive upload to the Vault. First I decided to just put up the entire HAK and make some blueprints for it, but then I changed my mind and will extract just my own thing and put them in three different packs:

Lights prefab pack
Visual effects pack
Placeables pack

Later on I'll extract some of the more interesting areas (strip them of custom content) and release them as Area prefabs. I think the forest will be useful for those who are in need of a low performance forest.

Except for this I'll:

Finish my new home office (I know it's been forever since I started)
Finish our huge outdoor wooden deck before the winter comes
Build a front porch
Finish my adventurous children's book

I'll also do some secret NWN2 stuff that includes the tre T's - treasures, traps and thieves

Thanks for reading
/A

ZORK - Rediscovering the Great Underground Empire is up!

2009-07-28T20:56:00.001+02:00

It's alive!
Download it now or may the Grue bite you!

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=378

Now I'll rest. Tomorrow I put the news on the NWN2Forums.

/A

Packed and ready to go!

2009-07-27T10:52:00.001+02:00

Hello sailors!
[this is a cross-post from my NWN2Zork-blog]

The 1.00 version of Zork is compiled into a self-installing executable. The Walkthrough is updated and I have asked the site managers of NWVault for a FTP access so I can upload the module. Now I only hope that everything is fitted together correctly and that I don't have to make too many patches.

I have also put up a NWN2ZORK-forum for players in need of help, hints and for reporting bugs and issues.

Finally, I want to thank everybody for the support and help you have given me over the last two years by showing this little, 80's classic style, end-game loadscreen.

Thank you for reading, as always. I'll be back when the mod. is up!

/A

Welcome, old and new friends!

2009-07-10T11:09:00.004+02:00

As I write this, I'm preparing the last things before the release of my first public NWN2 module:

ZORK - Rediscovering the Great Underground Empire
a re-make of the classic ZORK I, for Neverwinter Nights 2

Keep your eyes on the NWVault 'cause it's soon to be launched (fingers crossed)

Some of you may wonder what this blog will be about, and honestly, I don't really know. It will be about NWN, NWN2, CRPGs, of course. I may write something about module making and custom content. Or perhaps about something more related to a certain project...

We'll see, and until then...
Thanks for reading

/Amraphael