Test, Find, Fix, Repeat

Doing playtesting for The Shattered War has been the order of business for the last couple of weeks. This has been a series of playtests starting the game from scratch and experimenting with different decisions and choices within the game. Across a few characters I've tried a number of approaches, in one case I finished every quest and looted everything I could find, and in another I blitzed through doing the bare minimum of what I needed to progress, not to mention some options in between.

I still haven't gone through a full playthrough from start to finish and have hit on issues of all shapes and sizes...

• Typos or grammar errors in dialogue, item descriptions or codex. 
• While the voiced dialogue is basically problem free, there are a number of unvoiced characters that I noted some errors in.
• There are still unvoiced NPCs - female voice actors have been particularly hard to find. I will have to make a dedicated push to finding the remaining voice actors in the near future.
• Minor scripting errors, glitches in characters not moving where they're supposed to within an area, a player's reward not being correct, an enemy not spawning when they are supposed to.
• Major scripting errors - anything that stops progress of a quest. Say, items not becoming interactive when they're supposed to, or enemy deaths not triggering quest success.
• Camera angles for conversation looking weird.
• Missing or incorrect markers on the mini-map.

Of course, while the laundry list of bugs has been a decent size, I've been able to wipe them off the list fairly rapidly as well. Smashing through these issues has been a refreshing change of pace from spending time almost exclusively in the toolset with very little playtesting. Those darkspawn never knew what hit them...

Sometimes, you just need to resort to the trusty "sword to the face" option

The good news is that the mod really does feel like it's made big strides since my last round of playtesting. A bunch of long-standing niggles and annoyances have been struck off my list, and everything is definitely coming together to make a cohesive gaming and Dragon Age experience. I've been recording some of the conversations in an effort to put together a small video of the voice actors and acting present in the mod - I'm hoping to put that together and have it available on YouTube in the near future. This won't be another trailer cut with combat - just some (spoiler free) teasers of dialogue that should whet people's appetite for some of the characters and intrigue in The Shattered War.

Mapping it out

Recent modding efforts have been dedicated towards level design - putting the finishing touches on existing levels as well as getting the last few levels completed for the game itself.  I'm currently working on the decoration and walkmesh stage of the final large level in the game - once that's done, I'll have three small interiors (which should hopefully not require too much effort), and then one small exterior in order to complete all level design.

This will see all of the functional structure completed, and should basically require a test run-through of a few things to ensure that all the scripting elements are in place to ensure that events occur as they are supposed to based on player decisions. I've also recently gone through and tidied up the minimap appearance for all the areas - the generation of these is done automatically by the game, but unlike the original game, the minimap is basically a zoomed-out snapshot of the level from above rather than the sepia line drawing style.  While I could potentially produce minimaps in-line with the original game, I don't feel that this is entirely necessary, nor particularly worth the time that it would take me to do.  2D art isn't really something I'm particularly good at, so it would probably take me a while to create something that would be suitable. I'm happy that the level design is of a high quality such that the change in minimap style won't be an issue.

Part of a recently completed level

Once this is done, I'll have a bit more work to do to finish off a puzzle that has caused some real hassles in terms of scripting not behaving reliably, ensure that the last few special set items are added at appropriate locations within the game, and then add a very small amount of writing to one of the characters in the game and ensure the epilogues are put into the game.  At that point, all that remains to do is a full test run of the adventure, and attempt to get voice acting for the remaining unvoiced characters.

Thus the end of this modding venture is in sight - I'm hopeful that it will deliver a great roleplaying experience for people!

Levels, scripting and hooking together

My supposedly regular updates have not been forthcoming, and my apologies to people for that. However, on the whole, a lot of what I've been working on hasn't necessarily been that exciting to write or read about.
A large amount of my modding time over the past few weeks has been working on getting the overall flow of the mod strung together and debugging issues relating to plot progress. If that sounds unintelligible, put simply, I'm writing scripts to make sure that the game continues properly.

To explain in more detail, this work is what ensures that the game carries on when the player completes quests and works towards completing the main plot.  When the player completes sub-quests that progress the main plot and change the situation of the setting and The Shattered War, it is this scripting that ensures that the next key part of the plot unravels, and that characters react appropriately to the player's decisions thus far.  This scripting is what makes other characters remember the player's actions and then react to them - if the player has aggravated particularly individuals with their choices, they may act to hinder the player instead of help them.  There are a lot of different options in The Shattered War, so working through the different possibilities and combinations of player choices takes a lot of time to ensure that the appropriate consequences (both good and bad) come about as a result of those choices.

That said, I have also been working on a few new areas, including a couple of areas that I had previously planned to cut out entirely.  This means that there is even more content in the game for players to explore and experience...

Are these merely abandoned ruins? Or are they something more?

I will attempt to make more regular updates (I think I've suggested I'd do that in my last few irregular posts), but at the same time, I do want to make sure that the content is interest for people to read. If there is something people would like to know more about, please leave a comment and let me know, and I'll endeavour to answer your questions!

Filling out content

In addition to the playtesting I've been doing to piece the core plot of the game together from start to finish, I've also been working on designing and adding in some extra content that has been in my mind for a while. I'm talking about "light content", which is the little subquests that revolve more around exploration and puzzle solving that reward the inquisitive player.  Generally, these things are much less time consuming and demanding to implement for me than fully fledged quests. Think of these quests like the "Chanter's Board" quests from Dragon Age, but without a central location to kick them off for you.

There are a few things that I want to make sure that I do with these quests in order to make them interesting, and so am trying to follow a few principles when creating them.

Don't make it immediately obvious

The point here is that I want the player to start the quest by finding something, not by going to a person with a marker above their head or a notice board in the middle of a village. It could be a journal, a scrap of paper, a strange item, some kind of key, or anything really.  The main point is that the player should find something that gives them a clue that there is something else that they could do or find.

Require exploration
These objects should be spread out across the areas that the player will explore - they won't just be found in the main locations that every player will have to visit. The levels I've created for the mod are reasonably large - and I'd like to encourage players to explore them. With many modern games, we're often forced down very linear paths, so trying to get players to search and experience the fun of exploration is something I'd like to be able to do.

Monsters are easy to find, these should require more effort

Puzzles can be fun
One thing I find really annoying about puzzles in many games is that they're either really obscure and illogical (the worst of Monkey Island syndrome, or Anna), or blatantly obvious (Towers of Hanoi).  The other annoyance is when puzzles are presented in a way that they're not solvable when you encounter them, either because you don't have the right skills/items to solve them (e.g. Batman, Assassin's Creed), or worse, that the player cannot complete the puzzle until they are explicitly told what to do. Where I implement puzzles, I want the player to be given enough information to carry them out, but without beating them over the head with an answer. This is a tough balance, but I'm hoping to provide a mix of puzzles that should be interesting.

Use player skills
Skills like tracking, herbalism, pick pocketing and the like are things that are often neglected by designers. Even in Dragon Age itself, it felt like these were mostly for facilitating combat rather than being useful for anything else.  I want to be able to use these skills to assist, or possibly even be required to complete some of these quests.

Give rewards
The player should get something from these kinds of quests. They're exploring, uncovering secrets and the like, and thus should be rewarded with different and unique items as a result. This is the icing on the cake to make the player go "that was awesome!" This is where I'll be giving out the most interesting and powerful items in the game, because it rewards dedicated players, and makes people want to explore and find those hidden secrets.

So that's my update for this week. Stay tuned for another update next week!

Testing Progress: Fixing companions and falling off the edge of the world.

After my recent reinstall, testing has resulted in a bunch of scripting and random undocumented engine issues. Nevertheless there has been some solid, albeit slow and frustrating progress on some more difficult problems.

Showstopper issues tackled this time included:

• The player appearing off the edge of the map after traveling to a location via the world map. This came as a result of implementing an area list - which allows the player to easily switch between interior and exterior areas without a major load screen.  Unfortunately some identically named destination waypoints (which are used to set the player's location when entering an area), resulted in the game not knowing where to place the player.
• Continuity issues in plots resulting in the player being unable to progress the story if they took certain actions.
• Made companion dialogue work correctly in the toolset again - a reinstall had deleted a custom file that enables it to detect and make use of custom companions. Without this fix, companion interjections in dialogue are impossible... and I've got quite a number of them.
• A major breakthrough with the player's party members - making sure that they have appropriate skills and specialisations when they join the party.  Since the game starts the player at a higher level, the party members need to have skills that suit their background. There were a bunch of different problems: not receiving correct skills/talent points, not receiving a specialisation or having skills assigned incorrectly (or not being able to assign them at all).  Party members that have half or a third of the hitpoints they should have aren't useful to the player!

This fight was nothing compared to the battle I had solving that last problem...

A few other select issues included:

• Fixing some level design to improve the flow of play and improve overall appearance.
• Changing / cutting some recorded dialogue to make the flow of conversation seem more natural.
• Noted a bunch of areas that felt "empty" for future reference to fill with little bonuses for the exploring player. 
• Solved an issue where ambient animations for a group of sleeping/injured people would kick in a few seconds after a player entered an area. This resulted in them standing up briefly after the player entered... then suddenly all falling over.  While this was quite amusing, it wasn't really the desired effect. 

So some big and small wins this time around. Hopefully this will continue for the coming week!

Playtesting: Old and New

One of the big things from doing a bunch of playtesting is that you quickly realise where things don't quite work. This is blatantly obvious when it comes to show-stoppers, of course.  If you can't progress a quest because of some logic error, an area being inaccessible (either in or out) or not receiving an object you need to complete the quest, this is immediately recognisable.

With the title of this post, what I'm talking about is where things don't "fit" quite so well as they should.  While I've been focusing primarily on the big show stoppers, I also hit upon the continuity, realism or general flow of the game issues that mean things just don't come together nicely.  One such issue was relating to a major quest, where part of it occured on the same area as a main town map area.  This was originally to make sure the player got to see the whole town map area, but as I played the game, I realised that it simply didn't fit in terms of the content of the quest.

This means new area time!  Now, in this particular case, I didn't actually want to spent hours and hours on making a new area. This is basically a one-shot area that isn't really designed for much more than a single encounter. I've created almost all my areas from scratch in The Shattered War, but there are a couple where I have used existing work as a base for an area. In this case, I grabbed one of the default areas from DAO... but modified it to suit my own purposes.  Doing this, I've managed to create an entirely new area with basically only a few hours of effort. 

The really good thing about this is that with some clever editing, it's quite easy to change the area such that it's not easily recognisable as one of the original areas even for someone who has played the game a lot.  By removing a bunch of items, changing texturing and vegetation, and doing a few key modifications to the existing terrain, it is possible to make it look dramatically different. Here's a shot of my modified level below - if you've played DAO, see if you can spot where it came from!

You never know what's around the corner...

If you're interested, here's a link to a comparison shot of the original level compared to my modified version.  I'd still like to do a bit more work to the decoration of the level, but given my current focus is getting the mod "content complete", that will have to wait.

Playtesting and Bug Squashing

My modding efforts for the past week have all been working towards my stated goal of getting the game in a more playable state. This was to try to get through as much of the game as I could in its current state. There are still a handful of things that need to be fixed before I can run through from start to finish, but that glue that links all the individual finished components shouldn't be far off.

So the weekend saw me spend a fair amount of time doing a playthrough from the very beginning and exploring as much as I could, noting down any issues along the way.  I'm focusing primarily on the gamebreaking issues, but noting the cosmetic ones as well for future attention. Then, sometimes you just pause for some reason and manage to catch a party member leaping at an Ogre and looking a little bit odd...

Flying goose strike!

The good news is that I managed to get through quite a lot of the mod before I had to stop.  There were, of course, things that I missed, but that's inevitable when you've got an adventure like The Shattered War. Some choices cut off some content, meaning you can't see everything in one playthrough. It also means there will have to be lots of testing before I can finally call it finished.

There were a bunch of little things that tripped me up along the way:

• I was missing stages for couple of conversations - which unceremoniously dumps the player (and the person they're talking to) outside of the walkable area of the level.
• I'd moved/renamed some resources/levels, which means they were inaccessible when referenced by name by some scripts/variable names.
• The ability for supposedly mutually exclusive quest lines to be run simultaneously due to some bad logic.
• I'd failed to set attach some scripts to plots - so when the player completed particular actions, the necessary consequences didn't occur. While this really puts a dampener on a playthrough, I've done this a few times now, so it's one of the first things I check (and subsequently solve a number of issues in one hit).

Smaller issues were things like:

• Areas having very quiet ambient sound. To be honest, I'm not actually sure how I can fix some of this, because there's simply no way within the toolset to increase their volume. This is actually one of the most annoying issues, because the ambient sound really makes a huge difference to the overall atmosphere of the area. If anyone with DAO modding knowledge has any idea about this, I'd really love to hear from you.
• Tweaks to companion approval scripts causing the approval for one of the companions to not work.  
• Some recorded lines of dialogue were uncharacteristically louder or softer than they should have been. There was a nice conversation and then suddenly ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS TALKING REALLY LOUDLY.
• A large battle scene where one side simply refused to fight and simply stood there, oblivious to any combat around them.

On the whole, I've made some great progress, and should be able to make even more over the coming week.

How long does it take to make a level?

Recently I was asked a question about level design and for some advice on how to construct a level. I was also asked about how long it takes to make a level.

As for general advice on how to construct a level, there are entire books on the subject. Achieving a level that is successful both functionally and aesthetically is a challenging task, and the former will depend greatly upon the style of game that is being created. A level for a multiplayer FPS will be vastly different to a story driven FPS, which will be different again to a single player RPG, which will in turn be different from an open world MMO. Simply put, there is no silver bullet solution on how to design a great level. Levels can look great but play horribly, and look horrible yet facilitate great gameplay.

The biggest bit of advice then is to examine good levels for the genre you wish to design for.  If you're looking to create a level for an RPG like Dragon Age, go play single player, story driven RPGs. Of course, this is useless if you're looking to create the latest and greatest FPS map. Examine examples from your chosen genre, and determine what works and what doesn't. Item placement and level movement, chokepoints and dead paths are all important issues in an multiplayer FPS, but irrelevant in an RPG. In this case, you'll be concerned about things like how the level facilitates (or hampers) player combat, potential traps for the player, NPC patterns, and avoiding unnecessary player backtracking.

We don't go to Ravenholm to learn to make a deathmatch map

Ultimately, level design comes down to practice, and lots of it. Furthermore, whenever you switch to a new tool, you're always going to have a learning curve on how to use it effectively. Yes, many of the skills you will learn will transfer; the basic design tenets, but new technology always comes with a learning curve, and after you make a few levels, you'll look back at your starting work and think "that looks horrible." I've done exactly that with some of the early levels I created for The Shattered War (and pretty much every single level creation tool I've ever used).

Finally, the time factor. How long a level takes is widely variable based on the skill level of the person, how complicated the level is and how big the level is.  I've done one level in as little as 15 hours, yet producing Fort Velen took around 60 hours - even more when taking into account finalising it and adding associated waypoints for moving characters, ambient animation and sounds. My most recent level has taken around 35 hours, but again, that's just the base of the level. Sounds, monsters, encounters, scripting and so forth all need to be added before it will be in a playable state.

So to give an indication of what that time creates, here's a look at the near finished product.

A ridge above a gully high in the mountains

Until next time, happy level creating!

Shattered War: Still Progressing

I realise that I've been less active on this blog of late that I would like, and probably less active than I should be.  This is partly because I've been slightly busier than usual and been able to dedicate less time to blogging and modding than I would like, but also because a lot of the modding work I've been doing lately for The Shattered War hasn't been terribly interesting for people to read about.

Why is that? Mainly because a lot of the work has either been testing and fixing bugs, or writing dialogue scripts. Dialogue scripts are the text files that get sent to voice actors once a role has been filled. This is a test file with a full export of all the character's lines, but heavily annotated. It provides a character biography, so the voice actor has an insight into their personality. It has any background information on the lore or setting that people may not be familiar with that is relevant to the character and their dialogue, along with details of any plots/storylines that the character may be involved with. It also contains a pronunciation guide for the names of other characters or locations.

Voicing a templar would be less convincing without relevant lore knowledge

Finally, the lines are divided up into logical segments to indicate the structure of the dialogue, and also an indication of the character's emotions or thought process behind the line is provided. This allows the voice actor to inject their own skill and take on the character's personality, while remaining true to the core persona with which the character has been written.  There is a delicate balance here - being too prescriptive doesn't allow the voice actor to act properly or give a good range of emotion and characterisation, but too little information and the voice actor may convey something completely different from what is meant in the context of the conversation or situation.

However, all the dialogue and all the scripts for the entire mod have been written, so I'll be running open auditions for all roles until they're filled. If you're at all interested in providing voice acting for any of the characters in the mod, please check out this page for details on characters and how to audition.

That said, there are still a handful of levels in the game that haven't yet been finalised. Some of these I'll be keeping in reserve and won't be publishing screenshots for them - I don't want to give away all the eye candy in the game. Of course, I can't tease you like that with giving a shot from another area that shows off the cold and unforgiving landscape of the setting...

Brrr, it's cold out there...

I'll endeavor to get back to more regular updates of progress on The Shattered War, it's been a very long journey of development thus far, and there's still a substantial amount of work left, but there will be quite a lot of gameplay to show for it once it's finished.

New Screenshot

Just a quick post today in the middle of my Assassin's Creed posts to demonstrate some more of the work I've been doing on The Shattered War. Dialogue has been occupying a vast majority of my time lately, but I've managed to get another level done and have a screenshot for your viewing...

It might look serene, but who knows what's around that next corner?

There are only a few levels I have left to complete, but I'll probably be trying to focus on more dialogue work and getting voice actors to fill the remaining roles for the adventure in the near future.  The vast majority of the dialogue work at the moment is getting the scripts into a readable and understandable format for potential voice actors or getting voice cuts integrated into the game itself. Once that's complete, I'll be putting out a full audition list of all remaining characters that need to be voiced. Stay tuned!

Shattered War Update

After last week's trailer, I feel I should provide some indication at to what I've been doing recently on the mod apart from making trailers and screenshots. The short answer is: playtesting.

For anything of a decent level of complexity, you'll never get everything perfect the first time, and there are inevitably things that require testing and in-game observation in order determine whether they work.  Is the player having to run around too much, does the area feel too empty or busy? Are the NPCs wandering around naturally or should their movement be changed. These are the sort of things that a designer gets better at with practice, but they still need to be observed in the game to make sure they're working as they should.

Too empty? I have to explore to know for certain.

The other inevitability is the presence of bugs. I've yet do any large project where everything works perfectly first time. An unassigned script, an overlooked set of possibilities combining to provide a dialogue choice that doesn't make sense, or any number of issues can cause a problem that will crop up for a player.

Perhaps the most significant problem I found was that it was possibly to short-circuit and complete two quests practically immediately after receiving them if the player had followed a particular course of action beforehand. This was obviously an undesirable situation, but I'd not contemplated the possibility that those events could or would occur in that order, hence I'd not catered for it. A few hours and a large number of tweaks later, the dialogue now had appropriate dependencies to prevent players from effectively skipping and missing out on a large amount of dialogue.

One thing to note from this is that some quests can be solved entirely through dialogue and exploration rather than through combat. I wanted to give players options in the way they pursue a course of action, and have catered for diplomats as well as warmongers. I'm just now fortunate enough to see those different options coming together within a playable product.

New Shattered War Trailer

In order to showcase some of the work that I've been doing recently on The Shattered War, I thought it was time to release something that people could look at to see and hear everything as it goes on during the game. To that end, I have a brand new trailer showcasing some of the voice work and level design that has been taking place over the past few months.

In addition, for those who want a bit of a closer look at some of the action, I've got a screenshot for your viewing pleasure.

Fighting to save a town

Until next time...

Action, Reaction: The Shattered War

Recently I did two posts about a player's interaction with a game, covering how the game can train a player and how this can led to an undesirable narrowing of gameplay options chosen by the player. So, in the spirit of continuing this series of posts, I want to discuss how The Shattered War reacts to the player, and how this can affect and influence their gaming experience.

Within the process of playing a game, the first step is for the game to introduce itself to the player and explain its mechanics. While this is essential for a game to ensure the player is not overwhelmed, gradually new elements are introduced to increase the complexity of the experience. As the Shattered War is a standalone experience set after the main campaign, it can be expected that most players will have played it, and thus have some background in the mechanics of the game and the setting itself. As such, The Shattered War does not start the player at level 1 and force them to start off with a miserly array of combat options. Right from the start of the module, the player is given numerous tools to deal with all situations. However, new items and placeables have been created to add a little more creativity to the mechanics.

One such example is the medic table, which allows a player to rejuvenate their health/mana/stamina. This is only available at certain encounters, and can prove the difference between life and death in challenging fights. Of course, doing so takes time and will remove the character from the fight, making it more difficult for party members still engaged in battle.

One character runs to heal while Taraz kills an ogre

In addition to fighting, another key aspect of the game's reactions to the player is the way that the narrative progresses in response to player actions in dialogue and even in their quest choices. One of the things I'm aiming to do is to make it such that the player will need to make choices that they won't be able to have everything they want, but more importantly that they feel like those choices have been validated. For anything the player might have lost from not pursuing one course of action, they will gain something else that may be useful to their cause.

A key concern here is that the player feels that their action was a perfectly valid choice. Every decision must feel like a logical extension of the story and must flow naturally, else the player will feel as though their actions have been penalised. Every possible outcome presented should be as though it is the only story, and do as little as possible to draw attention to the variations within. Whether characters live or die should feel natural to the player.

Will these characters survive the experience? It could be your choice.

In this regard, some of the choices are designed such that the player should not necessarily realise they are making a choice. The approach is such that a player makes decisions or choices in the people they support and the quests they choose to pursue. Furthermore, the player is not given a penalty for pursuing different roleplaying options. Decision making can be pursued regardless of the character's moral disposition, allowing them to side with one person or another with freedom. The actions of the player are met with equal, but different reactions for every choice.

Gameplay decisions with significant benefits will also cause comparable negative consequences, but these are balanced among different choices. This way each set of choices allow the player to feel some reward, but also some temptation to wonder "what could have been". This is the way for every action and reaction to feel unique and special to each player, and to allow them options to play and replay the adventure to experience different outcomes.

Shattered War Characters: Farouk

It's time to meet another character from the cast of The Shattered War. In today's post, I'll introduce a key NPC from the adventure: The Templar Commander Farouk.

Farouk was born into a Chasind family, but his the rest of his family was killed by The Chantry under suspicion of being apostates. In an act of kindness, of the templars rescued him, for he was just a young boy at the time. As a result, he was raised by the Chantry and soon led into the life of a Templar after becoming a devout follower of the Maker. He does not consider himself one of the Chasind people, and is grateful for path his life has taken.

"Templars act to protect the safety of everyone, and sometimes that means making hard decisions in an instant. The Chantry trusts us with that power, with that burden."

He takes his duties as a templar very seriously, and rarely engages in humour. He is greatly distrustful of any mages outside of his jurisdiction, particularly Dalish elves, but is even suspicious of Grey Wardens who are also mages. He does not hate apostates, but will attempt to bring them to the Circle/Chantry in order to fulfill his duty. While he has no love for mages and does not trust them, he does not wish to chain them up, and finds the Qunari treatment of mages distasteful. However, if a mage was deemed to be a maleficar, he would see them killed instantly.

 "Rest assured that the Chantry recognises those who follow their duty."

In the Shattered War, Farouk is responsible for the templars within Fort Velen, and is responsible for overseeing mages who are part of the militia force. While he shares the same rank as Norvac, he makes no claims for seniority, as he recognizes Norvac's greater experience in conducting military operations.

As a significant character in The Shattered War, he will be an important character for players during their adventure. It will be their choice as to whether the relationship with him will be friendly or antagonistic...

Testing issues

As I've mentioned previously, I wanted to create a beta version of the introductory part of The Shattered War for testing by some players while I continue to work on the mod.  While for the most part this has gone smoothly, there have been a few issues that keep cropping up and causing me trouble.

One of the most frustrating is the audio for a particular dialogue not working properly - the character simply does not speak. Oddly enough, the lines work perfectly in the toolset, and I can export the dialogue without hassle. I can then even extract the sounds from the exported .fsb file and listen to them. Unfortunately, for some reason, they refuse to play in the game itself. This occurs with a couple of characters, but I can't identify any consistent issue across the various dialogues or sound files. If anyone has experienced this and/or has a solution, please let me know.

Of course, the other problem is that some characters aren't yet voiced, but that's a problem that I understand and will hopefully get the right people to solve before the final release. I've still have to produce properly annotated scripts for some of the dialogue that still needs to be recorded, which is a significant undertaking in its own right.

Taraz looking concerned (maybe about voicing issues?)

Another hassle appears to be within character creation. Specifically, the game doesn't seem to give the player enough attribute points if the player happens to click "Quick Play". If they do, then a whole lot of attribute points simply disappear into the ether, and I can't find a means to fix this.  If the player decides to create their character by going through the entire customisation process, there's no issue, but it's a potential problem.

Another problem that has come about a number of times is objects not interacting correctly.  There have been several cases where objects to do not react correctly to player manipulation. In some cases this is due to me attempting to use pre-existing mechanisms for interaction in a way that isn't supported. This generally has to be discovered by trial and error, as documentation of many of these mechanism is minimal to non-existent.  The other alternative is to simply code all my own scripts, an option I have been resorting to more frequently, albeit at the expensive of additional time.

At least we can interact with this corpse...

All that being said, testing is coming along quite well, and everything is fitting together reasonably well.  So if you're keen to check out the beta version of the introduction of the mod (and haven't already contacted me) please shoot me an email (I have a gmail address for AmstradHero) and I'll be in touch.

I do work in a bit of a vacuum at times, completing individual segments separately before doing the work that brings them together.  There are a lot of individual parts (particularly dialogue) that are complete, and I can see the end in sight for writing of dialogue.  The Shattered War may be a long time in the making, but a beta version of the introduction shouldn't be far off for those interested. With any luck, people won't have to wait a really long time for the full product!

New Shattered War shots

I know I promised my next post would be about the history of modding... but I realised that I hadn't yet posted about the recent images of The Shattered War that I've produced

There's a new wallpaper of the companion Taraz, and also this action shot from part of encounter I recently finished working on.

A much needed burst of healing

Stay tuned for more screenshots in the coming months!

Once isn't enough

Having come back from my break, I've started modding again for The Shattered War. I decided to get back into the enjoyable task of level design, working on one of the wilderness areas high in the Frostback Mountains. I thought I'd done a moderate amount of work and there'd be some basic sculpting and then it'd be the lengthy process of decoration with props and vegetation.

Taking a break from something and then coming back to it later is a great way to spot the faults in a level. I hadn't realised just how much work that the level needed in terms of additional sculpting to bring it up to an acceptable level. On reflection the level had been done quite some time ago as a basic draft to get the shape of the level and see if the basic concept worked, but somehow along the way I'd decided that it might not have needed too much work. A quick look told me this was most certainly not the case.

It's a bit jagged there

Now, I hadn't touched this level in quite some time, and the draft was done up in a matter of maybe 4-6 hours. However, while the rough shape was done, after some closer examination I realised that the terrain needed to be tesselated to a far greater degree in order to give a proper organic look that I would expect. Now, while there's some degree of sharp and jagged edges that you can "cover up" using props and vegetation, I realised that wasn't an option in this case. If I'm to give a sense of perspective, the narrowest section is about two-to-three people wide, and the low-outcropping is slightly higher than the height of a human. As such, those very angular edges would be extremely up close and personal to anyone walking through that section of the level.

So I undertook a fairly serious resculpting of the level, fixed jagged edges, abrupt angles and anything else that simply looked abnormal. Even now I could probably increase the tesselation another level in large patches of the level, but issues with the lightmapper in the DAO toolset mean that this is likely to cause insightly black spots due to some errors in the way it precalculates lighting effects. There's always a trade-off between effort and aesthetics, so I felt I was able to strike a reasonable middle ground with the reworks I've made thus far. I even managed to get some of the vegetation in for the level, though I've kept it clear from this picture to give a clearer difference shot between before and after.

A less jagged look

It's still not a perfect look by any means, and there's still some softening and adjustment I'd like to do, but overall there's a lot more rounded terrain and less obvious triangles sticking out from the edges of the landscape. A little more effort is still needed here to give more character and variance, even though most players probably won't pay that much attention to this small part of the level. As a side area, this level was unlikely to ever give the player a "wow" moment that would make them gawk at the gorgeous landscape. However, I could not let it pass without still giving the player a sense of the brutal but beautiful landscape of the Frostback Mountains.

Sharp triangles are hard to soften with vegetation, but that area (and the entire level) is now a lot easier to make look like authentic terrain by using a health dose of grass, shrubs and trees. The more interest you can create with the base mesh of a level, the better the level will look once it is fully decorated and populated with everything else that ultimately brings it to life in the game.

A little less conversation, more vegetation please

Conversation writing has taken a little bit of a backseat to the level design process over the past couple of days. I've individually placed and adjusted over 4100 trees, shrubs and grass tufts, making sure that none of them are floating above the ground and all of them are "just right".  So here's the requisite "show-off screenshot" to demonstrate a small segment of the now fully-decorated level.

Running in a winter wonderland

In other development news, I've completed another significant portion of the main quest line of the game. This was a particularly time consuming task, as it involves numerous choices which can greatly affect the way events can pan out. My current rough progress for a few key items looks like this:

• Level Design: 45%
• Main Quest: 35%
• Side Quests: 30%

As such, there's still quite a way to go, but there's already a lot of content and material for players to experience. Keep in mind that this includes many decisions that can be made which have a real and powerful effect on the story, its characters and the ultimate conclusion and aftermath. Death, betrayal, love and triumph may all play a part in The Shattered War, but it will be up to you to determine how these events play out and whether you will pursue a path of kindness or vengeance.

Shoryuken bear

I'll leave you with the above gem that I took while trying to grab a screenshot to showcase my vegetation placement. It doesn't really show off the level that well, but it does show the intrepid hero in a little bit of a trouble...

Sharing is Caring

One thing about creating mods for games is that it really heavily relies on the game's player and modder community. Without players, modders would not exist.  It's that simple. Most modders love the creative process of modding, but if there is no player base to experience their content, then the endeavour will ultimately feel flat.

But a modding community also relies heavily on the modders themselves sharing and supporting one another.  By providing support to other people attempting to create content for the game, they often discover possibilities that the designers themselves may not have explored, or workarounds for issues that may or may not have been present in the original workflow of official designers.

Barcode trees. I bet BioWare didn't have to deal with these.

They can also help advertise and support the publicity of other modules - some modding communities have modders attacking or openly criticizing one another, which typically just ends up fracturing the community and resulting in lower quality modules being released. I believe the adage goes: If you hate something, tell the creator, if you love something, tell everyone.

It also allows people to share content to help modders create their own works.  This has been the case with Semper's level pack, which contained several level areas ready for modders to use.  Having previously released my own hillside village for the first Community Contest, which has since been used in the Dirge of Coldhearth module, I'm a strong supporter of helping other modders.  Semper's level pack is a fine example of this, and his village level immediately took my eye as something that I could potentially use for The Shattered War... it meshed beautifully with some ideas I'd already had for one area.

So let's get down to the bit that everyone wants to see... it's screenshot time!

Exploring the modified town

I've done a substantial amount of retooling, modifying structure, appearance and the general layout and accessibility of the level, but still spent far less time than what I would have had to do if I'd made the level from scratch. There's still some additional work to be done, and I haven't really added the population of the town as of yet, but it is definitely a great addition to The Shattered War.

Interesting Characters

Interesting characters are vital for any sort of narrative, and video games are no exception.  I've always tried to make characters that are a bit different from normal, and The Shattered War is no exception.  The means for making characters interesting are many and varied, and I couldn't try to list all the possible ways that you might try to do this. But here are a couple of general pointers that I like to think of when going through the initial process of creating a character:

Introduce Quickly
Give your character's name, position and emotional reaction to the protagonist as quickly as possible. Ideally you'd give all three within the first line or two, but you might choose to withhold an identity for dramatic tension or plot reasons. Players generally shouldn't be left wondering who they are talking to.

Cameras have establishing shots, dialogue should have establishing lines

Purpose
What does this character add to the game? Why have you added them? If you can't answer this question, then you've got a problem. Are they for background flavour, to allow the player to overhear a conversation, give the player a quest, or are they an ally or adversary?

Uniqueness
Resist the temptation to fall into stereotypes (the typical tough guy) or counter-stereotypes (but he's really a softie on the inside), or if you do, give them a quirk that gives their personality some additional depth. If you've got an established lore, see what roles this character can play within that, and how they might buck some of the trends set by it.

Emotion
People have an emotional reaction to situations, especially when there is something at stake. If there's nothing at stake... well, you're doing something wrong with your game's plot! How does a character react to their current problems or predicament. This should come through in their attitude, expressions, movement, tone of voice and vocabulary.

He doesn't look particularly happy...

Desired Reaction
What do you want the player to feel when interacting with this character? Are you trying to get the player to sympathise with them, dislike them, want to show them up? Not all allies have to be likable, and not all enemies have to be completely hate inducing. Imagine if you can make the player empathise with a villain and then be forced to decide whether to kill them or spare them despite probably future danger and/or betrayal.

Don't be afraid to try and manipulate your player. Some of the best characters are those that people love to hate. If you can inspire an emotional reaction in a player such that all they want to do is see a character brought undone, then you've achieved the goal of making your NPC memorable.

In my next post, I'll give a few hints about The Shattered War and what players can expect from interactions with characters during the adventure.