Friday, February 26, 2010

The Joy of Prefabs (and intermission)

Had quite a productive past ten days, despite spending a lot of time bug hunting and testing in game. The Forgotten Ziggurat I mentioned in the last post is finished, and I've gotten a 4 level Worg Warren and 4 level Dungeon of the Hark completed, scripted and 'encounterrified'. On top of that, having seen Lugaid's post about a new prefab he's come up with, I decided it would be a nice way to join the Worg Warren and the Dungeon of the Hark together (as they were in the Living Forgotten Realms campaign I'm loosely following for this) through a jaunt into the Undermoor. This of course mean that I had to go back and ensure that encounters fired regardless of the direction the player chose - which can require quite some mental gymnastics to visualise sometimes.

None of this would have been possible without the prefabs. I'm guessing I now have 5 modules with on average 12-15 areas each maybe, perhaps 60-70% of those are prefabs - the only times I rush to delve into area design myself is actually in White Plume Mountain itself where I'm following the canon maps. That isn't to say that I can always just plug and play these prefabs in - most of them I've spent time playing with the lighting, walkmesh, chucking in some custom content placeables or added a little of my own touches. But man that's such a more relaxing way to build areas for someone like me - I know where to hang a painting but don't let me near the brush, mkay?

The Dungeon of the Hark


In the lost sewers under an abandoned town...


The eagle-eyed will spot a gelatinous cube filling the corridor in the distance


The lycanthropic hordes are under the Hark's command


Showdown with the Hark himself

The Worg Warrens




Goblins and goblin worg-riders stalk the plains


Bugbears defend the snowy pass

Undermoor

Through buried elven ruins...


A fire giant camp


And with that, I'm soon off on belated honeymooon to Egypt for two weeks! A Nile cruise and exploration of Egypt awaits! A long held ambition of mine so really looking forward to it. One last foray to the toolset over the weekend to finish off the areas and encounters in this region of the overland map - then that should mean all the content is in place for the campaign, and all that remains is to go back and finish off placeholder conversations and script some battles. A little intermission in the building should be good, and then I can come back and press on with the final round of polishing and testing balancing and debugging. Hmm... maybe I'll just stay on holiday...

4 comments:

Kamal said...

What tileset is that in the Hark?

EC said...

Have a wonderful honeymoon! It's a great time to work on becoming a parent! ;)

(Getting quite excited about WPM! Looking forward to it.)

Wyrin said...

@Kamal - its the RWS Sewer (most shots) and Deep Chasm (to the left of first shot) tilesets

@E.C. - thanks! Working on a parent now would drive my wife mad as we have enough birthdays (including mine) around christmas as it is!

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Have a great honeymoon!

Egypt is quite a country. I had not realised until I went there myself, just how close Cairo was to the pyramids. If you get the chance, they are a great place to visit. Mind you, I came out with a sore throat .... a curse maybe. ;)

Prefabs .. maybe I should just take the plunge and use them as well if I cannot get the help or time I need to build the areas I am after.

Lance.