Project Zero: Tools for Inspiration

Objects are the meat and potatoes of NWN2 adventures. Tonight I looked into the different characteristics that you can give to various objects. The surface was barely skimmed since objects can be any kind of creature, placeable or useable item, all of which can have very unique characteristics.

I spent the majority of my time looking into the different ways the scripting would identify the different objects in game. It's very obvious that NWN2 is driven by the scripting language since all object characteristics are given developer code written names.

The terrain editor is surprisingly intuitive and I was quickly able to lay out a desert sand textured ground with scattered ponds filled with blood of fallen adventurers! There is a very convenient feature that allows you to find and replace any instance of a particular texture. I used it to see what the various texturing felt like when it came to landscaping the level.

I mentioned in the first post that my design inspiration would mostly be coming from the tools that are availible to me. In other words, tonight was a good chance for me to sit down and visually look through the character and monster models, play with character sheets, look at terrain and get a feel for what kind of setting I want to depict. Based on my criteria for success I'd much rather have a well layed out level with one or two basic scripts than an unfinished level with complicated scripts.

Next steps

After the first night of opening and playing with the NWN2 toolset these are the next steps that need to be completed:

1. Submit a 500 word back story to drive character and NPC inspiration
2. Submit a list of characters and NPC with general characteristic descriptions
   
3. Build the physical layout for each level using the terrain editor