The Black Hound Blog Launched

Earlier this month, Obsidian Entertainment’s J.E. Sawyer launched a blog called The Herald of Archenbridge for reporting the progress he’s making on his Neverwinter Nights 2 mod, The Black Hound. Among the five entries so far, you can find a few screenshots and some information about his plans to add Storm of Zehir’s overall map functionality:

I think one of the biggest current stumbling blocks for me is getting the overland map to function the way that it does in SoZ. There are a lot of files (mostly .2DAs and scripts) in the NX2 campaign folder that have to exist in (your) campaign folder for the overland map to function properly. Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Rich and Nathaniel about making some sort of mini-hak or .zip of campaign-neutral files that could be dropped in for greater plug-and-play ease of use when modders sit down to make their own overland maps.

It’s easy enough to get the UI to appear and the basic (be small, move slow as hell) functionality, but triggers are proving to be problematic and I’d rather not stumble across a dozen other tidbits that cause hard-to-debug issues.

In plotting out the basics of the overland map, it’s clear that the map is big enough to encompass the region I want to portray, but I may need to shift around locations for gameplay/aesthetic purposes. That doesn’t mean Archenbridge will suddenly be north of Essembra, but a few (known) locations will be adjusted. That leads me to another point: I don’t like how the southern Dalelands are laid out.

http://www.candlekeep.com/images/sitegfx/dalelands-patrakis.jpg

Part of it is the fact that there are a TON of cities and villages. Cities and villages are like the bane of CRPG development due to the number of resources required to make them remotely decent. Tassledale? More like HASSLEdale. Look at that: it’s got like six towns and a few adventure areas sprinkled over a thousand square miles of open plains. I want to make sure the overland map is open for exploration and the discovery of well-scripted unique locations, but areas like Tassledale just make things difficult. So, uh. don’t expect to be making a grand tour of Arrowmark.