Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

Over the past several days, I took a break from area design to try my hand at 3D modeling, something that I've never done before. The closest that I have come to creating 3D models was to retexture several NWN2 placeables. Emboldened with my success in this endeavor, I figured that the logical next step is to try to create a new character head. Stands to reason, right? Right. My objective was to create a pretty half-elven head for one of my NPCs. Anyone who has tried making a female half elf character in NWN2 will understand why I need a new head model. The ones that come with the game are all pretty... pretty ugly. There are a number of heads that are available at the Vault, but none of them are appropriate for my NPC. With no prior experience and no patience to read tutorials, I jumped right in and fiddled with my 3D software. I decided that the best way for me to learn how to create character heads is to examine and tweak the ones that come with the game. This strategy opened up...

The Coldlands is a mountainous region that is rich in heliotrope, a gem that is better known as bloodstone. Despite the abundance of gems in these mountains, only the toughest and most desperate prospectors dare to stake a claim here because of the savage humanoids that infest the region. Gareth Dragonsbane, the king of Damara, offers a bounty on the heads of these creatures, but in attempting to collect these heads, many adventurers have lost theirs in the process. The initial part of Faithless is set in the Coldlands, where the player characters will eventually stumble upon an adventure far more dangerous than collecting monster heads. The very first area that they will find themselves in is a mining camp. Although I had created the initial area last April, I decided to change it because it does not measure up to the prefabs that I've been adapting for my module. I searched the Vault for an area prefab that would make a suitable location for the mining camp. I wanted the area to ...

In my last post, I presented the Basilica of Lost Hope, an area that I recycled from one of the modules of Mask of the Betrayer . Well, I'm junking this area in favor of a brand new one, courtesy of Josh (a.k.a. Anduraga). Josh has done a couple of beautiful area prefabs (namely, Surague Escarpment and Tropical Shore ) and is currently designing areas for "Misery Stone," a highly anticipated NWN2 horror module. Seeing that I had ripped the basilica right out of MotB, Josh decided to make a better one. The resulting area kicks serious ash and is even more terrifying than the one I made. In terms of floor area, the original basilica and the one that Josh made are the same size. The latter looks far more spacious, however, because of its higher ceiling. The stained glass windows are more realistic and are an integral part of the walls. Josh created this area using the RWS Pocket Cathedrals hakpak by Robinson Workshop. He also set up the lighting of the area and added the v...

Since my very first post at this blog, I had not created any area set in the Fugue Plane. Considering that the whole point of my module is for players to try to destroy the Wall of the Faithless, readers may very well wonder if I haven't lost focus somehow. Wonder no more. I present one of the sites of the City of Judgment -- the Basilica of Lost Hope. All right, this area is something of a cop out. Like the first area that I created for Faithless, the Basilica of Lost Hope is lifted from Mask of the Betrayer . The designers at Obsidian Entertainment did a decent job of creating this area. The layout of the building is similar to that of real basilicas, although the ceiling of the former is rather low. What I like about OEI's design is that the sounds are appropriately creepy, and the misty haze that permeates the area gives it a ghostly ambience. What I didn't like about it, however, is that the lighting is as bland as Kelemvor, the incumbent god of death. To make matters ...

One of the most gorgeous area prefabs at the Vault is Registerdebakel's Forest Prefab XXL (Part A) . To date, this prefab has been downloaded 560 times, and it has garnered an average score of 9.2. It is one of the few area prefabs to have been awarded the Neverwinter Vault's Hall of Fame, a distinction that it shares with only three other prefabs. Several module builders have signaled their intent to use this prefab in their modules. One of this year's most highly anticipated modules, "Into the Forgotten Realms: Trinity" by Gaming Parents Studios, is being built with this prefab. I took a virtual stroll through this forest a week ago, and I was immediately taken by its charms -- the leaf-strewn ground, the verdant foliage, the laughing brook with its pretty waterfall... "I must have this lovely forest in my module," I thought to myself as I blinked back tears of joy. I then opened the prefab in the toolset and proceeded to uproot most of the trees to ma...

"A man's gotta know his limitations." - Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force , 1973 When Dirty Harry speaks, one would do well to listen. Having worked with the Electron Toolset for some time, I've finally accepted the fact that while I can churn out decent outdoor areas, none of them is going to win any awards. On the other hand, my module isn't doomed to have second-rate exteriors. Thanks to the easy availability of area prefabs at the Vault, modders with little talent in area design can still have stunning exteriors in their modules. I wanted to create another desert area for my module, so I did a search for desert prefabs at the Vault. I soon found one that was perfect for my needs -- Just Add Encounters - Wastelands by SGK73. I still had to modify the prefab considerably, but the work that I put into this area was small compared to what I would have done if I had started from scratch. The first thing I did was to extend the area by a few squares. This task was easy ...