Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

It has been a long time since I last posted in-game screenshots of areas from Faithless. It's high time that I end this hiatus by presenting pictures of Eternity's End in the grip of war. Although I kept OEI's original design of this area mostly intact, I made a number of significant changes to it. As mentioned in my previous post, I replaced a few houses with burnt shells. I also replaced two of the buildings with piles of rubble. Aside from these cosmetic changes, I put up a number of makeshift barricades along some of the pathways. These barricades are made from whatever the locals would conceivably have on hand -- crates, wagons, pieces of wood nailed together, those sort of things. Characters may attempt to destroy these barricades, but they stand the risk of being mowed down with missile fire while they are at it. Perhaps the most striking change that I did to this area was to put a very large crater in one of the streets. In the Forgotten Realms, things that go boom...

Making the Halloween module that I submitted to Bouncy Rock took a lot out of me, so much so that I decided to take a week off to relax a bit. Well, I'm back in the saddle now, plugging away at the toolset once more, this time for Faithless. The next area that I've chosen to work on is Eternity's End, which I ripped from Mask of the Betrayer . In MotB, Eternity's End looks dreary but pristine, nothing like one would expect from a war-torn city. I decided to roughen it up a bit by replacing some of the houses with burnt shells. Of course, the ground on which the houses stand must look sooty. Normally, a modder would create this look by coloring the ground grayish-black. In Eternity's End, however, the houses all stand on city curbs, which are placeables just like the houses. The only way to make the curbs appear sooty is to re-texture them. I didn't want to do this because not all houses that stand on the same type of curb will be burnt. Hence, the parts of the c...

In my last post, I mentioned that my computer self-destructed for reasons unknown, which prompted my sending it to the repair shop. Well, my computer is still at the shop, awaiting delivery of replacement parts. It seems that the supplier has a delivery schedule to follow and won't deliver the parts that I need before the allotted time. I'm hoping that deliveries are made at least once a month. It certainly doesn't look as if the supplier does weekly deliveries. In the meantime, I have to content myself with using Old Unreliable, a computer of mine whose specs barely meet the system requirements to play NWN2.This machine is slow and has a tendency to shut itself down twice a day (but thankfully not more often than that). I'm fairly certain that the more I use this machine, the quicker I'll be sending it to its grave, so I'm hoping that I can get my other computer from the shop before that happens. Speaking of the grave and all things dead, I created yet another ...

It has been a bad week for me. Seven days ago, I found out that I could not turn on my computer and external modem. To make matters worse, I also found out that my phone line was dead. It seems an odd coincidence that three separate machines would choose the same day to malfunction. When I brought my computer to the repair shop, I was told that both my motherboard and video card weren't working and had to be replaced. I can't explain what brought about this massive glitch in my devices. My guess is that my Intel Core 2 Quad processor and my GT8800 video card generated so much heat that they fried each other. Maybe the heat was so strong that it radiated to my modem and melted its innards. In its death throes, my modem then short-circuited my phone line. Sounds like a plausible explanation. Or maybe the gods do not want me to finish my module. Faithless is so blasphemous to the deities of Faerun that the gods have reached across the multiverse to zap my motherboard, video card, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Thirty game years ago, a war was fought in Bloodstone Pass between the monster armies of Zhengyi the Witch King and the civilized forces of the Barony of Bloodstone. At the forefront of the war was Sir Gareth Dragonsbane, who was to become the next baron of Bloodstone and eventually king of Damara. When the war ended, Lord Gareth built two massive walls at either end of Bloodstone Pass. The southern wall was called Damara Gate, and the northern wall, Vaasa Gate. Like its southern counterpart, Vaasa Gate is more than just a wall. It is a well-manned fortress that stretches from one steep mountain face to another. The Gate hosts a thriving market where civilized folk from either side of the wall may trade. Its interior chambers serve as stock rooms and living quarters not only for the soldiers stationed there but also for adventurers on monster hunts. The most detailed description of Vaasa Gate that I could find was from the Forgotten Realms supplement The Bloodstone Lands by R.A. Salva...

When I first took screenshots of the desert area in "Faithless," Corrugath told me that the landscape looked too mundane. He suggested changing the color of the sky to make the area look like a truly strange place. (Those were not his precise words, but I don't want to quote him directly and risk giving the story away.) It took me a while to change the desert landscape. I wanted to finish the mining camp first, after which, I got sidetracked with enhancements for "Battle of the Builds." It was only yesterday that I finally had a chance to redo the desert area. This entailed changing the colors of the sky and repositioning the sun. Although I didn't touch any other part of the area, when I was done, I sat in awe of the results. The desert acquired a strange kind of beauty. I don't think I got the effect I was going for, but the screenshots I took were amazing nevertheless.

Despite its abundant veins of bloodstone, the Galena Mountains in Vaasa don't attract as many miners as it could have. Besides the dangerous and hostile creatures that make their home in these mountains, the bone-gnawing cold keeps away all but the most foolhardy prospectors. Fortunately, the Forgotten Realms are never lacking in foolhardy people of any sort, and many of them seek their fortune in the Coldlands. One of the challenges that I faced in constructing "Faithless" was building the mining camp that the player characters will find themselves in. I've never seen a mining camp, much less set foot in one, but that didn't stop me from rising to the challenge. First, I had to do some research, which is not at all difficult in this age of the Internet. To this end, Google Image was my friend. Looking specifically for old photos of mining camps in the mountains, I downloaded as many images as I felt I needed. I also downloaded several images of mountain trails, w...