For the last month or so, I have been chipping away at module two, adding NPCs, journal entries, conversations and events. During this time, I also discovered something about stores I had not realised until now. On another note of introduction, I must confess that a fair amount of my development time was taken up with designing a card game for another builder. However, now done, the mini-game will also feature in my next module as well, and you can see a video of it in action below. So, ye olde shoppe is now open for you to enter and take a browse ...
The Hunt of Life Card Game
Basically, I have built a small card game that plays similar to "Pontoon" (aka "Blackjack" or "21"). If you want to read more about the rules, watch this video below and pause it when the "Rules" are displayed. I already have an idea how this card game will be used in a quest, and hopefully, players will enjoy the minor distraction from the norm for its duration. I even intend to have a deck available as an item for players who may just like to play it now and then.
This video shows a slightly earlier build, but everything working fine. The latest build has an additional setting button that allows the player to select a faster or slower deal speed.
Store Blueprints Info
During my time sorting out some new stores for module two, I discovered that if you made a "campaign copy" of a "STORE" object, which you hope to use as a template in other places, it fails to allocate any custom items based on altered item blueprints when you try to add them.
For example, I have altered the standard cure healing potions and have new versions of these potions, which if I then try to add them to this campaign Store blueprint, the added items immediately revert back to the original item template. The only way I could add my own altered items was to ensure the store object was already placed within an area and then add my modified items to that Store object.
I was surprised that I had not noticed this before, but it may be because I have only recently been altering items prior to adding them to the campaign store blueprint. However, this is not the first time I have experienced "difficulties" with store items. Frustratingly, if you add an item to a store, and then later decide to alter that item template in some way, the store item needs to be removed and then replaced with the updated version, or else the older version has been retained. Module placed Store objects appear to maintain individual references of items placed in them, even if the original template is changed in some way. EG: If you add a potion that says, "A Blue Potion" and you later alter that potion template to read just "Blue Potion" in its campaign template, then the store will not update the item, but will have kept a copy of its original wording. It's kind of doing the opposite issue of what I describe above.
This was a reason for the latest module update to The Scroll v1.63E. Some Stores objects had items placed in them, whose templates had been changed since the items had been added. So even though the items had never been referenced before (aside from the builder adding them to the Store object), when they came to be "bought" by the player, the store handed over "old" items based upon an old template reference that no longer existed! Something to keep an eye open for moving forward, and a chore to "fix" if one does ever alter an item template.
Reactive Offers
Thankfully, after all these latest discoveries, I have now been able to address all potential store issues with such items for module two, even before its release. Also, as a heads up for followers of this blog, (and while talking about stores), some store owners in Predestinated Days will now respond and offer other goods or alter prices subject to how the player interacts with them, which in turn is governed by how they have setup their PC background and role-play their PC with them. This is on top of the existing PC appraise skill deals!
The idea is to introduce a bit more character to store vendors again. I did this somewhat in The First Day, but I hope to take this to another level in the next module. It will be up to players to consider how best to speak with vendors to help improve their deals. Note: This is just a small piece of game mechanics that allows more player agency ... Hopefully, I have designed it to be reasonably natural and not overly intrusive, but noticeable.
Soul Shaker (EE Version)
In other news, and after some requests, I ended up buying NWN1: EE at discount from STEAM, so I could update my NWN1 module, Soul Shaker, to be NWN:EE compatible. The updated version of NWN1 has undergone enough changes that had made my module incompatible with it. The main four issues I had to address were:-
- 1) Videos required a WBM format. (Thanks to Pstemarie for help here.)
- 2) A script function clashed with one in NWN:EE.
- 3) Some VFX required a delay to function correctly.
- 4) Some extra code to allow SP gamers without a unique ID to play.
I await feedback to let me know if there are any other issues that need addressing. However, if you want to give it a go, grab it here. Let me know if anything else needs fixing for NWN:EE.
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| A City Vendor Tries To Attract Your Business! |
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| Is This The best Deal? |
