Episode 91: Birds of a Feather...

The full saying from my title is "Birds of a feather, stick together", and I am reasonably confident that most people are aware of what it is trying to say. Just in case there is any discrepancy, however, I mean it in the sense that people of a similar nature are more likely to stay together to complete a task than those who have conflicting natures... so I guess you may have guessed where this is heading? I bring up the topic of alignment shifts this month, as I had to rework an earlier amendment for my campaign after I realised some PC good/evil axis settings were going awry after a prolonged period of game testing. Read on for more...

Alignment Shifts

Readers (and/or players) may know that I like to use alignment shifts where appropriate in a game, as I believe they add an extra dimension to the story, as well as having a direct impact on some of the campaign systems. Importantly, the good/evil alignment axis and the choice of the Channeler of Harvester role, which the player selects for their party near to the start of the game, are directly connected. Basically, if a player wants to play a good alignment PC, then their whole party must play as Channelers, but if the player selects to play as a Harvester, then the whole party alignment shifts into the evil spectrum. The point being, these two variations will not "stick together" if their roles differ. It has to be all "birds of the same feather" (same good/evil alignment), or a parting of ways.

A while ago, I did update this area of the game to consider the druid class when it was brought to my attention by Dustin_Offal. Subsequent play-testing has shown, however, that this update was not robust enough to manage the task properly over time. For while it aided the druid from not quickly being shunted from a neutral standing, it meant that it was now possible for a party to start splitting alignments when other PC alignments were close to being neutral themselves. The problem I still had to overcome was that no PC can ever be neutral within the good/evil axis. They can only ever be "neutral" within the chaotic/lawful axis.

To cut a long story short, I had to redo the alignment shifting system for the good-evil axis, while still considering neutral aligned PC classes. In the end, I was able to build a system that now keeps all PCs either good (Channeler) or evil (Harvester), while allowing a druid class to maintain a level of neutrality by shifting their law/chaos appropriately, but only if it was not already extremely compromised. For example, if a Neutral Good druid played along with a Chaotic Evil act, they may shift to Chaotic Evil if they were already close to turning from neutral to chaotic in the first place. If they were closer to lawful, then the same chaotic evil shift is not likely to affect their overall neutral standing.

The bottom line is that the good/evil axis can no longer be broken by PCs that play close to the neutral axis with respects to good and evil. A good or evil act will now eventually switch a party from being Channelers (good) or harvesters (evil), subject to their latest act, and if in opposition to their usual role. This does have greater repercussions for clerics, of course, whose alignment along the good/evil axis matters. But for druids (and other classes who wish to maintain a neutral status of some kind), as long as they maintain their chaotic/lawful axis within the neutral spectrum, then they keep their class status. As a further aid for druids to help maintain their "neutrality", they can now make sacrifices at neutral shrines to help bring their chaotic/lawful back to neutral.

Alpha Testing (MP)

My wife recently finished her "single player" multi-player testing of the first module, and has already continued with her MP alpha testing party into the second module. While not ideal (as to fully test MP, it would be better to have another player logged in and playing at the same time), nevertheless, it did test the overall MP platform with respect to some scripts and their timing. For I have witnessed that some scripts require a very slight extra delay in their execution to ensure MP games work as expected. To this end, after finishing the first module play-through, my wife helped highlight four MP issues:-

• TB GUI to opens/close for all players if manually opened. (1)
  
• Prevent an on load crash if having more than ten PCs and Associates. (2)
  
• Extra delay required for large loots and extra script firing. (3)
  
• Reinstated fix for Main PC losing focus. (SP game already uses.) (4)

1) Could cause issues if a player tried opening (or closing) the TB GUI when it was already in use.

2) It appears that a MP game restricts the total number of PCs/Associates that can be loaded into a MP environment to ten. As it is possible to have six PCs and two henchmen, even prior any other associate types, I have now ensured all such other associate types (apart from henchmen) are removed when a player loads a game to prevent the crash.

3) An instance where an extra slight delay is required to ensure a function fires correctly for a MP game.

4) For some reason, NWN2 will sometimes lose focus on a Main PC on a reload, thereby preventing clicked items to respond correctly. I had already employed this fix for the SP game, but after it showed up in a MP game load, I added the fix for the MP game too.

Campaign Update

As well as the MP fixes mentioned above, a handful of other SP fixes have also been addressed in the latest v1.22 update, released today. The majority are related to animation (or other) cosmetics, or to apply ease of play improvements. The biggest update for the SP game was the Alignment Shift update (as described above), which affects all game types. Anyone updating their current version will have any erroneous alignments corrected with this latest update.

Stage Two Development

I have been having a lot of fun developing the scenario surrounding an area within the second stage of module two. The background for it is complete, bar the very final conversation, which I am currently mulling over. I have the choice of going with the original, more predictable way to go... or with a later "surprise ending" that came to me early one morning as I was suffering from yet another sleepless night. I'll continue to think it over for another day or so, but if I can, I think I'll go for the latter, as I believe that would make the scenario more memorable.

During the process of making this scenario, however, I was able to include a few puzzle elements as well as a couple of conversations alongside what the player may usually expect. As the scenario is reasonably involved in its own right, it means the area in which it is to work has had a significant update bringing me a big step closer to finishing the second stage.

I still have to go back and finish Bloodstone College, and I do still have at least two other areas to complete. One of those areas, however, I was able to "complete" its story/background events, again bringing me further along to an overall completion of the second stage. There is also another added cutscene, which I am pleased with, and hope adds a moment of drama for the player.

All in all (and apart from some sleepless nights), it has been a relatively productive month.

A Great Treasure! (Module Two, Stage Two.)