Choose Your Language

Thursday 3 May 2012

Althéa: Party Creation Rules (Manual Entry)

I have been continuing with conversations and the quest journal entries associated with them. It is the crux of the story and so is not something I can go into much detail about, apart to say that it is coming along slowly but surely. So, to give you something to read this week, I decided to show you another page from the manual that I hope to ship with the module. This week, a little more information about Party Creation and how multi-player games affect it. As I said last time, if you have any questions about the module or just wish to leave a comment, please do.

Party Creation

Before the player is finally released to explore the World of Althéa, they are offered the chance to add some more PCs to their Main PC to make a party of up to four characters. The following information screen pops up prior to the main creation screen. As it says, party creation is not required, as their are companions that can found and added instead. However, the player can choose to add some PCs now and add others as companions later when they come across them if they so wish. Once the player presses "OK" to this screen, they will be presented with the standard SoZ style party creation screen, where they can continue to create their party of up to four, or choose "cancel" to play alone.


MP Considerations: When it comes to Party Creation, the players that are playing the game count as "non-player" created PCs already. Furthermore, if the host player uses all three empty PC slots to create a party of four, then later players entering the game will not be able to add any more created PCs at all. E.g. If two players play the module as a MP game, then each player could add another PC at the party creation screen to their specifications, to make a total party size of four. i.e. Two real players, and two created PCs. Alternatively, if a group of players entered one at a time, then the fourth player to enter would fill the last fourth slot and be unable to create any party PCs. Practical usage will demonstrate how this works.

2 comments:

Frank Perez said...

Have you done a multi-player module in NWN2 before? I've always wondered how that works. I've never done one because I don't really have the facilities to test it with several players at once. Anyway, good luck with your module. You've clearly put a lot of effort into modding the game.

Lance Botelle (Bard of Althéa) said...

Hi Frank,

For NWN2 no. (I made one for NWN1 though.)

Writing a MP game is much more difficult than writing a SP game because one has to account for the actions of other players. I wrote a couple of posts about that, but it is not as easy as one might first think. It's only because I have had experience with my NWN1 module (Soul Shaker) that I have an idea of what to consider.

I am blessed with having more than one computer, and so I can test the MP aspects that way. I only need to test that occassionally though, as I have already tested the main aspects, like cutscenes, transitions and conversations.

I am always looking to add people to the beta test though, especially for testing the MP aspect, so if you are up for that, let me know.

Cheers,
Lance.