Act 4 part 2 needed a little more work than I thought, but it's coming up nicely! Still tweaking some of the skyboxes too, but I think they're settled now. Hoping to have this entire update done by the end of the week and get it online for you to play.
Just finished the play-through of the entire series. Phew, this thing is ridiculously epic lol, thought I'd never get to the end. Just need to do a few more things on it and it'll be ready to go. Should have it online by the end of the week, if all goes well. It's taken a lot more work than I thought to bring it up to speed and I'm out of time, with other projects beckoning me on. Here's your final batch of screenshots to tide you over
Final post: The updated edition is complete, or at least as complete as I'm willing and able to do. I could probably spend months adding and tweaking little things here and there but one has to draw the line somewhere
You'll find a list of fixes with each of the mods, although these are a little spoilerish so if you're new to the story, don't bother with that.
You can start with the link provided here for the first in the series, and go from there. This update was much more intensive than I'd planned, but I'm proud of the result. As usual, if there's any game-breaking bugs (it's so hard to catch them all) by all means, let me know. A final note to @TrentOster , hi-res skyboxes make a world of difference, and the ones I've used here aren't even all that high - you'd probably need textures at least twice the size to look decent on 4k systems, but it's well worth doing and I hope the Trello board agrees with me
Just a couple of things of note - I found a weird crash bug in act 2 that prevents you from getting into an area where the druid(actually a cleric) henchman is. So I fixed that. Also, after doing some more testing with henchmen and encounter spawns, I've decided to remove the limit on the number of henchmen you can hire. This only affects act 2 onwards of course. Naturally, taking 4 henchmen with you will result in less XP for the players, so it's up to you to decide how many you want to take
This looks amazing I can’t wait to play this. Question is this staying CEP 2.6 or going back to 2.4? I remember there being a issue a few weeks ago and I have been really busy and haven’t had a chance to follow this. Last I remember they were trying to work something out.
I finished the first act and I think I saw some bugs:
- While I wanted to give the new orders of the mayor of the first village, I first talked about the barbarians and he broke upstairs, preventing me from giving him orders - The ranger who can heal us if we ask him never heals the third member of the group (here it was the barbarian) - In the end, I had with me the barbarian (+ fighter and cleric) in my group but the princess did not follow me and stayed in his cell (a bug ?). It gave strange dialogues and quest updates referring to a princess when she was not there.
Despite these minor bugs that have not prevented me from finishing the first act (lvl 9 !), I have hugely appreciated and can not wait to see more
@Jinashi thanks for the report, not sure what you mean about a ranger not healing third member of the group though - Oh I think I know what happened: Morik stayed with your group instead of leaving as he should have, and that prevented Criosa joining. I'll make some adjustments right away.
@Krovos I've used cep 2.6, I haven't heard anything about that issue ever since.
Thank you @aarionn ! It certainly was a nostalgia hit to play and mod the saga again. I delayed work on my next novel to get this overhaul done, totally worth it I think I am definitely thinking about making mods based on the next series of books I made, the Ballard Chronicles, though I need to finish up some other work on my Sabre (pen and paper) RPG before I could get on to that. Would certainly consider working with BD if that was an option
Just fyi, I've been playing through it again (for fun!) and found a few issues here and there, so I've been uploading fixed versions as I go, with updated version numbers. So if you're about to start playing this weekend, make sure you check to see if there's an update on the Vault
I was waiting for this to finally get finished up before I gave it a shot. Somehow I never played this one back in the day, so have been excited to give it a run through.
So i keep starting, and getting a bad case of restartitis. There any classes that I might feel like I'm missing out on stuff? Sort of like how SoU really favored Paladins? I keep tinkering with the ideas of a Barbarian/Weapon Master, Bard/Barbarian/Red Dragon Disciple (kind of a skald), Bard/Arcane Archer or Sorcerer. With the resting restrictions, it seems like a mage might not be the best idea. I did see there's some dialog for rangers/bards in the first one, just thought I'd ask if there's any classes that really provide extra.
There's extra stuff for paladins and bards, especially in act 2 and act 4 part 3. There's lots of class specific gear too. I designed the series to be playable by any class, so there's not a lot you'll miss out on choosing one path. Oh and I reduced the resting restriction to 6 minutes (3 hours in game) to make it a little easier for spellcasters.
This really does make me more and more excited about the EE edition and just what else could potentially come from it, though I am very tempted to give this a whirl on my original diamond edition of the game as well I've heard such great things about this module over the years ^^
It may be called Enhanced Edition, but it'll run on any version of nwn so go right ahead
In other news, I just successfully tested a skybox with 4x the resolution of the ones shown above. I figure that's pretty close to an actual 4k skybox, and certainly 1080p or higher. NWN didn't choke or anything, I'm very impressed
Just catching up with this thread now. Great work, Savant! You've obviously been busy. Another playthrough of Aielund in EE will definitely be going on my to-do list. And thanks for posting the enhanced skyboxes! I've been searching for better ones for a long time. I'll definitely look at including them in my mods.
If you're looking for better heads, then I can recommend taking a look at Salt's and Estelindis' head packs. I use some from each in Sanctum and I think they look great, especially relative to the stock low-poly heads the game comes with.
Also, thanks for working out the backward-compatibility issues. I've been updating in EE as well (more on that to come on another thread), and it's good to know that modifying the builds to run on 1.69 should be fairly straightforward.
Those are excellent heads! I will have to include them in my next update of the saga, thanks for pointing those out. There's been so many updates and additions to the game since I departed the modding scene in '07, amazing stuff. I was surprised at the lack of new skyboxes though, so I'm glad to have been able to contribute
Hey Savant thanks for doing all of this work! Aielund is what keeps bringing me back to NWN.
I was wondering whether you have any plans to update some of the spell/ability descriptions in game to align with changes made by EMS. All in all I think the changes that EMS makes are good but they are pretty poorly documented. The EMS readme is a bit of a mess and as far as I can remember none of the changes made it to the descriptions in the final game, leading to a fairly confusing experience in some cases.
One question about your 6 book Aielund saga series and your nwn modules.
What would you recommend to a newcomers to your work? Should one first read books and than play modules or play first and than read? Or play and read together? Your point of view.
@Livegood118 You're welcome, hope you enjoy the new update Hadn't thought about changing the spell descriptions to match EMS but it's a good idea. I'll put it on my to-do list
(Edit: Does anyone know where to find the in-game spell text?) (Further edit: It's a tlk file thing, which means a completely custom tlk file merged with CEP and BW. Uh, no not touching that with a 10 ft pole :P )
@aarionn I wouldn't recommend reading and playing simultaneously as the two iterations of the story differ. When I wrote the first novel I tried to include just about all of the first mod in there and it was ridiculously huge and bloated. Some things that work for games don't work in novels (or movies, tv shows etc) so the books are a more compact story which followed the main plot with little deviation. If it's your first time, I'd play the game first, then enjoy reading about another party doing the same quest
(Also, there's some deviation from the original story here and there where some things worked and some things didn't.)
For the newbies out there who might find installation of this flagship campaign a lil' intimidating, I have updated my Aielund Saga installation instructions to cover the new custom content added by Savant in his Enhanced Edition.
Enjoy! And here's to another 10 years of people playing Aielund!
Earlier in the thread (which is turning into a "what's Savant up to now?" thread) I mentioned I'd been experimenting with ultraHD resolution skyboxes. And here they are! I found time at the end of my days to play around with these a bit, and thankfully found a lot of free panoramic photos online to try out. These take a lot longer to make, and are pretty huge in terms of file size, but the results are stunning. I don't have a 4k monitor, but I reckon they're pretty close to 4k skyboxes. It'll probably take another week or so before I have all of them done, and when I do I'll release them as a separate hakpack, as it'll probably be well over 1gb in size, too big to squeeze into Aielund's main hak by default.
@Livegood118 You're welcome, hope you enjoy the new update Hadn't thought about changing the spell descriptions to match EMS but it's a good idea. I'll put it on my to-do list
(Edit: Does anyone know where to find the in-game spell text?) (Further edit: It's a tlk file thing, which means a completely custom tlk file merged with CEP and BW. Uh, no not touching that with a 10 ft pole :P )
Ah well that's a shame - didn't realise it'd be so much work so I don't blame you.
Maybe doing a cleaner/more concise version of the EMS readme as a cheat sheet for players would be a next best thing?
Not sure how long ago you looked at the EMS readme but the changes aren't particularly well documented at all.
For example, there's pretty much nothing in there about how epic-meta magic works, which is a real incentive for players not to go for crazy multiclass cheese. Likewise for various reference to the PHB.
I breezed through the text file for a few minutes and yes, its a bit disorganised. I'm sure I can organise the spell changes into categories and make it easier to read.
Comments
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/images/texture/artful-skies
You'll find a list of fixes with each of the mods, although these are a little spoilerish so if you're new to the story, don't bother with that.
You can start with the link provided here for the first in the series, and go from there. This update was much more intensive than I'd planned, but I'm proud of the result. As usual, if there's any game-breaking bugs (it's so hard to catch them all) by all means, let me know. A final note to @TrentOster , hi-res skyboxes make a world of difference, and the ones I've used here aren't even all that high - you'd probably need textures at least twice the size to look decent on 4k systems, but it's well worth doing and I hope the Trello board agrees with me
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/aielund-saga-act-i-nature-abhors-vacuum
- While I wanted to give the new orders of the mayor of the first village, I first talked about the barbarians and he broke upstairs, preventing me from giving him orders
- The ranger who can heal us if we ask him never heals the third member of the group (here it was the barbarian)
- In the end, I had with me the barbarian (+ fighter and cleric) in my group but the princess did not follow me and stayed in his cell (a bug ?). It gave strange dialogues and quest updates referring to a princess when she was not there.
Despite these minor bugs that have not prevented me from finishing the first act (lvl 9 !), I have hugely appreciated and can not wait to see more
PS: google translate
@Krovos I've used cep 2.6, I haven't heard anything about that issue ever since.
Savant thank you so much for going through your modules again and making Enhanced Edition
I just installed the first module and whoa... does it bring back memories... and I am so looking forward to this epic adventure!
Thx so much for making this.
I hope you will create more great books and maybe some modules based on them
@Krovos I've used cep 2.6, I haven't heard anything about that issue ever since.
Well no news is good news I suppose. I’ll be installing everything I need and playing this ASAP thanks again for updating this.
So i keep starting, and getting a bad case of restartitis. There any classes that I might feel like I'm missing out on stuff? Sort of like how SoU really favored Paladins? I keep tinkering with the ideas of a Barbarian/Weapon Master, Bard/Barbarian/Red Dragon Disciple (kind of a skald), Bard/Arcane Archer or Sorcerer. With the resting restrictions, it seems like a mage might not be the best idea. I did see there's some dialog for rangers/bards in the first one, just thought I'd ask if there's any classes that really provide extra.
In other news, I just successfully tested a skybox with 4x the resolution of the ones shown above. I figure that's pretty close to an actual 4k skybox, and certainly 1080p or higher. NWN didn't choke or anything, I'm very impressed
If you're looking for better heads, then I can recommend taking a look at Salt's and Estelindis' head packs. I use some from each in Sanctum and I think they look great, especially relative to the stock low-poly heads the game comes with.
Also, thanks for working out the backward-compatibility issues. I've been updating in EE as well (more on that to come on another thread), and it's good to know that modifying the builds to run on 1.69 should be fairly straightforward.
I was wondering whether you have any plans to update some of the spell/ability descriptions in game to align with changes made by EMS. All in all I think the changes that EMS makes are good but they are pretty poorly documented. The EMS readme is a bit of a mess and as far as I can remember none of the changes made it to the descriptions in the final game, leading to a fairly confusing experience in some cases.
Hi Savant.
One question about your 6 book Aielund saga series and your nwn modules.
What would you recommend to a newcomers to your work? Should one first read books and than play modules or play first and than read? Or play and read together?
Thx.
(Edit: Does anyone know where to find the in-game spell text?)
(Further edit: It's a tlk file thing, which means a completely custom tlk file merged with CEP and BW. Uh, no not touching that with a 10 ft pole :P )
@aarionn I wouldn't recommend reading and playing simultaneously as the two iterations of the story differ. When I wrote the first novel I tried to include just about all of the first mod in there and it was ridiculously huge and bloated. Some things that work for games don't work in novels (or movies, tv shows etc) so the books are a more compact story which followed the main plot with little deviation. If it's your first time, I'd play the game first, then enjoy reading about another party doing the same quest
(Also, there's some deviation from the original story here and there where some things worked and some things didn't.)
Enjoy! And here's to another 10 years of people playing Aielund!
Maybe doing a cleaner/more concise version of the EMS readme as a cheat sheet for players would be a next best thing?
Not sure how long ago you looked at the EMS readme but the changes aren't particularly well documented at all.
For example, there's pretty much nothing in there about how epic-meta magic works, which is a real incentive for players not to go for crazy multiclass cheese. Likewise for various reference to the PHB.