NWN Dark Sun Video Game

Discussion in 'Gaming' started by Tonden Ockay, Jul 23, 2018.

  1. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    [​IMG]



    Hi all

    We are creating the world of Dark Sun using NWN (Neverwinter Nights)

    We have been hard at work on this project for sometime now. Dizzitt and I are putting large amounts of time into this project each and every week. There is hardly a day that goes by that we are not working on something for this project.

    We are currently working of the tileset needed for The City State of Tyr.

    We have made custom desert tileset just for Dark Sun with all of the following so far.

    - Water
    - Hills
    - Cliffs
    - City Walls, Gates, Battlements
    - Adobe City Buildings (We will be creating a lot more of these)
    - The Ziggurat
    - The Arena
    - The Golden Tower

    Our goal is to build the City of Tyr first to give us a good base/starting point. Since the buildings are adobe we want the tops of them to be walk able to give another level to the city. Also for those that don’t know Tyr it is built upon an ancient city, so there is a lot to explore under the city as well. We really feel we can do a lot with just the city of Tyr which is why we are starting with it first.

    However we do plan on creating all the different terrains that Dark Sun has. We also want to build the other City States as well. However all of this is going to take time and a lot of work.

    So if anyone wanted to help with the project Dizzitt and I would be willing to help you learn whatever you would like to help wit0h.

    For example Dizzitt and I didn't know anything about scripting or making custom content at all for anything just a few years ago. Shoot we didn’t even know what a 2da or even a tga was. But we have learnd so much that we now feel that are able to do just about everything needed.

    That said If a true scripter doesn't join us then that is one of the things we still have a lot more to learn yet.

    Another area we haven't done a lot with is creating custom creatures, so that would be another area we still need to work on more as well.

    However we are very stong at working with 2da's, Haks, and model making, which is why we feel that we can help others to learn as well.

    Now we still have a lot of tileset work to do. Along with a lot more custom placeables and items for Dark Sun. Along with a lot of Area building, Quests and really good stories to create. We want NWN Dark Sun to look like the Dark Sun that we all see in the artwork and feel like the world that it was meant to be. I have even been looking into custom music to help give our project a different feel then the Standard NWN. We really are putting in the work and would love to have help from others.

    So if you would like to help, even if you don’t know how to do anything we could help you learn.

    Just contact us
    Our Discord Channel
    My Discord Name is: Tonden#9076
    On The NWVault
    Our Website
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
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  2. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Welcome.

    Is this a licensed product? Or is it a free fan game on the NWN platform?

    Thanks!
     
  3. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    This is a free fan game on the NWN platform
     
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  4. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]



    Hi all

    I thought that I would share a screenshot of one of the many things we have been working on for the Dark Sun project and explain on how I came up with it.

    When we first started this project I didn’t know how to make a custom model let alone a custom time or tilesets. So we started off with a tilset that someone else had created. However as I learned more about making models and tileset I decided that it might be nice to create our own.

    So we talked it over and decided to just do addons for the standard Desert tileset. However the tiles that we have been creating are so different from anything in the standard Desert tileset that if we left it as an override, we would have to rework all the older tiles to try and match them up with what we are creating, which would be even more work for us.

    This led us to splitting off from the Desert Tileset override and creating a totally custom tileset for our project. That said I’m still glade we went through everything that we did because we learned a lot.

    So for our custom tilset we decided to go with flat tiles instead of uneven tiles

    - Uneven tiles are tiles that are raised a little higher on the corners, while not raising the middle edges of the tile. This helps to create an uneven ground look to a tileset.

    The reason for not going with the uneven ground was because it makes a tileset look really bumpy and since we are creating a desert with blowing sand we felt that the ground would be more level. Which is why we went with flat tiles but we still added in tiles that are raised and/or lowered in the middle of the tiles to give the ground a little uneven look about them in places which can be seen in picture #2.

    After deciding on making a custom tileset and going with flat ground I created raised ground terrain along with slopes/hills. As you can see from picture #1 I went with an uneven edge along the top of the hills. The top wasn’t that bad to get it to look the way I wanted, but rather the bottom was a little more of a problem getting it to blend well from the lower ground to where the ground starts to slant up. All in all as you can see in picture number #3 I think it didn’t turn out too bad.

    Well I thought instead of just posting a screenshot that I would take the time to give some background on how and why we did what we did.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
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  5. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Cool. I'm definitely a Dark Sun fan...

    RPG Legends: Dark Sun | LitRPG Reads

     
  6. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    That is really good to hear we love to meet and talk with other Dark Sun fans.

    We started playing Dark Sun around 1992 about a year or so after it came out.

    Dizzitt a real life friend of mine who is working on this project as well bought just about ever thing printed for AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun. So we had all the rules books, adventure books, and story books.

    I was the DM for our group for several years. Long story short Dizzitt have a BIG Dark Sun background. So our goal is to do this project right. We want to walk the streets of The City State of Tyr and we soon will be.
     
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  7. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Cool. Had you heard about LitRPG before?
     
  8. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    No I hadn't
     
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  9. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Basically, RPG in narrative form. Books include stats and leveling, crafting, base building, etc.

    Glad you found us.
     
  10. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    I have been playing RPGs for over 29 years and to me an RPG is

    A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game[1][2] and abbreviated to RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting.

    I have played RPG's around the table using PnP with friends, over the internet, and on video games. I'm a BIG RPG fan and I like them all.

    I'm glad I found you all as well :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  11. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    I just found this
    RPG Legends: Dark Sun | LitRPG Reads

    It even talks about an old NWN Dark Sun server Athas Reborn

    Are goal with NWN Dark Sun to create totally custom content to really make NWN look and feel like Dark Sun. So we want to take it farther then Athas Reborn did back in its day. We want players to feel like they really are walking the streets of Tyr.
     
  12. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Yeah, that's another site I publish. I posted a link to it upthread.

    Where are you from?
     
  13. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    Your right you did, Sorry I over looked it at first.

    I'm live in Ohio
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  14. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    Would you be interested in helping with NWN Dark Sun?
     
  15. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Cool. Probably not personally. I'm busy publishing LitRPG novels. :)

    Good luck with your project.
     
  16. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    Ok well if you change your mined we can use some

    - Scripters
    - Quest creators
    - Story creators

    One of those might fit a writer ;)
     
  17. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]




    When I first started out with trying to learn how to create custom content for NWN1, I began with texturing. I would just pick different things in tileset I liked the looks of and retexture something I felt may look a little better to me if I was to change it.

    So when Dizzitt first started talking about Dark Sun for NWN he showed me a sky that someone had made for NWN1 to be used for Dark Sun. After looking at it for a while I started to wonder what kind of sky I could make using paint.net (which is the first paint program I started working with beyond paint that comes with windows).

    I looked around online and found some sunsets of here on earth and played around with them a while until they started to look like how I felt a Dark Sun sky should look, from all the Dark Sun paintings I had seen over the years. I then took the twin moons from one painting and the sun I used from another painting. However the sun wasn’t complete so I had to do a lot of work to it in order to get the full thing.

    Using the different layers in paint.net I was able to have two copies of the sky with the sun and moon in between them, which allowed for me to delete parts of the top layer/first sky to allow for the moon and sun to show through and allowed for the other sky behind them to help blended everything together.

    Anyway this was the first thing I really did for the Dark Sun Project over 2 years ago. I have learned so much since then and at some point I will try to see if I can create a better looking sky for the project. However for now this sky is the one we are currently using.
     
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  18. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    [​IMG]


    Raised Ground Cliffs

    It took far more time then I ever thought that is would creating these raised ground cliffs. I learned so much from then, when it comes to what can and can’t be done. That is part of the nice thing when it comes to creating something from scratch.

    Now what was it that I wanted from these cliffs one might ask?


    [​IMG]


    1 - No flat clear cut sharp straight line along the bottom of the cliffs where they meet the ground. I didn’t want it to look as if the cliff had flat bottoms to them being placed on a flat even ground. Instead I wanted it to look more blended and natural as if sand has blown up against the bottom of them.

    2 - No straight clear cut lines where the sand ends and the rock begins on top of the cliffs. I wanted it to look more natural. So I created a custom texture that slowly blends the two together.

    3 a - No sand at the top of the cliffs along the edge ( so it looks as if the sand get blown of the top next to edges)

    3 b - Smoother tiles so that they look as if blowing sand has sanded off their sharp edges over time.

    When creating these cliffs they really made me have to think outside the box to get what I wanted and work with in the limits of the game engine. So I have to try a few different ideas before I came up with the current look I now have.
     
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  19. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Looking good. How many hours have you put into this project so far?

    Do you plan to release your own game one day? Just curious!
     
  20. Tonden Ockay

    Tonden Ockay Level 7 (Cutpurse) Citizen

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    We have put more hours then we will ever know into this project. Our goal is to release a Dark Sun online server using NWN. An after we do that we will look into releasing downloadable adventures for people who want to play offline.

    We have a very nice small core group and we are still looking for more help. So if anyone would like to help bring 3d world Dark Sun to life come join us.
     




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