@ the Shadowvale CSR
from TrueSite or TMU
by TM
2) I make the scenario file in the editor. It's asking me for a title; I can change it at any time, so the working title is "Settlers." (This is a fairly good title, actually; I might keep it.) I don't see any goddamned reason why I should need more than 1 outdoor section. (Typically, though, it's useful to make more outdoors than you'll need; you can always use less than you make, but you cannot make any more if you need them.) I will NOT be using Warrior's Grove.
3) I'm including my custom data set, because I like it.
4) I'm working on the first town. It's going to be very plain because it's a frontier town; I might have some cobblestone in the center of the town, but that'd be it. (In fact, I might even have that be under construction.) I'm just gonna concede this much: There's no easy guide for town design. First, you think of what your town will need. Then you sorta just gotta draw it in a way you think looks good and then see if it actually does. The 3d editor helps a lot here.
5) Now, I'm working on the outdoors. It's going to be a mildly forested area the party can leave by exiting on the south and east sides, which lead back to friendly territory. The fort the party lives in will be on a hill, whereas their goblin foes will live in a village, with a forest separating the two and growing thicker to the southeast. I had originally considered a cave, but a mountain is just as easy to design and is less clichˇ. The party will lead their troops up the mountain to wipe out this infestation.
...whew. That took way longer than I thought. Okay, I guess I probably shouldn't have made a mountain exclusively out of hills. I'll take note of that for the future. Meanwhile, I'm going to scrap the incredibly difficult work I did, and make a mountain using mountain walls. I don't want to do anything in this scenario that anyone else couldn't do, and making a mountain using hills is way too complicated and not worth the effort. ALTHOUGH. I am using hills in making this mountain to a certain extent. All perspective designers note: Hills are of incredible importance; do not skimp on them.
Some hints for outdoors work:
* Hills are good. I'm tossing in a few for flavor.
* Spray paint a bunch of one kind of tree and one kind of bush, then use the random terrain swap tool to vary the types a bit. (I abstained from evergreens in this scenario; it doesn't really matter.)
* REMEMBER to FRILL the TERRAIN. I did it twice because I like the effect, but remember to do it at least once. It's in the outdoors menu.
These hints also apply to areas of towns that aren't as civilized.
Anyway. I built myself a nice hill leading up to the goblin village, and there's a wall at the entrance, and a secret exit in the back. The party and some soldiers will fight some goblins to get up the hill. Time to make the village town itself.
6) First, though, I'm gonna make the goblin creatures 'emselves. Nothing too tough-- just making 'em slightly more powerful, 'cuz I want this to be a somewhat difficult fight for the soldiers. Also, I'm going to make two lightly enchanted artifacts for the party. I also made a very simplistic script for the soldiers who will be escorting the party into the village. I'll post it at the Codex; basically, it's a combination of flocknpc.txt (which comes with the editor) and the leadc har script at the Codex. I edited it a bit to suit my purposes, though; don't use it as it comes in the scenario
7) Eh, what the hell. I may as well set up the initial dialogue in the first town that will set the party on its way. A few things you should do at the beginning of every town:
* If the town is friendly, set the crime level and make sure that the party is killed if they commit any crimes.
* Disallow training if the town is hostile.
* Set up variables you're fairly certain you'll be using. bmessage for dialog nodes, pcs if you want to do something to a large number of monsters or the party, et cetera.
* Change names to whatever you want and add dialogue pictures.
8) I'm adding flavor dialogue, I guess. I don't like it very much, so I keep it pretty minimal. A general rule of thumb is, give each personality at LEAST 4 "flavor" dialogue nodes; I added a few more, but I still don't like doing it. Since most of the characters here are soldiers/workers, I'm going to have only two personalities-- a trainer and the administrator of the fort. The trainer will sell some very basic skills.
Also note: It's all too easy to spend your time writing crap dialogue you don't care about and then abandoning the project altogether because you have none of the ACTUAL work done. I'm just writing the dialogue now because I don't have much. If I had 5-6 towns replete with dialogue, I'd save it 'til the last minute. It's EASY to add on details at the last minute.
9) I'm making sure to supply the party with some decent equipment; this is a level 1 scenario after all, and I'm not providing any shops (other than the trainer). I'm also giving the party a tiny bit of gold (315) to buy skills. This scenario will NOT be all that difficult.
10) Three bottles of wine.
11) Waking up the next day, blessedly without a hangover. Finishing dialogue. Setting up the party's bedroom. Just borrowed the lockbox script.
12) Adding nodes to the outdoors. Just some descriptive, flavor text. Now, I'm adding some nodes for the party's ascent up the mountain. I'm setting up the preset encounter the party will meet en route to the village. Now, I'm placing the node to trigger this encounter. I could create a new town for the fight to take place in that won't allow the party to flee, but I won't. I'll just say the goblins make their retreat when the party flees.
13) Okay. I just set up the goblins and gave 'em scripts to count how many have died. The party will not be allowed to leave the town because they will either be fighting the goblins or looking for survivors or finding the secret passage out of the village. I set up a few quasi-NPCs on both sides that are only mildly more powerful than the regular ones and have special drops. I also set it so that the party gets warnings as their soldiers die.
14) I'm setting up the fort for when the goblins take it over by placing corpses. The corpses I'm using are of the creatures themselves; see the data script (terrain 443-446) to see how I pull this off. It's actually really simple. The worst part is making the actual change-- you might, in your scenarios, consider using Variable Town Entry (VTE) to accomplish this. It's up to you.
15) I'm editing messages into the outdoor nodes describing the havoc the goblins have wreaked-- mostly slaying Imperial guards. Now, I'm giving the last few messages of the scenario. Namely, the ones describing the party's horrific loss. Now, I get to program the ending node: That is, when the party leaves Morrow Territory, gets yelled at and demoted.
16) Final details... scenario description, scenario icon, intro text, etc. Time for the alpha-test.
17) Well. Some dialogue script errors... forgot to place a script or two... a nd town exits have not been set. A few script errors. Now, I'm zipping it up and sending it to 1-2 people to test.
18) Okay. Someone pointed out to me that I apparently managed to delete two doors I had placed somehow.
19) 450mg dextromethorphan.
20) Fixing a goblin graphic, because it's evidently got off-white pixels clusterfucked into it.
21) Writing a readme and releasing.