Equipping the Dogs of War

Dogs of war and men of hate
Without a cause, we don't discriminate - Pink Floyd

This page is way overdue for an update so I'm going to post a spread of screenshots of some of the weapons and shields that I've made for BouncyRock's Shattered Dreams module and the BTH Weapon Pack.

So starting with the Shattered Dreams tribal theme; we have some leather shields and primitive weapons as well as the Axes and Shield carried by Elysius' Knight. The screenshots are not taken from the Shattered Dreams mod and so the setting is a little out of context (especially the dude wearing a Roman helm while wielding the flint dagger). Nevertheless here they are.








Below are the models I recently added to the BTH Weapon Pack. I really enjoyed making these (and the Knight's equipment above) and I went looking for inspiration among the Warhammer Online concept art to help me achieve the tone I was looking for. I love the hammer, all the markings are worn, there are runes embossed in the head and it looks as though it's been around for many a long year.

I have a couple more weapons in mind with a similar feel to them. That should keep the Dogs of War happy.



And lastly, I was pleased to see my Module Testing Toolkit receive a Hall of Fame award. It's great to see a niche product, like the MTT, get such good support from module builders.

A mixed bag

I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure. - W.C. Fields

So the last five weeks have produced a bit of a mixed bag in terms of my NWN2 work. I've been a little scattered with my efforts as I jumped from one idea to another and from one project to another.

BouncyRock's Shattered Dreams module is coming along nicely and you can read more about that on the BouncyRock forums here: BR Shattered Dreams and you can read about the interesting work Elysius is doing on his blog. Now that the module has been announced I'll post some screenshots of the work I've done for Shattered Dreams in the coming weeks.

Aussie NWN - Dark Ages PW (the other project I'm working on) has an alpha module ready and is in the early stages of testing. It's been a long time coming but I'm looking forward to this PW coming to life. They are are waiting on the long promised fixes that are set for release with the 1.23 patch.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to try my hand at character skinning and with that in mind I set about making some Roman-like armour to compliment the other work I'd done for Dark Ages. I basically made up a Frankenstein model from bits and pieces using the OC naked model for the arms and legs and one of the chain shirt models for the torso.

Bolting all the pieces together was the easy part and once I started to work with the skin modifier, I soon realised how much work it was going to be. It took a lot of experimentation to get the legs working so they didn't break out of the armour during the character animations. I used a combat animation widget I'd scripted to help me test the new armour and it proved to be a valuable tool. In any case, I managed to tweak the lower part of the model to achieve a very good result. It wasn't until I ran the OC chain shirt model through the same animations that I realised I'd actually improved my model over the OC model in terms of reducing the amount clipping.

Having finished the legs I moved to the arms. I completed about 90% of the skinning on this armour before I was distracted by something else but I intend to get back to it soon and complete the model. Here's the model so far.


The combat animation widget that I'd used to test the Roman armour was included as part of an update to my Module Testing Toolkit. Along with a module reload widget and some redesigned GUI functionality, the "Ring of the Dancing Warrior" formed part of the MTT v2.01h update and brings up more than six years of work on this toolkit.

I could not count the number of hours the MTT has saved me in testing time over the years. This little tool started life as a set of NWN1 scripts that morphed into the DM and player widget used on the Aeon NWN1 PW and in 2007 I re-wrote the core scripts for NWN2, adding a GUI menu to replace the conversation driven menu. If you have any interest in building NWN2 modules you should check out what the MTT can do and how it can help.

I have also released an update to the BTH Weapon Pack to include four new axe models. Three of which are shown below.


And lastly (and quickly, because my weekly NWN2 multi-player campaign is about to start) I did a re-skin of the arrow quiver model for the Dark Ages PW.


So there you have it, a mixed bag of NWN2 goodies.

A change is as good as a holiday

Chance favors the prepared mind - Louis Pasteur

It's been a while.

I've been on a bit of a break. In fact I've done bugger all in the way of 3D stuff. I even took some time off work, packed a tent, my two dogs and enough beer for a week and headed south to bum around some of the places I used to camp and fish in my younger days. Quite a bit has changed in the forests of the south west of Western Australia. I hope the mining royalties that the West Australian government are getting from Alcoa is worth the destruction of state forest and the disruption to recreation. But it was great to get away from the technology that has dominated my life in recent years.

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Here's a screenshot from the ultra-realistic game called "The Real World - Life Outdoors" expansion.

BTH Mini Review - Fantastic graphics and realistic companions. But many of the NPCs are complete tossers, there's not enough loot and the deity system is broken. The game enforces an ethics system called "political correctness" and some factions are easily offended if you choose an inappropriate conversation response. The game also lacks DMFI support.

Summary - "The Real World - Life Outdoors" is not recommended for powergamers or those that like to role play chaotic evil alignments. 6/10)

(Campsite at Waroona)

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One of the things that greeted me on my return was a message from Dirtywick. It was brief and to the point, basically asking me if I wanted to join a NWN2 project. It was perfect timing as far as I was concerned as I was looking for something to inspire my modeling. Skipping over the nitty gritty and jumping forward in time by a couple of weeks to the present and I find myself involved in a BouncyRock Entertainment project and in the company of some very fine NWN2 talent. Elysius' blog entry lists the people involved in the new project.

I can't reveal much of what we are working on. But I am excited about being involved in a community project with such depth of talent and I've already started work on some custom shields.

So this project is good news in that I have a challenging few months ahead me and bad news in that I don't expect to be releasing any additional custom content until after the BouncyRock project is completed.

On another matter, the NWN PW I co-developed with Sporaxis and Relexx has been raised from the grave. Sporaxis has decided to dust off the Aeon: Frontier PW module and take it in a new direction. The work I did on the Aeon: Frontier tilesets was pivotal to me moving on to 3D modelling for NWN2. It will be good to see Aeon running again even if I don't have the time to be involved. The Aeon forums can be found here : http://aeon.heavenforum.com/