NWN - Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon - Released

[dark]

Hey guys,

I was the person who created the Original Eye of the Beholder I Module many years ago. We have just released Part II: The Legend of Darkmoon.

After two long years of hard work we are proud to say we can finally present Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon.
If you are interested in playing this Neverwinter Nights Mod, please head on over to download it at the following site: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=6375
We would like to thank the community for all of their interest, support and the great feedback given to us over the past two years and for all of the encouragement we have received along the way to continue making this mod.
The mod should provide many hours of fun and challenging game play and hopefully bring back some fond memories from long ago, (for those who may have played the original game released by Westwood in 1991).
Thank you,
Rick

 

[Karmapowered]

I will have a look at it, (probably next week-end though) and of course provide feedback.

I really enjoyed the first one, and MOAR CC is always good.

Thank you for the heads up, and the mod.

 

[groke]

You might want to correct the aspect of those portraits, i.e.:

Spoiler

rather than:

Spoiler

 

[octavius]

Such fine young republicans.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Hey guys,

I was the person who created the Original Eye of the Beholder I Module many years ago. We have just released Part II: The Legend of Darkmoon.

Thanks for the hard work, and the heads up! But I have a question: Which EOB1 module did you guys make? I recall there being two of them, and one of them added extra content like a Necromancer on the second level.

 

[dark]

Hello Unkillable Cat, go to this link to our first mod.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=4028

And yes the Necro would be ours if you are referring to the Death Section. We added a lot of extra content to the mod after several patches.

Anyway, check out the mod and please leave us feedback on the forum and let us know what you guys think.

Rick

 

[dark]

groke,

Im not following you on the portraits, what is it you are referring to here? They are all in accordance to the standard size they should be thats allowed in NWN.

 

[groke]

groke,

Im not following you on the portraits, what is it you are referring to here? They are all in accordance to the standard size they should be thats allowed in NWN.

Well, I'm no expert on these matters, but my understanding is that most VGA games, such as EoB, output image data at a resolution of 320x200, which is a ratio of 8:5 (or 16:10 if you prefer), whereas the game was intended to be viewed on 4:3 CRTs, which stretch the image vertically by 20%. This means that if you snatch a screenshot of a game in DOSBox (or even pull the image data from the game files), it will appear 'squashed', like in the second picture I posted. You have to manually correct the proportions to get the intended appearance.

It's a very minor quibble, but it irritates me to no end when I see characters or images from games I like turned into vaguely-mongoloid distortions. For example, people frequently complain that enemies in Chocolate Doom look "skinny", because they've only ever played modern sourceports that don't account for aspect correction.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

will check it out soon.

 

[dark]

Hi groke,

I think you misunderstand my mod. It is not the old SSI classic being modded. This is a remake using the Neverwinter Nights engine. We built the game from the ground up using the Aurora toolset. Please follow the link to the site and view the screenshots of the mod.

At least I think that is what you are implying. because we didnt just rip images from a dosbox version, all of the images were redone. BTW, the NWN engine is very strict on the aspect ratio for all portraits in the game. They have to be an exact certain size or they will not show up in the game at all.

I’ll be happy to answer anyone questions about the mod or their expectations.
Thanks guys,

 

[Infinitron]

Hi groke,

I think you misunderstand my mod. It is not the old SSI classic being modded. This is a remake using the Neverwinter Nights engine. We built the game from the ground up using the Aurora toolset. Please follow the link to the site and view the screenshots of the mod.

I’ll be happy to answer anyone questions about the mod or their expectations.
Thanks guys,

dark, he misunderstood nothing. Just because you're remaking the game in a different engine doesn't mean you can't adjust the portraits so they aren't distorted. For example, you can add margins to the portraits so they're letterboxed. It's not rocket science.

 

[theSavant]

Why not create a HD remake of the original game in a simple game engine e.g. Unity (which doesn't look worse than NWN)? So you could sell it and even earn some money for living by doing it. At least I hope so, if the IP belongs to your team.

 

[Infinitron]

dark

Compare and contrast:

Same image size, fixed aspect ratio of actual portraits.

 

[dark]

Yea, Okay I see what you are saying, but the fact is. The game uses such small images that are no larger than a thumbnail, that it really does not make a whole lot of difference. On this project we did not have an artist on the team to fix or make new portraits. You guys have no idea how hard it is to find people willing to put in the time to make this kind of stuff.

We struggled at times getting people to even script for us some of the more complex scripts that were written for the project. Trust me guys, I would love to make everything nice and neat and perfect. But the truth is, you don’t always get what you want or need when doing mods like this.

For the comment about making an HD version. I would love to do that. But we do not own the rights to this franchise. I believe EA does, and that would be like prying money out of a dead man hand to get those rights, especially when dealing with EA.

 

[Infinitron]

For the comment about making an HD version. I would love to do that. But we do not own the rights to this franchise. I believe EA does, and that would be like prying money out of a dead man hand to get those rights, especially when dealing with EA.

Actually, since EoB was published by SSI and is a D&D title, it's most likely that EA has nothing to do with it. The third game in the series wasn't even developed by Westwood.

Yea, Okay I see what you are saying, but the fact is. The game uses such small images that are no larger than a thumbnail, that it really does not make a whole lot of difference. On this project we did not have an artist on the team to fix or make new portraits. You guys have no idea how hard it is to find people willing to put in the time to make this kind of stuff.

Nobody's asking you to make new portraits. You could set up a script to adjust all the existing ones automatically in a few minutes. *shrug*

 

[dark]

Infintron,

Im currious how a script will fix those? You guys realize how NWN works for the portaits right? There are several of them, 5 to be exact. and each is a differant size.

Starting with this. 256x512 128x256 64x128 32x64 16x32

That is how they have to be in the game. this is a format Bioware setup and it can not be fixed by any script that im aware of.

Each has a specific name they have to be named starting for portaits with PO_ then a name and ending with _H _L _M _S _T

If this format is not used the game will not recognize the file. Just saying, but Im still currious how you would do this with a script?

BTW, Thanks guys, I do appreciate all the feedback on this.

 

[theSavant]

For the comment about making an HD version. I would love to do that. But we do not own the rights to this franchise. I believe EA does, and that would be like prying money out of a dead man hand to get those rights, especially when dealing with EA.

I see
Yeah, I've read in a german forum that EA still owned the rights for the Lands of Lore series, in a dusty cupboard. Sad to see that they most likely have the rights to the EoB series too.

 

[Infinitron]

Sad to see that they most likely have the rights to the EoB series too.

They don't, just like they don't own the rights to Baldur's Gate despite owning BioWare.

D&D games belong to Hasbro.

If this format is not used the game will not recognize the file. Just saying, but Im still currious how you would do this with a script?

I'm not talking about NWN scripts. I'm talking about setting up some sort of batch image processing script.

See here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/02/15-useful-batch-image-processors/

I myself used IrfanView to adjust the Nadia and Joril portrait. I could have easily used the program's batch capabilities to have done the same to an arbitrary number of other portraits.

(Unless that is, each portrait originally had a different size and is distorted in a different way, in which case you're out of luck.)

 

[dark]

I have a question for you groke, and infintron, It was bothering the crap out of me about that picture you guys keep asking me about. Where are you guys getting that portrait from other then the original game? Because it sure isn't in my mod. in fact, I have that portrait in my mod as two separated portraits. And we cleaned it up, so its no where near that quality. So are you guys looking at someone else's stuff? I just want to be clear on this, because some where there's a misunderstanding going on here about our mod.

I would post the two images of those two in question, but I'm unable to. it wont allow it.

 

[groke]

The picture I posted is a screenshot of the original game with the interface cropped out and scaled to 500% x 600%. I was just trying to illustrate the difference between the original game's intended appearance and the portraits in your mod.
For comparison, the portraits in your mod look like this:

 

[dark]

Hi groke,

Okay, you had me thinking for a moment that you were referring to my mod as those originals were in my mod. That's why I commented on it. There's so much stuff we added to the HAK files that over time you start forgetting all the smaller things you added. Thanks for clearing that up.

BTW, just curious if you guys had a chance to try out the mod? If so, what are your thoughts so far?

 

[Crooked Bee]

RPG Codex is the kind of place where people don't really play games - they bitch about portraits graphics instead

Just kidding. I'd be curious to try out the mod but I can't stand the NWN engine

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Wow a module that doesn't require expansions? May try it out.

Does it do something to prevent the instant sleep problem of vanilla NWN?

 

[Infinitron]

FFS Awor, just buy the Diamond Edition on GOG.

 

[racofer]

What is this? Modules being made for eleven years old games? Where's the romance, the graphix, the acthun, the bloom!

It's probably better than most games released on this time frame as well. Will surely check it out.

(by the way: anyone found more modules like ADWR, ADWS or Gladiatrix for NWN/NWN2 yet?)