Re-visiting Old Conversations

First off, I owe a big "Thankyou" to Jfoxtail, respected member of the Neverwinter community who agreed to playtest the first module. I'm pleased to say he gave some very positive feedback, to the point that he actually sounded excited at the prospect of playing it once complete. He went so far as to take some screencaps of his progress, so expect to see some here soon. A few minor bugs were also encountered, but they didn't spoil his enjoyment, and are things that I believe I've already rectified thanks to his comments inspiring me to get cracking with fixing them.

Progress has been so good that I've actually started working on the henchman implementation (another "first" for me). The henchman doesn't become available until the town of Oasis is reached, whereupon he must be taken for the story to progress. Because of this, I wanted to ensure he feels like a personality in his own right, so am introducing a variable that keeps track of his reputation with the player. The reputation can be affected by various player choices within the game, which, if it becomes negative, can make it difficult for the player to make requests from the henchman.

Another aspect of having the henchman present is that he can intervene with conversations the player has with other NPCs, so I've now been re-visiting old conversation files to see if such interventions are required. Such extra nodes are easy to implement, as I can place henchman lines above an NPC line, that way, if the henchman is not present, the NPC line will automatically fire instead. It's been fun implementing such lines, as I feel it increases immersion into the game and improves on the overall story.

Oasis itself still requires some work, but I might take a rest from it and transfer my efforts to the final journey and quest of the module.

That's all the news for now. Expect some screencaps soon. :)