Time of Unparalleled Darkness - Dev thread!

[Maiyannah]

Hi there,
I’ve talked enough about this in other places and had people ask me about it, so I thought I would put a thread about my own module project here: Time of Unparalleled Darkness! It’s a Ravenloft module meant to be used for a persistent world. Unlike other persistent worlds, I do plan on releasing the module (eventually - “when its ready” - or at the very least, a Minimum Viable Product, as the term goes). Centered around the conquered former gunadarkite capitol of Ziedenberg, it will be leaning heavily onto the gothic horror aspects of the setting, given the Ravenloft-apocalypse it’s named after.

A couple of the scripts I’ve written for it are already released onto the vault:

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/description-and-portrait-commands

and

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/emote-command

I am aiming to have the minimum viable product as it were by end of year, though we’ll see how much life gets in the way since this is, after all, a passion project, not a job.

I’ll update this thread with some pictures and developments along the way.

I will post a few screenshots as teasers when I get home, the ones I have readily available at work are dated

There is a forum here you can follow development and participate in discussion about directions, things we’re adding, etc: https://forums.toud.pw/

And a discord here, though I’m bad at discord and only remember to post on here sporadically:

Join the Time of Unparalleled Darkness Discord Server!

Feel free to ask any questions or whatnot too, happy to answer, and help is great too if you want to lend a hand

• May

[Maiyannah]

OK, I didn’t like just leaving this with zero screenshots at all, so by virtue of playing hookey at the office, here we go.

A cozy spot in Dawnguard Arms, one of the local pubs

The Sanctuary of Our Guardian’s Grace emerges from the mists, as is appropriate

(Better statue pending)

A little off the beaten path of the square - pawn shop and cooper’s

There’s a lot to be found in the little corners of the map, we try to make the place look actually lived-in

(that does of course come at a compromise with performance, but so far there hasn’t been any perf. issues noted. Also yes I know about the door, I need to find more arched ones)

Some of the stalls in the market square - a few left intentionally unoccupied for players to use

Complete with garda photobomb

The Morninglordians are represented too, of course:

(Strangely this door appears inset appropriately in the editor, I’ll have to fiddle)

Within the Ezran church:

Behind the curtains are a little gathering area for the anchorites:

The clocks even tell time:

Toret’s quarters:

Kitchen in the priory:

I have a few packs of paid game dev assets I’d bought for something else, so I reused them a bit here to give the skills some fancy icons as well:

TOUD reimagines the crafting skills into Alchemy, Metalsmithing, Leatherworking, and Carpentry. I may make a tailoring one as well at some point. These are largely in need of programming in any case.

It also condenses the knowledge skills into Lore (already there), Occultism (the esoteric secrets of Ravenloft and the planes, etc), Religion (probably self-explanatory), and Culture (knowledge of the history and customs of the Core)

That’s hardly an exhaustive go through the module, but hitting a variety of different points as a sampler I think. It’s small at the moment - only 11 areas - but we’re adding to that with each update. It takes a bit to be as thorough as I want to be with each area and we’re not there yet on any of them.

Thoughts and comments appreciated

[Phantom_Fugue]

Keeping an eye on this one, look forward to playing and/or trying my hand at building a few areas in the module you post whenever that happens to be.
Adding Occultism is a neat choice and a good replacement for Knowledge - The Planes in a Ravenloft setting, I think.

Are you builder and scripter? That’s a lot of work.

[Maiyannah]

@Phantom_Fugue

Keeping an eye on this one, look forward to playing and/or trying my hand at building a few areas in the module you post whenever that happens to be.

I’m not particularly against posting it even now, it’s just nowheres near Minimum Viable Product right now. It has a long ways to go.

Along with, of course, using what we do off the vault (mostly CEP, but also some of Stonehammer’s work, Philos’s NUIMenu and that recently-released Vale tileset is definitely getting used when I can merge it), it is the work of myself (the scripting and some of the building), and Wilkins1952, whom isn’t on the vault but nonetheless helping. I’d say the building is pretty evenly split between us. She has a couple areas not pictured because they’re not live yet But I’ll post some screens when they’re up!

[Maiyannah]

Some teasers for the next live drop, from the c release candidate of 0-1-22

Anchorite of the Mists prestige class:

Occultism skill, though I need to update the text to reflect it encompassing Planar information too:

Weather information is now given when you enter an area (mostly to workaround the weather effects in vanilla often going AWOL, tbf)

Black Stone Inn common room - this inn will have short-term rentable rooms assigned to a player for a real-world duration (rented in 1d increments up to 1 week)

One of the inn rooms, basic layout is the same in all of them though the “clutter” varies

Detailed little corner on the first floor of the inn

Little reading nook on the second floor

One part of my own personal building philosophy is to think about how people would actually use the space, I find a lot of little RP spots come out of just thinking in that light honestly.

Also the Virtue system from Heroes of Light will be mostly implemented, though of course we’ll be adding things that change ones status +/- here as time goes.

Finally the magic mirror (our customization tool for heads/height/etc) will be fully implemented:

That one will be on the Vault when its done!

There’s some other areas that will be added, but I don’t want to spoil everything all at once, at least

[Baireswolf]

Really like those inn bedrooms and corners, great ambience.

[Maiyannah]

Its a bit time consuming to do, especially the portraits on the walls, but I love the results myself too. Really makes the places seem lived in, in my opinion. (Of course, I’m a bit biased!)

[Baireswolf]

Yeah, I know. Ambience Interiors are time consuming, but they payoff.

[Maiyannah]

I genuinely need to go through the vault and collect clutter, it really livens up those rooms.

[Maiyannah]

The module is now available on the vault for those curious:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwnee/module/gameworld/time-unparalleled-darkness-0121

Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the incomplete state, however

[Sachie]

This looks super interesting. I’ve bookmarked the vault page to check this out a bit when I have some free time then will provide whatever feedback I can.

[Maiyannah]

It’s not all that big right now but that will be changing as we go forward hopefully I do appreciate all constructive feedback!

[Baireswolf]

I don’t know if these are included in last versions of CEP, but if they are not you should look at them:

Zwerkules compilation of Witcher placeables
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/placeables-game-witcher-1

and PAT’s ones
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/prefab/placeable/lady-patricias-placeables

[Mmat]

We didn’t include all witcher placeables. That would be over 600.

[Maiyannah]

Neither are included, and I do plan on grabbing them when I can. Since we already have the placeables.2da from CEP2, we need to merge the 2da from those ones into that. I already had the Witcher ones on my todo list, but those ones from Lady Patricia look neat as well, thanks for the reference!

[Maiyannah]

The problem of course with merging 2das is we would have to remove them from the CEP haks and then it’s not a clean CEP install, I think the 2das for CEP are seperate if memory serves.

[meaglyn]

Merely create a tophak with your merged 2das. Don’t need to remove anything from the cep haks.

[Maiyannah]

It will override the below ones without anything going weird?

[meaglyn]

Yep. That’s how it works. The highest one on the hak list takes precendence. Any lower copies of the same file are ignored. Think of it as loading each hak from the bottom up and overwriting files as needed to produce one flat namespace with a single version of each file.

[Maiyannah]

Cool beans, just trying to avoid the severe weirdness I had at that one point.