Jan 1st, 2010
Happy New Year. I've made some minor changes to this site.
June 21st
PCGames, a German computer games magazine has cotnacted me for
a feature of A Hunt through the Dark Remastered. You can find it in their July
issue. They will also put the latest version of AHTDR (1.1) on their
magazine DVD.
May 14th
A Hunt through the Dark Remastered is Module of the Year 2008!!!!
This is my first MotY reward ever so I am really honored - and proud - that
so many people out there voted for me. It was a hard competition and with
two ties in first and second place it was a very close finish in the end.
Thank you everybody for voting for me.
I am also overjoyed to announce, that Skunkeen and his team are working
at the voice overlays AHTDR. The next version will have spoken audio lines
of all conversations. I am eager to hear the results.
Lolthanchwi, the sequel of A Hunt through the Dark has reached beta status.
We will release a public beta for testing in the next couple of weeks.
Check the Lolthanchwi section of this site for more information.
March 29th
Jonny Ree has released his driders - and they are ... great! I've included
them into this new, version 1.01 of AHTDR. Jonny had a reputation file
included into his override drider package and this nearly drove me insane
for two days. It broke my faction system in AHTDR and so all neutral NPCs
went hostile and started attacking the player and hiseach others. I began
removing my custom scripts, my factions, my NPCs until I finally took a look
into the hak file. LoL!
You can find a picture of the new driders in the screenshots section.
March 8th
I've been silent for some time - but I'm still there. RL keeps me busy. Today
I'm proud du report, that AHTDR has received a reviewer's award. With
6700 downloads reached and a total score of 9.34 at the moment, AHTDR
is still one of the top-rated modules for NWN2. Thank you for that.
I'm still working at the sequel Lolthanchwi and it's making (good) progress. I
hope to get it down until Apirl. Check out the lolthachwi part of this website
to learn more about it.
January 4th
Happy new year, everybody. AHTDR has been awarded Hall Of Fame
status on new-years day. Thank you everybody for your support, feedback
and votes.
Obsidian came up with a 1.22 beta patch around Christmas. Fortunately
this patch fixes the mentioned issue with the on_enter cutscene triggers.
So I'm in good hope, that the coming 1.22 patch will set things right.
December 15th
Damn, patch 1.21 us breaking the on_enter trigger. This means that
ALL of my modules will break some essential cutscenes and will
become unplayable with SoZ for the moment. At this time I'm not even
sure if you will encounter game-stopping bugs or not.
I hate it when they do this!!!!!
I strongly recommend NOT to install this broken version!!!!
November 21st
We are approaching Hall of Fame status (5000 downloads)
and It makes me (a little bit) proud that so many people like
A Hunt through the Dark. It is my child, my idea and my story
and so it's something different to Pool of Radiance, where I
was only doing an interpretation of a pre-written story.
October 11th
With 50 votes and more than 3000 downloads we are proud
to be rated 9.31 at NWVault. Thank you for your voting and
great feedback.
September 12th
We've had a open beta of more 6 weeks now. Many people
gave great feedback on gameplay, balancing, bugs and
spoilers. After 4 weeks of polishing, testing and bugfixing
it is time for the final release.
Have fun!
August 9th
I've checked build 3 another time. There were countless small
things that needed to be fixed. Jasna, my editor of the old
AHTD series came back for some testing. She flooded me
with 20 pages of feedback and ideas within 24 hours. That's her!
Altogether wth Chet's first run through the conversations and
Skunkeens first version of the intro narrations AHTDR is starting
to take shape.
I think our first public beta version (build 4) is ready now. I am
right in this moment uploading the necessary files to the vault.
They should be available on Monday 11th.
July 22nd
I managed to get the whole thing done until Friday, only to
find the journal entries broken while testing. It was a weird
thing, something I had never experienced while doing
PORR and all the other projects. It drove me mad testing
and testing without finding any clue why all those empty
(broken) journal nodes were appearing when some key
conversations were triggered. I found the problem - on
Tuesday morning, 5 AM. There were artefacts from the
old AHTD scripting and those quest flags were embedded
in the conversation nodes, not triggered actions like those
we are using now. So I simply missed them while checking.
The internal beta is underway now. I don't expect much trouble.
It's been checked over and over again but I'm eager to hear
the opinions of the other team members.
July 18th
AHTDR made very good progress this week. I've been
polishing the chapters three and four and I am yet satis-
fied with the results. Everything seems to work quite fine
and I hope that there are no major breakers left.
I will try to complete the journal entries durign the weekend
so that the internal beta version is ready on Monday.
July 12th
With summer break I finally have time to concentrate in the
completion of this project. So - after two weeks off at the
beach - things a taking good steps to completion.
Estimated release date of a beta version of AHTDR:
Late July
June 15th
I've been quite silent in May and early June. Real life really kept
me busy and I am sorry for that. I've added 5 new screenshots
as a compensation.
AHTDR is still alive and growing. I took time to change most
of the dialogues of chapter 3 to add depth to the NPCs found
there. You will also se more dramatic elements in the main
storyline and more interaction with the other drow characters.
I'll keep you up to date on a more regular basis from now on.
May 13th
The last weeks saw me very busy. We had a lot of work at
school so I could not spend as much time for AHTDR as I
would have loved to.
I met Skunkeen during the AME nomination chat for AME
awards finalists in 2007. He is volunteering to do a full set
of voice overs for AHTDR and has even formed a team to
do this on a professional scale.
I got his first samples and they are really great. I really hope
this team stays together and does its magic on the AHTDR
dialogues. It would lift the whole thing to a much higher level.
Thank you for your help :) .
May 1st
Jonny has posted his first results for the driders. Man,
those models are awesome. I've had little time to work
at AHTDR this week and I'm stuck in chapter 3 - the
killing cloud. Damn, those NWN1 scripts in NWN2, who
are there but won't work with NWN2 really take me to
my limits. I'll need more time to solve this.
Apr 20th
I had an exciting week. First of all we had Jonny
Ree's poll for his next 7days challenge. I asked the
community to vote for driders and - what can I say -
the drider model won the poll. Jonny has already
started the challenge and shows off some of his
models at his forum thread. Looks like we are getting
something that rocks!
Second highlight of the week was that AHTDR was
topic in the news sections of NWN podcast #50. I've
never been at NWN podcast with anything and so this
first time is really exciting, an honor to me.
I'm almost done with chapter 2 of AHTDR. Those new
conversation options really eat away time - even more
since I want to see different conversation option and
realistic dialogues. It may sound strange, but this is
much like acting - you need to find the right mood to
do the proper lines, lines you still like two days later.
I've started area building for chapter 3 and my first
area, the beholder lair, will be posted as a screenset
at the vault during the next couple of days.
Apr 14th
The last two weeks saw a lot of changes in AHTDR.
I've included several new pieces of community work
to the mod. First of all I've included several pieces
of the Baldur's Gate 1 soundtrack by Michael Hoenig.
As far as I recall Interplay gave permission to use all
the classical soundtracks of their dnd games in
Neverwitnernights modules as soon as credits are
given. I hope nothing has changed since
during the breakdown of Interlay and its successors.
I've decided to change many things in the dialogues
of the original AHTD. Important characters like
Thriandir and Llomir will have a reputation system
now and they will have different reactions to player
actions depending on their standing to the player.
I hope players will notice this while playing since
it surely adds to depth and atmosphere - if it works.
Another milestone in AHTDR was the release of
Johnny Ree's great beholder creature. I don't know
where this guy has been hiding for the last year but
his work is outstanding. He has plans to do one
creature per month for the community and half of
his todo-list reads as the wishlist hanging on my
desk. I couldn't help but to influence the current poll
a little bit by posting a request for driders at several
places at the vault. It is a hard race with minotaurs
and gelatinous cubes.
So if you still need to vote: Please, vote for driders!
This is the last day of my two weeks off and so the lazy
times will come to an end. I've made good progress with
chapter 2. The svirfneblin outpost is almost done. I am
still impressed how all those areas look, although they
aways use the same standard tileset. Obsidian has
made a great job with their lighting effects and place-
ables so you can create many individual areas.
March 20th
I had some great days off during the last week. Of course
this also means that I spent some time for AHTDR. Most
areas of chapter 2 are done now and I've also made great
progress with the scripted events at the svirfneblin outpost.
The NWN2 engine is great for doing Underdark areas -
much better than I ever thought. SirChet had build 1 for
testing and he really liked the first areas. This has en-
couraged me to do a stand-alone version of the main
hall of the svirfneblin outpost as a part of my Obsidian
area contest portfolio.
We'll see how they like it.
March, 7th
This is the first entry in the AHTDR developement diary.
Although the homepage has not been launched so far, I
have already made good progress in the conversion of
the game. I will keep this project smaller than the PORR
project. It's just me and SirChet for the editing so far but
I hope to get Iain to do the narrations again.
I've already sent two mails to him but he is not answering
so far. Iain, please, I need you again!
