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How to Creat your first Dungeon Delve
apocrs1980
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Silverstars Posts: 0 Arc User
Hello everyone Apoc here!
Since we have some time until the game officially opens I wanted to take some time out to make a post for all the authors aspiring to create their own multi-player UGC content.
I'll cover some of the tricks I used when creating the Cragsteep Crypt so that it can be expounded upon, as I am some what new to the entire foundry tool (only about a total of 1 month & 1 week playing with it.)
I do not proclaim to know all the tricks and other authors even may have better or more efficient work arounds, but that's what's great about having a community
and drat I misspelled "create" in the title but I'll live with it
lets get started shall we?
1. concept, what sort of story do you want your players to be going through if any? Think about what kind of enemies really interest you, for me it was the Undead, and thankfully there were a lot of them to choose from
The reason is you need something that motivates you through the entire project.
For me just thinking about the undead and where they came from and how I was going to engage the players in the story was exciting!
Once you know about what enemies your going to use think of the setting they are in. Take for Lizard Folk for example, maybe we would want to use some swamp, cave, and forest type environments. You need to also consider time frame, this is a huge factor in showing your players that a period of time has passed when whatever events took place.
Lets continue using the lizard Folk in this example, how long have they been in the location your creating?
If for a long time perhaps they should have tents established or a cave they claimed, where are the eating? are there bones and left overs from it?
What other encounters have they fought in this area and what evidence is there?
In the Cragsteep crypt I used a lot of this visually such as broken architecture, growing plants, and dust to show it's been there a long time.
Some of this may never be noticed initially by your players but it adds to the over all "feel" of the area your creating.
Lets talk about area creation:
Custom built maps really allow you to set your work apart, while you can use the pre-done maps, when you build from scratch you can really create whatever your mind desires and make it truly your own.
While you can create just about anything your mind desires you need to also keep in mind the editor has limitations.
There are budgets in place so that the editor does not get too bogged down and unusable and that your maps are not so saturated with items that it causes most folks problems trying to play through it.
Currently the budgets are as follows (but may be subject to change later on as the Cryptic team deems necessary)
Per map budget
Details: 1500
Actors: 500 (individual actors) or 50 (encounters)
NPC's: 50
Doors: 20
Secret Doors: 20
Rooms: 50
Remember these budgets are per MAP so each new map you create will have it's own budget.
Selecting a map and where to start: There are 2 types of maps, indoor and outdoor.
Outdoor maps: They give you the greatest flexibility when creating an area from scratch as they offer the most wide open space for a clean pallet to start from, however there are some draw backs to consider....
1. Sound. You can not create the same type of sound echo's you would get form an internal map currently this may or may not be a big deal to you but it's something to consider as sound is a major part of the "feel" of your dungeon.
2. Lighting., Outside maps have a overall defuse secular lighting so attempting to get a different light scheme in different parts can be tricky.
3. Y height. This becomes apparent when you are placing details and encounters in areas when the map has per-generated Hills or mountains, it effects the Y value of the objects you place and some times places them higher or lower then an object right next to it as they Y value of the map is different.
Indoor maps: These do not have all the drawbacks that outdoor maps have however they are far more limited in space to create your dungeon. The largest by far are the Cave maps but they are only really large in terms of Y value.
So where ready to create our first map!
After selecting a map that you want to start building upon think of the path your player will take, I strongly recommend avoiding leaving your map completely open (sandbox) as you will hit your budget limit on details and this will leave almost all of the map open and barren looking unfinished.
It's better to stick to a short route and populate it with as much detail as you can to get that WOW factor.
Don't worry if it feels too short, once encounters are placed in this area it will generally take a player 2 to 3 min per encounter. So a really short trail could easily eat up 10 min of playing time.
Start building, it's up to your preferred style!
I really like to mess around with the platform details and see which one has that "look and feel" I'm going for.
I always place my floors first and build the walls next and ceiling is always added in last.
(IMPORTANT STEP) Re-label EVERYTHING you put down!!! this makes it far easier to come back and edit something later on if it's needed! nothing is worse searching for that 1 floor tile out of 300 when needing to make adjustments.
This is also a great time to mention 2 little buttons in the upper right corner, one looks like a grid, and the other a raidious these are SNAP TO toggles (basically they will snap to per-generated points on the map they are great for lining up tiles but remember they always will round up your Y values!
Example: I have one floor tile set at a Y value of 1.55 and another set at 1.55 after moving it in 2D view with grid snap to on the one I moved will now be at a Y value of 2.0. So remember to turn it off if your trying to fine tune details.
This is the process where my mind goes wild I will often draw out a picture of what I want the final product to look like and emulate it as much as I can.
After all walls and ceilings have been placed I start decorating this is a lot of fun for me as you really get to make the look of your dungeon. It starts to come to life and it's awesome seeing ideas come together. Remember to pay attention to the floor! as Players are always looking at it.
I typically will go through all the details and pull out everything I want to flavor my rooms with and set my pallet if you will, I then hop into map preview and start 3D editing copying what I want to place and pasting it then doing fine tuning on the placement to get just the right look.
(This is one word of caution when using this method) Do not change or manipulate the room the original details were placed that you copied from as it will effect the X/Y/Z values of ALL the objects copied from it!)
After decorating is done I will place my dynamic lights to set the color and tone of the areas I have made.
Placement is crucial as too close to an object can wash it out with bright color too far away and you get barely any light on it at all so experiment with placement, as a general rule of thumb I use 2 lights to highlight objects once with a cooler tone and one with a warmer hue to extenuate the features.
An example of this is used in the Broodmother's Lair on the Cragsteep Crypts where I used an orange light to highlight the bottom of a chain stretched across the ceiling and a blue light to highlight the top.
Next, I place my encounters, for 5 man content you primarily want to use the Hard encounters for the majority of your mobs and standard should be used for and "roaming packs" of multiple monsters at the same time.
Making your players face more than 8 Hard encounters in an open space is a very difficult challenge most groups will not be able to do this without the proper group make up, while only having 1 hard encounter all the time can become too easy and boring.
Avoid placing 8 or more hard encounters at the same time in small places this is extremely difficult and actually does nothing but punish the players for playing your dungeon.
I strongly recommend tailoring your enemies to your vision and making a separate and unique costume for each actor in your encounter this gives both a memorable enemy and furthers the submersion in your story.
Boss encounters, this is difficult as the only way bosses can be done is by having their costumes Unique to other mobs and being very crafty about the over all encounter, playing the Cragsteep Crypts will give you some ideas on how I achieved this.
When figuring out where to place encounters this can be a messy process with en entirely completed map in the 2D editor but I have a trick that helps me out.
Using a 5x5x5 invisible wall appears as a bright red box in the 2D editor this sticks out like a sore thumb and can easily be found, further more when your in 3D edit and you copy it you can run around and past it at each location you want a encounter to be.
This will allow you not only to set up you encounter in the perfect area but the invisible wall's Y value will be preset to the exact Y value needed for your encounter spawn.
This method also works great for patrol points, traps, and so on.
Just remember to delete them when your done!
Invisible walls have another added use, use them to create boarders and boundaries, wall up ANYWHERE you do not want the player to have access to or that is off the path you decorated!
This serves as a duel purpose.
Walling off areas also increases the FPS as the invisible wall will be rendered as a collision wall and everything behind it that is for show will be effectively "hidden" from the program saving your players fps but everything still remains in the player's sight. This also includes your ceiling as this will also help in path node generation once your dungeon is published live. I call it plugging the leaks.
Finally put on the Polish and FX and music/sound! FX can be budget intensive so use them sparingly but they also create some of the most awesome looks! And sound/music is HUGE as it sets mood to your Dungeon.
And then.... TEST TEST TEST, get people in to play with you and test some more, you will always find missing or misplaced stuff even if you ran the same area 100's of times. which is why it was so important to label EVERYTHING you placed early on so you can easily find it and fix it!
I hope this helps all of you out there and gives you a little insight as to the process I go about creating my dungeon.
Most importantly if your not "feeling" an area, leave it be and come back to it later when your in an inspired mood.
For the Cragsteep trail it was the first map I started on and ended up being one of the last I finished for that very reason.
Also, if something does not look good DO NOT LEAVE IT IN! That's the best advice I can give!
Enjoy everyone and happy dungeon creating!
Since we have some time until the game officially opens I wanted to take some time out to make a post for all the authors aspiring to create their own multi-player UGC content.
I'll cover some of the tricks I used when creating the Cragsteep Crypt so that it can be expounded upon, as I am some what new to the entire foundry tool (only about a total of 1 month & 1 week playing with it.)
I do not proclaim to know all the tricks and other authors even may have better or more efficient work arounds, but that's what's great about having a community
and drat I misspelled "create" in the title but I'll live with it
lets get started shall we?
1. concept, what sort of story do you want your players to be going through if any? Think about what kind of enemies really interest you, for me it was the Undead, and thankfully there were a lot of them to choose from
The reason is you need something that motivates you through the entire project.
For me just thinking about the undead and where they came from and how I was going to engage the players in the story was exciting!
Once you know about what enemies your going to use think of the setting they are in. Take for Lizard Folk for example, maybe we would want to use some swamp, cave, and forest type environments. You need to also consider time frame, this is a huge factor in showing your players that a period of time has passed when whatever events took place.
Lets continue using the lizard Folk in this example, how long have they been in the location your creating?
If for a long time perhaps they should have tents established or a cave they claimed, where are the eating? are there bones and left overs from it?
What other encounters have they fought in this area and what evidence is there?
In the Cragsteep crypt I used a lot of this visually such as broken architecture, growing plants, and dust to show it's been there a long time.
Some of this may never be noticed initially by your players but it adds to the over all "feel" of the area your creating.
Lets talk about area creation:
Custom built maps really allow you to set your work apart, while you can use the pre-done maps, when you build from scratch you can really create whatever your mind desires and make it truly your own.
While you can create just about anything your mind desires you need to also keep in mind the editor has limitations.
There are budgets in place so that the editor does not get too bogged down and unusable and that your maps are not so saturated with items that it causes most folks problems trying to play through it.
Currently the budgets are as follows (but may be subject to change later on as the Cryptic team deems necessary)
Per map budget
Details: 1500
Actors: 500 (individual actors) or 50 (encounters)
NPC's: 50
Doors: 20
Secret Doors: 20
Rooms: 50
Remember these budgets are per MAP so each new map you create will have it's own budget.
Selecting a map and where to start: There are 2 types of maps, indoor and outdoor.
Outdoor maps: They give you the greatest flexibility when creating an area from scratch as they offer the most wide open space for a clean pallet to start from, however there are some draw backs to consider....
1. Sound. You can not create the same type of sound echo's you would get form an internal map currently this may or may not be a big deal to you but it's something to consider as sound is a major part of the "feel" of your dungeon.
2. Lighting., Outside maps have a overall defuse secular lighting so attempting to get a different light scheme in different parts can be tricky.
3. Y height. This becomes apparent when you are placing details and encounters in areas when the map has per-generated Hills or mountains, it effects the Y value of the objects you place and some times places them higher or lower then an object right next to it as they Y value of the map is different.
Indoor maps: These do not have all the drawbacks that outdoor maps have however they are far more limited in space to create your dungeon. The largest by far are the Cave maps but they are only really large in terms of Y value.
So where ready to create our first map!
After selecting a map that you want to start building upon think of the path your player will take, I strongly recommend avoiding leaving your map completely open (sandbox) as you will hit your budget limit on details and this will leave almost all of the map open and barren looking unfinished.
It's better to stick to a short route and populate it with as much detail as you can to get that WOW factor.
Don't worry if it feels too short, once encounters are placed in this area it will generally take a player 2 to 3 min per encounter. So a really short trail could easily eat up 10 min of playing time.
Start building, it's up to your preferred style!
I really like to mess around with the platform details and see which one has that "look and feel" I'm going for.
I always place my floors first and build the walls next and ceiling is always added in last.
(IMPORTANT STEP) Re-label EVERYTHING you put down!!! this makes it far easier to come back and edit something later on if it's needed! nothing is worse searching for that 1 floor tile out of 300 when needing to make adjustments.
This is also a great time to mention 2 little buttons in the upper right corner, one looks like a grid, and the other a raidious these are SNAP TO toggles (basically they will snap to per-generated points on the map they are great for lining up tiles but remember they always will round up your Y values!
Example: I have one floor tile set at a Y value of 1.55 and another set at 1.55 after moving it in 2D view with grid snap to on the one I moved will now be at a Y value of 2.0. So remember to turn it off if your trying to fine tune details.
This is the process where my mind goes wild I will often draw out a picture of what I want the final product to look like and emulate it as much as I can.
After all walls and ceilings have been placed I start decorating this is a lot of fun for me as you really get to make the look of your dungeon. It starts to come to life and it's awesome seeing ideas come together. Remember to pay attention to the floor! as Players are always looking at it.
I typically will go through all the details and pull out everything I want to flavor my rooms with and set my pallet if you will, I then hop into map preview and start 3D editing copying what I want to place and pasting it then doing fine tuning on the placement to get just the right look.
(This is one word of caution when using this method) Do not change or manipulate the room the original details were placed that you copied from as it will effect the X/Y/Z values of ALL the objects copied from it!)
After decorating is done I will place my dynamic lights to set the color and tone of the areas I have made.
Placement is crucial as too close to an object can wash it out with bright color too far away and you get barely any light on it at all so experiment with placement, as a general rule of thumb I use 2 lights to highlight objects once with a cooler tone and one with a warmer hue to extenuate the features.
An example of this is used in the Broodmother's Lair on the Cragsteep Crypts where I used an orange light to highlight the bottom of a chain stretched across the ceiling and a blue light to highlight the top.
Next, I place my encounters, for 5 man content you primarily want to use the Hard encounters for the majority of your mobs and standard should be used for and "roaming packs" of multiple monsters at the same time.
Making your players face more than 8 Hard encounters in an open space is a very difficult challenge most groups will not be able to do this without the proper group make up, while only having 1 hard encounter all the time can become too easy and boring.
Avoid placing 8 or more hard encounters at the same time in small places this is extremely difficult and actually does nothing but punish the players for playing your dungeon.
I strongly recommend tailoring your enemies to your vision and making a separate and unique costume for each actor in your encounter this gives both a memorable enemy and furthers the submersion in your story.
Boss encounters, this is difficult as the only way bosses can be done is by having their costumes Unique to other mobs and being very crafty about the over all encounter, playing the Cragsteep Crypts will give you some ideas on how I achieved this.
When figuring out where to place encounters this can be a messy process with en entirely completed map in the 2D editor but I have a trick that helps me out.
Using a 5x5x5 invisible wall appears as a bright red box in the 2D editor this sticks out like a sore thumb and can easily be found, further more when your in 3D edit and you copy it you can run around and past it at each location you want a encounter to be.
This will allow you not only to set up you encounter in the perfect area but the invisible wall's Y value will be preset to the exact Y value needed for your encounter spawn.
This method also works great for patrol points, traps, and so on.
Just remember to delete them when your done!
Invisible walls have another added use, use them to create boarders and boundaries, wall up ANYWHERE you do not want the player to have access to or that is off the path you decorated!
This serves as a duel purpose.
Walling off areas also increases the FPS as the invisible wall will be rendered as a collision wall and everything behind it that is for show will be effectively "hidden" from the program saving your players fps but everything still remains in the player's sight. This also includes your ceiling as this will also help in path node generation once your dungeon is published live. I call it plugging the leaks.
Finally put on the Polish and FX and music/sound! FX can be budget intensive so use them sparingly but they also create some of the most awesome looks! And sound/music is HUGE as it sets mood to your Dungeon.
And then.... TEST TEST TEST, get people in to play with you and test some more, you will always find missing or misplaced stuff even if you ran the same area 100's of times. which is why it was so important to label EVERYTHING you placed early on so you can easily find it and fix it!
I hope this helps all of you out there and gives you a little insight as to the process I go about creating my dungeon.
Most importantly if your not "feeling" an area, leave it be and come back to it later when your in an inspired mood.
For the Cragsteep trail it was the first map I started on and ended up being one of the last I finished for that very reason.
Also, if something does not look good DO NOT LEAVE IT IN! That's the best advice I can give!
Enjoy everyone and happy dungeon creating!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by apocrs1980 on
0
Comments
UPDATE: and my original reason for typing. lol.. great writeup!
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
For sound do you get voice files, like stero typical greetings that your NPC's may say, either during text dialogue or just randomly when you hang around that NPC (we all know those NPC's in game already)
If you put alot of time into crafting an NPC can you save off his file and bring him into future dungeons as a recurring character?
Can you place friendly combatant NPC's to aid your party in there quest?
Can your NPC's do Emotes, Triggered when you want them too, like on dialogue actions.
Can NPC's follow scripted paths of actions, like a ghost roaming the halls and performing the same actions over and over again. and if your PC's interact with this NPC can the actions change?
I am just here cuz im a fan. lol.. dude makes good dungeons.
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Sounds are ambient and music there are some of people milling about in a town square (Protectors Enclave) and monster sounds but none so far that are just of an NPC making sounds such as laughter.
Unfortunately no, you have to recreate this NPC for each new quest/dungeon you create but once the NPC is crafted it can be used as many times as you like in the current quest.
You can place NPC's but unfortunately all they do is stand there with the Fear animation while the monsters whale on them, you can do some cool stuff with appear and disappear when triggers however
yes and no, it's limited to each conversation section in the dialogue tree, there is a button to set an NPC animation once the character reaches that new dialogue prompt. but you can not set multiple animations in the same prompt. This would require an Atomic state NPC which they currently do not have.
Yes, you can set up an NPC to "patrol" and area either looping or one way, you can also use this in conjunction with appear and disappear when with multiple copies of the NPC doing various things and triggers to make it look like they stop or begin walking, a good example of this is in the Cragsteep Crypt I have a pack of ghosts talking about in one state not wanting to be captured using a contact behavior and then copies of them appear using a one way patrol behavior and the previous copies disappear giving the effect that they are now running away when the player character reaches a marker.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
as for using this as a main toon in a quest, i highly suggest not doing it, cuz the friendly encounter, unlike the npc, can die, and thats it. it is great for timing stuff, though. set one friendly encounter against 3 unfriendlies, and then when the friendly encounter dies, it can trigger a reaction. You can do this on an entirely different part of the map, so the adventurer isnt aware of it.
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
I wanted to chime in on this question. While it is not possible to currently transfer a custom character or items or maps, you can however create a copy of the quest with the things you want to use again and just breakdown and rebuild for the second quest and those assets will be there. I did this with my current campaign (and my 2nd unpublished one as well) to maintain the same look of some of the maps, NPCs and items that I knew would be using in multiple quests. It saves a lot of headache for NPC that have had a lot of customization done to them originally.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
You do realize that the doors don't open for another 1 1/2 days, right? We're not exactly hours away from this.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.