Omg, more Nashkel?

Hello followers! It’s been a while since I last updated (I’m sorry!), but I have been very hard at work both on the mod and in my life outside of modding. My Fiancee and I are planning our wedding — late May! — which has just completely absorbed all my free modding time. But fear not, for I have still squeezed in quite a bit of progress at the expense of sleep and sanity!

In the overland map, I’ve been working on the roadways. Currently, we have the roadway connecting the Friendly Arm Inn to the Coastway Hub, the Coastway Hub to Beregost, and Beregost to Nashkel. The placement of the roads has been relatively simple; however, it’s how you decorate the sides of the roadway that really make the scene…and also takes a long time!

Another thing I’ve been working on heavily is the Nashkel Mines. The dungeon presents quite a lot of headaches. The sheer size of the dungeon, for example, makes development a challenge. The Nashkel Mines are nearly four levels deep, which means that at some point the mines need to be cut up into separate cells, otherwise they grow too large and will cause CTD issues.

So Big! Much Wow!

I plan to perform this after the majority of the dungeon has been laid out well, and the nav mesh has been generated so that I can duplicate the cells and remove unused portions instead of re-developing the entire section.

Dat NavMesh!

While my level design work has mostly kept me busy, I did provide a teaser of the companions I’m working on — Minsc, Edwin, Dynaheir, Brawnwen, and Xzan. They are using Skyrim-specific clothing and gear while I develop them, but eventually they will have clothing and gear more related to their characters as they were in BG. All companions are voiced currently, which makes for quite a fun experience, and you can hear some of that in the run-around video. While some of the longer dialogue requires my own voice for recording, or have been set to generic voices, Minsc and Edwin have taken center stage and have much of their original BG voice content within the mod.

Stay tuned! The next post will have a few working quests and the companion system allowing a party of up to 6! I’ll probably also put in some monster spawners along the Coast Way and at the Xvart Village for companion testing.

Be sure to check out my youtube channel for some other videos taken from earlier in the development cycle!