Learning About Custom NPCs, Journal Writing

Finally got to do a little more work on the module last night. I'm starting to get the feeling that I may just have confine work to the weekends and days off. Revised the OnClientEnter script using part of Sir Elric's script, so now the PC loses, gains, and equips his gear all at the start of the module, and all in one script. Went on to do a lot of twiddling and tweaking of the NPCs in the next scene, and began to learn about the vagaries of "update all instances" and "edit copy." I changed the voiceset of my soldier from "Aasimar, Male" (the first on the list) to a more appropriate voice, and then did an update all instances. When I tested it, I discovered that not only did the voice not change, but the cutscene wasn't working again! I realized that changes I had made on the soldier I had painted down were not changes on the soldier in the palette, so when I updated, it changed the former to match up with the latter. As a result, the tag, faction, and voiceset all changed, which is why things weren't working.

After spending a long time fiddling with the various peasants and goblins in the second area, I realized I was doing it all wrong: instead of creating one model, painting it down several times, and then tweaking each model, I was making a new copy of each model on the palette and then painting it down. As such, I've got a bunch of unnecessary NPCs cluttering up my palette. I'm going to go back and fix that tonight, but that means I'll have to be careful about updating all instances in the future, so that I don't reset everyone again. Still can't get the peasant women and children to stop fighting the goblins though. Someone noted that there's a scene in the OC where peasants who are under attack don't fight back. I'll have to check that out.

Also wrote my first journal entry. That took a long time, because I suck at coming up with names for things on the fly. I got the first entry down, but didn't have the time to write the script that calls it when the PC enters the first area. I also accidentally deleted the script that sets the camera mode, and my attempt to recreate it didn't work. Someone suggested this may be a flaw in the game, and suggested I use a trigger instead of putting it in the OnEnter event. Another peson suggested putting a short delay on the command. I'll have to see if either works.