The Foundry Smithy

And is it ever applicable here!

Dialogue is all your NPCs have because so far, The Foundry doesn't have the option to fit more than armour on them. No weapons, no shield, nothing. So I guess it is also a good thing that it won't allow you to fight them either.

The interface is pretty straightforward and simple (or limited, depending on how you see the glass) and my major bug with it is the Go To Prompt. Once it is set, I can't for the life of me unset it. It's ok when you can Undo it, but if you decide to change anything a few days later, too bad.

So the workaround I use is to add another Dialogue Bubble between the Conversation Response and the old Go To Prompt. I then delete it immediately and I am back with a free Go To Prompt slot. One thing you have to know in order to use this workaround: when you delete the new Dialogue Bubble, you will lose the Conversation Response. So remember to copy it before modifying your old Go To Prompt.

But Qui-Gon, what are Go To Prompts?

When you add Responses to Dialogue Bubbles, it can either:

Complete The Dialogue Objective

Fail The Dialogue Objective

Create a Go To Prompt

The first two are pretty simple, the other is the weird one. It basically allows you to jump to another Dialogue Bubble, anywhere in your Dialogue. All you need to do is to grab the white arrow (shown above) and drag it to the Dialog Bubble you wish the Response to go to. Take an example from a conversation with The Benefactor's Daughter, Eridiana.

To Be Or Not To Be

Little too much drama there, sorry... But it makes a nice segue into being careful about the conversation animation you get to choose for each of your NPCs' replies. They tend to be a little bit over-dramatic and testing them all will be a must. Take notes and save them.

Speaking of being, Dialogue aren't just for NPCs, they can also work for objects. When you are using an Interact With Object Objective, you can create a whole conversation with the object you need to interact with, where the Players' Responses are actually written out as actions. This is the best avenue for the Skill section when dealing with Response requirements.

These can become quite elaborate, and sometimes it will seem that your configuration boxes for your Dialogue Bubbles are not appearing. I thought it might have been a bug at first, but later realized that they would appear if I clicked next to the "+" of the Dialogue Bubble.

Continuing the story, once you have gained the location of The Benefactor's daughter, you set off to find her forest camp.

Stuck Between A Rock and A Wooden Place

My first idea was to camp her out in a cave inside an outdoor forest map. After looking through the different pieces available, another idea came to mind. I decided to take some some random wood tiles and turn it into this.

Pretty sure we all know what a pain that was, but after doing some ingame exploring (sometimes out of bounds), I have gained insight on how the official maps are designed. It allowed me to save some time from nitpicking, seeing how the game engine seems to tolerate a lot of textures / different tiles overlaps. I have my suspicions that it is somehow linked to The Half Degree, where it always seems impossible to completely align certain objects once you have already transformed them from their original state when you first dropped them in, or if it is a copied object.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Seeing as you are a stranger, popping up out of no where at her camp, it is normal that Eridiana, like her father, will ask you to prove that you are trustworthy before, well... trusting you. After you have successfully raided the bandit camp next door (which I will cover in Encounters), she discloses to you that she stole a map to an abandoned tower, where they are now heading to start a new guild (which I will cover in Dialogue).

When Life Gives You Lemons...

In this case, it's when there is no free roam cam. You are stuck at eye level and it sucks big time. Especially when you're building an abandoned tower. There is no way around it, you're going to need to build yourself some scaffolding. In this example, I had selected an outdoor canyon map and wanted to build the tower in the middle. Simple enough, so I decided to bring it up a level and make the main floor part of the mountain. So I built it and then buried it.

Not bad uh? Well... whatever you do don't find a way to climb to the top.

IDCLIP

What did you think? That I would build the whole thing and then bury it? Well let this be a lesson... whenever you can get away with not having to climb your scaffolding in edit mode, do it. Because if not, this is what happens: you'll have to do this jumping game to climb without touching any of your scaffold's objects, because when you do, that object no longer clips you. So you fall and you have to pop out of, and back in, 3D Editor mode for them to support you again.

Don't worry, I have done the math for you already: the amount of times you're going to fall is exponentially linked to how fast you built your scaffolding. The rest is basic Bullet Hell Style gaming to avoid your object's hotspots.

Go Big Or Go Home

I have recently completed the inside map of the main floor of said tower. Where I came about a new frustration: It seems that you can't place a Player Start outside a cookie cutter room and you can't overlap rooms even if you set their Y accordingly.

I understand, you're like... whatever. I was too, until I realized that I would never be as free in indoor maps as I am in outdoor ones. So I picked the Crypt Room - Huge Two Tier Chamber room and built on top of it. The directive line was that this was where Dwarven miners would sell their wares to the world before, and the tower was later built on top of this old market hub.

I also used another illusion here. You might have found out already, but a lot of the commodities, like torches for example, are missing from the object library. The quest is about lighting the brazers in order to shed some light on this abandoned tower. In order to see a bit, I had the NPC throw their torches in.

Well... ok, that's what happens in Imagination Land, but what I really did was use the smallest torch holder and rotate it in such a fashion that only the end part was showing.

There are a few little things like these that you will need to improvise on. At least, I got you covered for torches, so it's not all bad, right?

Since a certain someone didn't want to come over and get the full tour, I did something nice... I gave him the link to this post containing the before and after lower tier shots, as well as the before and after upper tier shots. I removed a block to show the walkway paths along both sides of the map.The hanging lights are only there in order to take better screenshots. The playable map is only lit by floor brazers.

So this rich Benefactor has a hole in his bedroom, behind his bookshelves. Who doesn't these days?!

The challenge in this is that I didn't want the Player to snoop around the house, find the hole before talking to The Benefactor. Cue the visibility conditions.This is what I do to get around there being no "sliding" actions to reveal hidden doors.

As you can see, it is dependent on objectives. I used a Dialogue type to switch the visibility state of the two bookshelves but you could have used an Interact With Object also. Either way, I needed an NPC to ask me to do it. I didn't know The Benefactor's name (would I ever?) but I did have an idea how he looked.

The Clothes do not maketh the man

But they sure do help! The Costume editor is the same editor you used to create your first character, albeit one major difference, here you can add and mix any armour sets together and try to streamline something wearable with the use of colours. Sadly, the Shirts and Pants sections have a very poor selection and there is just so much colouring one can do.

Now that you have an NPC, the work to be done in Dialogue can be pretty straight forward, I will get into a few things about dialogue in an upcoming post. There is nothing special to note about the Story side either.

So I cheated a little, so what?

In order to achieve the bookshelves trick above, I had to cheat a little. There are no move action (except for Patrols when dealing with Encounters) that can be applied to items. Knowing that the Player wouldn't be in the room when the bookshelf switch occurred, allowed for it to work.

Bookshelf A is the "Closed State" of the hidden tunnel. Bookshelf B is the "Open State". A is set as Visible immediately when the map loads, that way if the player is snooping, it's properly hiding the passage. It is set to disappear when the first objective (Dialogue with Benefactor) is completed. B is set to appear when the same objective is completed. It is set to never disappear once it has appeared, since the bookshelves do not need to go back into their original position.

The logic behind this is that any dialogue that ends with an answer that isn't marked as "Fail to meet Objective", successfully passes the objectives and moves to the next one. So as long has you didn't comply with the NPC, the Objective that regulates the bookshelves, is in progress. When you accept to go down to the basement, you successfully end the Dialogue Objective and the bookshelves switch positions.

Side Note: My quest required the Player to come back out and speak to the NPC again. So as I duplicated the original map to move the Spawn Point, I also had to change the logic behind the bookshelves a bit. A had to only be visible once the last objective (Dialogue Objective with quest item found in the basement as requirement) was completed. Of course, I had to set it to be invisible while the same objective was in progress. B set by reversing the visible and invisible states of A.

Throughout the first few posts, I will be dealing with the same example. I have decided to make three campaigns, each with three quests. This has to do with the game's current limitations of 10 campaigns and 10 quests. I probably keep the last quest slot open because I am claustrophobic.

Now let's get right down to it, that's why you're here anyways.

Your first map.

The first quest is pretty straightforward. Your reputation is starting to grow and you caught the attention of a wealthy benefactor. He sends a messenger with a note, asking you to meet him at his house.

But first, he needed a house.

Since you managed to find your way here, I will assume you are already familiar with creating a new quest and switching to the map tab. I am going to select "interior" and choose a main room to host the meeting. I chose "Human Interior Room - Medium Square 01" and a hallway leading in, "Human Interior - Hallway Straight Short", containing the Spawn Point. Both of which I kept the lighting set to "Lamps" with no ambient sound.

After placing both tiles down, you can click on the Interior Room and select "Populate" to get a generic set of details (chairs, bookshelves, etc) added to your room. The hallway isn't considered to be detailed, one would assume, because the populate option will not work on it. I didn't really like the cookie cutter setup this time, so I decided to remove it and do my own thing.

If you ever change your mind and you want to add some of the filler back, here's what you need to do: Duplicate your room, populate it, group select everything and move it into you current room.

Lord Copypasta would be proud.

I know, you're not here to learn how to insta-model your map, so here's what you're here for; the gritty and dirty tricks of the trade.

I know the 3D Editor is nice, but you're going to have to switch between both the map layout mode and the 3D editor...unless you don't have enough computer juice to switch between mode in 2 minutes, in which case, you're going to waste a lot of time either way.

Drop everything you will need on the map first. I used to only drop one item of each and then copy paste multiple times in the Editor, but I stopped doing it. Here's why:

First bug that is going to annoy you to no ends, the Paste bug. This is when you are editing in 3D, you copy and paste an item. When you want to move it, you'll notice that it doesn't have its "Core" box (this is the white wireframe cube in the middle of all objects). When handling small to medium objects, it is not that bad, but as soon as you want to move the bigger stuff, like building a bridge for example, you will find yourself wondering when this game switched styles to "Escape The Room", blindly looking for that hotspot that will allow you to move your object.

In The Benefactor's study, I wanted to have a bar. So I dropped all the bar pieces on the map layout, used the grid to align them, and then switched to 3D. Everything will be set on one axis, cutting down on the time needed to make everything seamless.

What do you mean, what's that doughnut? Oh that! That's just a hole in the ground behind The Benefactor's bookshelves, what were you doing in his room anyways? There are actually three bookshelves, one permanent and two in different quantic stages; one that is out of the way when his active quest is underway, the other replaces it when the quest is done.

There are a few tips and tricks that can help you along the way. I will probably update this post every time something is out dated or has been fixed. Keep in mind that I am new to this tool and there has not been much information out on it as of yet.

On Saving...

There is an autosave function enabled in The Foundry. It will auto-save most of the time. I say "most of the time" because as long as it's not a server error that caused the disconnect, you're fine... otherwise, yes, you will have to re-align all those bottles again.

  On Map Making...

If you are planning on make a campaign out of this, try to organize accordingly: You can re-use elements of one or your single quests for another. This is done via the "Duplicate" option, either from the main menu or from the Map tab. This will allow you to recycle maps, NPC and items. Note that as of yet, there are no ways to change the Quest's Banner Picture... you will be stuck with the duplicated one until they fix this.

Something I wish I had done in the beginning was to create a template quest that would always be in my account and would contain all I needed in order to make sequels. You can copy this template into any of your new quests and won't need to spend hours re-doing maps and NPC colour schemes.

It seems that you can only use a map once in a quest. Using the same map again is either not possible or will give you the "Item can only be used once" alert. You can duplicate the map you want to go back to and everything should be fine (remember to change your Player Spawn and Re-Spawn accordingly).

Things you need to know right now:

There is no freeroam / fly cam, you are stuck at character level. I have gotten around this by building custom scaffolding, I will get into details when discussing maps. You can press B to go into inspect mode and use the scroll wheel to get into first person view, this will help a lot of with aligning objects and making wall seamless, but unfortunately, you will automatically switch out of inspect mode when you select and object to interact with.

There is no clone tool. You will have to copy-paste your building block using your avatar. This is both tedious and time consuming, you might want to drop a few objects from the Map Layout mode, fix their X,Y,Z and then place them more precisely in 3D editing mode.

While on the subject, you can copy-paste items when you are in Layout mode, just keep in mind that it will create an instance of the same object(s) you have selected, meaning they will lose all X, Y, Z coordinates. If you want the object to be an exact copy, you will need to use the "Duplicate" button, available when you click on an object. You will know soon enough, but if you continue reading, you will know that you can select many items at a time, but you won't be able to group them together (like clusters) and you won't be able to duplicate them as a group. You will be able to move and rotate them as a group, the selected item you use to rotate will turn into the pivot for the whole group. See, now you know.

There seems to be a bug that affects your mouse and forces you to restart The Foundry. It seems to happen when moving objects (usually clusters) into the map. When the drag and drop is done too quickly, the item is dropped on the edge of the map and the mouse cursor will stay stuck to the middle of the screen. Ctrl-Shift-ESC to bring up Taskmanager, using TAB to navigate to the Process tab, use the arrow keys to go down to the game process, press Delete to end it and start over. Don't worry, Autosave has your back on this. You can work around this by moving the mouse (dragging with the object(s)) over the item list for a second before moving it into your map layout.

As of yet, there are no animation trigger (a bookshelf sliding open) or lever triggers (pulling a lever to have a bookshelf slide open). I will cover workarounds when I get into map building. Lucky for you, this is the first section I intend on getting into!

On Respec...

There is currently a bug with this option. It is meant to enable you to walkthrough your quests with different skillsets. The problem is, once you respec, you will end up naked, unable to do anything.

The work around isn't pretty. You can create a small map with a bunch of NPC, respec into your class choice, play the map and use the kill function (ctrl-space) to kill selected NPCs. This way, you can loot them and rebuild a character. It is not pretty, but it works.

  On Quest Items...

As far as I can see, there is no way to have an Encounter drop a custom Quest Item. The only way so far that you can manage to have a Quest Item in the player's inventory is with a successful Dialog Ending and with a successful Item Interaction.

Once you have logged in, at the bottom of the character selection screen lies the door to The Foundry. After reading the agreement, you're ready to begin!

Before we go any further, I am going to assume that you hold a certain basic level of of these things work. For example, I am assuming you can fill out all the quest info from the first tab. I will assume that when a box says "private notes" in there, you don't need me to tell you what to put in there, same as Quest Name, and Quest Description. I assume you googled your way here and are beyond these common steps.

Now that this is out of the way, let's proceed.

The Basics of The Foundry.

There are a couple ways to get a quest done as  the Story, Dialogue and Map tabs are interrelated, but there are ways that will cause you less grief. Here is how I do it (assuming you have a clear and concise idea of what you want to do):

First, I get my map done. This is because, when keeping the tab relations in mind, everything first needs a map. I tend to use a broad brush at first (no, don't go looking for it, it's an expression) to get started: I will go through the Details and Cluster (or Rooms, if you are indoors), drop a few items here and there. I don't spend too much time of details at this point.

Second, I give the Story tab a go, still high level stuff, no details yet as this usually creates dependencies in my maps (and a pesky warning until I have inserted whatever was missing). I do this to help me figure out the big pieces of the puzzle, how they fit in my first map and if I will need a second or third map in order to achieve what I set out to do.

Third, I turn to the NPC screen, to flesh out the actors that I will need and the Items tabs, in case I need quest items.

Forth and final step... the Dialogue tab. Being someone that loves instant gratification, I always keep the text for the end. Always make sure you at least have a draft of your main plot, then you can add filler.

I first started to seriously use The Foundry about 3 week ago, when Neverwinter's Open Beta was announced. I had played a bit when it was in closed beta since I was curious to see how far they had gone after PWI.

Following a good 20 minutes to find and retrieve my old account information, I was able to log in. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I already had a level 15 character, allowing me access to The Foundry.

I have a long love history with game editors, I fondly remember printing out the manual to DooMED on my dot matrix...for hours. User interface being what they were back then, it wasn't the most friendly of editors. I was a bit reluctant to try The Foundry at first because I had spent so many hours with the frustrating Neverwinter Night editor and wasn't ready to go through that again.

I have a lot of ideas and I thought that starting this blog would help me better organize them and help new people just tuning in. I have spent a lot of time trying to find help on many of the little things that can cause issues while building. Hopefully, I can save you most of that time!