Blogs - Corylea

The conclusion of "Medical Problems" has been released!
It's called "Medical Problems 2: The Witcher Disease," and you can get it at Corylea.com.

Description:

"Disease?" I hear you say. "But witchers don't GET sick!" Ah, but you see, in "Medical Problems 2: The Witcher Disease," a mage has used the stolen witchers' secrets to create a disease that's specifically targeted to witchers, one that will overcome that famous witcher's immunity. Who has done such a thing? And why? And most importantly, how can Geralt stop them? Play "Medical Problems 2: The Witcher Disease" and find out.

If you played "Medical Problems," "Medical Problems 2" is the continuation -- and conclusion -- of that story. But if you didn't play "Medical Problems," it's okay; you can still play "Medical Problems 2." The new adventure opens with a recap of the story so far, so you can dive right in. Of course, if you want to play the first "Medical Problems" before you play MP2, don't let me stop you! But you don't have to.

The game has several different possible endings, depending on which choices you make while playing. Five choices each have consequences, and which ending you get depends on the combination of choices.

Geralt has monsters to kill, human lives to save, a mystery to solve, and witcher contracts to fulfill. There are also some ladies to woo, though all but one of those encounters is optional. :-)

How to get it:

There are two versions of "Medical Problems" available; choose the one that best suits your needs:

1. For everything you need in one file, download the version available from ModDB: Moddb.com. (The official Witcher website isn't accepting new uploads at the moment; they're in "maintenance mode" to prepare for the announcement of you-know-what. )
a. Download the all-in-one version.
b. Unzip the folder.
c. Follow the installation instructions.
d. Play.

2. For those who are comfortable moving files around on their hard disks, the version available from my website (Corylea.com) has the adventure and the movies in two separate files. This should give you somewhat faster loading times.
a. Download the no-movies version.
b. Download the movie folder.
c. Download the main loading screen.
d. Unzip the adventure.
e. Follow the installation instructions for the adventure.
f. Unzip the movies folder.
g. Put the movies folder into the folder where your other Witcher movies are. (On many computers, this is at The Witcher Enhanced Edition\Data\Movies, but the location of the folder varies, depending on whether you installed the EE from a disk or upgraded the original edition to the EE via patch.) In any case, if the folder has files like "cs_sex_abigail1.bik" and "intro.bik" in it, it's the right place.
h. Put the ls_load.dds file in The Witcher Enhanced Edition\Data\Override. (Remember to take this out of your Override folder when you play the main game or another module!)
i. Play.

How to get help, ask questions, and make comments:

"Medical Problems" comes with four text files:

1. An installation manual
2. A hint sheet
3. A list of cool things to be sure to see
4. A walkthrough

Walkthroughs take half of the fun out of a game, so it's only there in case of a playing "emergency." If you get stuck or have a question that isn't covered in the installation manual or the hint sheet, ask it in the "Medical Problems" thread on the Witcher forum (http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=27973.0 ), and I'll answer you.

Oh, and if you think you can make a better adventure for The Witcher than "Medical Problems," please do! :-)

"Medical Problems" will be released on March 4th.

It should be available on the official Witcher website (http://www.thewitcher.com/community/en/adventures/ ) and on my own site (http://corylea.com/).

The version available from the official Witcher website will have everything you need in one file. There will also be a version on my own site that has the movies separate from the adventure module; if you're comfortable moving files around on your hard disk (and not everybody is), the separated version should give you faster loading times than the all-in-one version.

There will be a walkthrough available on release day (though I hope you won't use it unless you really need it, since in my experience, walkthroughs take much of the fun out of games).

In the last month or two, several different people have told me that they couldn't possibly make a new adventure for The Witcher. Well, that might be true for some people, but I think a lot of folks who think they can't do this actually could if they wanted to. So I thought I'd post an example of what happens behind the scenes when I'm trying to do something that turns out not to be as easy as I'd hoped it would be.

The people of my village (Riverford) are followers of Melitele. They're not very religious, but what religion they have is focused on Melitele. So I wanted a statue of Melitele for the center of my village, and it seemed as if that would be easy. We've all seen the statues of Melitele in the main game, right?

There's one in the swamp forest and one in St. Lebioda's hospital, so having a statue of Melitele in my village should be easy, just grab the right file for the statue and plunk her down.

I guess I should back up a bit and mention a few basic Djinni facts, for those who haven't worked with it before. The places in the world where Geralt runs around and does things -- outside, inside, cave, crypts -- all of those things are called "areas," and they come with the game. Most of the buildings, trees, fences, large rocks, and so forth are just part of the area -- they can't be removed. The smaller things, like furniture, herb bushes, campfires, and so forth are called "placeable objects." Things that are in Geralt's inventory are called "items," and most items aren't seen in the outside world, only in his inventory. There are exceptions to this, though -- things like his sword are both in his inventory and in the world. But in general, big, unalterable things are area, medium-sized movable things are objects, and stuff that's only in the inventory are items.

Well, I thought the statue of Melitele would be an object, and placing an object in Djinni is really easy. And when I looked through the files of objects, I found one called ob_melitealt01. That should be the statue, right? Nope.

It turns out to be a small table with a carving of a woman on it -- it's probably a small altar for at-home devotions, but it's certainly not a big, three-part statue. Hmm.

So where IS the statue?

I opened up the area of the swamps from the main game in Djinni and tried to click on the statue. I couldn't click on the statue, though; I could only click on an empty box next to the statue.

Opening St. Lebioda's in Djinni showed the same. Oh, hell. The statue of Melitele is part of the AREA; that means there's no placeable object statue.

But I WANT a statue. It will look cool in my game and it will also help to establish a bit of background that's important to the plot.

Huh. What to do?

Well, Melitele is a three-part goddess. There are a lot of three-part goddesses in mythology, and most of them have one part that's Maiden (a young, unmarried woman), one part Mother (a woman of child-bearing age), and one part Crone (an old, wise woman). Well, we have women of the relevant ages in the game. How about if I just get three women to stand back-to-back, after first giving them clothing that makes them look as if they're made out of stone?

Made out of stone. Hell.

I'm no artist -- I mean, I'm really, REALLY no artist -- but I can do some elementary recolors, so I try to find a way to make an ordinary woman look as if she's made of stone.

So I open up the model for the peasant woman (the file, amusingly enough, is named "boob2." Really!) in PhotoShop, then tell it to remove color. Okay, now she's grey and looking more stonelike already. She still looks too alive, though, and not the right texture. Hmm, texture. There's a texturizer under the Filter menu in PhotoShop, and one of the possible textures is "sandstone." Sure, give her a sandstone texture. Hmm. That's better, but her face and chest are a lot lighter than her clothes, which would be kinda weird if she's made out of a single block of stone. So undo the texture. Select the face and chest and make those a darker grey, more like the color of her clothes. Reapply the texture. Hmmm.

Not exactly what I was hoping for, but not bad.

Well, let's start again from the grey woman. How about if we apply the "emboss" filter instead? That looks sort of statue-like, but it looks kinda like a METAL statue, and we want stone.

Well, how about if we combine them? Go back to the sandstone woman, then apply the embossing on top of it?

Hmm. Not TOO bad, but still not what I want.

Wait, I'm a dolt! We have plenty of stone textures, all through the game. I can copy one of those, tell PhotoShop it's a pattern, and apply that to the woman. Okay, so let's try that.

Hmm. Her facial features are a little too blurry that way.

Well, what if I apply the stone pattern at 70% opacity, and not 100%?

That's not too bad, but the stone texture seems kinda small, compared to the size of the statue.

Okay, so I'll go back to the stone texture and blow it up, then save that as a new pattern. Okay, apply this bigger stone pattern to the grey woman.

Better. Yes, I like this one. It's not perfect, but it will do.

Okay, so I have a woman who looks like she's made of stone; I'll just add a line to the appearance.2da file, and that'll give me a new set of clothes for good ole Boob 2, one where she looks like stone.

Now, if I want her to be a statue, I don't want her wandering around or even fidgeting; I want her to stand still in one spot and NOT MOVE. That sounds mean, but she's only pixels; she won't get thirsty or get muscle cramps. :-) So, let's look at the character template. Yes, there's a "movement" line, with several possibilities to choose from, one of which is "Immobile." Perfect. Okay, Melitele-to-be, you're immobile.

I need to give her an "action" in her Story NPC file; is there a stand-still-and-don't-even-breathe action? Hmmm. Here's something called "monster pause," maybe that would do it. Okay, let's put her in the game.

Yes! She looks like stone, and she's standing perfectly still. Okay, I have the Mother for the three-part Melitele statue; now to make the Maiden and the Crone.

The Crone is fairly obvious. There's only one old lady in the game, so we'll use her -- the Vaska, Shani's Landlady, Old Woman model. Okay, recolor her to look like stone. That's a lot faster, now that I don't have to try a hundred things that don't work. Apply large stone texture, 70% opacity -- wham, she's done.

Okay, how about the Maiden? The little girls are too young; it needs to be definitely a woman, but one who's kinda just old enough to get married. Hmm, the Maiden in the real Melitele statue is naked; I never noticed that before. Well, if we take Shani or Triss or Adda in her nightgown and remove the nightgown.... She's older than the standard Maiden age, but once her face is stone, we won't be able to tell much about how old her face is, and her body certainly looks young in that model. Or maybe Morenn's model? Check Morenn's model -- no, she's wearing lots of jewelry and stuff, which doesn't really work for the simplicity of the Maiden. Shani's hair is shorter than is usual for the Maiden, and Adda's wearing that headpiece. Okay, naked Triss it is, then.

Okay, apply stone texture to naked Triss, and she's all set. Make character template for her and for the Crone. Make NPC story file for her and for the Crone. One spawnpoint for the three of them, and three action points, arranged in a back-to-back circle.

Damn, I hope this works!

Hell. It doesn't. They spawn fine, and each of them is immobile and stone-like if I put her by herself, but they won't stand close enough together to look like a three-part statue. If I put the action points that close together, one of them stays at the spawnpoint so that she doesn't have to get that close to the others. What, have they got lice or something -- why won't you stand back-to-back with them?

Okay, so that won't work.

Well, I can still use the character models to make a statue, though. Instead of using them in a character template, I can use them in a placeable object template. The placeable woman! But if I do that with the existing character models, then I can't specify an outfit, the way I can for a character. That means that the default outfit would have to be stone. Hmm. That's not so good.

Well, I can COPY the character models, rename them to something else, and edit the internal specifications to match the new name.

All right, so now we have Boob 3 and Grand 2 and Naked 6. And they're things, not people, so I can place them however I want, even one half inside of another one or something.

Does that work? It works!

Oh, it doesn't look like the Melitele statue in the swamp forest or in St. Lebioda's, but it doesn't have to. It's not like there's some factory that turns out identical Melitele statues; in the medieval era, each statue would be made by an individual sculptor, and it would make sense that different sculptors would have somewhat different visions. Heck, it even makes sense that the sculptor would use models from the village when working on the stone, so if the faces look rather a lot like the locals, that's not just okay, it's even good.

This took me three days. It involved much flailing about, a lot of trial-and-error, and a lot of telling myself that I'm awfully stupid, and why didn't I think of this or that or the other thing SOONER. And what I ended up with isn't fabulous, but it will do.

Three days. And the average player will probably walk right by the statue and never even notice it's there. :wall:

Why am I telling you all this? Well, people see the finished product, and they think, "Wow, *I* could never do that." They don't realize how many false starts and blind alleys are involved before one stumbles across something that will do. So I thought I'd give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how this works -- or at least, how it works for me; it's possible that all of the other modders are smarter :-[.

It's all about not giving up, really. There WILL be a statue of Melitele in Riverford, damn it!