Being Good

Before bed last night, I played Christian Mayr's contest module, Being Good. As you'll see, I had a lot of fun playing through this strange little module.

My vote: 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look
Character: lv. 1 Human Female Illusionist Wizard (with the elderly fairy godmother face and hair, of course!)

Christian Mayr's first module release, the delightfully bizarre Asylum: A Bet, A Corpse, put him on the map as one of the more ...non-traditional builders in our community. This module does nothing to change that peception, though instead of the dark foreboding of Asylum, the mood Being Good is decidedly light and fun. If I was going to try to describe this module via comparisons, it would probably be something like a blend of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Looney Toons, and yes, Batman . It's extremely funny, particularly near the beginning, when I literally was laughing so hard I had to rest my head on my keyboard wrist support. Mayr continues his use of extreme lighting and tinting in places, though it wasn't so severe in this module as in his other module, and actually makes for an appropriate effect early on. In addition to the bizarre concept, what really made this module stand out the use of custom sounds and music, which set a tone completely unlike anything you'd get using stock nwn2 content.

The module plays out well and is fun, even though it's pretty short and is essentially an "adventure"-style game (there isn't any real combat) with very little in the way of challenging puzzles. The story is creative, and everything makes sense in a twisted and absurd kind of way. The one possible critique I might have would be that the writing is still a bit awkward at times, though it's actually quite good for a non-native English speaker and seems to be substantially improved from the (somewhat early) version of Asylum that I played. Thanks again to the author for a fun little module, and I continue to look forward to the next Asylum module!

Once Upon a Time...

Tonight I also got the chance to play through Mungo_D's contest module, Once Upon a Time. My comments:

6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 1 chaotic good human barbarian

Once upon a time is a modest, humorous little adventure with a cool premise, and ultimately is a decent way to start off a character and get him or her to level 2. The premise--that people are just pawns, their lives shaped by stories, which repeat over and over again--is really cool and deserves exploration. I thought that this was going to be a really cool exploration of fate and destiny and a character's fight against impossible odds. Instead, while there's an element of that, the author opted to use the premise as a running gag throughout the module. His take is funny and clever, and I recommend it for that. The module also has a cool underground mines area that was built exterior areas, as well as a spectacular effect during the opening sequence.

The actual adventure itself was fine, though perhaps not particularly memorable. Dialogs, as others have mentioned, were fairly minimal and were quite linear, though they were well written. It seems like this could have been a great hack and slash mod for a level 1 character, but I found the combat to be a bit light for that genre. Granted, I played with a fairly uber melee character, which might have made it too easy, but I think that a bit more combat & a bit more exploration (especially in the mines) might have made this a more enjoyable module. Of course, that might have been inconsistent with the punch line... :)

Witch in the Wood: A Grimm Fairy Tale

Last night, I played Lord Niah's contest module Witch in the Wood: A Grimm Fairy Tale. It's an enjoyable little adventure. My comments:

My vote: 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 4 chaotic good wood elf ranger

Witch in the Woods is a very short, but still enjoyable little adventure. While it is more true to the classic tale it is based on than some of the other contest modules, it still takes liberties with the story to spice things up a bit. As the readme indicates, the best fit for this module is a ranger, as essentially you are tasked with tracking down two lost kids and saving them from whatever fate has befallen them.

The highlight of this module is its custom scripting, which includes an interesting "search" system in which you can check an object (like a hollow tree stump) for items or other bonuses using your search skill, as well as a few special-use items. It's a nice variant from the typical "click to open and loot" approach that is the default in nwn2, especially in this setting (a forest). The writing is good, and the plot is decent even in its brevity, with a (sometimes humorous) twist or two to keep it interesting. The action was fairly easy for my ranger (a level-3 character might have been better balanced), but I like that what combat is there fits the setting, without any obvious "filler." Finally, the area design is fantastic. The author makes great use of scaling to create a gigantic redwood backdrop, beneath which lies a thick understory. When coupled with the ambient noises of an untouched wilderness, the module gives a great sense of walking through a thick forest.

The reason I "only" give it a qualified recommendation is that, at about a half-hour of game time, it is such a short module; it seemed to just be gaining some momentum by the time that it ended. You could probably describe the whole module as something that would make for a fun little side-quest in a larger adventure. I understand the constraints that the author worked under, of course, so this is understandable. But one thing that might have made this module more enjoyable is if the tracking phase of the module had a bit more meat to it. As it is, while there is some effort to include spot checks for signs of the kids, you basically just stumble upon the children. Perhaps if something more akin to the tracking system used in Kale's Rangers (NWN1), or even the "chase-the-odor" sequence in Stormchaser, had been used, it might have been a bit more dramatic when one finally locates the house.

Overall, though, it's a fun little module and is worth checking out, as long as you are aware of its limitations.

Mouse-over Health Status!

As I played through Dark Waters and The Birthday the last couple of nights, I noticed a small but substantial improvement to the NWN2 user interface that goes back to a beef I had about the game from the moment I started playing: mouse-over health status for all NPC's has been added! Here's a screenie of it in action:
Here, my mouse cursor is hoving over the "Unseelie," and it reveals his approximate health status. This is how NWN1 worked, but it was initially absent from NWN2. Prior to this improvement, the only way to discover a character's health status was to right-click on that character. There was no quick way to assess the health of a large number of foes in the middle of battle. And now there is! While it's a little thing, this already has greatly improvement my comfort with the game--and has decreased the clicking I've had to do!

I guess this was an addition in the 1.05 patch, but I didn't see mention of it in the patch notes. Kudos to Obsidian for making it happen.

The Birthday

Last night I finally got a chance to complete my first contest module, which was The Birthday by Maerduin. I expected these modules to be of higher quality than those submitted for Bioware's Writing Contest, but given the constraints, I still had relatively modest expectations. But if Maerduin's module is any indication, I'm going to have a blast playing through them this month. My comments:

My vote: 8 – Excellent, recommended to anyone
Character: Neutral good female human druid.

An excellent debut module! This is an absolutely delightful little adventure. There's a way in which I didn't expect a lot from these contest modules, but this one really showed how brilliant a module can be if a lot of creativity is exercised when developing it. The plot is excellent, with a host of fairy tale references and themes sprinkled throughout, even as one or two turn out to be the ultimate inspiration. There are actually multiple endings, which is remarkable in a module of this size (and one created on this short of a time frame). The pacing is excellent, with a satisfying amount of gameplay that never feels rushed. Most impressively, by the end, you actually feel like you accomplished something, even though only 1.5 hours have passed.

Writing is genuinely excellent, with great humor scattered throughout the dialog, and especially in the item descriptions. There are some excellent roleplaying opportunities, as well as the opportunity to earn extra xp via skill checks. Even the combat is satisfying; it's reasonably well varied, and very well balanced (for my druid), with a challenging, memorable final battle. And I also want to particularly commend the exterior area designs. The town's rolling hills are spectacular, and the forest area is among the most dramatic NWN2 area I've seen yet, thanks in large part to its wonderful trees.

Just a few minor comments. First, I encountered one bug related to a cutscene, but it was solved with a reload. Also, I'd recommend exporting the character at the end of the module so that those of us who like to keep their characters can use them later on. Finally, in the future, I'd highly recommend using a hakpak rather than forcing us to put things in our override folder. Less likely to cause problems for users in the future, as I have a tendency to forget when I put things in my override. Plus, it's simpler for novice players--just put the *.hak in your override and be done with it. :)

Tragedy in Tragidor and A Bet, A Corpse enter Hall of Fame

I'm a bit late on reporting this, but A Tragedy in Tragidor by Phoenixus, and A Bet, A Corpse by Christian Mayr were inducted into the Hall of Fame this month. Congrats to both authors!

Here is an excerpt from my comments on Tragidor (my vote: 9 - outstanding, a must have):

Tragedy in Tragidor sets a high, early bar for what modules can be in NWN2. It's immersive, fun, and has a good, tight story that generally is told well from start to finish. I think this is a great example of what authors can do when they try to stay within themselves. It doesn't try to be too big, but it still has enough to it to make for a very satisfying experience.

And here is an excerpt from my comments on A Bet, A Corpse (my vote: 8 - excellent, recommended to anyone):

I personally have played well over 100 modules for NWN1, several of which fell into the "bizarre psychological abstraction" genre. But this one probably takes the cake for absurdity. Wonderfully creative ideas throughout. On the surface it's completely random, and yet there is a coherent story here, with pieces that actually do fit together as an intriguing metaphor for the player character's shattered mind. There's good humor here as well, but it's set against the backdrop of something terrible that has happened, which gave the module a very uneasy feeling even as I grinned my way through it.

If you haven't checked these two modules out, there's no time like the present... Also, Christian Mayr has released a module for the NWN2 Grimm's Fairy Tales Contest: Being Good. I'll have comments on it soon (promise! -- been a really busy week with the semester ending, but I expect to have more module playing time in the coming week).

Finished Dark Waters

I did end up finishing Dark Waters last night. Lots of pros, but some cons as well. The setting is fantastic, the custom content is overall very nice (nice resource for the community!), and the scripting of his various puzzles and mini-games was really well done. On the other hand, while the story is also excellent, its execution, particularly in the latter part of the module, wasn't very good. It seemed rather rushed, and was pretty confusing. There are also still some lingering bugs, but the show-stoppers seem to have been resolved.

Anyway, I've requested the review of Dark Waters with the NWVault Review Guild. Hopefully Adam Miller will agree. It might not be a gushing review, but I think it'll be very fair.

Update: Adam Miller wants to wait on the review until he fixes a few more bugs. Fair enough, though to be honest, I don't think that'll change the results much--I wasn't going to penalize it much at all due to bugs, as they didn't affect gameplay much. But who knows, maybe his subsequent version will make some other parts of the module work better. So I'm going to hold off on my comments for now. Hopefully he will eventually submit it for review.

Looking forward to playing Maerduin's The Birthday tonight...

Contest Watch

Update: Rather than keep this stickied all month, I've opted instead to move this list into the sidebar.

Here is the final list of NWN2 Contest Modules. Congrats to all of these authors for meeting the tight deadline!!

• Being Good by Christian Mayr (ryam_baco)
  
• Birthday, The by Zach Holbrook aka Maerduin
• Crossroads of Fate by Novalis
  
• Cry Wolf by Lorft
• Dark Twins' The Wizard and His Creation, The by E.C. Patterson (aka ciViLiZed)
• Ebha by B.B.
  
• Grimm Brigade by Jason S. Roy
• Grimm's Patchworld by Patcha
  
• Happily Never After by Allyndn_The_Beggar
  
• Once Upon a Time... by Mungo_D
• Prince of Light, or Shadow by Saorsa
• Queen of Lies, The by Adoniram
• Rampion Champion, The by Death Quaker
• Sathmar - Invasion Chapter 1 by Lord Mephisto
  
• Walk in the Woods, A by Wyrin
• Witch in the Wood: A Grimm's Fairy Tale by Lord Niah

Interview about Mask of the Betrayer

Somehow I never got around to reading this, but last week Gamebanshee published this interview with Kevin Saunders, who is the lead designer on the Mask of the Betrayer expansion for NWN2. One item really caught my eye:

GB: Are there any plans to introduce any new prestige classes or sub-races? How about epic levels?

Kevin: Absolutely! We are adding new prestige classes (and a base class) and new sub-races. We’ll be sharing more information on those soon, but we think you’ll be excited about our choices. ;) One of the prestige classes is completely new and was designed through consultation with our colleagues at Wizards of the Coast. As far as the leveling goes, NX1 will feature epic levels through level 30.

Added emphasis on those last two words. This is really exciting. Unless this is a typo (and I doubt it is), this upcoming expansion will only have epic levels up to level 30. NWN1 went to level 40. My interpretation? This is the first real indication we've had that Obsidian is indeed planning two expansions! The first to go to level 30, and a second one to go lv.30 to lv.40.

Yippie! More expansions = more content = more time with ongoing support for the community!

Another cool tidbit was the mention that the monsters that they're going to add in the expansion include the Night Hag and (a favorite of mine) the Treant (here's the Treant made by DLA for NWN1).

Added to this news is a feeling that I've been getting around the modding community that we're going to start finally seeing a lot more frequent significant module releases in the coming month or two. That, combined with Ossian apparently getting somewhat close to announcing whatever it is that they've been working on, and with the contest starting next week, things are really looking encouraging in nwn2 land right now.

Also, one last thing. Obsidian is doing a better job of updating their blog with readable and relevant information. I've added it to my blogroll in my sidebar, as well as the blogs of several new builders I just became aware of.

I'm up and running!

NWN2 is finally up and running. I had some trouble getting it to re-install. Kept running into read errors or something as the dvd drive was trying to switch between different files during during the installation. I don't know if the problem was the dvd (it looks clean and undamaged) or my dvd drive. But I managed to rip a dvd image, mount it onto a virtual drive, and install from there. I have to have the actual DVD in the real drive to run the game (thanks SecuRom), but at least it finally worked. I'll deal with any additional hardware issues later, 'cause I wanna play a game for once.

Which means I was able to spend some time playing Dark Waters. It's a really interesting module. About as light in the combat department as you can get, and the puzzles have (mostly) been a lot of fun. I still am really enjoying the voice acting, and I got reasonably far into the module tonight. The two main companions are extremely well done, and tonight I finished a sequence involving conversations with an odd chap--the voice acting really brought it to life. Overall, I'm very impressed. I think what I've learned from this is a) voice acting can actually be done well by the community, and be a great strength of a module, and b) that one should focus on the good talent and just leave the other lines silent.

So far, so good.

The replacement hard drive arrived today, and this evening I've managed to install windows xp, update to service pack 2, flash my bios (which I had never done), install various motherboard drivers, install ati's drivers, and finally install mcafee, and firefox. And in just a few minutes, I should have completed copying all files from my temporary 40gb drive to my "new" (well, refurbished, but whatever) drive.

Feels good. I love using computers with fresh installs of windows on them. A month from now, it'll start getting gummed up with crap again, but right now everything feels fresh. Looking forward to installing NWN2 tomorrow night, at which point I'm going to download Dark Waters and play through it. And after that, I'm going to play Keep at the Borderlands. And after that, the contest entries. ;)

I'm excited to get back to playing games again...been well over a week since I've had any gaming fun. :(

Contest deadline is approaching!

The deadline for the first Obsidian NWN1 Module Contest is now less than a week away! While no one has uploaded a module yet, there are a number of entries that are apparently close to being uploaded to the vault. Here are a few of the ones I know about:

Lord Niah and Mungo_D, both experienced builders from NWN1, and members of the Forgotten Realms Weave, have contest modules that are currently in the beta testing phase.

Maerduin reported on Sunday that his entry, The Birthday, is close to completion.

And while I don't know them, there are a number of builders on the forums who sound likely to release a module: Wyrin_D'njargo, jackyo123, ryan_baco, Lorft, and ciViLiZed have all recently indicated that they're either on track, or are desperately trying to stay on track, for an on-time submission. I'm sure there are more as well--lots of builders aren't terribly active in the forums, especially when they're busy building. :)

It will be exciting to see what shows up this week! Given that no changes may be made to modules after the deadline, it would probably be a good idea to get entries uploaded ahead of time whenever that's possible so they can get some initial playtesting comments from players. Of course, given the tight deadline, that's not always going to be easy...

Keep on the Borderlands released!

I wanted to send a huge congratulations to Enoa4, creator of the Hythum series (among others) for NWN1, who just released his NWN2 module, Keep on the Borderlands. If you've been following Enoa4's blog, you'll know that this module has been a major battle to get out, both in terms of the time required to build it and the various setbacks he encountered due to the still-buggy toolset. So huge kudos for hanging with it and getting it out.

I'm planning to play it as soon as I finish Dark Waters...and get my computer back together, of course.

Hard drive update

Tonight I was able to install windows on an old 40 gb hard drive that I had laying around (it used to be in my tivo box before I hacked it and put in a 60 gb instead), start the computer, and copy off all important files. So that's a relief.

I then downloaded Western Digital's diagnostic program and had it run the quick scan on my drive...and the drive promptly failed. Fortunately, Western Digital seems to have an outstanding RMA system. I didn't even have to call them or jump through any hoops. I just filled out the RMA request form with a brief justification and (if I'm understand this right) they're going to send a new drive out to me--holding my credit card for collateral of course. My only obligation will be to send back my defective drive within 30 days...I might have to pay for shipping, but maybe not, I'm unclear on that.

I'm hopeful that the new drive will be here by next week, which would mean that I'd have time to get back up and running before the contest modules start pouring in at the end of the month.
It's still kind of a shame though. I had just started playing Dark Waters and was really enjoying it. I can see why there have been complaints about the lengthy cutscenes at the start, but I actually enjoyed them--and most surprisingly of all, with one painful exception (which I think is Adam Miller's mom), I found the voice acting to be pretty darn good--especially that of the two major companions, Heather and Daniel. I agree with Maerduin that bad voice acting can kill a module, but so far, so good. The story also is really interesting and potentially really deep.

But, I have saved my saved games (and, in fact, everything /mydocuments/neverwinternights2), so everything should be there when I return. In the meantime, I'll probably occupy myself with my other hobbies, as I don't want to clutter up my new windows install with graphics drivers and such--I want it to be crisp and clean so that it'll be ready to go the next time I have a problem like this.

Update: The replacement has already shipped. Truly impressive service. It's UPS ground, so it should arrive mid-late next week (the tracking number isn't visible yet).

Hard drive...

As I type this on my laptop, I'm running chkdsk on my desktop's hard drive. This evening I couldn't get it to boot, and it's been acting strangely the past few days, and giving errors that now (in hindsight) seem like they could be the result of my hard drive dying.

So far, the drive seems to be scanning ok (got here by booting with my windows cd and getting to the command line), and if nothing is picked up I think there's a slight chance that removing my sound card might help matters. But if not, I'll probably need a new hard drive.

I hate it when my computer goes down. Hopefully the drive isn't actually damaged, or at least not so much that I won't be able to get any information off of it. If everything is unrecoverable, I don't think there's too much critical info on here, though I'd probably lose my work on the frwcc since the last release. I think i could recreate that in a few days of effort, but it'd still be a shame as it's looking pretty snazzy right now. The biggest loss, though, would be some baseball research I've put together over the past few months, mostly in the form of excel files. It's all reconstructable, but I'd spent a lot of time on it to get it where it is.

::sigh:: We'll see. I hate this feeling.

Quick hits...

There's been a variety of news items over the past few days:

• The NWN1 Module of the Year 2006 contest is over! Congrats to the winners:

1. A Dance with Rogues by Valine
2. Darkness over Daggerford by Ossian Studios Inc.
3. Exile of the West (Bastard of Kosigan episode 1) by Fabien Cerutti with help from Ginni Swanton
4. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr by DLA & Bioware

• Tiberius209 has a blog! Tiberius is the author of the excellent Saleron's Gambit series for NWN1, and is currently a designer for Ossian Studios. And now, he's joined the elite ranks of Neverwinter Nights bloggers. Looking forward to seeing more from him, even if it's about medieval literature. :)

• The first NWN2 Expansion Screenshots have been released. Looks like we've definitely got a nice snow texture as well as snowy trees to play with. :) Also looks like an Astral bear(?) and some wyverns. The wyverns were present in some of the first NWN2 screenshots for the OC, but apparently were cut and saved for the expansion. Nice to have them back though, as they're a cool monster. I'm hoping we'll see a stream of additional screenshots as the release comes through. Certainly you'd expect to see a beholder one of these days...
  

Update: Whoops, been meaning to mention:

• Enoa4 is very close to the release of his module, Keep on the Borderlands! In fact, he has a pre-release version available to interested parties.
  

NWN2 EXP: Mask of the Betrayer

Well, today came the biggest news we've had about NWN2 since it's release: there will be an expansion, due Fall 2007, of NWN2. An excerpt from the press release:

Set in harsh, spirit-rich Rashemen, near the powerful nation of Thay, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer will present players with an exciting new campaign; epic levels; dozens of new feats and spells; new races, base classes and prestige classes; new companions; new weapons, armor and crafting options; hordes of new monsters; and enhanced modding tools.

Lots in there to be excited about. As expected, epic levels will appear in this expansion, which might make a second expansion pack less likely. Still, it will be nice to have that flexibility, and I'm sure that feature alone will sell a lot of boxes. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with in terms of new spells, feats, races, classes, etc. NWN2 included pretty much everything that had been done in NWN1 save for the epic stuff. Including a host of new monsters is also very welcome news, and is something that is desperately needed by modders.com

The campaign setting also looks interesting. We've pretty much been stuck along the sword coast and its northern and southern borders since the initial release of Baldur's Gate, and this moves into a rich and uncharted territory. The Red Wizards of Thay are a sister bunch, and Thay's proximity to Rashemen makes it likely that we'll see them make an appearance.

As for the story itself...well, here's the hook:

In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, players are transported back to the Forgotten Realms shortly after the events detailed in the original Neverwinter Nights 2. Following the climactic battle against the King of Shadows, the player awakens alone and stranded deep beneath the earth. Surrounded by a horde of evil spirits, the player embarks on an epic adventure that reveals his true destiny.

I'm sure it makes good business sense to allow players to use their characters from the OC (even though they are not exported!!) and continue that story, though I personally had hoped for a novel story. When I character gets as absurdly powerful as ours did (my character is a lv. 20 Aasimar Cleric), it's hard to tell a convincing story--especially one set somewhere in terrestrial Faerun. I imagine we'll see a lot of planar travel or something to allow there to be believable combat opponents.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with this announcement. I'm a bit surprised that there isn't a website with some graphics and such to go along with the announcement, though I'm sure we'll see that in time. Congrats on Obsidian and Atari for being in a position that they can make this announcement--nothing will bring players back to the community like the release of an expansion.

Dark Waters to be released tomorrow!

While we haven't yet seen any entries to the module writing contest (no surprise--I'm sure most will turn up on the last day or two of the month, as they will take a while to put together), another big boost to the community comes tomorrow with the release of the first module in Adam Millers' Dark Waters series.

Miller has been working on this series since completing Demon two years ago. Here's an excerpt from Miller's website describing the intriguing setting:

I'm trying to combine swashbuckling and high adventure with a more somber exploration of the human mind. The story is also set against the backdrop of a myriad of island nations, only now recovering from a devastating war that changed the face of the world. It is into this world that three friends grow into adulthood and learn about joy, loss, and secrets that have long lain hidden.

On top of the cool setting, the module promises to be well written and contain a TON of custom content. Custom score, full speech, custom models, psionics, flintlock pistols, etc. It should be very interesting. I plan to start playing it this weekend, so you can probably expect to see my comments on it sometime next week.

Patch 1.05 released

Patch 1.05 was released today. It took a bit longer than I expected to go through beta, but it still represents a nice trend of ongoing support from Obsidian. Yay.

You can read my comments on Patch 1.05's feature list here.

A Shot in the Arm - Obsidian NWN2 Mod-Making Contest

Tonight, Obsidian announced that the long-awaited NWN2 Mod-Making contest is on! From the news announcement on the Vault:

For this first contest, the theme will be "Grimm's Fairy Tales." The final day to submit modules will be Monday, April 30th at noon Pacific Time.

You can remake one of Grimm's Fairy Tales or do anything else as long as your mod has something to do with the theme.

I'm really excited about this. We've talked about how the builder community hasn't been very productive thus far, and this contest could be just what we needed. It offers a chance to get a lot of good modules pushed out in just one month's time...and even if some of the entries aren't very good, it might help a lot of people get their feet wet with the toolset, who might then go on to do great things in our little community.

The immediate comparison one might make for this event is the Bioware Writing Contest of February/March 2006. In that module, conditions were extremely cramped: one 4x4 area, a maximum of three NPC's, no combat at all, and a cap on word count. Most modules took about 5 minutes to play through, though some of the clever ones, including the eventual winner, Myranni's Magic by Mat Jobe, might have taken 15 min. The result was 300+ modules being submitted. Unfortunately, due to the severe constraints, many of them weren't terribly fun or engaging. Still, in my role as one of the nominated community judges, I played through around 90 of them, and saw a lot of really good ideas out there (as an aside, Mat Jobe's module was luckily in my initial batch of modules to review as a judge, so I felt some level of pride to see it win it all...not that it wouldn't have won had it gone to anyone else's batch!).

This new contest has much more open-ended rules, though the expected product must be larger in scope: between 30 minutes and two hours long, two to five areas (one must be an exterior), and must follow (on some level) the Grimm's Fairy Tales theme. It also doesn't carry with it the opportunity to gain potential employment in the gaming industry like the Bioware writing contest did. Therefore, I think the result is going to be that there will be far fewer modules that are submitted, but the ones we get are almost certainly going to be more enjoyable than those of the writing contest.

I can't wait to see the entries start to pour in. I briefly (like...for about 3 seconds) toyed with the idea of trying to come up with a submission of my own, but with the start of the baseball season and everything going on at work, I have too many distractions. :) Instead, I'm going to try to play and give comments on as many as I can, as I think this could be a cool feature for the blog. Stay tuned to this space...

Update: Maerduin is apparently planning to put in a contest submission. Great news!

Update2: It looks like a lot of folks in the NWN2 Mods forum around going to give it a whirl.

Hall of Fame Inductees - April 2006

Yesterday, the second round of inductions into the NWN2 Vault Hall of Fame were announced.

This round's inductees included the first Hall of Fame story-based module: Pool of Radiance Remastered - Chapter 1 by Markus "Wayne" Schlegel. You can read my comments on this module here, but this is an excerpt of my opinion on it:

The town feels cramped and overcrowded, the people have real personalities and are desperately just trying to scrape by in this new outpost, and the strained, self-serving interactions between the adventurers and the town officials do a great job of conveying the unique circumstances of the setting.

It's an excellent module, certainly among the top two or three available on the Vault today. Congratulations to Wayne on making it into the Hall!

Also making it into the NWN2 Hall of Fame this month is clubok's Less Obtrusive Spell Buffs. This is an absolutely essential tweak to the user interface that I highlighted here. Congrats to clubok--and many thanks for making this game much more playable for magic users.

Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to Heresiologist, whose NWN1 module, UK2 - The Sentinel was FINALLY inducted into the Hall of Fame. It's long, long overdue--her module has been overlooked for quite some time. Here is an excerpt from my comments on this module, dated 23 June 2005:

The best thing about this module is the detail that was put into it in terms of creating an atmosphere. This is a PnP conversation (I have not played or read the original pnp module), and it shows with the elegant maps included with the documentation, and some of the surrounding backstory in the module. The author has put all of this detail, and certainly some of her own ideas, into this mod. There are some downright beautiful descriptions (though occasionally these are a bit verbose) of the areas in which you travel, much of which is done through pop-up texts. Lighting is also handled well in most areas—I was particularly struck by a forest scene during sunrise, where gorgeous yellow light streams though the leaves. Stunning.

I also want to acknowledge jfoxtail, who ramped up a small campaign to get that module the last few votes it needed to be eligible for the Hall.

Kudos, congrats, and thanks to all of April's inductees of both games.

Music Taste

Maerduin's post about his favorite Modding Music reminded me of a post I saw some time ago on another blog (don't remember where) that asked folks to provide a slice of their music taste by putting their MP3 player on shuffle and reporting what songs came up. So I've done that. Here are the first 40 tracks:

1. Jealous of the Moon by Nickel Creek
2. Your Song by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge Soundtrack)
3. Drain You by Nirvana
4. Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight by Amos Lee
5. Turn You Inside-Out by R.E.M.
6. Out in the Woods by Poor Alfred
7. What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
8. Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles
9. Tush by ZZ Top
10. Crazy by Barenaked Ladies
11. Free Fallin' by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
12. Heart of Gold by Neil Young
13. You Are the Everything by R.E.M.
14. Don't Come Around Here No More by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
15. Kentucky Moon by The Kinks
16. Someone Else's Song by Wilco
17. Strange Currencies by R.E.M.
18. Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues by The Kinks
19. Desire by U2
20. Hey Joe by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
21. I'm Always in Love by Wilco
22. You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon
23. Have you ever seen the rain (cover-live) by R.E.M.
24. The Late Greats by Wilco
25. Star Me Kitten by R.E.M.
26. Talula by Tori Amos
27. The Past and Pending by The Shins
28. Handshake Drugs by Wilco
    
29. What's the Matter Here by 10,000 Maniacs
30. Alabama Song by The Doors
31. Where Did You Sleep Last Night by Nirvana
32. Yesterday by The Beatles
33. Leave My Wife Alone by John Lee Hooker
34. Cool #9 by Joe Satriani
35. Speak To Me/Breathe by Pink Floyd
36. Sedan Delivery by Neil Young
37. Rebel Yell by Billy Idol
38. Beloved Wife by Natalie Mechant
39. Cuckoo's Nest by Nickel Creek
40. Fall On Me by R.E.M.

I'm not proud of everything up there, but I do admit that I like all these songs. :)

As you can see, I'm not particularly eclectic in my tastes, though there are a few bands on that list that you might not know.

Distribution and representation is interesting. I admittedly do have several R.E.M. and Wilco albums on there, but it's not so biased as this would indicate. While he made appearances, my large collection of Neil Young albums is fairly underrepresented. :) I'm also a bit lacking much in the way of new content--I basically just listen to what I did in high school and my early years of college. ;) Suggestions that complement my interests are welcome--and I'd love to see others around the nwn blogosphere do a similar exercise!

Dark Waters getting close to release

After all the doom and gloom from our discussion post a few days ago (btw--thanks to everyone who posted, it was exciting to have so many intelligent comments!) , it's nice to see some positive news. From Adam Miller's blog:

As March comes to a close, it feels like the module is increasingly getting close to release. I wasn't able to do a full walkthrough yesterday, but I did a lot of spot checking. ... At this point, I want to get a final build out to the testers. ... I'd also love to do another full walkthrough this weekend, though with my family coming back, I might be hard pressed to pull it off. If I can make it all the way through without any significant bugs, well, I'll break out the champagne when that actually happens.

Very exciting stuff! From the sound of things, a release before mid-April is a very real possibility. It should be worth checking out. Adam Miller is perhaps best known for his custom content and scripted mini-games, but he also is a good writer, with a great knack for creating well-paced, compelling adventure series with intriguing companions.

New Module of the Year voting totals

Maximus has created a page where you can view the new 2006 Neverwinter Nights Module of the Year voting results. This new round is more secure because in order to participate you had to have a Vault account prior to the start of voting, and you can only vote once. There still are some oddities in terms of how votes for particular modules are clustered, but my guess is that most of that is due to chance (i.e. lots of clustered voting for Dance with Rogues and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, but when you receive lots of votes, they will probably cluster together now and then).

The results--and I have to say that this is a relief to me--are very consistent with those from the first round. Here are the front runners as of right now:

1. A Dance with Rogues (139 votes) -- it seems to be the legitimate winner. Bravo to Valine.
2. Darkness over Daggerford (67 votes) -- I voted for this one because of its unparalleled impact on the community. Hype aside, it's a very deserving module in its own right.
3. Exile of the West (46 votes) -- Fabien Cerutti's module, which seemed to be among the modules supported by voter fraud, is genuinely popular. According to QSW, it is fantastic.
4. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr (45 votes) -- The last and best premium module, and the most significant product released by the high profile DLA modding group.
5. The Fall of Aielund, Pt. 2 (32 votes) -- While I wasn't as impressed with this particular chapter, Savant's Aielund series is one of the great accomplishments in NWN1.
6. The Rose of Eternity II - Cry of the Beloved (31 votes) -- Vote inflation or not, Challseus's hugely successful module trails only SubBassman's Tortured Hearts II in the top module rankings.
   
7. Almraiven (25 votes) -- A highly original and innovative module. While Hugie's Tale of a Mage series features the best action for a spellcaster, this module features the best spellcaster roleplaying I've seen since Bone Kenning.
8. Prophet - Chapter I - By the Will of Kings and Mortals (22 votes) -- By all accounts a brilliant roleplaying module.

It will be interesting to see how things shake down in the time that remains for voting. Congrats and kudos to all authors who have modules involved in the competition. We all really appreciate your efforts!!

State of NWN2

Alazander has a great post over on his blog about the current state of productivity of the Neverwinter Nights 2 modding scene. He notes that productivity is down--substantially--compared to where it was for NWN1 at this point in time. The list of high-quality modules that were out 5 months post-release of nwn1 is a bit staggering compared to what we have now.

I can think of three explanations for why this might be:

• The toolset is harder to use. Honestly, I think these claims are far overstated, as my experiences with the toolset have been largely positive. It does take longer to do some things--especially rough out basic areas--but other things, like writing conversations and scripting (especially when swapping between windows like I like to do) goes much faster in my experience. But there's no question that a module involving a lot of area construction will probably take longer to make in NWN2 than NWN1.
• Several prominent and productive builders from nwn1 have been gobbled up by groups like Ossian Studios, Rogue Dao Studios, and DLA. Some of these individuals might have released modules for NWN2 by now had they not had other distractions.
  
• Finally, and by my estimation, probably the most important factor, is that builders have a choice of platforms now whereas they had little or no choice when nwn1 was released. NWN1 is still a great game to design modules for, even as the player base is shrinking. There are a bunch of builders for nwn1 who have yet to switch over, either because they are in the middle of projects, or because nwn2 won't do some things that nwn1 can do already. Or, because they're comfortable with nwn1 and don't feel like changing.

I still have every bit of confidence that nwn2 will continue to grow and flourish as a community. But I am a bit, well, disappointed is too strong of a word, but I will say surprised, at the sparse number of modules that have been released thus far. At two months, it was understandable not to see much out there. But at 5 months, we certainly could have seen some progress by now. Still, when you look at Hugie's thread on all that is currently in the works, it's very hard to be pessimistic for long. There's a lot of great stuff to look forward to. :)

---

In the meantime, I'm sort of on a break from NWN2. I didn't mean for it to happen, and I doubt that it will last long. But baseball season has begun, and as usual, I'm feeling a great draw towards my Cincinnati Reds (following and writing about them is my other hobby). I've also been playing a bit of Galactic Civilizations II, as well as the recently released Out of the Park Baseball 2007. But I'll still be around and keeping tabs on things--and I intend to keep updating this blog whenever I have something to say. :)

Update: Maerduin, who is one of the new breed of nwn2 builders, posted his take on this issue on his blog. An excerpt:

What are we builders supposed to do? Keep building, and, at those times when building has gotten the better of us, talking to each other and making our conversations visible. Keeping discussion about the game alive is vital, which is part of the reason I think blogging about mods is a good thing (the other reason is that it is psychologically motivating for builders).

New art from Rogue Dao

I just wanted to highlight this amazing digital painting by Vaei of Rogue Dao Studios that appeared on the Vault yesterday. It depicts The Hive, which consistutes the slums of Sigil, the City of Doors. Absolutely spectacular work.
The news feature for this item also mentions a new release date for Purgatorio, June 2007. This is not surprising given the apparent size and scope of their module, though I admit I had hoped it might come sooner--simply because it looks like it will be so much fun to play. :) All in good time though.

The MoY voting controversy

First, let me gasp for air for a second here. I finally got a draft of a major manuscript done and sent around to my coauthors today at work, which means I'm hopefully going to be able to least regain part of my evenings for hobbies. I do hope to get back to playing modules, though I also need to get my FRWCC update out sometime as well. I'm at one of those points where I'm behind in EVERYTHING I want to be doing or should be doing in my life. You'd think I'd be current on one thing, eh?

Anyway, the big news of the past week, of course, is that vote rigging was affecting the original voting for module of the year. It seems likely that this was mostly associated with Fabien Cerutti's Exile of the West--which is by all accounts a very fine module, but somehow was posting the second highest vote totals of the year. I'm also a bit suspicious of A Dance With Rogues (I posted about this a few weeks back on the forums)--again, not because it's not deserving, but because I didn't think the fanbase of that module would be so large to outpace more well-known modules like Daggerford or Wyvern's Crown.

Maximus has restarted the voting, and it sounds like it's being done properly this time--each person has one vote. As I mentioned earlier, I'm voting for Daggerford. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how things turn out in this new, more honest round of voting. Maybe A Dance With Rogues will carry the day once again! :)

Another day, another bug

Well, I didn't get much done tonight.

I spent about two hours working on the character creator tonight. It wasn't terribly productive, though at least I learned something.

I spent a little bit of time polishing off the scripts for the altar (thanks Hugie!), did a couple other touch-up things, and then decided to put together the library. It came together fairly quickly thanks to Cleitanious's Prefabs. After setting up a nice little reading area and placing some of Maerduin's books, I then went in game to test it out.

It's a simple thing to add an inventory to an item, right? First, you make the item non-static and useable. You make sure the "Has Inventory" flag is on, and then open up the inventory and drop in your items. But for some reason, no matter what I did, while the objects would "light up" in-game, my character wouldn't move to them and I could not access their inventory.

After fiddling for a while in the toolset (with many tests in-game) to no avail, I did some searching on the forums. Thankfully, in my second search, I found this thread, which contained a very helpful post by ddaedelus. Apparently, as I was assembling the library, I converted everything to an environmental object (which I find to be a good practice), and then converted back items I wanted to have inventories. It turns out that when you do this, the HP of the item is set to zero, which messes up any onopen scripts (and inventories) associated with the object. Adding 1 HP to the item fixed the problem, and now I have a fully-functional library.

One other oddity... file size for my module dropped from ~11 mb to ~5 mb when I upgraded to 1.04. I have no idea why that might be, but I've tested the whole thing and can't find any errors or signs of corruption. Go figure.

Still to do for the next release: add an NPC from Pool of Radiance to the bar, set up the area transition between the bar and the basement, do a final bit of decorating in the basement (maybe add blacksmith and alchemy stations?), and *maybe* add some sitable chairs in the bar and basement (assuming I can figure out these scripts). My guess is two-three nights of work before it's ready.

Subtlety of Thay, part 1, enters beta

Dirtywick, the builder behind the upcoming Forgotten Realms Weave module, the Subtlety of Thay, has begun a private beta for the first half of his module. He will be releasing both halves at the same time, so the Vault release is still a long way off, but I wanted to send a little bit of buzz his way. Here's an excerpt from his page on the FRW Wiki:

The Subtlety of Thay is a campaign set in Aglarond, eventually leading into Thay and the lands of the Red Wizards. It is planned to come in three parts. The first part is in progress, and is planned to take a player from 3rd level to 7th - 9th level. It's going to be dialogue heavy, featuring dialogue only quests for charisma/skill classes, and light hack and slash combat that falls more on the tactical side than anything else. Nearly every encounter is scripted and tailored to the enemy/surroundings.

I had the opportunity to check out his beta for a few hours last night, and I was very impressed. Dirtywick has a good knack for narrative, and what I've seen of the story thus far is engaging and interesting. I took a few screenies, but I'm not going to post those without his permission. The Red Wizards of Thay are one of the more infamous groups in the Forgotten Realms, yet they seemed overlooked as a nemesis in NWN1 modules. I'm excited to see a module coming out that involves them.

You can get the latest information on Dirtywick's activities at any time by visiting his development blog.

Neverwinter Nights Patch 1.05 beta released

Obsidian has released their beta patch of version 1.05. Assuming that means they get out the actual release on April 1 (two weeks), this is their patch schedule thus far:

• Nov 1 - NWN2 in stores, patch 1.01 released.
• Nov 9 - 1.02 patch (more of a hotfix than a real patch)
  
• Dec 4 - 1.03 patch (very significant performance improvements)
  
• Jan 30 - 1.04 patch (mostly user interface issues)
  
• Feb 8 - 1.04 hotfix
  
• April 1 - 1.05 patch (see below)

It looks like Obsidian is on an every-other-month patch schedule at this point, and has been since the monumental 1.03. I'm extremely pleased with their support thus far. There continue to be outstanding issues, particularly in terms of toolset stability, but I'm nonetheless extremely happy with their commitment to keep working and improving the game. As long as they keep up support, NWN2 should continue to be an outstanding platform for our modding community.

I'm probably going to continue to judge all patches on 1.03, because that patch brought both significant performance increases (I got better framerates with full shadows after the patch than I did without shadows before the patch) as well as key user interface improvements (e.g. dual-wielding hotkeys). This one looks to be a bit more modest in terms of changes that will impact me, but there are a few things that catch my eye in the patch notes:

• Many substantial improvements to the AI scripts provided by community member evenflw have been integrated into the game. Additionally, revisions were made to AI to make both friendly and enemy characters be much more intelligent with feat use in combat.

I'll be interested to see how this manifests itself. One of my remaining issues that I encounter regularly has been how NPC's use their abilities in combat. For example, if I leave a low-level bard character alone for a second during combat without queued actions, s/he will immediately start casting countersong whenever you enter combat--even if you're not facing enemy spellcasters. This uses up a precious bard song, and, if you're not using clubok's Bard Songs That Don't Stop Inspirations, it can negate a potentially more important inspiration. I'd like to at least have the ability to make the bard AI stop using songs altogether (turning off "use abilities" and setting spellcasting to "do not cast spells" doesn't help), but even better, I'd like them to more intelligently use their songs. Other problems like this still exist with the companion AI, and I'm hopeful that this patch will help fix those issues.

• There is now an “Advanced Options” button on the Server Options panel. Server Administrators can specify two URLs in this menu: One, intended to point to their server’s homepage, if it has one, and one intended to directly point to the server’s latest PWC file. Players will be able to see these links from the Server Details on the Internet Game browser and clicking them will launch the user’s Browser and direct them to the URL specified.

PWC files are the walkmesh data files that players are required to download in order to play on persistent worlds in nwn2 (this is necessitated by the huge size of the outdoor heightmaps, which make nwn2 so beautiful). This is the first (and long overdue) effort to help improve the process by which players are informed of the need for a PWC file and are aided in downloading it. Ideally this will someday be a bit more of an automated process, but this is a big step in the right direction. ... of course, all this doesn't matter much to me as someone who only plays single player, but the online PW community is an important part of NWN2's long term viability, and this is a key feature that they needed.

• The Grass, Creature Appearance Type, and Creature Soundset lists are now sorted alphabetically.

This is a small thing, but looking through the soundset lists in the toolset has thus far been an extremely arduous process. I'm hopeful that browsing through sounds will continue to get some attention--particularly because a fair number of the available sounds seem to be missing or something (i.e. they don't play when I try to preview them in the toolset).

• Walkmesh Helpers have been added to Placeables/Misc Props. These objects are invisible square objects that can be resized and placed on a map to bake a walkmesh. You can use them to make flat objects walkable that normally are not or would be difficult to bake. Some examples of situations where these would be useful are a long length of repeating bridge pieces or building roofs. To view the Walkmesh Helpers in the Toolset, turn on the display of C2 Collision volumes. There are two versions; each will play a different footstep sound. Special thanks to Zarathustra217 for the original concept and objects.

This one's interesting, because it basically is just incorporating a (hall of fame) hakpack by a community member into the official release of the toolset. :) Go community! It should also prove very useful for builders not already using that hak.

All in all, I don't see many huge changes coming (the AI adjustments being a possible exception, depending on how big the changes turn out to be), but it should be a useful patch. As with 1.04, though, I'll probably hold of on patching until I have to in order to pay a module (for 1.04, it was Stormchaser).

I will just close by pointing out that there remain two major issues that really need to be fixed in 1.06:

• Improve toolset stability. There are still a fair number of users that are encountering corruption to their modules...sometimes in a way that ultimately dooms their work (here's an example). At the very least, some sort of automated backup system would be useful as a temporary workaround as stability problems are repaired (e.g. maintain 5 backups in a subdirectory, creating a new one each time the toolset is opened).
  
• Fix the seams issue in outdoor walkmeshes. This really became a major problem in 1.04, and has yet to be repaired AFAIK (though I haven't seen many complaints about this lately, while folks like Hugie are building tons of exterior areas).
  

Ossian Studios activities...

I've been reading a lot about Ossian Studios' activities lately. Well, that's not really true. I've been reading that a lot of people are involved in Ossian Studios activities lately. I have absolutely no idea what they're up to.

Here's what I do know:

• Alazander, a Hall of Fame author in NWN1 and author of the cancelled premium module AL3: Tyrants of the Moonsea, is a "Lead Designer" for Ossian.
• Hugie, a Hall of Fame author, is a "Writer" for Ossian.
• Challseus, another Hall of Fame author, is a "Technical/Cinematic Designer" for Ossian.
• Tiberius_209, yet another Hall of Fame author, is also apparently involved with them.
  

And presumably, given their somewhat conspicuous absence, these folks are working with others from the original Ossian team that produced Daggerford, which included folks like Luspr, codepoetz, MadWombat, Lady Oonagh, and Lord Alex (all Hall of Fame authors).

There are a variety of things that they could be working on. On the surface, a premium module of some sort for nwn2 seems the most likely. I suppose it's also possible that they are somehow involved in the expansion...though to be honest, I'm hoping it's the former, as that would mean more content for us in the near future--but obviously I'll be happy with whatever we end up getting. :)

Edit: On a related note, I decided to vote for Darkness over Daggerford as Module of the Year. While it wasn't perfect, it was revolutionary in terms of the exploratory gameplay it offered. Furthermore, its release was such an enormous event for the community. Download totals were staggering, as were the number of comments spilling over into the NWN Modules forums. It even seemed to increase the number of downloads on OTHER modules. No other module created that sort of buzz or excitement in our community last year. So for all those reasons, I think Daggerford should be recognized as the most important module of 2006.

Finally back to work on FRWCC

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but I finally squeezed in a few hours of work on the character creator tonight. My primary focus was to write and script the alignment-shifting altar. I have to say, I'm amazed at how easily it came together. I have almost no clue what I'm doing in that scripting editor, but I somehow managed to get it working tonight. My jaw literally dropped when everything seemed to be working as planned...on the first try, no less!

Right now, the sequence is:
1. Activate conversation on the altar by clicking on it.
2. If you don't have 10% of your total worth (gold + item value) in gold, you're forced to walk away.
3. If you do have 10% of your net worth in gold, you can pray to gods of any of the four alignment directions (good, evil, law, chaos) and give the 10% of your total worth in exchange for a 10-point alignment shift in that direction.

Everything seems to be basically complete except that I'd like to add some sort of visual effect when the alignment shift happens, and I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I think it'll just be a small addition to the script, but I'll have to do some snooping to figure out how to attach a single-fire visual effect (I'm thinking "fx_bard_ins_song_cast") to a character. I did that sort of thing once before when I was working on a nwn1 module, but I think I was using Gestalt's cutscene scripts at the time and therefore had prepackaged visual effect invocation scripts. Shouldn't be too difficult a thing to do though.

Big news may be coming.

As pointed out by Lariam on the NWN2 Modules forums, two intriguing and possibly-connected pieces of news were released by Obsidian over the last few days.

First was an interview of Obsidian guru Chris Avellone by Neverwinter Nights Chronicles. Here's the question by the NNC community, along with Chris's response:

NNC: You'll be asked this much times before but will the next expansion be set
in the Neverwinter lands and the North? Or maybe we'll travel again trhough
the planes? You'll be in charge for the future expansions, isn't it? (I
hope it so and I'd truly love a gothic story as Planescape)

C.Avellone: Can't comment on this at this time, unfortunately, but you should be hearing an announcement soon. ;)

We've definitely heard news that they're working on content before, but this would seem to be the fairly clear statement that news of an expansion is forthcoming.

Further stoking the fire is this post by Rob McGinnis on the Obsidian General Forums:

So, we have been receiving some e-mails about wanting a contest. We have talked about it a bit here and think it could be a lot of fun.

Basically, it will be a module building contest.

More information will be coming soon, as we get closer to April. Basically, you will have a limited amount of time to build something... that something will have a theme... and Obsidian (probably) will decide the winner.

Prizes will, of course, be given.

Stay tuned for more details.

The reason that this latter news is so interesting is that there was a contest leading up to the release of the second expansion for NWN1, Hordes of the Underdark. In that contest, community members were challenged to build modules that "bridged the gap" between SoU, which ended around character level 12, and HotU, which began at level 15. Lariam's idea is that, perhaps, this upcoming contest will be associated with the upcoming expansion for nwn2. :)

Of course, these two pieces of info could be completely unrelated. It is hard to see how a community module project could play a "bridge"-like role with the upcoming expansion, as the official campaign ends at level 20, while the expansion's campaign seems likely to start right at level 20 and allow epic-level adventures. Perhaps the best that could be done would be to flesh out an NPC's backstory or the story of some event related to the completion of the official campaign.

Nevertheless, even if it has nothing to do with the expansion, this contest is good news. It might serve to help builders focus for a short time on getting some good quality, short modules out into the community. A lot of builders are working on projects right now, but many involve very large projects that will take upwards of a year to complete. There have absolutely been some notable releases, but a surge of short, high quality modules that might be produced under an Obsidian-sponsored contest could be a great thing for our hungry little community. And it would serve as fantastic feedback for builders who are working on larger nwn2 projects. We'll be watching this one. :)

Stormchaser

Here are my comments on FalloutBoy's Stormchaser, which was a delightful module to play over a couple of evenings.

My Vote: 8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone
Character: Female human bard/fighter, started lv. 1 and ended lv. 3.

I think this is one of of the top three modules available on the vault right now. I found it to have a very polished feel (in spite of a few bugs), with good scripting, a focused story, amazing visuals, and challenging combat. It is basically a linear module, though there are a few minor (but fun!) sidequests to help keep things interesting. This, along with good story execution, helped avoid any feeling of being railroaded. Cutscenes were very well done, and the visuals -- particularly the coastal and island villages--were spectacular. There is also a surprise "dungeon"-like area later in the module that showed off novel use of height maps, and, of course, the first implementation of controllable ships that I've seen in nwn2. Roleplaying is reasonably well-implemented, particularly in the latter two thirds of the module, with good use of skill checks (with consequences!) and a few cosmetic choices that offer good roleplay opportunities.

My critiques are minor. I think that a few more dialog options would have been nice --especially new threads allowing you to talk to NPC's as you learn things from other NPC's. I'll provide a few of those suggestions in comments to the author. Also, given that this is the first chapter in a series, I was surprised to see that the player character is not exported automatically, nor is the player given a chance to do this near the module end. This could create problems when players go to play the next module in the series. There is also a place where monster respawning occurs at a fairly high rate. I wasn't crazy about this, but I understand the author's reasoning behind this design decision.

Overall, a really excellent module and one that is well worth playing. It's great to see high-quality content like this coming out after the initial surge of Tragidor & Pool of Radiance in January. Congrats on a great module, and good luck in your future efforts! -B

Hugie is on vacation--hold on tight

Apologies for the lack of updates lately, but things have been a bit busy in real life.

Tonight I noticed this post by Hugie on his blo...er...blarg:

First of all, I'm excited because I'm ON VACATION!!1!11!!!1! (for two weeks).

Hugie was among the most prolific builders over the last few years for NWN1, so the fact that he has two weeks to dedicate to NWN2 is wonderful news--especially if he can put it toward a module to be released to the public, as opposed to some sketchy "secret project" of some sort. :P

What makes this particularly interesting is that news came a few days ago that his first NWN2 module, The Star Mounts, has been expanded in design to be more epic and dramatic in scope. It now sports a new name, Moonshadows, and looks like it will be a heck of an adventure. An excerpt from his module description:

So, to sum things up, Moonshadows is an epic-length story-driven adventure set in the Forgotten Realms for low-mid level characters, with emphasis placed on story and great attention devoted to atmosphere, varied sidequests, and well-balanced, realistic combat. The player will visit a tremendously wide array of locales, from gloomy forests and towering mountains to ancient crypts and forgotten ruins. The player will engage in time travel and planar travel as they are caught up in a plot involving the Gods and artifacts of great power, all in a storyline rooted deeply in Forgotten Realms canon--I did my research. ;) Is it ambitious? Uh, is the sky blue? Jokes aside, I think I've come up with a story worth telling, and I intend on making this a reality. I had six modules for NWN1, but I anticipate only having one for NWN2...and Moonshadows will be that one.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses. The claim that Hugie will only build one module for NWN2 is something that I'm a bit skeptical about, but even if it is true, I expect this will be a good thing. His work in NWN1 gave him a lot of experience in both module design as well as fantasy writing, and this should prepare him well to create an epic adventure for NWN2. I'm somewhat hopeful that he'll be able to release it in episodes, which would allow us to play along as he builds to some degree (and give Hugie encouragement to keep going), but obviously some stories aren't suited for that. Definitely one to watch.

2006 NWN1 Mod of the Year Voting - Day 1

As of right now, here are the voting leaders for 2006 Neverwinter Nights Mod of the Year:

1. A Dance with Rogues, Part One and Two by Valine - 46 votes
2. Darkness Over Daggerford by Ossian Studios - 29 votes
3. Rose of Eternity, Chapter 2 by Challseus - 20 votes
4. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr by Bioware/DLA - 16 votes
T-5. Almraiven by Fester Pot - 11 votes
T-5. The Fall of Aielund, Pt. 2 by Savant and BlackDiamond - 11 votes

I'm somewhat surprised to see A Dance with Rogues at the top of the list, but I'm not shocked; those modules have had a near-fanatic following in the forums. ...It does happen to be the first on the list of votable modules, which could potentially translate into more thoughtless votes than other modules. Past contests, however, have been pretty reliable in choosing outstanding modules (2005=Hex Coda, 2004=Demon, 2003=Dreamcatcher, 2002=Lone Wolf) so it's probably not that important of a factor.

I've played four of the above modules. I commented on #2, 4, and 5 in a prior post. But while I'd overlooked it earlier, it turns out that I also played Fall of Aielund, Pt. 2 last June. Here's an excerpt from my comments (I voted 8.5 on the nwn1 voting scale, such that it is...I probably would have voted a 6 or 7 on the nwn2 scale):

As is evidenced by my vote, I felt it was something of a mixed bag. There were some great moments, most notably some thrilling large-scale (for nwn) battles that are nicely scattered throughout the module. ... The story overall is also quite good and was very interesting, and this looks to remain the case going into the third part of act 4. ... But I also felt that in some ways this module fell short of the prior mods in the series. It was completely linear...Some areas just felt like filler to prolong the module and keep you from getting right to the end. ... Even most of the dialogs are linear, with dialog options being rare...

I'm still uncertain how I'll vote. I think that a module of the year should be a module that truly breaks new ground and sets a new standard for module making. So, based on those criteria, I think it's going to be between the two giants of the past year: Daggerford & Wyvern Crown. Daggerford contained some of the best exploration and feel I've seen since Baldur's Gate 1, whereas Wyvern Crown had a better story, overall, and a number of novel features that players have been after for years--most notably the horses and the jousting.

I will say one other thing...and this is not to denigrate the offerings in the current contest...but none of these modules were quite as good, at least in my opinion, as Hex Coda 01 or Tales of Arterra: The Awakening--the two top finishers of the 2005 MoY contest. 2005 really was an amazing year for NWN1 modding.

I have a few weeks before the voting closes, so I'm going to continue to think on it. :)