So, I very actually got into NWN the first time around, but NWN 2 looked good so I decided to buy it, as I am purchasing it the attendant mentions the two version of a strategy guide, one for the game itself, which i dont' really think I need, but the other one which will be harder to come back in the future is the world-builder guide, which I then decide to purchase after talking to my wife about making our own adventurers.
As I read the opening pages of it, I already start to get ideas, mostly putting the Adventure Path into a the NWN 2 toolset, so I decided to come on here and see if someone has already started to do something like this.
I also got to thinking about doing a few small adventurers first to get the feel before trying to get into the daunting task of programming an AP.
Dude, if you do it right, I'm gonna buy NWN2.
To do it right would be a big project, but I think AoW could be great on NWN 2, especially in multiplayer with 4 real players and a DM.
I just bought the game, and haven't looked at the toolset much. Is there enough flexibility to create the many specialized monsters in the AP (the various Kyuss creatures, etc.)?
Even if it does, imagine taking the time necessary to script all of the dialog necessary to do the game justice. <shudder>
Sean Mahoney
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It looks like there's alot more flexibility in the new toolset to create variants of the monsters that are already in the game. You can change the scale of the monsters, the hues, the stats, etc. The problem as I see it is that there's not enough base monsters yet to really do AoW justice. NWN shipped with LOTS of monsters, but looking through the NWN2 toolset, it seems that that area of the development may have been short-changed. For instance, there's only two dragons in the toolset, an ancient Black that looks like pieces of him are ready to fall off, and a huge Red. Now you can change the hue from Red to Blue, but he still won't look right (no nose horn, etc). And I have no idea if you can switch up the breath weapon.
That kind of project probably will be feasible if NWN2 gets anything like the community support that NWN got. That's the really cool thing about the game - it's only going to get better the longer the community has to mod it!
That said, if you manage to build it, I'll be the first to download that baby!
NWN2 is pretty sweet, and uses 3.5 rules now.
There's a much smaller number of default monsters in the toolset, and there is a pretty big hurdle to adding more from the community, in that the game engine requires a program called Granny to animate models, and a Granny licence is really expensive, so it's prohibitively expensive for people to make custom creatures.
So you sure could make a non-moving statue of a rust monster, or some other creature that is not in the game currently, or you could make a custom skin for a creature that is already in the game and has animation files made by the developers (red lizardfolk, blue lizardfolk, we can have all kinds of lizardfolk) but making a creature from scratch isn't reasonably possible yet until a tool is made to allow animations from a cheaper program to be imported to NWN2. Even custom animations are not possible yet for humanoid characters. People on the messageboards are upset that there isn't a "sit on the floor" animation yet, since one didn't ship with the game, and it wouldd take a Granny licence to make one.
With that out of the way, there is still tons that can be done with what is available right now. Non-animated things like buildings, scenery, and custom weapons are totally possible. The scripting is deep enough that all sorts of nasty critters like Kyuss Zombies could be programmed, which infect with worms when they attack or any wonderful/horrible thing you can think of. At this point, they would just have to look similar to the NWN2 zombies, maybe with a gross green gas/sludge cloud effect around them. Custom special effects can be created, with a bit of knowledge of particle systems. Now that I think of it, having your zombies drip writhing worms likely would be possible at this point. It's just a bit out of reach to have custom giant worms and Dragotha yet.
Right now I'm trying to make a version of The Styes and I'm getting stymied by the fact that placeables like buildings can't be tilted. I found and downloaded a plugin that can tilt objects, but it only appears tilted in the toolset, not in the actual game. My sagging lighthouse and buildings look great in the toolset, but stand up straight in the actual game engine. That's something that may or may not be changed soon.
In any case, the community at large is great for this game already. I'm looking forward to seeing what the creative people out there make!
I would be happy to help, if you decide to adapt one of the Dungeon AP's to NWN2. I can design levels, playtest (of course), create creatures and NPC's and do any of the non-heavy-scripting stuff. I can send you a sample of my original NWN work if you like. I wrote close to 25000 words for my old NWN campaign
so I can help with dialogue as well.
Please keep us posted (No Pun Intended) about your plans and count me in as a volunteer. I will of course be working on my own projects based perhaps on my old FR/NWN Campaign "Heroes of the Starspires" or something in the Silver Marches as I always wanted to with my old NWN group, but I would be happy to help out with someone's adaptation. I like AoW, and I could also see STAP adapt nicely to NWN, but I am unfamiliar with SCAP.
Tot Ziens
After loading up NWN 2, I have found I will need a new video card, which is incoming however my wife has decided it is my christmas present so it will not be available until after the christmas season, the good news is I will probably have read the world builder book forwards and backwards by then and be ready to test some stuff out on it.
As for helpers, with a task as big as an AP to NWN, yeah I will probably need them at some point, but first I want to get comfortable with the toolset with another dungeon adventure or two!
I feel your pain. I had to overclock my proc. to play NWN2 without major "lag", and in spite of my graphics card being a 256 megger, it is a righteous piece o' you know what. Freakin' 6200. Bah! I wish I had not been in such a hurry to upgrade.
Anyways, no hurry, mate. I want to run through the SP campaign and refamiliarize myself with the toolset before I do any groundbreaking on a new project too, so sometime in 2007 sounds ducky. Just let me know when and if you want help. I was a NWN guildmaster in my day and I hope to find as passionate a community of creative people as I found with the original NWN. I really enjoy collaborating on stuff like this and NWN provides a good way to do it.
I seem to recall that there were some licensing issues in NWN with making any modules based on Paizo materials. I am foggy on it, so take this with a grain of salt, but I seem to recall the agreement stating that Atari gets ownership of any materials created using the tool set and since Paizo doesn't want to give up those rights (no more Styes) they can't allow stuff to be distributed from it.
Anyway, do with that what you will, but I figured you should at least be aware there could be an issue.
Sean Mahoney
Hmm, I will have to see about that, the world editor book even suggests doing your old adventure or commecially released ones in the toolset...
Which is what really got me thinking about doing adventure paths in there, that is a shame if that is true...
I just don't see how Atari could claim say Red Hand of Doom if its done up in the toolset (not that its available to do). I don't think they can claim the original work, just the work done in the toolset and even then, that seems wacked out to me in the extreme.
If I recall, several persistent worlds were based on works by other authors such as Robert Jordan, Tolkien etc,
To my knowledge, WotC doesn't now own The Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. I think the key is: make the mod, don't release it on NWVault, put it up in a server to which you give the password to a few select folks, such as the nice people here on these boards, and never make the mod available for download. You are not distributing it, just making it available for play. Sort of the speakeasy mode of copyright infringement.
You are not seeking to profit from it, just providing enjoyment for fellow appreciators of the awesome adventure paths we've known and loved.
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While ZeroCharisma is right, I would still be cautious about possible copyright issues. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the topic. It should be just fine as long as you follow the guidelines ZC outlined, but if you wanted to make it widely available for download, I'd ask permission from paizo first. And if you're going to put THAT much work into something, I'd think you'd want to share it with as many ppl as possible.
Just my 2c.
As for NWN2, I am excited about it, but unfortunately my PC is probably not top of the line enough to handle it. I exceed the min. requirements but not by much, and I know what that means. What's more is my wife gets first dibs in line for a new computer, the Mac Laptop she does her graphics work on still runs OS9, so it will be some time before I get any love on a new system.
I'll just stick with NWN and all the cool premium modules and such I have for it. By the time I get a new pc, we'll probably be raving about NWN3... but best of luck to you on your project.
Well, depending on how new the mac is she is looking at for the next one you may be able to dual boot WinXP and run it anyway!
Sean Mahoney
Yasumoto, if you've done any scripting in NWN1, scripts in NWN2 are exactly the same.
If you had a script you liked using in NWN1, there's about a 99.9% chance it will work fine in NWN2.
As for possible copyright issues, it's a long time before I have anything ready for view by anyone other than me, but I'd be interested in knowing what the limitations are regarding using NWN to recreate an already published adventure.
I'd certainly want to give credit where it is due, and simply wouldn't publish it if it would potentially cause a problem. I'd hesitate to even share it with a few people I didn't know, since when any file hits the Internet, I've lost control of it.
As for possible copyright issues, it's a long time before I have anything ready for view by anyone other than me, but I'd be interested in knowing what the limitations are regarding using NWN to recreate an already published adventure.
I'd certainly want to give credit where it is due, and simply wouldn't publish it if it would potentially cause a problem. I'd hesitate to even share it with a few people I didn't know, since when any file hits the Internet, I've lost control of it.
Many of the most successful mods for NWN on the vault were based on published adventures. I think they are pretty relaxed about it. Off hand I can think of a few; "Sunless Citadel", "Tomb of Horrors", "Temple of Elemental Evil". As far as I know there was never any litigation or even a serious problem. Most of those mods are still available on NWvault.
I created almost exclusively original content, and while I didn't want to have it available for download for my own personal reasons, I was happy to run my campaign (1-20+) for several different groups. I occasionally sent copies of the mod we were playing to the person who was hosting the server for that night when I could not, but they never turned around and distributed it without my permission.
One of the things I liked best about the NWN community was that level of trust and maturity. I don't think you will encounter many problems. And since most modules aren't carbon copies of their PnP counterparts, a simple "inspired by Module X, by Author Z" goes a long way to giving credit where credit is due.
For sure, the NWN community is pretty mature, and the Paizo boards are fantastic. I'd just hate to put something up that is supposed to be for private use, and then having it go public. Maybe that's too paranoid.
I've looked at some of the famous conversions for NWN1, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the Sunless Citadel. I've seen that there have been several versions of both. I played through one version of the Sunless Citadel and it was really well done!
I don't know. Paizo staff have been pretty quiet on this topic, and it has come up in a few threads here in the last few months. Probably they have more important things to worry about, though.
I'll make a post on the Bioware boards asking about legal issues, and see if a good response comes up.
On one level, I totally agree with you, especially about hoping that someone from Paizo chimes in. I don't believe anyone would be able to do anything with a mod you hosted personally on your server, since the mod itself is not downloaded to client machines.
I think that since there are several Paizo employees, including high mucky mucks that actively post, we may be able to take their silence as tacit assent. I doubt they would be able to come right out and say "go ahead" because of the legal complexities, but who knows.
If you get a good response on the BioBoards, please post the URL of the thread. I would like to follow up on this and figure out a good answer. I am taking my time learning the NWN2 toolset, so I am in no rush to go exploring the possibilities, but I hope that we can clarify the legal ramifications.
Thanks for your excellent input.