Building in NWN1 vs. NWN2 Toolsets :: Fun vs. Not

Ok. Life has been busy leaving me little time to do much else, but as summer was ending and I was trying to do something to stimulate some thought for my child; I returned to NWN1. First things first, I haven’t opened NWN1 in years. I was trying to come up with something that might get my 8 yr old interested that would be better than simple Gamecube games or console games – the reality is that everything there is pretty much mindless.

So I thought – he’s read all the Harry Potter books (up through 6th one) and loves them. Maybe I can get him to work on basic modules for himself or for his friends so that he can create a little world. I certainly think it promotes creative thinking and I can introduce some basic concepts about programming etc. Better to see things early and within a good environment than never at all and if I can get him interested, he might learn something – at least more than red button, green button.

My first question was: NWN1 or NWN2. Again this review comes from the perspective of building a world – telling a story and being able to have an 8 yr old have a CHANCE. The decision didn’t take me that long. I choose NWN1 and opened up the toolset for the first time since probably 2004 or 2005. It certainly has been more than 2 years at this time.

Going back to NWN1 was simply put – a far better building experience than NWN2. No doubt.

Less powerful? Yes, but fun. NWN2 lost something magical as it transitioned to something newer and it is the fun factor. Sure NWN1 graphics are less visually appealing and the game camera now does look old, but from the builder’s perspective, Obsidian simply missed the boat. NWN2 traded tedious for fun. Opening up the NWN1 toolset and you are a storyteller. Your focus immediately shifts to broader – more important – aspects of the story. I’m not saying you CAN’T have that focus in NWN2, but the reality is that the details abound and make keeping that focus soooo much harder.

NWN1 is intuitive. I opened it up and really had no problems doing or creating anything. It made sense. Sure somethings were nested or I had to close down windows to get access to things but the thing worked. I haven’t patched up the NWN2 toolset beyond 1.05beta but the last time I did, music doesn’t play unless you copy files over. Making items and clothing and creatures without community haks was painful and getting to view them wasn’t straightforward. Many basic functions simply were not user-friendly. Certainly that is opinion and certainly there is a trade off for power vs. user-friendliness but BioWare hit that balance and Obsidian missed.

NWN1 struck an amazing balance of power and ease of use. NWN2 failed on the ease of use side of the software and I believe it is one reason the game was really only a SP OC campaign success.

Please don’t confuse the purpose of the post. I am not saying that if NWN2 had just added a few features to NWN1 it would have been better. Obsidian had a very difficult if not impossible task to follow such a truly great game. The graphics needed updating. But I believe they lost focus on creating a toolset for storytelling and turned it into a game development type software and that is/was a shame for the community. Granted they did that to focus on the SP game which is where the mainstream income lies so maybe that is reasonable, but from a users perspective, it shows just how special the NWN1 Toolset really was.

These aren’t rose-colored glasses – this is side by side testing and it isn’t close in my opinion for what I want to do.

Hijacking of Email – Maybe a better trip planner is hidden inside

For the last month or so, my email has been hijacked and someone who apparently comes from Russia appears to be sending out emails and is able to get any failed return email to come to my address. So someone sends out the email and sets the return address to my account. From that point, the returns don’t go to the sender but to my email account. Great!

Here is the basic story. A month ago, I started getting hundreds of returned emails back to my account. Obviously I wasn’t purposefully sending out the spam or Russian character based emails, but they would come back to my Comcast account. Ok…. ok… first things first, I will crank up the firewall and update all the virus protection and scan for other pests on the computer. I did that for everything on my network and still no luck. I changed passwords and did just about every common step that I think you can do.

I’ve called Comcast and alerted them of the issue and basically the answer is pretty poor. “Yea it happens and it should slowly fade away with time.” I’ve gone hunting on the internet and it seems that some providers are good about monitoring for this type of activity and others are poor or just don’t care. Comcast seems to be in the group that either doesn’t care or doesn’t want to install the equipment needed to stop this type of abuse.

But how do I know it isn’t a virus using my computer? I guess I can’t say 100%…. well I think I can actually. I can shut everything down and leave for a day and come back to find additional returns for the times when everything was off. So that and the fact that the Comcast “Abuse Specialist” said it was pretty common lead to my conclusion. Nothing I can do but wait for Comcast to fix the issue at their level or enjoy the numerous returns.

So today I found a great site that will locate an IP address. I’m certain it isn’t perfect, but it is fun to see where all these email apparently are coming from. (To get the originating IP, you need to view the Source code of the email – all email programs are slightly different, but it should be an option). After grabbing a random 5 returns out of my email junk folder, I’m thinking that I have a built in vacation planner. At least that might make something productive from this mess.

So here is my mapped out vacation taken from 5 consecutive random emails from the junk bin.

Germany

Trip begins in Germany. Looks like a nice enough place. I’ve never been to Germany, perhaps this concept will have some legs after all.

Lithuania

From Germany, we will travel to Lithuania. A town called Vilnius. Not someplace that I would pick, but it would be interesting and certainly different from the places I normally take the kids.

Rome

Ah yes. Rome. Never been there and it is on my list. Looks like I will have to bump this planner up above the others I have bookmarked. So far I’m impressed.

Russia

Russia isn’t a bad choice. I’m a little confused by the planner picking such a remote town. Moscow would have been higher on my list but maybe I’m missing out on something I don’t know about in Krasnoyarsk. I guess it can’t be that bad near Kazakhstan and Mongonlia. How many places get that as a positive?

Sydney

Finally we end up in Sydney Australia. Again, probably better than I could have imagined. Perhaps Google’s next generation search software has been stolen and some user has figured out some way to merge travel planning software for the next generation into a spam routing widget. Overall, I must say that I am overly impressed with this little hidden gem of a planner.

Maybe I should write Comcast a thank you notice because hidden in those thousands of returned emails that I have received in the last month, there’s a hidden travel planner that goes head to head with the best sites on the web.

So if the site goes silent again, I guess you have a handful of places to start looking.