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.

NWN2 Updates / DMFI Breaks :: Little New

I logged onto the Vault and once again it seems like another patch rolled out and that affected the community content once again breaking the DMFI.

While Obsidian did a great job of offering the ability to edit things and create content, the larger goal of having it be user-friendly was certainly missed. I guess it isn’t surprising to see that it happened with the patch and my bet is that it will keep breaking as long as OEI actually continues to support the game. It is a shame in many regards that something a bit more elegant couldn’t have been designed. Realistically, I fully admit that “that solution” might not exist, but the labor of upkeep with patching for builders and content creators in that game were killers.

I haven’t been on the NWN2 boards or even the DMFI guild for quite some time. I’m hopeful that someone will pick it up, but I get a less optimistic with each passing month.

Huge Patch :: Shores of Evendim!

A huge patch titled Shores of Evendim was unleashed yesterday into Middle Earth. It is the first free expansion for LOTRO. With more changes than I could even read through, it looks like a great update to an already outstanding game. Here is a link to the official patch notes which will take you a while to sort through.

Official Patch Notes

I can’t say much more than what the official notes hold, but it certainly looks like a very good game took another large step forward. It will be interesting over the next few days to see if they accidentally took steps backwards. If not then they are really doing a standout job with this game.

Note: The patch is big. It took me a good 1 hour to install on a pretty high end machine with a good cable modem. Good news is that in contrast to the NWN2 updates that seemed to always break something and always not work; these remain smooth as silk.

And a quick note from my post yesterday where I pointed out I made a “Fastest growing” list; it must be real because for the first time since opening this site I’ve gotten spam Thankfully, it is automatically filtered so another plus for WordPress.

Dark Waters and Rising Tides

One of the projects that I have followed for NWN2 was Adam Miller’s next home-grown module: Dark Waters. I haven’t had the opportunity to play it, but this is more of a commentary on the NWN community and how, at least in my opinion, the time has run its course for single person development teams and in some ways part of what drove me away.

I don’t know Adam on a personal basis, but I’ve worked with him on the boards and through the beta and watched the website and seen his prior work so I think I have a decent feel. He is mature and professional and has sunk an absolute huge volume of time into the development of the module. I have no doubt that what he has put into the module is far beyond what most would even consider doing unless they were working towards a career in software, gaming development.

I got my first taste of just how high expectations were in the beta. During the beta, Adam released his Pirate Card game. It had custom graphics, custom UIs, voice overs and a game that was far MORE complex than the mini-games in the KOTR series. Granted, maybe the game wasn’t bug-free and maybe it didn’t have the polish of a professional team, but the scope and effort was simply amazing. I was shocked to open up this module in the beta and thought it was simply jaw-dropping that he could do so much in so little time. That said, comments on the beta board, while they were good and encouraging fell waaay short of my internal enthusiasm.

I think that is the point of this post. Expectations have risen to the point that I’m not sure it is that fun to try to meet them. I look at the reviews and comments on Dark Waters and think “wow” (in a sad way). Not that everyone doesn’t have the right to voice their opinion, but 4’s. Stephan Gagne released some early modules for NWN1 that basically were a few functional shops in a town setting. That effort received 10’s from the community.

Again, I haven’t played his module, but the point is that there used to be a clear 2 tier rating system. One for professional content and one for community content. Community content was expected to be faaaar less professional and it was given huge credit for expanding the current standard. Now expanding the standard is expected and it had better get it accomplished at a professional quality. This is really, in many ways, a credit to the NWN1 community and to what we were able to accomplish but in many ways, I think it has crippled new adopters into the NWN2 community. So we are left with a small group of developers from NWN1 and specialized groups developing projects that are far beyond what a single person can do.

Anyway, I see the work and I think the rewards are less this time around.

How does this relate to the DMFI and my experience, “The DMFI has great marks, you might say”? Yes it does but the numbers of downloads and the overall size of the DM community is but a fraction of the NWN1 community at this time. Secondly, OEI realistically did a poor job delivering a playable DM client and so the DMFI looks good next to the official product that has several basic UIs that are broken or non-functional. Even still, the bar is high and the documentation standards and my personal standards were high enough that I needed a group to continue development and without that support I decided to walk away.

I guess I wish we could all back up in time and lower expectations and just be happy with what we are given. There’s the thought of the day for May 1.

Here’s a link to Adam’s development webpage / blog:

Dark Water’s Link