Will there ever be another NWN?

[Legacy_ScreamingPalm]

               No, I don't mean a sequel. Besides there is the mess of D&D licensing and WotC etc.

But will there ever be another game like NWN? One that has the great, endless, and epic possibilities? Or has the evolution of the videogame industry (including economics and perhaps dev/publisher greed) made that impossible (DLC, etc)?

Will the stars ever align again to bring such greatness once more to videogames? Unfortunately, I don't think so. It will probably be unique and a once-in-a-lifetime occurance.

I mean, after all these years of playing on wonderful PW's, I am only just now discovering and finally trying out some of these outstanding community- made modules. The enjoyment I get from this game "Neverends"!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ScreamingPalm, 16 juillet 2010 - 10:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               Instead of new game, which can never be like NWN1, I would like to see new expansion pack with new campaing which were always the best. It dont have to even bring anything new...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_olivier leroux]

               I've played top quality community modules for nearly three years now, probably over a hundred, and I've still not seen the half of them. I've checked out a few PWs as well and played on them for hours and hours but there's not one I already know in and out and there are also still lots I haven't even given a try yet. I tried multiplayer campaigns with a set group of players only two times so far but loved it. Never tried to DM myself yet. And I'm only just starting to get the hang of building and scripting.

The community is still active, even in 2010 awesome campaigns like Baldecaran's Prophet series are still continued and breathtaking custom content like this is being produced.

It's doubtful there will be another game with so many diverse options and a price-performance-ratio similar to NWN anytime soon or ever. But as long as NWN is still alive and kicking I personally don't see the need for another game that is just like it. And the best "expansion packs" and "new campaigns" I've seen were made by community members.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               I agree with the OP; there seem to be too many factors that make it unlikely, at least from a big name developer. I don't know the industry at all, but it's pretty obvious what drives the vast majority of "creative" decisions in games (and film, and music) these days.

But if what the community wants is another expansion pack-style campaign... why don't we make one? A "community premium module" wouldn't even take long to produce if some of us put our heads together.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Elhanan]

               I can see it happening again, though under an independent intellectual property; not D&D. I simply hope it is a setting as rich; perhaps one like DAO.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ScreamingPalm]

               I guess this thread is just me wondering out loud; just like Oliver said, there's enough community- made modules to keep me happy for years and years to come. I'm just surprised that Bioware hasn't made a "spiritual successor" of NWN, free of the D&D license, etc but my guess is that it's because of the state of the industry that prevents it from happening.



I can't complain though, I have plenty of NWN to last me for a long time to come.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               

ScreamingPalm wrote...

But will there ever be another game like NWN? One that has the great, endless, and epic possibilities? Or has the evolution of the videogame industry (including economics and perhaps dev/publisher greed) made that impossible (DLC, etc)?

I have a few thoughts about that. The first has to do with what strikes me as a possibly mistaken premise in the question: that the "great, endless, and epic possibilities" (I assume that means: for modding) that made NWN distinctive aren't present in or haven't been considered in some of the newer games like NWN2 and Dragon Age. Whether there's any truth to that partly depends on what you're looking for, but for many of us I really don't think it's true. NWN2 and particularly DA are and/or have the potential to be developed into extraordinary modding environments.

Here are the points on which I think NWN has a clear advantage:

• Multiplayer. NWN2's multiplayer was plagued with issues and difficulties from the beginning, and DA is a strictly Single Player game. If you're talking about multiplayer, NWN is arguably the environment of choice.
• Ease of Building. Because NWN is older and simpler, it's faster and easier to build in. This dramatically lowered the "barriers to entry" to game-building and modding, which in turn encouraged the creation of a lot of content for it.
• Ease of Area Building. This is a crucial subpoint of the above that deserves its own emphasis. NWN's tileset-based area building takes only a fraction of the time that the individual "area painting" used in NWN2 and Dragon Age does. The latter still allows making higher quality areas, but some of the more recent and brilliant work by NWN tileset modders has done a lot to narrow that gap.
• Enabling Solo Authors. This lowering of barriers to entry led to the perhaps unique phenomenon of solo authors being able to build fantastic and elaborate adventures in NWN. The effect on this of giving a single individual the tools needed to create CC or a full adventure can't be overstated. I can say flatly that if I had had to collaborate with others on my first modding project for NWN, it would never have happened and I would never have become a NWN modder. I didn't know anyone and needed to be drawn into NWN modding as an individual before I could become a member of the community. I suspect this was true for many other builders as well.
• A Large and Established Base of Custom Content. That probably doesn't need much elaboration.

However, if you're an SP modder who's willing to organize and work in a team to create a high-quality product, then NWN2 or Dragon Age are good environments to work in. The features available in DA are especially strong if you're focused on building a story-based and dramatic experience due to the improvements in the conversation, staging, cutscene, plotting, and other related systems. The main difficulty to overcome seems to me to be the need for modders to learn to cooperate and coordinate in teams to handle more ambitious projects with more powerful and sophisticated building tools, and Bioware has built that functionality right into the social site to encourage and facilitate it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 16 juillet 2010 - 02:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_SuperFly_2000]

               Counter Strike (CS) is still one of the most played multiplayer shooters...



They actually DID make a new one called Counter Strike Source...



..but for some reason there are still many playing the old CS...



I guess there are even older games than NWN around :-)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               

B_Harrison wrote...

But if what the community wants is another expansion pack-style campaign... why don't we make one? A "community premium module" wouldn't even take long to produce if some of us put our heads together.

Well, if anyone wants to collaborate on such a project for NWN, I'm currently recruting for a team to finish the Sanctum of the Archmage series. My current development plans are posted here, and involve another three full-size modules for NWN followed by two for Dragon Age. The plot and story are already outlined, and the design document for Chapter 3 that's currently under development is about 65 pages. So far I have several team members, the most active of whom is Estelindis, who has been building some absolutely fantastic custom content for it. '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 16 juillet 2010 - 02:37 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               I would love to see a new Dungeons and Dragons game completely based of off the NWN BioWare Engine come out by EA. It would be a great seller if it had many of the same features but was JUST for PW/Module building and stripped most of the stuff out of the Standard Palettes.



They could sell little Script Packs or what not piecemeal for people/Admins to buy. Like Pre Made gear up to this level or a system for this or that. In the end it satisfies the greed of the dev/publishers, it makes it even more customizable for us who want variety like Forgotten Realms vs Kara-Tur and it keeps this world going.



Imagine all the possibilities they could do.



You buy one Main Disk Set for about 20 bucks. Has all the script sets and such like that a person willing to host/admin for a world can turn on or off. Hen if you want to say adventure in the Forgotten Realms, you and the admin buys a premade disc of JUST Forgotten Realm themed stuff. You could have one for Greyhawk, one for Kara-Tur complete with classes and spells. Even the World of Krynn.  A true deity system could even be included for each world. Or for those who do home campaigns there could be a blank fill in the names system JUST for them. Sell those for say 5 bucks to download or buy the disc.



I think it would even help spark a small step up of NWN in a way if they made the disc able to be used with NWN.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               I would like to see Paizo's Pathfinder done in NWN fashion.  I think that would be exactly what everyone is waiting for.  Expand on that, make the Engine truly open source (released to the Community), and make it easy to Mod.



Could it be done?  I am sure that it could be.  Will it?



Time will tell.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_pkpeachykeen]

               There was a brief discussion tossed around on IRC the other night as to the technical side of a community-built sequel to NWN/NWN2. In about a half hour, we pretty much sorted out all the engine details and put together a solid list of resources that would be needed. With some of the existing code to load NWN and NWN2 resources and connect on the Aurora protocol, as well as open render engines like OGRE, it's just a matter of connecting all the dots we have. And finding people to connect them. There were a few folks interested, besides myself and dunniteowl, so with more suggestions and an organized team, something could very well come of that concept.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Snowbug]

               That sounds wonderful.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tyndrel]

               It would be good if such a game included a built in download
manager for the very many hak averse players out there and some “one click”
method of visiting a world related web-site or forum to gather information.

 I don’t profess any great technical knowledge but it would
seem preferable for it to accept resources in popular and affordable formats so
that programs such as Gimp, Gmax, and Sketchup (just examples) could be used
instead of 3ds, Photoshop or other professionally priced software.

 I seriously doubt that any commercial game manufacturer will
ever place this much power in the hands of its paying customers again. I
applaud Bioware for having done so but as games companies become larger they
will increasingly be run by accountants rather than gamers and will therefore
tend towards the spin-off market rather than games for gamers.  It may well be that we are in the golden age
of computer gaming and that NwN will be remembered as one of its shining pinnacles
while the majority of what is now a huge industry spirals down into a simplest
and cheapest method of separating kids from their pocket money.

Ouch,
that got a bit cynical. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tyndrel, 16 juillet 2010 - 09:01 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_pkpeachykeen]

               

Snowbug wrote...

That sounds wonderful.

The trick is making it happen.[smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/wink.png[/smilie]

Tyndrel wrote...

It would be good if such a game included a built in download
manager for the very many hak averse players out there and some “one click”
method of visiting a world related web-site or forum to gather information.

That's the sort of things that comes after, well, starting actually making the engine.  So, there's still a whole lot of time to plan a module downloader. Actually, there's a chance of making a downloader with the current system. It'd be external, but might be possible. If I have any free time, I'll take a look at the Vault's HTML structure and assess the odds. '>

There is a forum on the Citadel for all this, I'll edit with a link as soon as I find that.

I don’t profess any great technical knowledge but it would
seem preferable for it to accept resources in popular and affordable formats so
that programs such as Gimp, Gmax, and Sketchup (just examples) could be used
instead of 3ds, Photoshop or other professionally priced software.

Well, the current thoughts are focused on supporting existing resources as well as a new way to add things. So, tools to export to the new format would be possible for Gmax, Gimp, etc.
As for Sketchup, well, probably not. Sketchup models are an absolute nightmare to import into anything else, at least anything that respects poly normals. Sketchup is closer to CAD than modelling, and there's some things that it's quite crippled in (it is very easy to use, but just from a tech standpoint, it's kind of a pain to work with).