I guess this is the builder thread??? Toolset is a rather broad reaching term though.... Regardless... here we go!
We are a long established (13+ years now) world, that has gone through numerous generations of hosts and “ownersâ€, who have a very unique environment for building, as well as being a part of the community in any capacity (e.g. player, scripter, ect…)
We have a very unique, and challenging environment for quality builders to get involved with. It’s unlike anything out there, so it’s not for anyone.
We are still evolving, but slow these days, and yet still spark the interest of a core player base.
Just wondering if any builders out there might be interested in trying their hand at offering our players with a new, and unique area to run?
There is quite a bit to discuss but I can reveal some small details here such as:
1) Aventia was the first world in NWN PWs to offer a post 40 system, and it has continued to evolve to this day (and it’s completely different from legendary levels.) We technically have a level cap, but even today with some players having reached levels over 1400, no one has hit the cap so we still consider ourselves “Unlimited levels.†As such, you can imagine the challenge of building an area for players within that vast scope of playability, especially at the upper end.
2) Aventia was built by players. Over 200 people have contributed to it’s development over the years. As you might imagine this can get a bit messy at times, but it’s also a beautiful collaborative effort across generations of players, builders, scripters, DMs, aDMins, and owners.
3) Ownership of the world was recently turned over to the community. By that I mean builders (and scripters for that matter) used to have to just rely on a skeleton of the world (many “propriety†systems withheld) and use to guidelines and their knowledge of the world alone to contribute content, which proved difficult at times. Builders (and scripters) now have access to our full module for the purpose of testing locally potential submissions, or even using our content elsewhere.
4) Aventia, in its time has have over 4,000 unique player accounts, and in the 4+ years I have been hosting it has had over 1000. Of course many were simply window shoppers, however a couple hundred of which went on to be occasional, to semi-regular, to regular players for varying times. Our core base of regular players is small, but there continue to be dozens of semi-regular players and occasional drop-ins. It’s not glamourous, but it is still an active and evolving community.
I have a ton or resources personally if you are interested in working (with permission from original authors of which I have for the content I have) that could be used, or completely new areas could be built. I personally have been one of the few builders to contribute new areas in the past 4 years since I became the “hostâ€, and have drawn (modified substantially to adapt and update to our world) much from these resources (for which I am very grateful to the original authors and their permission.)
We have over 1300 maps already, and a module nearing 30k resources (not including CEP 2.3), but still have room to grow for truly quality content. The base development environment is 1.69 with CEP 2.3, although we may update to the current CEP version is we can work it out without breaking anything.
If anyone is interested in exploring this possibility feel free to get in touch. Keep in mind, I am quite busy with real life, and this is a side project I don’t have a ton of time for currently, and as such my communications will likely be less than immediate. It sometimes takes me a couple weeks, or even a month to get new content into the world since it’s a fairly time consuming task, but I am still here to help facilitate that if folks are interested and can be understanding of that.
I am sure we will continue to evolve regardless, but I just thought I would throw it out there for any interested builders. As a builder myself (and other than a player that is what I am more than anything [e.g. I am not a scripter]) I can attest (with some success, and some not so much success) to the fact that it is quite a unique and challenging endeavor creating an area for our players given our world dynamic that is one our players want to frequent. But I can say this, when an area is good, it becomes immortal in Aventia. There are areas over 10 years old that are still frequented today.
Lazarus Magni
