Because I’ve always wanted to
Filed under Design Diary on January 2, 2008
Keywords: Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance
I heard on the radio this morning while driving in to work that you should make any “resolutions” publicly known, at least to your circle of accountability (spouse, parents, close friends, etc.). I leaked mine over at ashlock.org, and will talk about my progress on them here at Pens & Swords.
Of the five goals I’ve set, one is health-related, three are professional goals, and the fifth is just for fun. By that, I mean there is no direct benefit other than the personal satisfaction of having accomplished something I’ve always wanted to do. I think it’s important to have those kinds of goals.
I like to design. Depending on the medium or subject matter, my desire to design may not get much further than conceptualizing. Part of my attraction to roleplaying games and writing is the opportunity to design. Neverwinter Nights presented such an opportunity for me, and the end product would be a video game. How cool was that? It certainly beat the old days of sitting down with my dad at the Commodore 64 and typing lines of machine language opcodes from a computer magazine to produce 8-bit games.
I never got around to building a full-fledged adventure module for Neverwinter Nights. Oh, I had such plans: to recreate the old Pool of Radiance game, to translate the world of my novels into a game. Someone else did PoR first, and I realized it might not be the best idea to publicly release my stories in game form, for free, before I tried to get them published as books. And then there was the time factor. I had to learn a new tool, and figure out how to best implement the ideas in my head.
Excuses, excuses.
I’m done with excuses. Yeah, it’s been almost six years since NWN1 was released. Yeah, there’s a sequel out. I don’t care. The NWN1 community is still active (Bioware even has a new patch in beta) and there are a plethora of tools that make module building even easier. I installed the game, all the expansions and patches, and the community content I wanted on Monday. I couldn’t resist rolling a character and starting the original campaign. I exited on my first death and opened the toolset. By the end of the day, I had laid out the exterior area for New Phlan.
Then I started building the opening cutscene, but I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
Related Posts
- NWN QA
- Quest for Bioware update
- Lunch with a Young Dragon
- Full steam ahead
- Urban rennovations in New Phlan
