New here, but an old module builder!

Hello, NWN friends, I'm Bort Son of Bort!

I'll try to keep this pithy, as I could write an epic, no doubt. Ten years ago I spent a little less than a year making a module for NWN 1 called, "Small Village Woes." It's on IGN's NWN Vault, and was apparently voted into Hall of Fame status, which I didn't know until recently. I was living in Seattle at the time that I created the module, and was very proud of it (though, it's not for everyone).

Link: Small Village Woes v.1.23

Ten years, several girlfriends, and many cross-country moves later, here I am doing a little review of my various projects over the years. My NWN module was one of my favorites. Problem is, the last update I designed the game under was for NWN v1.30. Never mind the fact that NWN is over a decade old at this point, and that a sequel has been released, I have some questions that I was hoping enthusiasts might be able to help me with.

1. Does anyone still play NWN? What kind of community still exists around it?
2. What are the largest communities for people who do still play? (Can you link me?)
3. How difficult would it be for me to upgrade the module to be compatible with the latest 1.69 release? (I know doing so might break a TON of original scripts I've written for the game.)
4. Any chance I might be able to get some NWN players to install a fresh version at the 1.30 update point to help me do some testing of the module?

As it is, I'm considering opening the tool-set and making some bug fixes to the game, editing dialogue, and just all-around cleaning it up some. But, I wanted to see if there was even an audience (reason) for me to do this, outside of finding a few random friends who might wish to install NWN on their computers just to play Small Village Woes.

I'm happy to discuss any and all ideas here, and look forward to any responses I can get.

Many thanks in advance,
Bort

Welcome Bort, it's possible some folks might have an interest in what you offer. Myself, I just really play Aenea. Hopefully you'll give it a shot too.

Good luck!

Bort_Son_of_Bort,

Personally I mostly play Aenea, but I would be more than happy to give you a hand, playtesting, etc.

Let me end my day (around 8:00 pm EST USA), and I will post more in depth. Even if someone beats me to it!

Oh, by the by, I am Eric of Atrophy! Pleased to meet you!

Allo Bort, old bean! Ancient One here! Good to read that you are well, and still gaming!

Only speaking for myself: I am still interested in solo mods, esp when one loses connectivity which is sorely needed for most modern games. I do know many are still playing NWN1, and that mods are still appreciated. Small Village Woes could benefit by an upgrade; both for players and yourself to see it revived. I believe one of the reasons your mod among others remains unseen by some is the older version may not play well on new version systems; will let you Techies work out the kinks.

That said, I personally am a bit weary of low lvl gaming, and really prefer getting into something 12+ and Epic (eg; HotU). However, what I recall of the feedback from your mod was the massive immersion folks would post after playing SVW, and this is appreciated at any lvl.

Finally, good to see you again, and hope to catch you on-line here sometime.

daveyeisley wrote:Welcome Bort, it's possible some folks might have an interest in what you offer... Good luck!

Thanks, Davey!

Eric of Atrophy wrote:Personally I mostly play Aenea, but I would be more than happy to give you a hand, playtesting, etc.

Let me end my day (around 8:00 pm EST USA), and I will post more in depth. Even if someone beats me to it!

Oh, by the by, I am Eric of Atrophy! Pleased to meet you!

Great to hear, Eric. Looking forward to your info follow-up. If I get around to updating, I'll be very happy to have your help playtesting... *see my response to Elhanan below for more on this.

Elhanan wrote:Allo Bort, old bean! Ancient One here! Good to read that you are well, and still gaming!

Only speaking for myself: I am still interested in solo mods, esp when one loses connectivity which is sorely needed for most modern games. I do know many are still playing NWN1, and that mods are still appreciated. Small Village Woes could benefit by an upgrade; both for players and yourself to see it revived. I believe one of the reasons your mod among others remains unseen by some is the older version may not play well on new version systems; will let you Techies work out the kinks.

That said, I personally am a bit weary of low lvl gaming, and really prefer getting into something 12+ and Epic (eg; HotU). However, what I recall of the feedback from your mod was the massive immersion folks would post after playing SVW, and this is appreciated at any lvl.

Finally, good to see you again, and hope to catch you on-line here sometime.

Thanks, AO! Glad to hear that there is still a community out there interested in SP MODs. I do know for a fact that my version of Small Village Woes, which was made for NWN v1.30, is just about completely broken for anyone playing the with the latest patches or NWN version. What I'm not sure of, but what I remember about concurrent NWN updates, is that trying to compile Small Village Woes in an updated version of the toolset is going to leave MANY scripts broken, as the C-based language of the Aurora toolset had some major changes made to it from NWN v1.30 to 1.69. I don't know this for a fact, as it's been a long time since I last opened up the Small Village Woes MOD and tried to make these alterations.

If anyone has further input, I would greatly appreciate it, especially regarding my original four questions, as posted above.

As far as what Small Village Woes consists of, I can guarantee you that, while although I would really prefer to make some dialogue edits, SVW is packed to the brim with detail. Nearly every selectable item has its own narrative; immersive camera content; deep usage of lighting, sound; area objects; and I designed the game to be a constantly refreshing semi-persistent world, where it can be hosted and left online to refresh itself after time limits. So much of the content and work put into the game was for the specific purpose of utilizing ONLY the in-game elements, with no custom content. I challenged myself to make the most detailed and immersive, but time manageable story using no custom content for additional downloading. My intent was to create a lush, fulfilling world, playable out of the box.

I would love to get this MOD up and running again properly at the 1.69 version.

Bort_Son_of_Bort wrote:
1. Does anyone still play NWN? What kind of community still exists around it?
2. What are the largest communities for people who do still play? (Can you link me?)
3. How difficult would it be for me to upgrade the module to be compatible with the latest 1.69 release? (I know doing so might break a TON of original scripts I've written for the game.)
4. Any chance I might be able to get some NWN players to install a fresh version at the 1.30 update point to help me do some testing of the module?

#1 - Lots still do, the vault is still a good site (although it had some tough times recently). The NWN podcast continues to ramble along. NWN Wiki is a great reference guide. (the creator of Aenea) also runs the neverwinternights.info site. If anything I think there may be more folks coming to the game in the past year than "leaving".
#2 - Addressed as part of #1
#3 - Shouldn't be too difficult to perform the initial conversion, mostly just getting the toolset resources updated, opening the mod correcting minor build issues (if any) and saving. However, the real work will be in testing and fixing lots of little bugs mostly related to the script engine. You may also find you want to update the mod to incorporate many of the builder resources that have become available in the past 10 years.
#4 - If you are asking if you can find someone to test the modules at the 1.30 client revision level, this is nearly impossible. The oldest most commonly available client version is 1.66. Also, I'm really not sure what the value of working with the 1.30 client would be at this point. I think typically folks are on one of the following revs: 1.66 (platinum diamond edition unpatched), 1.68 (systems incompatible with 1.69), and most will be on 1.69.

If you decide to update the module, I'm happy to serve as tester and assist with bug squashing.

You may wish to contact Rolo Kipp at the Vault to see if he may have any tips; think he is updating and saving some older mods there currently.

Hey and welcome, Bort!

odbo255 wrote:

Bort_Son_of_Bort wrote:
1. Does anyone still play NWN? What kind of community still exists around it?
2. What are the largest communities for people who do still play? (Can you link me?)

#1 - Lots still do, the vault is still a good site (although it had some tough times recently). The NWN podcast continues to ramble along. NWN Wiki is a great reference guide. (the creator of Aenea) also runs the neverwinternights.info site. If anything I think there may be more folks coming to the game in the past year than "leaving".
#2 - Addressed as part of #1

To add onto the list JT provided;
* There's a NWN section on the Nexus site. It's still relative quiet in the NWN1 department, though it's there: http://neverwinter.nexusmods.com
* And the social.bioware site: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/subindex/153

AoD, thanks for the link into Bioware! I hadn't come across the NWN forum there since they destroyed the old forum and all the incredibly useful infos that everyone in the world had links to!

I'd used the new social forum for my old guild, when Bioware obliged us to move it, but at least when it was new, it didn't have a very good directory system. It was a frustrating mess with no subdirectory capability at all, which is something essential for parsing guild topics. Or if it had it at that time, I couldn't figure it. So I guess I'd been ignoring those forums since departing my guild.

Thanks!

No problem, Ramana.

...the only section I really browsestalk in the social.bioware site is the NWN Custom Content section (unless I need something specifically in one of the other sections). You get to see all these lovely goodies creators make before they upload it to the vault or some other upload site.

Thanks for all of the input, everyone. I installed a MAC version of the original NWN, which just-so-happened to be packaged at 1.30 (go figure, what luck!) And played through the MOD last night / this afternoon. While it is definitely in need of some balancing, dialogue editing, and some minor bug correcting, I still found the adventure to be a ton of fun. I forgot, however, that the MAC version of NWN never came equipped with a toolset editor. D'oh!

I downloaded neveredit, but that seems to be hanging when I load up Small Village Woes to tinker on it. Ah, well. I think I will give updating the game a spin, and see just how much gets broken in the update. I'm expecting a lot. I have a great many custom scripts in the MOD, which probably use very old scripting variables no longer recognized by 1.69.

We'll see...

Thanks, everyone!

Bort_Son_of_Bort wrote:Thanks for all of the input, everyone. I installed a MAC version of the original NWN, which just-so-happened to be packaged at 1.30 (go figure, what luck!)

You can download the latest patch in the social.bioware's technical support section, here. More specifically Skildron's post near the bottom of the page.
Hope this helps you!