The other day a coworker asked how I found th...

December 31, 2005 by Adam in NWN2

The other day a coworker asked how I found the time to work on this little project. Well, I woke up at 4:30 this morning and have been plugging away ever since. I entered in more Woodhaven dialog, but have primarily been finishing up the Chronomancer quest, getting it ready for the Bioware writing contest.

There's some scripting and a tiny bit of dialog left, not to mention testing and editing and such. Still, I'll almost certainly be done in time. I'm not quite satisfied with the way it turned out. Some elements are very different and unique, but there's not as much branching as I would like. Branching dialog gives the player the feel they have more options and control over their lives, but it raises the word count considerably. I may end up working on a second quest, which is much more focused, and either submitting that one or submitting both. We'll see.

Since it's the last day of the year, it's traditional to look back and reflect on how things have gone. A year ago I was working on the mirror puzzle on the first level of the first module and hadn't had a single team member join. Now I'm knee-deep through the second module and have a seemingly huge team of people helping out.

Some things have gone really well. I like how the story has come together and I enjoy writing the interactions between the main NPCs. The first module, while seemingly a simple dungeon crawl, has a lot of fun and unique combats, systems, and amusing banter. The second module is starting to show off the piratey feel, with interesting places and characters really popping up.

Running a team has been harder than I thought it would be. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time needed to manage everyone, tasks aren't always coordinated well, and I always feel like I'm not able to give the personal touch I need. Turnover has been fairly high, with people vanishing for an assortment of reasons, not all easy to fix. One writer was called up to active duty, for example.

On the other hand, they've also produced some amazing things. The music department continues to make magic with their tunes. The QA folks stoically go through my most horrible spelling and scripting bugs. Sunjammer's scripting systems bring added flair to the module. Razvan's models are prolific and beautiful to behold. The voice actors are ramping up and producing some amazing stuff.

As for the year ahead, it may be even more exciting than this last one. NWN2 should be released, so I'll be busy converting the prototypes into the final modules. While I'd like to say that I'll have the entire campaign prototyped, the reality may be that I'm only finished with the first two modules. Keeping the later modules shorter and more focused may be a necessity if I'm going to ship in a reasonable time frame. I miss the Shadowlords days when I put out five modules in nine months.

So, here's hoping for a good new year. Hopefully we can ship something soon after NWN2's release that's both bug free and fun.