What comes after Zork I?

Ernie Noa said:
Now you need to admit the idea for your next project is lurking in the back of your mind somewhere. Enchanter anyone?"
The natural answer could be Zork II. But no - or more accurate Hell NO! If this module have been hard to interpret from the original Zork II and III would be nightmares. And Enchanter even worse. I have already hinted about my next project even if it won't be a NWN2 project.

I''ll write an adventure book for younglings (6-7 years). It'll be a book the kids love but their parents won't :) I have a pretty clear memory of what I liked in that age and it'll be about adventurous quests, good and bad, strange places and a brave, cute royal worm.

Okay, what will I do then? My band will release an anniversary album since it's over twenty years since our first release. We're arguing with our record company about releasing the unrelased material free for download. I'm pretty sure the guys in suites will have solve it. So prepare to download all of you out there. Stereophonic Electro Pop for the crowd!

But, what will I do after that? Hmm, there's that game, NWN2, that you can build your own modules with, maybe I should build something...

Of course I'll make a new mod! I've been thinking of a classic "steal the treasure"-module. Sort of a Forgotten Realms Oceans Eleven if you know what I mean. Play it cool, like the rouge or ugly, like the fighter.

Or if I find someone with a promising idea to team up with I may go with that instead. But it's a long way to go and I don't want to lose myself in making notes, drawing maps and doing research instead of finishing Zork.

So now you know :)

Patch 1.06 and the toolset

Yesterday I dared to do the upgrade from 1.05 to 1.06. It was some quite exciting and nervous moments when i started to toolset and loaded my module (after making two separate backups far away from the NWN2-folders)...

"Toolset has encountered a problem..."

I tried three times without luck so I tried to open the "Dark Waters" module. No problem. A few minutes of complete and mercyless fear later I restored my ZORK I-backup and the module loaded just fine.

It's kind of late to do a 1.06 review but my impression of it so far is:

• Not so stabile as 1.05 but much better than 1.03 and 1.04.
• I can't get the new pressure control tool working (maybe because of my non-US operating systems keyboard handling).
• Placed effects don't always show up in the toolset so I have to save and reload a lot.
• The Visual Effects Editor hangs, and more irritating, don't refresh the screen sometimes. I've wasted much time on looking for problems that never existed in my PFX's.
• When using undo/redo the painted water vanish. Very frustrating until I learned not to use undo in exterial areas.
• The type-ahead in script drop down menues is very, very, very slow now.

But what's good in the 1.06 patch? To be honest I can't think of anything other than it didn't destroy my module, the OC works fine and it's the next step towards 1.1 (which in my dream world is like the NWN1 1.31 patch). Oh, yes, one thing the OnClick -event on placeables! I don't complain. Everything works good enough to make my work going and I've been reading about 1.07 and it's not very far away.

Tonight I'll make all OnItemAcquired scripts for the treasure items, there's just 19 of them so it wouldn't take long.

Thanks for reading!

Expectations & Wishes

I've got some questions and aspects on making a Zork I conversion, both IRL and from the world around, and I think it's the right time to talk about my intentions with it. Expectations and demands can be high and with too high expectations come great disapointment (just take a look at the financial news on TV). So to settle this here's a list that comes to my mind righ now. I just love bullet-lists.

• A NWN2 version isn't a Text Adventure. It can be but what fun would it be? I'll use this amazing game development tool to represent MY image of The Great Underground Empire (which in fact is rather small to be called Great).
• It will not be a clone with every small fun but useless detail (there's hundreds of them). It would be of nostalgic interest for a few but not from a gameplay aspect. I'll implement lots of them but not everyone.
• It will contain items, objects, beings and places that isn't in the original game. Reading the orignal code many, many times have made me think the descriptions of the surroundings are sparse and thin but leave a lot to the mind and inner eye. In a graphic game it works completly different - you very much play and feel what you see. Therefore I'll mix in some new things that connects to the Zork universe and places that make the GUI feel more real.
• Zork as multiplayer - is it blasphemy? Not at all think of Zork's predecessor, Colossal Cave Adventure and the MUD implementation of it. Multiplayer is fun, and playing together is always the funniest. For now I restrict the mod to be single party co-op but if I'll find a way to do it without disturbing the game mecanics I may do competetive play possible. I could be fun to kill your buddies to get the crystal trident first.
• Text input for every "Examine the tree", "Eat the sack", "Jump and shout" and "Throw the burning torch at the fence and run west" would not be possible and if it was I wouldn't implement it anyway. NWN2 is a click-n-play game, it's what it makes best and so it should be. I'm almost certain that if the authors Blank, Lebling, Daniels and Anderson would have written Zork this summer they would have gone MORPG with full visual joy and thousands of players but the same great background story.
• I don't have any clue of how many hours of gameplay it will give the player. I suppose you can rush it through in 20-25 minutes if you have the walkthrough and plan your moves well. Any normal exploring adventurer may squeeze anything between 1 - 10 hours out of it. Maybe, maybe not...
• It can't be completly dark in the underground. I know it says "pitch black" but in the movies there's never pitch black in the dark. How can you scare the audience if they can't sense the fear with their eyes (and ears of course). They have to get a glimpse of the surroundings to know what they are scared and excited about. Therefore I have to give the GUI a small portion of ambient light.
  
• Maps - yes or no? I havn't decided yet. It's more challenging to explore the cave and maze without NWN2's map function and there's many ways to remove it. None of them are perfect. You have to make notes on paper and draw your own map. But it can also be frustrating and boring to run around having no clue about where you are. I'll think about it, game-test some alternatives and probably come up with a mix of solutions.
• And finally - No I'm not buildning this one to get on the easy, fast track to the community Hall of Fame. I'm not that good builder anyway. I do it for fun and relaxation, to learn the toolset and to have something to play with my wife and friends when the dark winter of Scandinavia come upon us. And if anyone out there want to play it and come to like it I'll be very happy, indeed. (Isn't that what all rock stars always say about their music?) :-)

Long post, rainy day, one tired old man. Thanks for reading, as always!

Ha-HA! as Joxer would say...

Rob McGinnis at Obsidian Entertainments community coordinator think this is a good initiative!!! And now we know he's a true gamer because he used to play Zork on his C64 four hours and hours.

Read it in this NWN2-forums thread and read the nice community-peoples positive comments on a Neverwinter Zork . Comments like those makes me feel good and "me feel good" is the fuel in mod-building.