The Sanctum

Shuurai recently offered the following thoughts about continuing the Sanctum saga in Neverwinter Nights as opposed to Dragon Age. Since they might be of general interest, I thought I would post my own thoughts on that here.

"Just to throw it out there, I too think it’d be cool if the entire series was kept in NWN1. Despite the age of the engine and it’s limitations, I personally find the interface to be much better than NWN2 and even Dragon Age. That said, the most important thing (to me) is the story, and I think this one will be strong no matter what the platform."

I very much appreciate the kind words about the story (thanks, Shuurai!). This is an issue that I’ve been torn about since the first module came out – first with NWN2, and then with Dragon Age. As some of you may know, I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity last year to be invited by Bioware to participate in the Dragon Age toolset beta and Builder’s Event. So I’m very familiar with what Dragon Age has to offer the series, and I’ve been very impressed with it from the beginning. I think it was designed much more for the kind of story-based modding that I’m trying to do with the series than was NWN, and that I could do a great deal more with it as a result.

So to be honest I really would prefer to switch to Dragon Age as soon as possible, for that as well as other reasons. For example I do strongly prefer the interface and game design, and the Sanctum world never has really fit well with the D&D ruleset. But I’m in the awkward position of being in the middle of the saga and having a lot invested in building the mods in NWN1, including an established player and fan base there. Those are things that I can’t just disregard.

If I come into enough free time or can recruit enough DA collaborators to help, then I may port Sanctum 2 to DA as a test. If that’s successful I could then port the rest of Part II ("The Miracle Worker") as well. I think I could handle that for DA-only players by including a video "prologue" telling the story of Part I ("The Sight"). If that works out then I’d end up with Part I as a NWN1 only mod, Part III ("The Alliance") as DA only, and Part II ported to both.

Either way, though, I don’t plan on building "The Alliance" in NWN1. But I also really don’t want to stop building in NWN1 until the end of "The Miracle Worker". That’s when the story will reach a point where I can at least give NWN1-only players a sense of closure with the series, even though it will be continued in "The Alliance."

And, I hope, in a series of novels to pick up the story after that. From the beginning, the Sanctum modules were intended mainly as an experiment on my part: a way of exploring the new medium of CRPG modding as a means of telling the backstory to those novels. So with any luck, it’ll be a long time before I have to commit to giving folks a full sense of closure with the saga as a whole.

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Although I’ve been talking for a while now about my intent to finally get back to finishing Sanctum of the Archmage, circumstances have for some time had a habit of conspiring in one way or another to delay those plans. So I’m pleased to announce that I’ve recently made several decisions aimed at ending those delays, and at speeding up when the remaining chapters of the saga will be available.

The first step was finally completing my graduate work. I had gone back to college part time for a second Master’s degree (in physics) several years ago, but it had ended up dragging on longer than I had expected. Sanctum chapters 1 and 2 were actually built in the spare time I could find between (some very challenging) classes, which is one reason for the slow pace of the saga’s development. I finally graduated earlier this year, and that’s started to allow me more time for other projects again.

The second step was one that I initiated a few weeks ago, when I regretfully announced my resignation as Chairman of the Academy for Modding Excellence, effective at the end of 2009. Working with the AME, first as Vice-Chairman and then this year as Chairman, was a wonderful and fun experience that also allowed me to meet some really terrific people. Although I’ll be retaining my membership with the Academy, it will be with a much reduced workload that will allow me more time to work on my modules.

The third and most recent step, which I’m pleased to announce here publicly for the first time, is that I’ve decided to form a modding team to finish the Sanctum of the Archmage saga. I concluded that this would be a good idea for several (probably obvious) reasons, not the least of which is that my chances of being able to finish the modules in a reasonable amount of time would be significantly increased if I had some help. Since modding is beginning to move more and more in the direction now of team-based rather than individual work, I thought this would be a good time to make that transition myself.

I think this is especially true given the plans that I’ve hinted at in previous posts, but would now like to make official: that the final part of the Sanctum of the Archmage saga, The Alliance, will be developed in Bioware’s new CRPG, Dragon Age (or DA). Some of you may know that I was a member of the DA Toolset Beta team earlier this year, and participated in Bioware’s "DA Builder Event" this summer. These unfortunately also helped to delay my work on developing the next chapter; but they were good opportunities that I think will ultimately help me to improve as a modder and to make the series even better in the long run. Since it has a much more complex and powerful toolset than Neverwinter Nights, team development will probably be typical for modules developed for Dragon Age.

My plan for the Sanctum Team is to have two groups working on parallel development tracks. One group will be working on finishing the last two modules of Part II of the saga, "The Miracle Worker," which will be in Neverwinter Nights and will use the fabulous new Project Q content. The second group will start development on the first act of Part III, "The Alliance," in Dragon Age. It’s my hope that with these parallel development efforts going on simultaneously, that the end of Part II and beginning of Part III could be brought out without too much time between them.

It’s a fairly ambitious plan, and you can probably see why I’ll need to recruit a team of folks to work with to make it happen. So far, I’ve got four team members from the Neverwinter Nights community interested in the project (including myself), and I’m hoping to at least double that in the near future. The team will need folks with several different skill sets, from level builders to the voice actors that we’ll need for the Dragon Age modules. I’ll be in the role of lead writer and designer, and the prospect of working together to make an RPG with a group of really talented folks is one that I’m really looking forward to.

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Dragon Age was finally released this week! I’ve received and installed my copy – and after playing it for a while, I have to say that so far the game exceeds my expectations. Since my expectations were pretty high, that’s saying something.

First, for those who may have missed my earlier posts: I was honored to have been asked to participate in both the Dragon Age Toolset Beta test and "Builder Event" this summer. I was one of about a dozen experienced "modders" from the Neverwinter Nights game-building community who were invited to come to Bioware Edmonton this summer to test out the adventure building toolset that they’ve developed for the game. That amazing experience was covered in the Bioware Blog a few months ago (Dragon Age Toolset: Builder Event II, Part 1, and Part 2), and in a pair of articles in Gamespy Magazine (Build Your Own Adventure: An Exclusive Look at the Dragon Age Toolset, and Voices of Creation: The Dragon Age Builder Interviews). Our team did the mod with the cat described in the last article. And I just noticed that the "Toolset Video" on the Collector’s Edition Bonus disk includes some footage from the Builder’s Event, including some showing me sitting in the front row.

Dragon Age has already been receiving some amazing critical reviews. For example, Gamespot gave it a 95, saying that "Incredible storytelling, great characters, and exciting battles are just a few of the things that make this fantasy role-playing game so extraordinary." The latest Bioware Blog post (Dragon Age to the World!) lists a number of other rave reviews as well.

The game system is simplified and very easy to understand and to play, compared to the awkward and cumbersome D&D ruleset of the Neverwinter Nights series. That’s something that I was hoping would be the case, and that I have to say that I very much appreciate. It’s also incredibly fast and efficient, smoothly delivering quality graphics and extraordinarily detailed animation with short load times. But what’s impressed me so far is the quality of the cinematic storytelling that the engine makes possible, and that the game builders at Bioware have demonstrated with the Dragon Age: Origins campaign.

I’ll have more to say about the game once I’ve had time to play some more of it, and to take a look at the final version of the game-building toolset. Suffice it to say, though, that I’m positively salivating at the idea of starting to build adventure modules using this incredible new engine.

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Gamespy has published two articles on the Dragon Age Builder’s event that I attended last week. See the links below to check them out!

Build Your Own Adventure: An Exclusive Look at the Dragon Age Toolset

Voices of Creation: Dragon Age Toolset Interviews

(Our team did the mod with the cat. )

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I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the status of the Sanctum v3.2 update, as well as some news that may be of interest to readers of my blog.

Between the demands of my job, vacation, managing the AME, and some other projects (see below), my schedule has gotten very busy in recent weeks – and that has unfortunately delayed my efforts to get the Sanctum update posted for general release. I have only a few remaining tasks to finish before I can upload it, but unfortunately my available time is still going to be very limited for the next few weeks. Hopefully when some of the smoke clears from my "real life," I should be able to finally get it completed and online by the end of the month.

The very talented Estelindis has graciously offered to develop some high quality custom NWN head models for the Sanctum update. We’ve been collaborating for a few weeks now on how to get the look just right for the various characters, and the results are truly amazing (if I do say so myself). Robin (both genders) and Orion are basically done, and Diana is currently in development as well. Here’s a link to a screenshot featuring (female) Robin’s new head and the use of the Romantic Animations Suite. Este, thank you very much for your fantastic work on this!

Although sworn to secrecy until recently, I can now also reveal that I’ve been a participant in the beta test for the Dragon Age Toolset since early this year – and I was invited to travel to Bioware HQ in Edmonton last week to participate in the Dragon Age Toolset Builder’s Event. I plan to blog at more length about that amazing experience when I have time – but for now, to see what it was all about check out the posts on the Bioware Blog here and here. I’ll only say for now that from what I’ve seen, the tools that Bioware is making available for Dragon Age are going to change the landscape of RPG modding. I’m very excited about it. Although I’m still committed to finishing "The Miracle Worker" in NWN1, I’m now giving serious consideration to completing Part III of the Sanctum Saga – The Alliance – in Dragon Age.

Thanks again to everyone for your patience and interest!

Cheers,

Andarian

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