Traveller Online - NWN2 Toolset provides opportunity

[stofsk]

Well I would be interested in this project, but I can't really commit to anything right now. Perhaps in a few month's time I will be able to. All I can say is that I'd like to join and I'd be very interested in supporting this project, but right now I can't do anything more than act as a sounding board for ideas or what have you.

 

[Ranger]

If you want to get a head start on this, take a look at the Nightfire mod at:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=modules.Detail&id=4030

It is a Firefly campaign setting using T20. It has 11 Traveller character classes already set up for use with Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Scarecrow]

I looked through the videos that were linked in the original post the other day and to be honest, I'm really not impressed. The Star Wars ones were by far the best and even then they were very ropey. The Firefly ones, aside from the Serenity and shuttle models had virtually nothing Firefly about them. The rest (Shadowrun and Modern) were so rubbish they made my eyes bleed.
A lot of this stems from the fact that you have part-time coders trying to force a framework onto a game design structure that it wasn't designed for. Square pegs in round holes.
I don't know what's involved in modding these things artwise but it seemed that a hell of a lot more work was needed and that, as I mentioned before is where projects like this fall apart.

I realise that in all my posts so far I've been unbelievably negative. White Warlock was, after all, only bringing the possibility of a Traveller mod to our attention. The simple truth is, I'd absolutely LOVE to help out on something like this - I'd prefer it if it were a standalone free download rather than a mod that requires a £40 game purchase first - but if it's going to be done then it needs to be done properly and the amount of work that that entails makes me want to run screaming to the nearest cave.

Crow

 

[White Warlock]

Hi Scarecrow,

The graphics, and otherwise, created for NWN1 are obviously going to be substandard... as the NWN1 game itself is many years old. We're talking NWN2 here though.

To put something on the table here, the main reason i'm interested in NWN2, as a platform for Traveller, is because it offers us all the most important utilities including: being able to create your own modules 'easily,' allowing you to Game Master your own campaign (with the DMClient), allowing 'multiple' people to login as Game Masters on one module, allowing 'multiple' players to play simultaneously (depending on the host connection, up to 64 players), being able to host your game publicly on Gamespy (with password or without), being able to 'link' to other campaign modules online at the time (the critical piece to being able to create a multi-server persistent world), and all the community support you can think of.

Granted, for 3d ship-to-ship combat, it is not the right tool. But i'm more interested in the 3d ground activities of characters interacting with other characters.

As stated many times, "Every Adventure Begins and Ends at a Starport." That's what i would like to envision when/if we develop this project. In all my campaigning of Traveller, it's been what has happened on ground, or within a ship, that made the games memorable.

The ideal here is to create something that allows us to play with our old Traveller friends again, 'remotely' and using a utility that provides a great 3d experience, rather than just a dull 2d mapping utility. This tool allows the GM to focus on game interaction rather than rules and mechanics. With the ability to 'possess' NPCs, GMs can roleplay a thousand different characters ingame, interacting with the PCs on a truly interactive and personal level.

Let me say this... you can only truly appreciate the benefits associated with using the NWN2 engine, if you've experienced a 'roleplayed' campaign run on NWN2. It IS the perfect tool for this, even if it doesn't provide the best for ship-to-ship 3d combat, and if you're geared towards the fun of roleplay, as opposed to 'rollplay.'

Now, to address some other thoughts about specific game design: If you looked at the videos, you will see something i didn't like either, and that was people with rifles shooting at their opponents while in hand-to-hand combat. That's stupid, and it can be easily fixed. Through a very simple modification, missile weapons of such nature can be non-functional at melee range, and thus turned into clubs. And if a player tries to bypass this limitation, by shooting at someone far away while being engaged in melee combat, we could pose a very simple concentration negative (built-in to the game already, btw) and an attack of opportunity everytime they try and shoot (also, built into the game already)... so, pretty much, by trying to shoot while engaged in melee, they're taking a major risk with very little possibility of reward. Best to just focus on the person in front of you and club him with your rifle, or pull out your rapier and gut him. There's also the option (built-in) to knock your opponent down. If your character succeeds in doing so, the missile weapon can once again become functional and you can fire upon the prone character on the floor.

Just one example of how to make it so things work a little more 'realistically.'

As to the cost of NWN2, it's actually pretty dang cheap (and often you can find it at half-price)... and it's a ONE-TIME purchase, as opposed to purchasing a game and then paying every friggin' month. This, i'll tell you the truth Scarecrow, is not a reasonable argument. You can spend 'thousands of dollars' PER COPY for 3d software to develop your world, or you can spend the price of buying 'any' video game, with many of the tools built-in to develop your own world. And no monthly surcharges to play, and hundreds of other campaigns out there to interact in (even if not Traveller)... for free.

I agree with you, absolutely... you're negative, but that's okay dude. At least you present your thoughts and concerns, and i hope we can continue to discuss this. I also hope, eventually, you'll be able to expend the money to try NWN2 and play in a roleplayed campaign with me or another, even if it's not Traveller. I think you'll truly be able to appreciate what i'm striving for here, once you've had an opportunity to experience the 'gems' that NWN2 can offer.

As a whole, i still think it's a good idea and a worthwhile endeavor. I don't believe it is 'worth' it yet, because there are still some obstacles that the producers of the game need to address, but that's why i'm approaching you now... so we can continue to discuss it and address some of the concerns. I also think, if everyone here is open to this, we can start working on the planning process... as if we were going to go ahead with it.

Just to clarify, the #1 benefit this community can provide to the development of the "NWN2 Traveller Project" is their insight into Traveller. I provide insight into the limitations of NWN2, and others here can provide their insight into other aspects (3d modelling, etc), without having to provide anything other than forum discussion. Again, if you're open to this, i would like to start productive discussion (on another thread), the planning stages for "NWN2 Traveller Project."

Let me know if this community is interested in this stage of development?

 

[White Warlock]

Also, i would like to know if this forum is the best candidate for these discussions, or whether i should relocate to a different Traveller forum.

 

[whartung]

First off, certainly good luck to anyone who pursues this. It's a lot of work.

The concern I think that is being addressed here is simply the fact that no matter how good the toolset or the framework, the end result is VERY dependent on quality of the presentation. And graphics affect that presentation.

For example, I've played two different MMORPGs. One is WoW, and the other was D&D Online, I played in their beta for a short time.

One thing that the Blizzard did was they made their world specifically "cartoonish". It's not particularly "realistic" in any way. D&D Online did the opposite, striving for more realistic graphics.

WoW, IMHO, looks FAR FAR better than D&D Online did. The basic reason is that my mind does not try to find "reality" in the scene I'm presented with. It's the funny pages -- it's Not Real at all.

D&D though strives for and fails the reality test. The slightest flaws are more glaring because my mind is trying to compensate what it "knows" with what it sees. Like you can easily tell in a movie with "bad" special effects, it's easy to see the difference between "real" and "fake", and those boundaries stand out. When the boudaries stand out, they snap you out of the fantasy world and push you back in to the real world.

That is why presentation in these games is so vital, and art is so difficult.

There may be a lot of BBC Dr. Who fans here, but I simply can't watch it. The production values are SO bad, it's unimportant how good the stories are. Maybe that's part of the "fun" of Dr. Who, but it certainly doesn't work for me.

So, my basic point is that you can not underestimate the impact that art has on the experience. As the engines get better, the art gets even more important. And as someone for whom the phrase "Programmer Art" was invented, I feel at least somewhat qualified to note that Art is Hard for common folk. Really hard.

And these games, at this stage, are mostly art over content, and good content can't necessarily save bad art for players.

 

[White Warlock]

So would you prefer NWN1 over NWN2 because of the lower end cartoony art presented there? It's a legitimate question, because NWN1 already has much of the content built up to pose a Traveller project.

As to the realism factor, character faces/bodies already exist in the NWN2 engine, so artists would need to focus on static content, such as weapons, furniture, etc. Texturing and skinning would handle most of those concerns, and those are both 2d art, superimposed on a 3d frame. Regardless, i already mentioned that much of this would be handled by others, who already plan on doing the work (d20mm team, firefly team, star wars team, etc).

Finally, what matters most is gameplay, not realism. Great graphics adds to the enjoyment factor, but it's the manner in which those graphics are handled (and the potentiality in the toolset) that makes NWN2 superior to NWN1.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be enough interest here to pursue it, and i have not received alternative forum recommendations, nor any emails denoting interest beyond that posed in this thread. I also definitely do not wish to spend an inordinate amount of time, over and above what i already presented with my posts here, attempting to garner support for something i erroneously thought many of you would have wanted. I guess i've fallen out of touch with my fellow Travellers.

Thanks for reading, enjoy your game.

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by White Warlock:
I also definitely do not wish to spend an inordinate amount of time, over and above what i already presented with my posts here, attempting to garner support for something i erroneously thought many of you would have wanted. I guess i've fallen out of touch with my fellow Travellers.

I've noticed that Traveller is a game people seem to talk about but not play as much. I'm new to the game myself and this kind of project would absolutely rock.

Traveller needs marketing. It needs to be treated like a business rather than as a fannish hobby people used to play ten years ago and only talk about today.