NS5 Background:
In making a followup to our NS3/NS4 mod in NWN2, we wanted to of course offer something new and exciting but still retain the same fun that was had in our NWN1 mods. The kind of things we wanted to include were the things that made the Neversummer mods not fit into a category easily:
- multiple paths for character development
- vast amounts of replayability
- a huge interactive world to explore
- a fine balance between exciting adventuring and storyline immersion
- the challenge of PvP play with (hopefully) minimal griefing
- The requirement to not have to create 7 parallel starting factions (which gave a lot of diversity to starting out, but basically multiplied the dev workload by 7 for the starting areas). Also, this allows players to join up more easily when starting out.
- Better balanced gear and spells from the ground up.
- Being able to use some of the compelling features that the NWN2 engine offers like improved graphics and terrain modeling, some better scripting exposure to the engine, and long term, better PW support (we hope).
- Having a more advanced back-end user interface to some of our core systems that will allow more interesting things to happen by devs and DM's. Things like changing spawns real time while the game is running, importing items and creatures automatically, etc.
- More dynamic encounters with creatures that keep you on your toes. This includes random encounter maps, dynamically assigned equipment and item enhancements, etc
- A better, more flexible quest system
So, with any large scale project that's done on people's free time, moving things along at a predictable pace can be challenging. You have people come and go on the team, real life 'interfere' (babies, marriages, moves, job changes, busy semesters at school, breakups, etc) - so, while we've worked on this project for about the last 2 years, the development team (save for a few core folks) has always been in flux. Currently, we've got the largest and best team working on things that we ever have - probably about 12 active devs and a few other infrequent contributors/contractors. But, as large as the team may be, there's still always work to be done. But, I'll save my 'help us' pitch for later.
Goals:
Our goal is simply to have an Alpha server open for testing around Christmas. Not sure if that will be a public thing, a Neversummer forum users only, or an invite only - regardless, we want to start testing and getting feedback from real players then and we're moving as quickly toward that as we can. The Beta version would hopefully follow soon after that. And, as Neversummer longtimers can attest, Beta is a loose word around here.
Aspects of Neversummer 5 and Their Status:
Below we'll list some of the aspects that will go into an Alpha release and their degree of readiness.
World Design: 90%
Whats a world to adventure in without - a world?
Area design in NWN2 is both one of the most wonderful aspects of the game and the most infuriating/time consuming. We've created some very diverse (and many say beautiful) areas so far, but area design takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you're setting a high standard.
Both because the area size in NWN2 is much greater than NWN1 (both in dimensions and in memory load, particularly exterior areas), we've had to make some design decisions about the world. Every exterior area in NS5 should be meaningful - because they're so large and because they take so long to develop, NS5 has much less 'filler' areas than NS4 had. In addition, in order to deliver on the goal of a dynamic world, between the destination large exterior areas, players will encounter smaller random encounter maps between areas where they may encounter monsters, merchants, quests, and more. This also has the benefit of allowing us to make a much larger seeming world by reusing many smaller random encounter areas.
Static Areas: Current Count ~100
The 'destination' areas in NS5 are arranged into 'shards', each shard having it's own distinct terrain, racial predominance, and feel. For our Alpha release, we're targeting 5 shards to be completed with 2 more soon following. We've got just a couple of maps to go to complete our first 5 shards and a good portion of the following 2 shards complete as well. This should give us room to allow players from level 1-12 for the first 5 shards and 12-16 for the following 2. Landscapes have all been done in-house and are as diverse as mountains, swamps, plains, dense forests, 5 cities (from rural to tree city to urban), coastlines, and of course the requisite dungeons, crypts, caves, ruins, etc. In all, we have about 100 static areas completed thus far. This may not seem like a lot compared to NS4's 800 current areas, but area size is much larger in NWN2 and when combined with the random encounter system, the world can feel like a much larger place.
Random Encounter Areas: Current Count ~35
About 35 random encounter areas have been made so far, but when nearing the alpha stage, this number will rise rapidly as we plan on using some areas that have been made by others and released on the Vault and converted for our own use in NS5.
[Since this appears it's going to be a fairly lengthy post and update, I'll probably start posting this as part 1 and post more details over the coming days and weeks. Questions or comments welcome in the forums!]