I’m finishing a version upgrade (v3.1) for Sanctum 1 and 2 that should make the modules compatible with patch 1.69 and CEP 2.1. It also includes a few new features and fixes. If anyone would be interested in helping beta test the new version, please let me know. 🙂
Thanks — Andarian
I’m very proud to announce that Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I, has received the Golden Dragon Award from the Academy for Modding Excellence (AME) for Best Neverwinter Nights Roleplaying Module of 2007! Here’s a link to the announcement of winners, including a very nice (if I do say so myself) awards video produced by qkrch:
NWN1 2007 Golden Dragon Award Winners and Video
The segment announcing Sanctum 2’s win for Best RPG starts around 3 minutes 32 seconds in. I’m very proud of the video as well, not only for the honor of having my work included in it — for which I’m deeply grateful — but also because I actually did most of the video capture scenes for it myself.
I should also mention for the record, since I am a member of the AME, that the Academy has strict rules for when one member nominates another for an award. (Members may not nominate their own work.) In those cases, the nominated member must immediately recuse himself from any further participation (voting included) in that entire award category (in my case, Best RPG) for the rest of that year’s awards cycle.
Having worked with the other members of the AME for over a year now, I can only say that receiving an award from a group of people who are as dedicated to recognizing quality as I know them to be is a profound honor. Thank you!
EDIT: Be sure to listen to the great awards podcast with hosts Trey and Skunkeen, and AME member guests BGPHughes and Tybae. The awards segment for Sanctum 2 starts at about 22:35 into the show.
I just wanted to let everyone know that the NWN1 2007 Golden Dragon Award Module Category Finalists have been announced by the Academy for Modding Excellence (AME). As before, we’ve also produced an announcement video, which can be viewed here:
I’m particularly proud of this one, since I actually produced most of the video clips that were used in it myself. Qkrch edited those clips to create the final video, adding the sound, voiceover, and titles.
You’ll also see, at about 4:50 into the video, that Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I is a finalist in the “Best RPG” Category. (Since I’m a member of the AME myself, according to the Academy rules I wasn’t allowed to be involved at all in that nomination, and had to recuse myself from further participation in the NWN1 Best RPG category once I’d been nominated.) I am very glad that my fellows in the Academy decided that Sanctum 2 was worthy of a nomination, though, and I’m hopeful about my prospects for winning the award. 🙂
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EDIT: Here are the nominations and video for the NWN1 Recognition and Custom Content category awards. These two videos also include the (combined NWN1 and NWN2) sound/music nominations.
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I haven’t had much time yet to get caught up on the new content being developed for NWN patch 1.69. But I discovered something today that I’m definitely going to have to incorporate into Sanctum 2:
Unicorn, Pegasus, Nightmare and Horses for HotU 1.69
To see why this has me positively drooling, take a look at this image:
These gorgeous models are adaptations of the DLA horses for NWN1 patch 1.69. And best of all, from what I can gather from reading the hak page, they’re going to be able to be made ridable!
*SPOILER WARNING* for Sanctum of the Archmage 2
So now I’m doing some serious thinking about how these could be incorporated into another update to Sanctum 2. One reason for this is that the original story (and my original plan for the module) featured the Pegasi of Mount Cassandra more prominently than the final version of the module was able to allow. In the original plan, the Pegasi served as steeds for the heroes on their quest to recruit allies for the fledgling alliance. But doing this properly would have required ridable Pegasus models, which didn’t exist for NWN1 (much less for NWN2) when I originally built the second chapter. That’s why I developed the idea of using Queen Talina’s “Wind-Walking” cloak for this purpose instead — which I think has actually worked out to be a very good alternative.
But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the idea of the loyal Pegasi of Mount Cassandra, carrying our heroes on their quest to build The Alliance against the Warlord Zomoran. So when these models and patch 1.69 become available, I’m at the very least going to add a cutscene showing the heroes actually being carried up to the peak of Mount Cassandra from the foothills. But should I redo the Wind-Walking scenes to include the pegasi as well?
It’s official: Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker – Act I has won the Neverwinter Nights Vault’s Bronze award for NWN Module of the Year, 2007!
I’ve just finished uploading the v3.0 update to the “Sanctum of the Archmage” modules (both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2). Please note that ALL of the version 3.0 files (including the music hak) are required to play the update, and that the downloads for Chapter 2 are now contained in these files as well. The module specific hak files (Hak, Music and CMP) will be moved to separate hak pages as soon as these requests make their way through the Vault approval process.
I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to the Beta testers who helped me playtest the update. Your thoroughness, enthusiasm, and attention to detail were very helpful, and very much appreciated. Thank You!
I hope that you will all enjoy the new version. Let me know what you think, and if you have any problems!
Andarian
EDIT: Here’s a screenshot from the new version. It’s a little too spoilerish for the module page, but check it out if you’ve finished Chapter 1. I thought it did a good job of capturing a particular moment that you’ll probably recognize. 🙂 (WARNING: The image is rendered with the game’s “violence level” set on maximum.)
The long-awaited version 3.0 of “Sanctum of the Archmage: Act I” is finally nearing release! The last stage of the beta test is finishing this weekend, and barring unforseen issues, I should be ready to post it sometime next week. Version 3.0 includes updates to both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the saga, although the most extensive changes are in Chapter 1. I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to the beta testers who volunteered to give the new version a very thorough shakedown, and who offered many helpful comments and suggestions.
I’d also like to remind everyone that we’re now in the final week of the NWN Vault’s Module of the Year Contest, in which “Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker – Act I” is a contestant. So if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to vote before the contest ends on Saturday, April 5th!
I’m very pleased to announce that voting has now begun on the NWN Vault for “2007 Module of the Year” — and that Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I, is a contestant!
Voting is open to anyone who had an active Neverwinter Vault account as of March 1, 2007, and only one vote is allowed. So of course, I’d like to encourage fans of the Sanctum of the Archmage series to visit the poll and cast their vote!
The poll can be found here. And good luck to all of the other contestants!
Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker – Act I, version 1.4, is now available on the Neverwinter Nights Vault! Version 1.4 adds three new areas and scenes, some important combat improvements, and nearly ten thousands words of new Roleplaying dialogues. Barring the need to fix any unexpected bugs, this will be my last update to Sanctum 2.
My next project is going to be doing a similarly final update for Sanctum of the Archmage 1: The Sight. In particular, I plan to merge the male and female Robin versions of the module (making the separate “M” version of the module obselete), and to make a few fixes and playability improvements to the first chapter. I’m hoping that won’t take too long, and that it will be available by early February at the latest.
After that, it will be time for me to move on from Neverwinter Nights 1 and to start building the next act in the series — Sanctum of the Archmage, Act II: The Miracle Worker — in Neverwinter Nights 2. There are still several features in NWN1 that I’m going to have to forego in the NWN2 sequels (such as the flying animations for wind-walking) and that I’m going to miss, since they don’t appear to have any reasonable prospects for appearing any time soon in NWN2. But on the whole, I’m now convinced — after many patches, the release of MOTB, and a lot of new work by the NWN2 custom content community — that NWN2 has matured significantly as a modding environment, and that it is headed in the right direction. Many of the issues that drove me away seven months ago from my original decision to build Sanctum 2 in NWN2 seem to have been resolved since then, such as the lack of custom content, and support for 2D character portraits and for cinematic cutscenes. And I am also looking forward to taking advantage of the many new and powerful features that NWN2 provides. I’m excited by the prospect, and looking foward to it!
Links to the Sanctum of the Archmage Module Pages on the Neverwinter Nights Vault:
Sanctum of the Archmage 1: The Sight
Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker – Act I
