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!
Interesting seeing you go to NWN2. Seems to me that to develop sensibly for NWN2 you need to make use of the many plugins available etc. No doubt Andarian is well acquainted, or becoming so, with the community content for NWN2.
Greetings. I have been watching your progress with interest, while enjoying the fruits of your labor very much. I am a retired (tech/science) writer and currently pass a lot of time writing amateur fiction and tinkering around with RPGs. I may be a little old for computer games, but the main attraction I find in them is the occasional chance to discover a well written story line. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does I consider it to be well worth the search.
In your series I have hit paydirt – so far at least. I haven’t read your website in depth, but I get the impression that you are fairly young. If so, your characterization is surprisingly adept. My compliments. Your plot is clear cut, without being so linear as to choke the player. I particularly like the way you are taking a non-typical approach to the romance aspect. I get so tired of seeing the same thing done over and over. It is refreshing to see a new way of doing things.
I am personally dubious about your idea of continuing the next module in NWN2, but that is just my prejudice. You are the one creating this work, and it is entirely your choice.
However, for my purposes, moving it to NWN2 might force me to drop out. I don’t want to. I really hope to be able to finish out this series, very much. But I am using a 3.4 gigahertz, P4 dual core Intel processor with a 128 meg ATI video card – and NWN2 still jerks along as if it were running on a 486. Ridiculous. NWN2 is not THAT much more graphic intensive than the original NWN. Pure coding sloppiness, that’s all it can possibly be.
But anyway, I spent a lot of time and effort building my Sanctum character. I would regret being forced to start over from scratch. Not to speak of all the item distribution and tweaks that I spent time getting just right on all three of them (PC, Robin and Orion).
Once again though, you are the writer/modder. The medium that you choose to use is yours and yours alone to choose. Only you can decide whether NWN2 offers sufficient advantages to offset the disadvantages of switching. Whatever you decide, I am sure that your work will continue to maintain high standards.
BTW, I like the way that you softened Robin’s attitude. I played the first version and got ticked off with her attitude. I ditched her and took up with Diana permanently because of it. Now that you have softened her up a little bit, on my second time through I decided to hold off on my final decision until later.
Does Robin really have to be a vengeful harridan to make an effective warrior? Remember that defending someone you love is the most effective of all possible motivations. Anyway, like I said, this is your baby. Good luck with it and once again, my compliments. Thanks for the fun I have already had following the story so far. It was better than any paperback off the shelf in a drugstore, that’s for sure. 🙂
Hi Geezer! Thanks for your extensive and generous comments, and particularly for your (unfortunately erroneous) impression that I’m "fairly young!" I’m not, although I won’t volunteer any specific information about exactly how fairly young I’m not. ;P
I’ve always been mindful of the fact that I might lose some fans of my NWN1 work in switching to NWN2, but in the end I do have to be driven by other considerations in making that decision. I’m probably going to be releasing modules for another year or two, and I would like to be able to do so for a platform on which they will be viable, and garner a large "playership," for an extended period of time in the future afterwards. I’m not sure that NWN1 is the best choice for that in the long term. I’m also a serious fan and supporter of both games, and don’t share the negative opinion of NWN2 that some players who are sticking with NWN1 seem to have. NWN2 runs fine on my dual 256 mb Nvidia video card, and as Moore’s law works its magic, the system requirements for NWN2 will become progressively less onerous and more mainstream in the future.
Regarding Robin’s having to be a "vengeful harridan" to make an effective warrior: she does, because that’s who she is as a person, at this stage in her life and in her psychological and emotional development. This is how she copes with not giving up in her fight against the Warlord. I could have given her a different personality, but then she would be a different (and perhaps arguably less interesting) character. And I’ve softened her resistance to love a lot in the mods as compared to the novels, because I realized that what I had planned for the one (non-interactive) medium won’t work well in the other. You’re right in what you say about how defending someone you love can be a powerful motivation, but it’s a lesson that she hasn’t learned and made part of her psychology yet. I can’t reveal much more without spoiling the series, but I’ll just say for the record that this is an issue that will be specifically revisited in the later modules. Each of your three companions is going to grow and change as a person in important ways over the course of the series, and if I started each of them out without needing that growth, then the story would be flat and uninteresting by comparison.
And thanks again for your very kind words!
– Andarian
I guess it all depends on your reason for making the modules, and your ultimate objective. If your purpose in doing these is to gain hands-on experience in modding, then naturally you want to concentrate your efforts on the newest programs you can find, regardless of any other consideration.
On the other hand, if your purpose is to gather potential readers for your proposed book series, is it really to your advantage to disregard the potential loss of previously loyal fans of your work? I am not sure that NWN2 is really that popular. I bought it for $29 off the discount rack at Wal-Mart, and I still think I got rooked. I don’t see it very prominently displayed around my city, whereas games like Obsidian for example, are still selling for their original price of $45 or so.
Bah. Ignore me. I am I am a crotchety old man and not worth dealing with. I am just being selfish and wanting to keep playing my favorite series. But I am only one fan. You have to do what is best for your own self-interest.
But I am also well past the point of being willing to shell out the cost of a brand new 256 meg video card simply to run a poorly made game, when no other program on my system needs it. Not when there are literally more than two dozen pages of NWN1 mods on the Vault network alone that I haven’t played yet, and hundreds of other games out there that don’t require those specs.
If and when you write your books, and I happen to become aware of them somehow, I will make a point of checking them out. I will quit pestering you now, and let you get back to your important work of actually creating something. Best of luck and most important, have fun.
Thanks again. Believe it or not, I just start Sanctum 1 again. Just for the heck of it. I decided to try a sorceror this time. I anticipate a lot of hiding behind Robin’s skirt tails at first…
Old Geezer: Thanks again for your feedback! Yes, one thing that I do also have to consider us the potential gain of new players of the series in NWN2, especially extended over the course of NWN2’s almost certainly longer lifespan compared to NWN1. As I said, I don’t share the view that NWN2 is a “poorly made game.” Having tried building in it, I find if anything to be quite the opposite (although I did think it needed to mature for a year before I was ready to switch to it myself).
You may not have good reason to upgrade your video card now, but in a year or two you will — and that’s the timeframe that I’m building for, since it takes six months to a year to build a good module anyway. I really don’t want to lose any existing fans, but I believe (among other things, from my correspondence) that most of them play (or eventually, will play) both games. If you look at some of the other posts in the “General” section of my blog, you’ll see that I’m very involved with the Academy for Modding Excellence:
http://ame.nwvault.ign.com/
The AME supports the active community involved with both games. Neither is as popular as NWN1 was a couple of years ago, but it does bear keeping in mind that it takes a couple of years for builders to take the measure of a new modding environment and to start turning out a lot of good games for it. So I’m optimistic about NWN2’s future, which is why I’m starting to build for it. 🙂
Anyway, have fun playing Sanctum again, and thanks for your interest! I think you’ll find (at least from my own playtests) that a Sorcerer is a particularly good build to try the series with.
– Andarian
Argh.
All right. You sold me. I went out today and bouth a new 256 meg nVidia 7300 GS. If NWN2 won’t run properly on this one, I quit. 🙂
I REALLY want to finish out this series of modules. Can you tell? Don’t disappoint me now.
You have my email I guess. If you ever need a beta tester, I am retired and bored. *hint hint*
Later.
BTW, a correction. In my post yesterday I meant to write “Oblivion” and instead I wrote “Obsidian”. Creeping senility rears its ugly head.
Also, I note a spelling error in my last one. Time for my nap…
Geezer: Thanks, and I’ll keep that in mind! – Andarian
Hello Andarian,
Found myself here while looking for updates on Act 2 of Sanctum 2. My question is: Are you planning to release Act 2 on NWN1 as well? Cos some of us still has terribly old computers. 🙂
Hi Turkish Dryad,
Thanks for your interest! I’m currently not planning on releasing a NWN1 version of Acts II and III, although I won’t rule it out entirely. I have strong personal reasons for wanting to start building in NWN2 that are driving my decision to switch platforms. Ideally I would like to do both, but I’m not sure that will ever be feasible in light of my real-life schedule.
Given the delays I’ve had in getting started, the beginning of Act II probably won’t be available until late in the year, and the full saga probably won’t be finished until the end of 2009. Because of that long development timeframe, as well as the fact that NWN2 has already been out now for a year and a half, I’m hoping that most NWN1 players will have the chance to upgrade in the meantime.
For now, I’ve spent several months upgrading Act I in NWN1 before getting started on Act II in NWN2. I should be uploading the new version tonight. There’s a lot of new content in it, so I hope that you’ll consider re-playing!
Andarian