In probably the longest and closest debate that we have yet had in the Academy, we finally came to a conclusion on the Custom Content Awards for 2008.

For NWN1: the awards will stay as per previous years, namely, a Best Tileset Award, and a Best Custom Content Award.

For NWN2: All 3D content such as tilesets, placeables and creatures, are now encompassed in the new Best 3D Content Award. All other custom content remains in the Best Custom Content Award.

Happy New Year!

Every year we take a look at the awards that we are giving out to make sure they are up to date, and relevant to players and builders to help them find the very best. This year is no exception, and we already have some changes for this year’s cycle, and some more to come.

Best Adventure Module has been renamed Best Dramatic Module. It’s basically the same award, but the name better captures the intent of the award.

There will be no Best PnP conversion award this year.

As with last year, Best Sound/Music will be judged across both NWN1 and NWN2 together.

Further news to come: We are still debating what to do with the Best Tileset award for NWN2, the Best Multiplayer Module awards and the Best [insert language] Module Award. For both the Multiplayer award and the International module awards, it is a question of staffing, so if you are interested in making sure there is a Best Multiplayer award or a Best Fench or Spanish Module award (for example), please step forward to help out!

Well, apparently we have all had a break, but before you know it, it is that time of the year again: the Golden Dragon award cycle is beginning!

Once again, we make the normal call to all authors to ensure they have their work published on the Vault by the end of December if they wish to be considered. If you have work already on the Vault, but believe it is unfinished and should not be considered, you must notify AME by the end of January.

This year we welcome some new members to the AME team, and say farewell to some old ones who have moved on to other things. So it’s goodbye for now, and a big thank you to sixesthrice and Carlo One, who will definitely be missed for their incredible dedication and valuable inputs. On the other hand we welcome for this cycle ActorofVeil, Hellfire, liso, Dragonstar and Eat2surf (and maybe a couple more TBC). We look forward to working with you!

So if you can’t wait for the cycle to begin, why not catch up on the words of some of last year’s winners. Here are links to the last few interviews:

savant – Best Action (NWN1)
Robinson Workshop – Best Tileset (NWN2)
Andarian – Best Roleplaying Module (NWN1)
Marc Price – Veteran Author (NWN1)
Grinning Fool – Community Contribution (NWN2)
Zach Holbrook – Debut Author (NWN2)

…for those of you who celebrate it!

We’re looking forward to seeing you in the New Year as the new award cycle gets under way!

Good news! We have another great interview with savant, winner of the Best Action Module award for NWN1. It’s not the first time savant has picked up a Golden Dragon – we ask him how it feels, whether that’s it for the Aielund Saga, and what’s next…

Read on…

As we start to gear up for the 2008 awards, we are revisiting some of our structures and awards. As part of our efforts to ensure we support both games equally well, it gives me great pleasure to announce two team leaders, one for each game.

For Neverwinternights 1: Tybae
For Neverwinternights 2: Sirchet

Both Tybae and Sirchet have been dedicated members of the AME team for some time, and this recognises their passion and leaderhsip.

At the same time we are also recruiting for the new season. Are you interested?

Today we have an interview with Andarian, winner of the Best Roleplaying Golden Dragon award for NWN1 with Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker – Act I. Andarian was pipped to the post in the previous year – we find out how it feels to grab the award this time around, and whether knowing what goes on behind the scenes makes it sweeter… or not.

Check it out!

More news! We have a new interview up with Robinson Workshop. Their tileset Deep Halls, picked up the NWN2 Golden Dragon award for Best Tileset. We talk about what inspired them and what else they have in the works…

Click Here

In other news, Lord of Worms has released the final version of his Seasonal Forext v10, the winner of the NWN1 Best Tileset award.

In the morning of the second day we got a chance to check out the studio a little. There were some parts that were off limits, due to work on a not-so-top-secret MMORG, but we still got to get a feel for the working environment. Despite Jay’s protestations that it was just like any other office, there were some differences from regular offices I’ve been to (or even other studios) – a lot of personal touches, and clearly a lot of pride. The walls were dotted with concept art, and the visitor’s area also included various memorabilia from Bioware’s games – including some carved plaques that Beerfish had made. They also had a special event running – ‘shoot a designer day’. This involved shooting as many people as possible with toy guns, though the definition of designer seemed to be pretty loose, as we were fair game. It was hard to tell how much work actually gets done though – there’s clearly not enough crunch time in Bioware! We never heard who won the game, so I’m going to assume it was me, though we were weaponless and had to rely on hand grenade style.

Reservoir Designers (from left): Jay Watamaniuk, Daemonblackrazor, Adam Miller, Alazander, Stratovarius

So back to the toolset. There are a number of editors in the toolset I haven’t really talked about, but the one I’ll finish with is the dialogue editor. This editor follows the familiar tree-like structure that those who have used NWN1 or NWN2 will be familiar with. Building in responses is as simple as clicking a button and typing the text. It has also evolved from both NWN1 and NWN2’s editors: no longer do you need to attach a script for every condition or plot update you want to do, and nor is the basic functionality dependant on parameters. Instead, you can set plot variables in a special section of the dialogue editor, and switch them on and off in the dialogue branches themselves. At least for all but the most complex plots, this will make setting up and tracking quests very simple (editing the journal can also be done here). It takes something of a change of mindset to get used to it, but once you do, the simplicity of it is easy to appreciate (it was quite interesting watching the response of each builder as they ‘got’ it). More complex quests may require some 2da fiddling, but that’s something that I didn’t really get to grips with.

Overall though, Dragon Age looks like it should continue Bioware’s streak of great RPG games. For me the visit to Edmonton dispelled quite a few worries I had both with the game and with the toolset. For the game, I was pleased to see Bioware not straying to far (at least gameplay-wise) from the winning formula of Baldur’s Gate. I read a recent review where they complained about lack of innovation, but this is one of those cases where what’s been retained is the good stuff. Don’t get me wrong though, there’s plenty of new stuff to see too. I also saw a toolset I could get pretty confortable using, and that’s important because I want to see a strong community behind Dragon Age: Origins. This is a game I want to get passionate about.

To get your own view of the Dragon Age Toolset, why not head over to the Dragon Age site and check out the videos?

If you found this interesting or helpful, why not drop by with your comments?

Well, there were no bikini clad fans to be found anywhere, but there was a toolset to look at, and let’s face it, that’s what we really came for. Jay Watamaniuk (Community Guru) and Fernando Melo (Producer Guru) organised a number of ‘lessons’ for us where we went through some of the editors available in the toolset. My first thought was that it looked a lot like the Neverwinter Nights 1 toolset, though with the distinct advantage of being able to open several assets at once. It was easy to pull open an area and to start playing around in it. The controls for moving about in the toolset are much like those of the NWN2 toolset (less than intuitive for me, but you soon get used to it). Dropping in objects and creatures is just like you will have encountered before in the other toolsets, though now there are some easy to use extra buttons that allow you to control pitch, rotation and height. In addition, there is a multi-level undo that seems to be present in all of the editors (this was our first ‘aaah’ moment as we remembered the pain of the NWN2 undo).

Dressing and modifying your characters is also easy. There is a mini viewer when you are adding equipment so you will know what the armour looks like, and like nearly everything in the toolset, what you see in the toolset is what you will see in the game. But perhaps the neatest feature of customising characters is the head morphing tool. This neat utility allows you to mess around with your character’s features (something like what you did when setting your character for Oblivion for example, but with a lot more choice). As a result, with the different racial and gender based starting models, you can create literally thousands of unique heads. Even better, the system is semi-intelligent, in that if you add a beard, by default it will switch off some of the other incompatible options. There are dozens of tabs on the head morphing tool that allow fine control (set out logically for you to work from left to right), but you can make fairly unique heads just by making a few adjustments – or indeed by randomising.

The event itself with the Bioware folks at the back from left: Dryan Derkson, Georg Zoeller, Ferret Baudoin (sitting), Fernando Melo, some guy I didn’t meet (!) and Scott Meadows
In the second row (from left): fluffy, Alazander, Hugie. Back row: B G P Hughes, Adam Miller, some other studio folks (!), Daemonblackrazor, Beerfish. Picture courtesy of Hugie.

The script editor feels very comfortable for a fan of the NWN1 script editor, though with some additional functionality that significantly improves it. The layout and the scripting language are similar but not identical to that used in NWN. One useful functionality that you can see from the screenshot is a panel at the bottom with some help-like details of what a command does when you have it selected. So far, there haven’t been a lot of details released on the script editor, so I’ll leave it there. In the next part, I’ll also take a brief look at the dialogue editor and wrap up with a trip round the studio to discover what actually goes on inside…