Out of nowhere, I was invited to take part in a weekly online gaming group as they explore the world of Neverwinter Nights 2 (which, it turns out, is an entirely separate game from Neverwinter Nights Platinum). I’d originally bought NWN2 to play with its level editor, but I never really learned it well enough to bring it all together. The levels seemed a lot smaller, for example, than I’d have liked. Smaller than in Neverwinter Nights, even.

I’d never actually played the game because, well, I’d gotten stuck in the tutorial. If I remember right, I couldn’t survive the general brawl event.

When I re=installed it last week, I figured this would be my litmus test: If I could figure out the tutorial and complete all the objectives, I’d be on my way.

This time, I got stuck in the magic tutorial, because, it turns out, I didn’t read the tutorial text in the popup. I’m just so USED to hitting “OK” “DONE” “COMPLETE” “GO AWAY YOU DAMN BOX” on every popup window that the idea that such windows may contain useful information is entirely foreign to me.

So try #3, last night, I actually read all the boxes and figure out the tutorial. The fact that I chose a HUGE half-orc barbarian for a character instead of a willowy elf or a tiny hobbit turned out to help a little in the general brawl, but I was of somewhat less use because it wasn’t entirely clear who the good guys vs the bad guys were, and I was having trouble moving around and having to click to select the baddies was getting tiresome.

As I’m writing this, I understand, finally, that MMOs, with all their time-saving conveniences, have trained me to approach RPG combat in exactly the same way, every time. Little use of the mouse, a camera which acts intelligently, tab-target-attack till it’s done. I was also unready for auto-attack — in EQ2, if you aren’t pressing a button, you’re not doing your job.

I have no idea what it’ll be like to play NWN2 with other people….

Time to reinstall Vent!

Over the weekend, I bought Neverwinter Nights 2. Not because I really want to *play* the game (though I will), but because I want to teach myself how to use the scenario creator to write my own adventures.

I’m not sure NWN2′s editor is what I’m looking for; it doesn’t have that sense of freedom while editing that I’d like. I would prefer to edit things in a sort of “god” mode — quickly sketch the layout of the rooms in an overhead view (as this editor does allow), but then walk around inside the room, placing things so they look good from the player’s perspective.

And a word on that perspective — as an MMO player, what I really want is a camera that just follows what I do, turns with me, and basically disappears — I never want to have to fight the camera to make it see something my character would be able to see. Fights are so frustrating.

I did with the editor what everyone probably does with it first — make a room, then place nice stuff in it. My first room was also filled with monsters, that attacked each other and the Dungeon Master character I’d placed in it. That didn’t really work. My second room (above) just had one monster that I could experiment with — Badger Jones is his name.

It’s going to take a fair amount of practice before I can even START with the real things I want to explore in an MMO setting. I’m still not even sure I shouldn’t be using the Unreal 2 scenario creator, as it looks to be more in sync with the tools used by actual MMO developers.