[MUD-Dev] Persistent worlds in NWN (was: Retention without Addiction?)

[Matthew Dobervich]

Sean Kelly wrote:

> There's been mention of some sort of DB support planned.  I've
> been pushing for just giving users the ability to add new
> functionality via dynamic libraries.  In the long run, BioWare is
> better off let users solve as many of their own problems as
> possible, and just giving them the facilities to do so.  But it
> remains to be seen what will be decided.

In essence the server's save game is it's database.  We don't need
Bioware to do this for us.  There is a large project underway to
create tools for direct database/savegame manipulation.

> This is what attracted me to NWN in the first place.  It's
> basically a graphical MUD toolkit, provided you want your MUD to
> exist in the D&D world :)

These is nothing restricting NWN to a D&D world except the fan
development resources to create models, textures, animations and
tilesets for other settings.  You are tied to the d20 system though.
There is a large d20 Modern project underway.

> IMO games like NWN have the greatest potential to satisfy players.
> They have the revenue-free constraints of a text MUD, but the mass
> appeal of garaphical game.  And of course the attention only a
> rabid fan-base can provide.  And to top it all off the servers can
> be interconnected to form a theoretically limitless game world.
> All for no monthly fee.

Amen!

> The grestest obstacle at this point is the module-centric nature
> of the game.  People commonly associate the ability to do things
> like carry player-specific data between modules as a Persistent
> World issue, but IMO it's almost a requirement for any
> multi-module campaign (there were even bugs in the bundles
> campaign where items disappeared from the player's inventory when
> beginning a new chapter because those items had not been coded
> into both modules).  That NWN doesn't have any support for this
> right now is a major setback (though it is possible to hack things
> by shutting down the server, importing data, and bringing it back
> up).  The other problem centers around how the game handles user
> add-ons (HAK Paks).  Right now, only one add-on is allowed per
> module, resulting in a lot of unnecessary downloading and
> re-combination of add-ons into large single-file collections.  How
> BioWare addresses these issues will likely have a great impact on
> the long-term survival of NWN.

For those that don't know a "hak pak" is a patch.  The problem he's
talking about is that if you want to send your players a patch that
contains a 1kb change, but you've already sent them 80,000,000kbs
worth of patches, you have to send them an 80,000,001kb update.

There is already a powerful fan-based solution for this problem, one
that Bioware is showcasing themselves.

  http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/hakupdater.html

Matthew Dobervich
A screaming NWN fan who's done screaming for awhile.  ;)



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