Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

I recently found out that the Neverwinter Vault had closed for good about a month ago. Although I had already said farewell to Neverwinter Nights a couple of years back, I feel as if a part of me had just died. Quite a few of my creative efforts were at the Vault – some 3D models, a couple of scripts, and my piece de resistance , the popular and highly rated Battle of the Builds module. I should also add that I had contributed a short but atmospheric adventure to BouncyRock's Halloween campaign, another popular mod that also garnered high ratings. All those contributions amounted to several months of my life. Now they're gone, all gone. To me, the death of the Vault marks the passing of an era, a golden age of prolific modding that I had never known before or since. It was through modding Neverwinter Nights that I learned how to program combat AI and create 3D models. I had helped and been helped by fellow modders at the official forums. It was a wonderful experience, and I w

I just wanted to give a heads up on a tutorial I wrote on how to rig a bow in 3DS Max . The tutorial isn’t specific to Neverwinter Nights, which is why I wrote it in my other game development blog . I had no luck googling for a tutorial like it, so I decided to write one after having figured out how to do it. Hopefully, other 3D modelers can benefit from this tutorial.

I bid a fond farewell to the game that I’ve stuck with longer than any other, Neverwinter Nights 2 . I’m sorry that “Faithless,” the module that I intended to make and for which I started this blog, will never be completed. Nevertheless, none of my efforts has really gone to waste. I’ve acquired quite a few useful skills from my attempts to mod this game, although I may have already learned all that is worth learning from it. As far as crafting games is concerned, I now feel the urge to travel the indie route. To document the experiences I will undergo as I take this path, I created a new blog – Elyzius’s Game Laboratory . If you’re into game design and production, feel free visit my new blog from time to time and leave comments on any post I make. To all the members of the Neverwinter community with whom I have had the pleasure of exchanging ideas or supporting each other’s efforts, I thank you. Don’t be a stranger now.

Four months ago, I offered to write a tutorial for Casadechrisso on how to convert armor made by Skyrim custom content makers into NWN2 armor. I didn’t actually know how to go about it, but I assumed that it wouldn’t be too difficult for me to figure out. Well, Casadechrisso accepted my offer about two months ago, which is why I’m posting yet another tutorial series on game modding. I haven’t actually completed the conversion as of this time, so this blog post is as much a tutorial as it is a journal of my progress. Conversion Problems Converting model files between video games is not without its problems, especially if the games are very different from each other. For example, it is possible to convert NWN models to NWN2 models, but the results often look crude and blocky. Likewise, converting Skyrim models to NWN2 models may be problematic for two reasons. Firstly, Skyrim armor has way more polygons than are recommended for NWN2, which is still slow compared