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Confessions of a NWN / NWN:EE Junkie (I Ain't Goin to Rehab)

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. I think they talk too much but, meh.

I've been around the forum for a little while, just really settling in a bit still, but I am enjoying the forum and the people I'm meeting here.

I am a NWN Junkie. I'm certain that I am not alone in this; I jones for the toolset when we are parted, I long for the DM console when PCs are on my server and looking too idle, I'm one for carrying a pencil and tablet to jot down my NWN related ideas when they hit me. I've been like this since 2003 and I'm telling you now, I ain't goin to rehab.

It started off innocently enough, I was seeking something to distract me from some grinding pain. I had been meaning to learn C language for literally a decade but had never put together the right amount of spare time plus learning resources to manage that. I had been a D&D gamer and DM since 1978 and been very active in the initial online steps of many RPG publishers back as far as 1986. I saw NWN for what it was, a glorious virtual tabletop for D&D.

I cannot tell you how many hours, nay days, I spent digging about in the toolset, reading, reading, reading everwhere. The distraction of the game and dabbling in the toolset helped me through the post surgery pains. Better, my efforts produced a module I dubbed "Argentum Regio" (bastardized latin for "Land of the Silver King") and soon had the module hosted on a dedicated server.

Pretty much immediately players started wandering in to visit the server. Things were still very fledgling in nature with the server, a few good systems were in place but it was nothing like you find today. It was, to be fair, a good solo effort, and clearly had room to grow and improve. Within a couple weeks, Eriniel visited the server, and like most every visitor I saw on the server, I paused to greet and chat with the new player.

Eriniel, I immediately realized, was a clever lady. We talked a lot that first day, and by the second day (she returned you bet) I was convinced that the players suite of tools was not enough to keep this ladies' intellect very much challenged. I offered her access to t he server as a DM, and she accepted. We spent a couple days just kicking about in the module as DMs, exploring the systems I had managed to make or adapt from systems I had gathered from the old IGN vault. Again I could not help but realize, this was a very clever lady, and I discovered that she is a programmer... just a few credits shy of her Masters degree. *swoon*

I had been self-teaching C language up to that moment, learning what I could, from wherever I could find a good text on the subject. Eriniel laughed with delight when I agreed to look at a thing she was making in the toolset. The next day she sent to me via email the first of countless ERFs; the package she sent was named 'smokebmb'. I added it to the module, then uploaded the module and restarted the server with the new module. Instant delight! The erf contained a 'thrown weapon item' which caused a vfx at the location of impact - belching smoke in a radius and a 'darkness effect' on anyone who entered the smoke. *swoon*

Eriniel agreed to be the Lead Scripter for the project and we've coded and built together ever since we first flung and tested the smokebombs back in 2007. Of great delight to me, she looked at the scripts I had been crafting up to that time and told me I was coding at a level of a graduate student as it was, but I assure you I have learned volumes from working with Eriniel. I am so very lucky to pick her brain as I do. She is a brilliant person with vast education and experience in hardware and software. We still meet several times a week to exchange files, dialog on features, scripting and more. We still update the servers now, both NWN and NWN:EE versions of our module several times a month. The feature list is utterly insane in length, I won't even try to list highlights here but you can read about it if you like via this link

http://argentumregio.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page?&cb=8705

I ain't goin to rehab.

ronaldoStummvonBordwehraarionn

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