Newbie Question - How tricky for multiple people to create module?
vreish
Member Posts: 28
My friend and I were looking for a way to hang out and keep in touch over distance, and I was considering proposing we both work on a NWN game module together. I have fond memories of playing NWN and all expansions when I was young, but I've never created any content for it before. So I had two questions. Please forgive the newbishness of them; right now I haven't even purchased the game yet.
1) Would it be feasible, or a pain, for two people to work on a module at once while not being able to be in the same room? Is there a way we could both work on a module simultaneously or would we have to send files back and forth via dropbox or some such? In short, are there any big hurdles there, or things we might find too aggravating after a bit?
2) How rough is the learning curve for building a module? Just to give you an idea of our baseline competence: I have fairy ordinary computer use skills for a 20-something nerd, plus enough HTML and CSS to build basic websites, my friend is a mathematics student and quite computer savvy, but doesn't know much more actual programming than I do.
EDIT: Oh, right, there's a Mac / PC divide here as well, so I'd want to know if there's any compatibility issues there. Thanks.
1) Would it be feasible, or a pain, for two people to work on a module at once while not being able to be in the same room? Is there a way we could both work on a module simultaneously or would we have to send files back and forth via dropbox or some such? In short, are there any big hurdles there, or things we might find too aggravating after a bit?
2) How rough is the learning curve for building a module? Just to give you an idea of our baseline competence: I have fairy ordinary computer use skills for a 20-something nerd, plus enough HTML and CSS to build basic websites, my friend is a mathematics student and quite computer savvy, but doesn't know much more actual programming than I do.
EDIT: Oh, right, there's a Mac / PC divide here as well, so I'd want to know if there's any compatibility issues there. Thanks.
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Comments
1) The teams I have built with usually have a "base mod" that is just an empty module with the haks and sometimes script systems in it so that everyone is on the same page. Each builder creates areas and what not in their local copy of the base module. Once you complete something you export that item and import it into the module that will actually be hosted when you play.
2) This depends mostly on how much of a perfectionist you are and how easy it is for you to do things like level design. The editor itself basically works like Legos. You put building blocks next to each other. The scripting itself isn't terribly complex (there is even a script generator called Lilac's if you just need basic functionality).
About the compatibility divide... I am actually able to run the toolset using Wine on my Mac OS X. I've been able to build a "small" module with 2 NPCs and 1 encounter by simply running the nwntoolset.exe through wine on the command line.
> wine nwntoolset.exe
Seems stable enough... but there appears to be threading issues. If you go through multiple iterations of tests and changes, then wine seems to start sucking up CPU like it were part of a black Friday sale. Shutting wine down and restarting seems not to be a problem; no work lost. In general it's intelligent to save early and save often.
After building the module; I have seen that it is available to play normally (without wine); which strongly implies that the resources I've touched with the toolset, so far, are data-driven. Haven't messed with the scripting yet. Those appear to need to go through a compilation phase before they can be used (could theoretically be system dependent, but depending on how they are implemented, they may not be).
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Also... I will pose this idea: if these resources are purely data-dependent; one would wonder if it would be possible to set up a local git repository on your computer... tell it it track those resources. Then any time those resources change... you can commit them to your local repository. You can share the repository with your friend by setting up a git account for the two of you; set up a private git server directly on github; and anytime you want to share resources just "Commit" your changes to your local repository, then "Push" your changes to the remote repository on github. Then your friend can "Pull" any of your changes and use them as a baseline to work with. You can set it up so that one or both of you have admin privileges on the git remote server.
https://github.com/
Depending on how the resources are lumped together... this idea that I propose could pose some problems.
EE Toolset supports unpacked modules, so you can even create a git repository inside that module folder.