NWN 1 and 2: state of the game

[Jadus]

Cloud computing has been around a while, I remember when SETI came out and it was a pretty cool idea. They've been trying to get distributive rendering to work in similar fashion as well, but I haven't seen anything that will replace a good render farm. It seems to me like the "cloud" has yet to come into it's own. "Cluster capable" describes what what we want exactly.

As far as DMs and staff, baby steps. I'd love your thoughts on the following:

The big problem is content creation. With a toolset like NWN's, you get all the character and enemy models, textures, and animations, all the tilesets, placeables, and particle effects, all the spells and feats and other game rules, etc. etc.. You don't get any of that building from scratch. And that's where the real challenge is, and where most open source projects out there fall short.

So let's dig a little deeper. Working from scratch requires the weekend developer to be a code-monkey/artist/modeler/writer/project lead/publisher/etc, limiting contributors to a relatively small population. Perhaps another piece of the puzzle is to make the development as "plug-and-play" as possible, like CEP contributions. (I'm just full of spoon-fed marketing buzz words, I know, but hear me out. ) We're far more likely to find just a programmer, or a modeler who'd love to create a walk cycle for a pit fiend, or an artist mocking up a concept sketch of a fort, just for fun. If there were a standard format required for a given element (e.g. a Maya binary for a 3d animation, or .obj for models), the developer pool begins to look more like the NWN community, which is not a bad model for success. That is, anyone with 3d software or a copy of GIMP can contribute. See below for details.

Another arrow in the quiver is the tendency of development houses to pick pick up the hobbyists who show promise. While this might seem to be a challenge to sustained contribution, it may be possible to turn it into a JUGGERNAUT of content. Anyone ever heard of the 10 Second Club? (No, it's not a dirty website.) It was a monthly contest for animators to showcase their talents. No cash prize, just some of the best animation around. Any medium could be used to animate to a 10 second sound bite that was changed monthly. There were hundreds of submissions every month, from people who were looking for work to established professionals. A gaming equivalent might have a model contest, or texture, or animation. You might even be able to extend it to UI and mechanics. I happen to know that an industry professional doesn't always get to stretch creatively, which is, I believe, part of the success of OpenSource.

One month's competition might be to create a concept sketch of a naga. Next might be a rigged model for some other creature, or an animation, or a texture for a previous month's winner.

I'm kinda getting excited about it. Anyone else?