Rose of Eternity - Family & Country [Story Based Mod] [RELEASED!]
 

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Since the beginning of time, the Rose Of Eternity has been in the mystical Garden Of Roses, tended to by the Keeper Of The Rose. It is said that the Keeper Of The Rose has the most beautiful singing voice, rivaled by none. She however does not sing for joy, but rather out of pain, for she is a prisoner in these gardens, forbidden to ever leave. Humanity is to blame for her misfortune, for as long as there is war and strife, she will be doomed to stay in the Garden Of Roses, and sing…

As she grows older, as petals fall off of the Rose Of Eternity, she continues to sing, in the hopes that mankind will change, but, they do not. As she begins to become an old woman, people pure of heart are born into the world. These people have the opportunity to change things, but alas, they make the wrong decisions, and the Keeper Of The Rose is left to her prison… And her singing…

As the age ends, she is born anew into the world again, hoping that mankind will change their ways. She has been going through this cycle for 4000 years. Will she ever be freed from her prison? In this life cycle, 6 unknowingly people will have the opportunity to make her wish come true.

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Rose of Eternity - Family & Country takes place 20 years after the events of my last two NWN games, Rose of Eternity - The Coming and Rose of Eternity - Cry The Beloved. Accolades include:

• 54,000+ cumulative downloads
• Featured in PC Gamer as a must play module of 2006
• 2006 Independent Games Festival award for best NWN module
• NWVault 2005 Module of the Year Silver Award
• NWVault Hall of Fame
• Rose of Eternity - The Coming is the 51st highest rated NWN module of all time
• Rose of Eternity - Cry The Beloved is the 2nd highest rated NWN module of all time

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Features

• 7-8 hours of gameplay
• Cast of 25 fully voiced characters
• 47 pieces of custom music
• 28 custom abilities
• 10 custom items
• 5 custom skills
• Last Resorts, which are abilities that can be activated when the health of a creature drops below a specific %
• Unison Abilities, which allow you to perform combination abilities with other members in your party
• Bonds of Battle, a system where the longer two party members fight alongside each other, the greater the bond grows, which unlocks special abilities between the two
• Bonus XP, a system which rewards playing who do that little extra "something" in combat

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The game can be downloaded from Nexus Mods. You can also following this game at:

• My Youtube Channel
• My Facebook Page
• My Daily Journal

In the meantime, please enjoy this animated intro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6Wbq8OCZJ0

UPDATE #1

Here is a new trailer, titled, Rose of Eternity - Family & Country: The Aran Dynasty.

It gives the player a little background on the events of this specific game, as well as the first shots of the game in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZMnYi___U

UPDATE #2

Introduction to Arik Lannen, leader of the Dantiran Boundary Wardens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33sA2R-RgXw

Introduction to Johnum Lyonars, Brother in the Ministry of Justice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpOrY4Vwoac

Introduction to Elric Sigerthur, mage from Stramadon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3tXDP4GVnM

UPDATE #3

This very moment, I am in the process of setting up the download page for the game over at The Nexus. I have a question out to one of the mods, because the uploaded doesn't seem to like DAZip files, even though that's what the toolset generates. So we'll see… In the meantime…

Introduction to Ranon of the Aran Dynasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKSbkGPn58I

Development Diary #1 (Combat Systems)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxI_KBXUpsE

UPDATE #4

The game is now available at Nexus Mods!

Thank you for the good news Challseus.:party:
Your mods were among some the best ones on the old IGN vault. I was sad when you never made a third one, but then I read about this mod a few years back.

Thanks, Couchpotato!

Yes, one of my biggest regrets was never finishing off the NWN series… I was just burnt out, and when I returned to modding, there was this nice new shiny thing called Dragon Age and its glorious toolset :)

However, people who have played my NWN games will definitely feel right at home in this game. I tried to design it to be friendly to new comers (hence the 20 year gap), while at the same time, giving the older NWN players some well deserved fan service.

I noticed many modders didn't adopt the Dragon Age toolset. I always thought it would reignite the mod creators to make new modules but, it never happened.

I was always wondering why. Do you have an opinion on the matter?

As for me I still prefer the Aurora, and the Electron engine.:)

The general consensus is that it just became too time consuming to do many of the things that were pretty easy in NWN.

One example is level design. NWN used the tileset based level creation system, while Dragon Age used the terrain based painting system.

Back in the day, I could knock out an interior/exterior in a few hours, no problems. It was so easy to pick the "Forest Tileset", place the standard assets around, add some props from CEP to make things look unique, and voila, you're done. With Dragon Age, it would take days/weeks, because everything had to be done from scratch. And that's just the level itself…

…You also had to start taking into considering things like light map rendering, shadow rendering, stuff that wasn't even a concern with NWN. Of course, there were some license issues with using the light map renderer that Bioware used for the official game, so we got stuck with one that Bioware developed internally, which just wasn't as good, and had all sorts of bugs. And god forbid you have a slow rig, because the actual process of rendering light maps and exporting a level could literally take hours, depending on the size of the level, and the number of light objects you had in it!

Then, there's the VO… Oh god, the VO… There's an expectation that all games will be voiced, and that takes A LOT of time to do. You have to find the talent, have them record the lines, do re-takes when necessary, and spend a lot of time integrating it into the game. And you better get it right the first time, because if you find that you need to change some dialog months later, that requires another email to the actor, and let's be honest, we're all doing this for free, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response.

Actually thinking about having the need to record VO constrains the amount of extra content you create, and clearly makes it harder to change things up towards the tail end of development. At least that was my experience. If I didn't have every character voiced in the game, I might have been able to squeeze another quest or 2 into the game…

I guess the final nail in the coffin was lack of multiplayer? I'm not sure how true that is, but I remember reading a lot of posts from NWN2 modders saying they didn't want to mod for an engine that didn't allow them to create PW's.

Oh, sorry, the real nail in the coffin was the lack of support from Bioware. Things started out pretty smooth in late 2009, as they invited a bunch of modders to their HQ in Edmonton. A year or so later, it was clear that a directive came from "somewhere" that stated that the toolset was no longer a priority. Updates dried up, and then developers just stopped posting on the forums.

Sad state of affairs, really, but I toughed it out as much as possible, and here I am :) I've long accepted the fact that I won't get anywhere near the amount of DL's as I would have gotten during the NWN heyday, but I'm pretty proud of what I accomplished, so I'll try to spread the word as much as possible!

Thanks for your opinion Challseus. :handshake:

I always thought Bioware never supported the toolset enough, and they even moved away from it with Dragon Age 2. Modding for that game wasn't easy.

It also looks look like Dragon Age: Inquisition wont have one either, but then again I excepted that due to frostbite being the engine this time.

So good luck and I hope your Mod gets a good reception.

PS: Do you still have the links to your in-game music?. I remember your website doesn't host the songs for the NWN mods anymore last time I visited.

I also made a news-bit on the front-page to spread the word.

Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=28409

I love the unfinished NWN series "Rose of Eternity" and I'll try the new game!

Thanks for the info Couch & Challseus!

Ah, Rose of Eternity… I've always wanted to play this mod except by the time I got around to it, it was so hard to get it working due to patch/CEP issues. I will definitely try this one out! Just a question though - I think for NWN mods, you have to play as a male, any chance this time we can play as female as well?

@Couchpotato

Yeah, definitely seems like Bioware is done with toolsets. To be fair, I'd love to get a crack at one for Dragon Age: Inquisition, even without support :) But as you say, small chance of that happening due to it being Frostbite.

With regards to the in-game music, I don't have that list anymore, but I can definitely re-create. Hell, I have all the songs in an iTunes playlist, and I'm literally listening to it right now!

Finally, thanks for adding something to the front page. Very much appreciated. I'll take any and all support I can get :)

@HiddenX

I hope you enjoy it!

@purpleblob

Sorry you couldn't get a chance to play my NWN modules. I actually have all the files needed to play the game sitting on my hard drive, including the 1.69 patches for the OC/Sou/HotU, as well as CEP 1.01. I plan on doing a play through of those games shortly after the release of this one, mostly to record video and possibly put together a "here's what you missed in my first 2 games video".

If the installation actually works, I'll upload them to my adrive remote storage site, and make them available for folks that would like to play them. I'm actually pretty sure CEP 1.10 -> CEP 1.53 should work, but I'm not entirely positive. I know they made huge changes in CEP 2.0 and on, which sort of broke the compatibility with the older versions…

As for the gender, sorry, but the character is a male this time as well :( However, like I did with the first NWN game, there are supposed to be multiple story branches that focus on different characters, and the next game is supposed to have a female lead, which will be a first for me. It obviously all depends on how well this game does, but know that the idea is there.

Anyway, thanks for your interest.

That would be great, thank you very much! :) I don't really like the feeling of missing out on story/lore etc, but at the moment, I just don't have time nor energy to fire up NWN again (patching and installing CEP pak etc is really draining for me).

Ah well, I just prefer playing female, cause you know, it's easier for me to roleplay (playing opposite gender feels so weird for me). But I guess it may be easy for you to write the story/dialogues in male perspective :P

Looking forward to it, definitely let us know when it's released!

UPDATE #1

Here is a new trailer, titled, Rose of Eternity - Family & Country: The Aran Dynasty.

It gives the player a little background on the events of this specific game, as well as the first shots of the game in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZMnYi___U

The trailer was astounding Challseus, and It looks like your mod will have voice overs as well. That must of been a pain to organize, and add into your game.

I also like that your mod gives closure to the first two , and I always guessed poor Aramus lost his rebellion as the game began in a dungeon.

Will any of the old cast make a new appearance?

I remember the NWN2 toolset having a similar disadvantage compared to the NWN one. It was overall far more powerful, and with a far better D&D implementation than its NWN counterpart, but it takes a lot of time to create a decent sized mod.

Anyway, it's nice to a proper DA mod, as there aren't enough of those. Best of luck to you!

Yes, VO is going to be the death of me, lol. When I make my post-mortem, I'm pretty sure 90% of it will be me complaining about VO :)

As for tying the games together, yes, I try to do as much of that as possible, while at the same time, not giving away all the details.

And yes, some old cast members will definitely be making appearances in this game, so keep a look out!

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head. You know the saying, "You never know what you had until you've lost it?". Well, that's the NWN engine :)

Anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence!

UPDATE #2

Introduction to Arik Lannen, leader of the Dantiran Boundary Wardens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33sA2R-RgXw

Introduction to Johnum Lyonars, Brother in the Ministry of Justice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpOrY4Vwoac

Introduction to Elric Sigerthur, mage from Stramadon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3tXDP4GVnM

I can imagine thats why I always chose to use just text in my small mods I created for personal use over the years. I never did release any of them though.
Good idea as new players, and some old ones might need a history lesson. I may just replay the other mods before your latest release.
I can't wait to see what happened to them.:thumbsup:

Also I just read you journal updates today and I see your already starting the sequel. Don't burn yourself out as some of the other modders have done over the years.

Before I finish I didn't know you worked on Mysteries of Westgate. It's a shame Atari/Bioware pulled the plug on any future paid mods.:disappointed:

Wait, did I say I was starting on a sequel? That must be a typo! I plan on taking some much needed time to, you know, enjoy life again :) Seriously, I'm burnt out right now, so I plan on not doing much of anything, except catching up on a bunch of games I've missed over the years (Dragon's Dogma, Kingdoms of Amalur, Dark Souls, Witcher Series, other things I'm probably forgetting). But yes, you're feeling on that is correct.

Quite the sad story, yes. Actually, it started *before* MoW. There was Darkness over Daggerford, that was supposed to be a premium module, that had been worked on for more than a year, that was cancelled. We decided to release it for free, as I'm sure you're aware.

MoW was much, much worse. We sat in limbo on that project for so, so long. I believe I finished development on everything I had to do at the end of the summer of 2007, and Atari didn't get around to putting in the DRM (which was hacked 5 minutes after release) until some time in 2009.

So on the one hand, I guess I thank Atari for giving us NWN. On the other hand, I hate them >:(

EDIT

Almost forgot. There was the cancelled Witcher: Scars of Betrayal project that we were working on, until CDPRojekt RED pulled the plug.

Then there was another NWN2 expansion we were working on that got cancelled as well, because the setting we were going to have it in turned out to be the same setting that NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer was set in.

Actually, I wasn't a part of the NWN2 expansion, because at that point, we had split the team into 2: some on the Witcher project, some on the NWN2 one.

Anyway, as you can imagine, after being burned so many times by publishers and the like, Ossian Studios are pretty much independent now, so their lives/fate doesn't have to be in the hands of some suit half way around the world that doesn't care…

Very impressive video, especially the voice overs and music! I thought MoW was great fun. Still have Darkness over Daggerfield to play though.

Darkness over Daggerford was one of the better mods for NWN so thanks for making that wonderful mod, and your group released it for free.:thumbsup:

I don't thank Atari for how they handled the whole process though. I remember reading what happened behind the scenes in a few interviews on our site.

1. http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article…11&ref=0&id=27
2. http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article…45&ref=0&id=27

I didn't forget about Witcher: Scars of Betrayal, and I remember some other paid mods in the work for the original Witcher also. I seem to recall a demo was released.:thinking:

That's another side of modding that never took off as I hoped.:disappointed:

At least a few talented modders released some mods for the game. The engine was just a modified version of the Aurora engine.

Also I believe the DRM for Mysteries of Westgate. is gone on the GOG release.

PS: Tell Ossian Studios to make a new PC RPG, or port the iOS game The Shadow Sun.;)

Wow, thanks for the links. These really bring me back, will have to check them out tomorrow morning.

Yeah, The Witcher "Adventure Editor" never really took off alright… I seem to remember not liking it that much when I did use it, and that's saying a lot. Won't lie… If there is a toolset for The Witcher 3, I may take a peak. That game is gorgeous :)

As for The Shadow Sun… Well, we're currently porting it to Android, and have a whole bunch of people with various handsets testing. Because, as you can imagine, with so many handsets out there, it will be hard to make it work for every one, versus the iPhone, where we only had to support a small set. Who knows when that will finish…

With regards to a PC game, who knows. Would be nice to do something totally new, however.

UPDATE 3

This very moment, I am in the process of setting up the download page for the game over at The Nexus. I have a question out to one of the mods, because the uploaded doesn't seem to like DAZip files, even though that's what the toolset generates. So we'll see… In the meantime…

Introduction to Ranon of the Aran Dynasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKSbkGPn58I

Development Diary #1 (Combat Systems)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxI_KBXUpsE

We also have a few articles about Mysteries of Westgate if your interested.

Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article…0&ref=0&id=379
Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article…=72&ref=0&id=9
I was was just Joking around a little bit as I tried the IPad version already.:)

I also covered the game on our site.

Link - http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/news?ref=0&id=618

One of our ex-editors txa1265 also reviewed it on another site.

Link- http://geardiary.com/2013/12/19/ossi…rience-to-ios/

Do you guys have any plans for the PC? I know it was mentioned in a few times in a couple of interviews? I remember one reason was due to funding.
Thanks for the update Challseus I will download the mod after it's uploaded, and give you my opinion. I'll stop with the wall of text now so good night to anyone reading this.

I haven't heard anything official from Alan as of yet. I think they want to finish off the Android first, let that get as many sales as possible, and go from there. To be honest, it's hard out there in the mobile world, at least from the little bit of it I've experienced since it released.

No one wants to pay for anything :(

On the contrary, I'm loving this trip down memory lane. Now I have even more things to read, since it looks like I'll have just a little more free time, for at least the next few days, because…

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UPDATE #4

The game is now available at Nexus Mods!

Just look at some of the new Indie games on the PC they get pirated over a million times, and sell for a quarter of that.

Probably why always online is looking to be the next requirement of all games.:thinking:

Then we have the the new wave of very cheap sales that make you very little money in return at the end of the day. The magic word is Bundle, and cheap Steam Sales.
Glad to hear that as I thought I might be bothering you to much.:)

One more post from me today, and that's it. :biggrin:

I just started your Mod Challseus, and I like what I'm playing so far. I'll try to give some more feedback in a few days after I finish it at least twice.

Okay, sounds good!

*Goes off to read about Mysteries of Westgate and think about what could have been…*

Yes, ads are generally more likely to create revenue than actually selling software or games, especially on Android. I'm currently working on a little mobile app (I'm a programmer), but I'm not expecting to make a single dollar. It's more of an exercise in mobile technology than an attempt to make money.

Of course, both mods and mobile games can be used as future references, so even if it doesn't make you rich it can still be worth it.

Here is a short post of positives and negatives from playing the mod twice.

Positives

+ Good Level Design.
+ Well thought out NPCs.
+ Good use of choice & consequences.
+ Battle Bond system brings a new change to DA.

Negatives

- Voice Overs sometimes don't fit.
- To many Cut-scenes felt like playing a novel instead of a game.
- The campaign's game length was short.

Now don't let my negatives get you down as I still enjoyed your mod, and can't wait for the next installment. Just remember to take a break once in a while.:thumbsup:

Ha. If this was 10 years ago, I may have gotten pissed at the negatives, and been like, "This guys doesn't know what he's talking about!!!!!!!!!". ARRRG!! >:O

I'm older, more mature, and ironically, I love the negatives. Helps me learn as a game designer.

At any rate, thanks for the feedback… Haven't gotten a lot, actually. That's the one thing I miss at the old NWVault. People seemed to take pride in writing reviews full of pros/cons over there back in the day. Today, I'm starved for feedback, lol.

With regards to the cutscenes, I totally hear you. Every time I was playing through the game, there was this one sequence of cutscenes/conversations where I was like, "Shit, this is going way too long". I think it was something like:

<SPOILERS>
- post invasion convo with Claudian
- Errani arrives cutscene
- post invasion Ministry of Justice meeting
- post invasion convo with Rayben/Vale/Errani
- Ministry Tribunal
- Vale's convo with the family
- Errani's rallying speech
- Boundary Warden safe house
- Arrival in Shinkara Forest
</SPOILERS>

But at the same time, I wanted to get as much story/lore in there as possible. I guess I over did it, but just gives me something to work on next time.

Again, thanks for the feedback!

Agree 100%. I got my current job (also a programmer) based off of my previous experience at a prior job, as well as because of my NWN mods and work with Ossian Studios.

I started playing the mod. I just reached the 2nd Act so it seems I still have a ways to go. Overall I'm enjoying it. The story is definitely much improved over what I remember of the NWN mods and I haven't been subjected to any fetch quests or other tedious quests that try my patience / insult my intelligence. I think most of my criticisms would be more my issues with the DA: O engine rather than the mod itself. Only issues I ran into was some of the area transitions are a bit buggy / wonky. I am tending to agree with Couch about there being a bit too many cutscenes, but at least they are pretty well done and relevant for the plot. I definitely recommend it to anyone who has DA: O.

My, you already finished the mod Couch? O_O

I will download it tonight or tomorrow and start playing too! :)

That I did twice in two days actually.:cool:

Though I had a lot of free time last weekend, and results may vary for each player.

With regards to the area transitions, there is a thread about it in the forums on the DL page. Turns out, I developed this all on my laptop, using the WASD keys. For whatever reason, I ended up creating transitions/doors/etc. that could only be reached using those keys, instead of the mouse. In an upcoming patch, I will try to rectify that.

Anyway, glad you are enjoying it thus far :)

I thought I would share the good news with everyone. Challseus has agreed to do a new interview with our site. I will hopefully have it posted in the next two weeks.

So thank you once again Challseus.:handshake:

If you do another mod in I would recommend using the Divinity: Original Sin SDK for it and with that you won't need to do VO's.

Interesting you bring that up. I've been taking a hard look at that engine for a while, and especially this thread: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthre…=508382&page=2

I have been following the mod scene for Divinity: Original Sin also. I see a few mods that have the potential to be good, but it's still to early to tell.

Also I think you would enjoy these NWN 2 mods.

1. http://neverwintervault.org/project/…s-lake-sorrows
2. http://neverwintervault.org/project/…imed-gods-saga
3. http://neverwintervault.org/project/…rk-waters-full
4. http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter2/mods/18/?
5. http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter2/mods/52/?
6. http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter2/mods/30/?
7. http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter2/mods/840/?

You mentioned you have free time now, and they may even give you a few ideas. Just a warning each of those mods takes 20-40 hrs to complete.

Each of those mods could also make a good paid expansion.:)