RPGWatch - Leonard Bedner Interview

I had the chance to ask a few questions of Leonard Bedner who goes by the name of Challseus in the Neverwinter mod community. So if you have time to spare give a read.

Couchpotato: Can you talk about how Atari handled the whole process for paid mods when you worked at Ossian Studios? I recall Darkness over Daggerford, and Mysteries of Westgate both had problems.

Leonard Bedner: I joined Ossian Studios at the tail end of development for Darkness over Daggerford, so I wasn't privy to many of the details surrounding Atari's abrupt cancellation of Bioware's Premium Module initiative. But the rug was seemingly pulled from under our feet with nothing we could really do about it. At that time, about a year's worth of work had already been done on the game, so it made sense to continue work on it and release it to NWVault for free. Looking back, I believe that helped Ossian, because we gained more fans than we would have if we had sold it via the Premium Module program.

As for the pain that was the development of Mysteries of Westgate, I was there from start to finish, and I remember it quite well. Shortly after DoD was released in late 2006, I took some time to myself to release "Cry The Beloved" a few months later in October. After that, I had a month to myself to recuperate, then I began receiving the design documents for what would become MoW. For me at least, development started in earnest in late November/early December.

Now, throughout 2007, things went pretty well. Then towards the end of the summer, I was CC'd on a bunch of different emails discussing this server side authentication solution Atari wanted. I didn't think much of it, because hey, it was a digital download only game. I got that.

I don't remember the exact date, but around late August/early September, I was done with my main development. I was then tasked with creating the cutscenes in game that would become part of the intro movie that Alan would later put together. From my perspective, the release of the game was imminent. Then, it began…

For whatever reason, excuse after excuse began to come from Atari over what was going on with the server side auth check. One day, it's "We're not sure how we're going to implement it", then, it's, "We've hired a contractor to write the net code, should only be another few weeks", and after a few weeks, it's "We had to bring a more experienced person on board, sorry, going to take longer".

From my perspective, it just seemed like we were a lower priority to them, and since the company was obviously in disarray, no one was thinking about us. I mean, this went on forever. Think about it. I finish development in late 2007, and it doesn't come out until 2009? During that time, not one, but two expansions came out from Obsidian!

More information.

Enjoy my latest interview fellow watchers as I enjoyed dong this one. My next interview should be up in about a week, or two depending on the amount of new articles.

Also don't forget to check out the forum thread about his new Mod.

Link - http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25396

I really enjoyed this one, Couch. Modders don't get as much big press as they should, and I really liked hearing his perspectives.

I can only imagine what a filthy horror the DA:O modkit is to use…

Thanks again for the interview, Couchpotato! It was fun to go down memory lane as I answered the questions

Originally Posted by Challseus
Thanks again for the interview, Couchpotato! It was fun to go down memory lane as I answered the questions

It was no problem Challseus as I enjoyed it myself. As Aubrielle said modders need more attention in the media. Especially when they improve most games.

You mentioned in the other thread your taking a look at the Divinity: Original Sin SDK. Can you share your opinion on it. Is it good a toolset for modders?

Probably to early to ask this question though.

Mysteries of Westgate - I remember this very good game!

Thank you for the Interview!

While I didn't play his mod, I am glad to see interview with modder.Good modders definitively don't get attention they deserve.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
I had the chance to ask a few questions of Leonard Bedner who goes by the name of Challseus in the Neverwinter mod community. So if you have time to spare give a read.
More information.

The unrealistic attribute scales and weak skills system in DA:O pretty much killed off my interest in modding for that game, as it meant I just couldn't develop the type of multi-faceted characters that I wanted. Otherwise I would have been interested in migrating off the NWN2 toolset at some point. To this day, Electron remains the best toolset for the types of party-based 3D CRPG content I like to see.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
It was no problem Challseus as I enjoyed it myself. As Aubrielle said modders need more attention in the media. Especially when they improve most games.

You mentioned in the other thread your taking a look at the Divinity: Original Sin SDK. Can you share your opinion on it. Is it good a toolset for modders?

Probably to early to ask this question though.

Well, I haven't done that much research with the toolset yet. And by that, I mean, I've just sifted through some tutorial videos, looking to see what it was capable of. Last time I was on the forums, I saw some people questioning if they were going to be getting any dev support, which as you can expect, put me off a little

At any rate, if I look at the base game itself (which I still haven't played), if I am able to do what I would want to, I'd say it might be a good fit.

The biggest thing is that I don't think I would have to spend as much time on exterior/interior level design, fixing annoying light rendering bugs, and dealing with absurd amounts of VO.

In essence, it would almost be like going back to my NWN days, where I was able to just knock out a lot of content, and not spending days/months on the aforementioned tasks that just took forever with DAO. I could put my all into putting as much content into the game as possible, which is something that I missed being able to do with this last mod.

Plus, I've had little ideas of creating my own SRPG, in the vein of Fire Emblem/Shining Force/FFT/XCOM, and while the combat system in Divinity isn't the same, I could still learn a lot from it, trying to make it as "Rose of Eternity" as possible!

Err, I just read something on the forums suggesting that the level editor is not tile based like NWN.

That may make things a little harder

Sorry about the the late reply as I was a little busy with other interviews. So here we go thanks for your opinion on the Divinity: Original Sin SDK Challseus.

I have been playing around with the new Shadowrun Return editor. It allows you to build new game adventures, but their not as detailed as the NWN engines.

Link - http://shadowrun-returns.wikispaces.com/Editor+Overview

That was a great interview, Couch! I'm a little late to the party but I'm glad I read it.

Modding is an interesting beast. I often think about trying to learn a modding set myself and getting to work, but it's a lot of work that frankly, I'm not sure if I'm up for.

I haven't played any of these vintage mods but I will definitely try them, whenever I get around to play the NWN games properly! Are these mods still available online? And even more, does anyone still make NWN mods?!?

It seems like there is a whole world of quality NWN mods out there that will take ages to get through. When I'm closer to playing NWN I will give you a shout and have you recommend me some good ones…

Some of the NWN mods are truly outstanding, eclipsing mods for all other engines, in story, NPC, and world design.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
Mysteries of Westgate - I remember this very good game!

Thank you for the Interview!

I played it as well. It was better than NWN2 OC.

Originally Posted by Fluent
It seems like there is a whole world of quality NWN mods out there that will take ages to get through. When I'm closer to playing NWN I will give you a shout and have you recommend me some good ones…

I'll be waiting Fluent as I have many good mods to recommend. Some of them will take you weeks to finish, and others can be completed in a few hours.

As I said before Mods make NWN 1+2 great game.