NWN Dark Sun 3D Video Game

Our goal for this project is to recreate the world of Dark Sun using NWN (Neverwinter Nights). You can get the complete NWN game on the Beamdog Store or on Steam.


Dark Sun is an original Dungeon & Dragons campaign setting set in the fictional, post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas known as Dark Sun. The product line began with with the original Dark Sun Boxed Set setting which was released by TSR for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1991. The product was released again and updated by Wizards of the Coast for D&D 4th Edition in 2010.



Contact use at:

Website: NWN Dark Sun
On Discord: NWN Dark Sun
My name on it is Tonden9076
Facebook: NWN Dark Sun

About us:

A lot of work went into this project to get it to where it is today. So I will start of by giving you some back ground on how this project got to where it is current state. Dizzitt Gradan and I (Tonden Ockay) are really close friends in real life and have know each other 27+ years. We first started playing PnP AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun in 1992 and still to this day it was some of the funnest PnP times we ever had. We had just about every 2e Dark Sun book/adventure made and read through them all many times. We really loved and enjoyed the Dark Sun Campaign. So in Dec of 2015 the two of us started the discussion with each other about recreating the Dark Sun Campaign we loved so much using NWN.

We continued to talk about thing over the coming months trying to lay out and decide on what we really wanted to accomplish with a NWN Dark Sun world. We took our time until we felt confident on what it was we wanted to do and that we would see this project through. It was at this point in time (in the fall of 2016) that we started reaching out to the NWN community and recruited a very small team of Dark Sun fans. At which point we spent the rest of 2016 searching through years of content on the Vault downloading anything that we felt might be useable for Dark Sun. Then going through all of it picking out what we felt we could use. Then it all got sorted through pulling out what all we wanted to keep and then created base haks for each area.

Races

Items

Placeables

Creatures

Classes

Sky's

2da's



After all that we still needed a really nice desert tileset and after spending a lot of time searching and testing different ones we realized we really needed to create a custom one.

This led to most of 2017 being spent researching/learning to work with all the different custom content files and tools needed to change the NWN Forgotten Realms setting into a full Dark Sun game world. Along with learning Gmax to be able to create fully custom models. Plus there was a lot we didn't know or understand when it came to the limits of the game engine, which we had to learn as well. Due to all of this is a lot of time was spent at this point in the process. However by the end of 2017 we really had started the ground work on a total custom desert city tiles and playable character models.

By the summer of 2018 we had a small collection of some really nice custom models that we felt we could start sharing. This was when we felt that it would be a good time to ramp up recruiting.

Currently our team has been growing a little each week and we are seeing some really great things being create. Even though we have a nice foundation started, we are still in the development process. So a lot of work still needs to be done.

There for we still could use people who know how or are willing to learn how to create custom models and/or scripts. The nice thing is everyone on our team is willing to help others to learn. So don’t be afraid if this sounds like something you would like to do we will help you help us

- Creating Scripts (NWScript)
- Creating Models (Creaturs, Items, Placeables, Tiles, Weapons & Armor)

The remains of Athasian civilization tenuously clings to life in the Tyr Region, an area that takes its name from the
oldest city-state.
The Tyr Tegion boasts dozens of towns and villages, but most Athasians live in one of the seven great city-states. Ancient and despotic sorcererkings rule the Seven Cities, defining life for city-state residents as well as the smaller societies that dwell in the expanses between the urban centers.

The Ringing Mountains, a massive chain of peeaks, and the vast Sea of Silt border the Tyr Region. Beyond them stretch wastelands devoid of settlements and culture.

Hi all

I thought that I would share a screenshot of one of the many things we have been working on for the Dark Sun project and explain on how I came up with it.

When we first started this project I didn’t know how to make a custom model let alone a custom time or tilesets. So we started off with a tilset that someone else had created. However as I learned more about making models and tileset I decided that it might be nice to create our own.

So we talked it over and decided to just do addons for the standard Desert tileset. However the tiles that we have been creating are so different from anything in the standard Desert tileset that if we left it as an override, we would have to rework all the older tiles to try and match them up with what we are creating, which would be even more work for us.

This led us to splitting off from the Desert Tileset override and creating a totally custom tileset for our project. That said I’m still glade we went through everything that we did because we learned a lot.

So for our custom tilset we decided to go with flat tiles instead of uneven tiles

Uneven tiles are tiles that are raised a little higher on the corners, while not raising the middle edges of the tile. This helps to create an uneven ground look to a tileset.
The reason for not going with the uneven ground was because it makes a tileset look really bumpy and since we are creating a desert with blowing sand we felt that the ground would be more level. Which is why we went with flat tiles but we still added in tiles that are raised and/or lowered in the middle of the tiles to give the ground a little uneven look about them in places which can be seen in picture #2.

After deciding on making a custom tileset and going with flat ground I created raised ground terrain along with slopes/hills. As you can see from picture #1 I went with an uneven edge along the top of the hills. The top wasn’t that bad to get it to look the way I wanted, but rather the bottom was a little more of a problem getting it to blend well from the lower ground to where the ground starts to slant up. All in all as you can see in picture number #3 I think it didn’t turn out too bad.

Well I thought instead of just posting a screenshot that I would take the time to give some background on how and why we did what we did.

When I first started out with trying to learn how to create custom content for NWN1, I began with texturing. I would just pick different things in tileset I liked the looks of and retexture something I felt may look a little better to me if I was to change it.

So when Dizzitt first started talking about Dark Sun for NWN he showed me a sky that someone had made for NWN1 to be used for Dark Sun. After looking at it for a while I started to wonder what kind of sky I could make using paint.net 1 (which is the first paint program I started working with beyond paint that comes with windows).

I looked around online and found some sunsets of here on earth and played around with them a while until they started to look like how I felt a Dark Sun sky should look, from all the Dark Sun paintings I had seen over the years. I then took the twin moons from one painting and the sun I used from another painting. However the sun wasn’t complete so I had to do a lot of work to it in order to get the full thing.

Using the different layers in paint.net 1 I was able to have two copies of the sky with the sun and moon in between them, which allowed for me to delete parts of the top layer/first sky to allow for the moon and sun to show through and allowed for the other sky behind them to help blended everything together.

Anyway this was the first thing I really did for the Dark Sun Project over 2 years ago. I have learned so much since then and at some point I will try to see if I can create a better looking sky for the project. However for now this sky is the one we are currently using.

Hmm is this going to be another online game world? If so I'll pass but it looks like you guys put a lot of work, and effort to remake a classic RPG game. So good luck finishing it.

Couchpotato said:

Hmm is this going to be another online game world?

Click to expand...

May I ask what do you mean buy this?
Is it going to be another MMO world? Another server world on NWN server list?

Are you more of a fan off modules you download and play through offline?


Thanks for your time.

Tonden Ockay said:

May I ask what do you mean buy this?
Is it going to be another MMO world? Another server world on NWN server list?

Are you more of a fan off modules you download and play through offline?


Thanks for your time.

Click to expand...

Yes I prefer to download mods off never winter vault and play offline. So no offense meant just not a fan of online server worlds, or online PW's is the correct term.

I can understand that, there is a difference in playing offline and on a server for sure.

That said we have talked about releasing playable modules as well. Again we are still in the early stages and we have been talking about doing both.

But thanks a lot for your insight.

Raised Ground Cliffs

It took far more time then I ever thought that is would creating these raised ground cliffs. I learned so much from then, when it comes to what can and can’t be done. That is part of the nice thing when it comes to creating something from scratch.

Now what was it that I wanted from these cliffs one might ask?





1 - No flat clear cut sharp straight line along the bottom of the cliffs where they meet the ground. I didn’t want it to look as if the cliff had flat bottoms to them being placed on a flat even ground. Instead I wanted it to look more blended and natural as if sand has blown up against the bottom of them.

2 - No straight clear cut lines where the sand ends and the rock begins on top of the cliffs. I wanted it to look more natural. So I created a custom texture that slowly blends the two together.

3 a - No sand at the top of the cliffs along the edge ( so it looks as if the sand get blown of the top next to edges)

3 b - Smoother tiles so that they look as if blowing sand has sanded off their sharp edges over time.

When creating these cliffs they really made me have to think outside the box to get what I wanted and work with in the limits of the game engine. So I have to try a few different ideas before I came up with the current look I now have.

Looks like you're off to a good start. Love that sky!

But I feel pretty much the same way as Couch. I'm a huge fan of SSI's Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (one of my favorite RPGs ever!) and always wished for a new Dark Sun singleplayer CRPG. MMOs / online games just never really appealed to me… But if you guys or a modder using your custom content creates a SP module, then I'd be absolutely stoked to play it...

Can someone move this to the NWN sub-forums?

Is this a paid PW?

Did you look at the rolling hills hak that was integrated into the CEP when you developed this? Any chance these haks will be released on their own?

daveyd said:

Looks like you're off to a good start. Love that sky!

But I feel pretty much the same way as Couch. I'm a huge fan of SSI's Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (one of my favorite RPGs ever!) and always wished for a new Dark Sun singleplayer CRPG. MMOs / online games just never really appealed to me… But if you guys or a modder using your custom content creates a SP module, then I'd be absolutely stoked to play it…

Click to expand...

That is something we have talked about and once we get a server up and running that is something we are going to look at doing because we know not everyone plays online.

Lucky Day said:

Can someone move this to the NWN sub-forums?

Is this a paid PW?

Did you look at the rolling hills hak that was integrated into the CEP when you developed this? Any chance these haks will be released on their own?

Click to expand...

This is a free to play game world being created using NWN. So all you will need is the NWN-EE which is on Steam right now for $15.99 but we don't have out server up and running yet we are still creating it and even though our team has been growing we are still looking for more help.

- We created our own custom hills.
- We have all of our own custom haks and there for we do not use CEP.
- I do not know if we will release the haks on their own yet or not.

Just wanted to say that Dark Sun was my favourite 2E setting and I loved the SSI games. (And read the novels ). That said, I will certainly not play NWN online these days. If you hire a writer and designer and sometime in the future create a single player mod, I would consider paying for it.

Anyway -- good luck!

Same with me, I simply adore the Dark Sun single player games, even recently just replayed them both for the umpteenth times. But I've no interest at all in an online game or anything resembling a mmo, too bad because I'm quite keen on another game delving into the Dark Sun world.

Elwro said:

Just wanted to say that Dark Sun was my favourite 2E setting and I loved the SSI games. (And read the novels ). That said, I will certainly not play NWN online these days. If you hire a writer and designer and sometime in the future create a single player mod, I would consider paying for it.

Anyway -- good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks Elwro

And this isn't going to look like NWN when we are done just keep an eye on us. Plus we are going to recreate all the 2e Flipbook adventures and we are looking into doing the same with the old DOS game's adventures.

In NWN its called a PW - its not Massive Multiplayer because Bioware limited it to about 60 (or 90 these days, I forget. They once claimed it could handle 2000 people but they wiped those forums before initial launch.

Lucky Day said:

In NWN its called a PW - its not Massive Multiplayer because Bioware limited it to about 60 (or 90 these days, I forget. They once claimed it could handle 2000 people but they wiped those forums before initial launch.

Click to expand...

Your right but some server have up over 200 players across 3 servers. There are even server with 1000+ areas per server. So a lot can be done with the game. If we need more then one server we will open another up, however right now we are focused on creating it.