I’ve just come across TR’s post linking together some very old tutorials (mainly Bioware ) and there looks to be some excellent stuff there.
However, I haven’t heard most of it discussed here so a quick heads up on its use (or lack of) would be appreciated. I’m guessing you’ve all assimilated these things and moved on to greater challenges but for a newbie like myself it was like one of those chests I have to put near my starting point, crammed full of higher level treasure, so I can manage to play through the mod I’m building without dying !
Actually, not so much for myself but I’m looking at helping in a Game Design class ( 15/16 yr olds) using the Toolset and anything that makes it easier at the start is probably good !
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The Plot Wizard I’ve had a read through but not worked through the tutorial. Do people use it? Is it as good and simple as it sounds ? Is it something you might start with until you are more proficient in scripting, conversations etc. ?
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The NWN Content Installer. It seems to suggest that if it is used by the creator of materials that it will self extract into the correct files when unzipped. Is that correct? I was under the impression that we could unzip the file but then would have to manually put each item into the correct folder. Have I got this wrong?
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Do folks use the Starting Movie tutorial and does it still work? Never heard of BIK files but I’ve checked and I can get a converter for my Mac that would allow mp4 or .mov files to be changed into BIK so its something I’d have a look at if it’s easy enough.
Thanks again to TR ( and many others !) , not just for advice but for the amount of time they have put into this place. I’m just coming across it but I’ve never seen so much ( good) support for software.
Full disclosure here - I’m also buttering them up as I have a couple of very elementary building questions I’m still struggling with, which I’ll put in another post so not to confuse the answers. 
Briefly,
Plot Wizard sucks.
NIT is the latest tool for automated installation.
I hear .bik movies are easy to make, but EE only supports a new format.
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Actually the plot wizard is OK up to a point. To be honest I wouldn’t use it. I used it once and realised it was easier to manage the plot(s) by hand.
Again with the content installer. I personally don’t use it (just never got around to it) and it’s not as though moving files into the correct directories/folders is that difficult especially as I wrote instructions in the readme file. As I understand it NIT is a download manager for players and not a packager for builders.
Hint always bundle your files with a readme. For sp modules this should at a minimum contain any class restrictions and the PC level needed to play the module. By bundle I mean put your project in an archive. Otherwise browsers will try to open files with certain extensions (.mod & .erf specifically).
As to starting movies. You can still use that tutorial. However if you are on EE you will need to convert your mp4 files to the webm format with a file extension of wbm.
As you mentioned the Ancient Bioware Tutorials you might be interested in the blog posts I did last year specifically about the fern mine tutorial. As they currently stand, only the first three lessons are covered. I am waiting on Beamdog to fix an issue with the conversation editor that only affects some of us. Links to Blog 1, Blog 2 and Blog 3 (covers doors).
There are a number of other module building tutorials you can try, that were written by community members that are included in the lexicon. Also there are a number of links to tutorials in this thread.
Finally, you may find that you have a scripting query that other people have had before. That is where the scripting FAQ comes in. If not, you can always ask in these forums.
TR
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Actually, you can use NIT to package Mods for download by users, but not for Steam packages.
Do the players need NIT as well? Or are these stand alone packages?
TR
Brief it may be but to the point. Proleric. Much appreciated. As you say it’s easy enough to match the file type with the folder. Also, thanks for the tip about EE and a new format. I think Tarot has identified it below as wbm.
Plot Wizard I may have a quick look at if it handles very simple conversations/ plots well as I’ll be doing this with some youngsters about 15 so will want to close down as much as I can at the start.
I’m just starting to get my head round the Conversation editor after a slow start. Cant help feeling there must be an easier way to handle conversations. I was involved in using NWN in schools for game design way back and at that time a Scottish University did a research project leading to designing a conversation editor which took the strain out of conversations. Think it was called Adventure Author but it was based on NWN2 and seems to have been discontinued. Link below.
[https://judyrobertson.typepad.com/adventure_author/about-adventure-author.html]
Tarot, just looked at those blogs. Excellent. Half of your tips were things I could have done with knowing when I started the tutorial. Loving Blog 3 on doors 