I can see where everybody is coming from on this topic, so I feel it’s a good idea to try and better clarify what nwic is, to address the above concerns.
Actually, better start with what nwic is not:
our goal is not that of showing off what we can or could do within the limits of our talents and expertise. Nwic is not about us, it’s not a showcase of our potential: it is about providing actually usable custom content for the nwn community, it is about contributing to its renaissance as much as we can. It doesn’t mean that recognition for our work isn’t a good or welcome thing, but the goal we have has some consequences on the approach we chose.
Instead of releasing a smaller amount of assets that we could claim were completely original and hand made, we decided to also include as much quality stuff we could pull from third party sources, since the new technologies added by the Enhanced Edition make it a viable approach, unlike in the past. The conversion requires its time and effort, but it’s still a relatively cheap way to provide more materials than we would be able to provide with a more purist approach. Reinventing the wheel would have its cost, so to speak.
Nwic still includes a large part of assets that are completely original and hand crafted, but those will be revealed more slowly as the work progresses. Our plans include a new and alternative player character appearance system (still part-based, but skinmeshed), a new and alternative items & weapons system, several new tilesets. For many details of these plans we’re waiting for Beamdog to fix some bugs or implement some new necessary features, so the time it’ll take doesn’t depend only on our work.
We believe that although NWN:EE started slow on the CC side of things, with unfriendly workflow and too many issues/limitations, in the last months things have started to significantly improve and the future of this reincarnation of the game is looking bright, with Beamdog taking care of roadblocks and putting an effort into making the production of custom content more rewarding and accessible.
Our starting point was to put together assets for an asoiaf/got-themed gameworld, currently in development. Given how restrictive such a server is in terms of lore and settings, it soon became apparent that at least part of the material we were working on would have a limited use in our world, hence nwic was born as a spin-off project, aimed at providing the result of our work for general use by the community.
With all that said, let’s come to the worrying topic of distribution. We plan to distribute our packages through NWVault, and everybody will be free to use the assets as they like and need, with only one limitation: we’ll explicitly forbid redistribution of our stuff as part of “megapacks” or “community packs”. That aside, anybody can grab, cherry-pick, package and combine any of our stuff for use on a module or server as desired, we don’t mind and even encourage you to do so.
Our releases might actually include some tools to help selecting and merging the assets into your existing packages.
In other words, whenever you want to grab or update any nwic assets, come to the source, which is maintained and includes the latest version of every asset.
Sorry if I missed it, but on the other hand, if it was missable, it should be posted once more!
(I gather they wanted to put a first showcase together before Croquette took time for mojitos and sand castles, hehe.)
