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| - The Aurora toolset (sometimes called the Aurora toolkit) is included in the Windows version of computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights, allowing players to create their own adventures and share them with others by using a module (a game made in the toolkit), potentially more advanced than the campaign included with the game. It is a combination of a visual tile-based terrain editor, a script editor, a conversation editor, and an object editor. Players using the toolset have spawned many modules that are available to download. The moniker "Aurora" derives from the game engine of Neverwinter Nights, the Aurora Engine.
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| abstract
| - The Aurora toolset (sometimes called the Aurora toolkit) is included in the Windows version of computer role-playing game Neverwinter Nights, allowing players to create their own adventures and share them with others by using a module (a game made in the toolkit), potentially more advanced than the campaign included with the game. It is a combination of a visual tile-based terrain editor, a script editor, a conversation editor, and an object editor. Players using the toolset have spawned many modules that are available to download. The moniker "Aurora" derives from the game engine of Neverwinter Nights, the Aurora Engine. Aside from using the supplied content built into the default game, aspiring game developers can add their own custom content in supported files called "Haks" (or "hakpacks") using third party tools. Creature and object models can be created using modeling software such as 3D Studio Max, and media composers can create their own music files and intro movies with appropriate software, all stored in the Hak file. The customizable nature of the game has inspired entire communities of independent scripters and content creators to develop additional tools, haks, and expansions that build off of the Aurora toolset. There are also many third-party software programs written by independent developers for Neverwinter Nights. One program of note is the NWNX2/APS package, which allows persistent storage of game server information. By interfacing with MySQL technology, builders can script persistence of object inventories, states, and variables. This package is of particular usefulness to persistent worlds, which require massive amounts of data manipulation above the capabilities of the scripting language. Overall, the success and longevity of the Aurora toolset (and by extension, Neverwinter Nights) lies in the hands of a dedicated and talented community of hobbyists, custom content creators, and independent developers. While BioWare continues to support the toolset and the community as this writing (October 2004), the complexity of creating and writing a good module still creates significant barriers to the average gamer, so much so that GameSpy rated Neverwinter Nights as one of the top 25 over-rated games of all time, making the following claim: That's not to say that the game didn't spawn an active community of people who eventually figured it out. After all, this is our list of overrated games -- not complete failures. But the promise of a universal online role-playing game with a human DM remains unfulfilled. Despite the technical learning curve, the Aurora toolset still is a powerful and versatile tool, which makes Neverwinter Nights a unique and long-lived role-playing game. As Greg Kasavin from GameSpot writes in his June 24, 2002 review: "Some games are memorable, but years from now, people won't just remember Neverwinter Nights--they'll also still be playing." However the developers never ported the toolset to the Mac OS X and Linux versions of the game. As a result, neveredit and neverscript have been created as open source versions of the tools for those platforms.
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