The temperatures are high enough that I don't want to go outside much. With nothing to do, a friend and I decided to work on a design project. We looked around at different designing tools and narrowed our choices to Microsoft's XNA, the NeverWinter Nights Aurora Toolset, Blizzard's Warcraft 3 Editor, and the Unreal Editor.
Each toolset had distinct advantages over the others. At first I was leaning towards the Unreal Editor, mainly because the game that I was interested in working on was built on the Unreal engine. However, Unreal is naturally a First Person Shooter engine. The extra scripting that was required to change the engine from a FPS to a MMORPG was beyond how much time we wished to put into it.
We then pushed to use Microsoft's XNA. We needed to install C#, update our version of Windows, and then download the XNA documentation. We got our computers set up at work, knowing full well that the intellectual property rights would be forfeited there. However, given the necessary compiling, the much faster computers, the conventional meet up place, the air conditioned work place, and the quick Internet connection, we simply couldn't pass up those perks. Plus, there's always free coffee, tea, and sometimes donuts (Yay for Mondays and Fridays)!
The advantages of XNA were that we could change our design down to the code level. Because of this, we could never use the excuse of there being no available tool. If we didn't have a tool, we could program it in. However, that was also a disadvantage. We'd have to make our own toolsets, or take the time to search for them online, then learn how to correctly use other people's toolsets.
Basically, using XNA would give us more work, but more flexibility. It would also focus more on coding than designing, though we could implement a lot more creative design. We decided to try it out, but for whatever reason (omg we be haxorz lol), our work didn't feel safe with us programming our own code at work. There goes the thought of using XNA.
We then installed Warcraft 3 and looked at the editor. The editor was simple to use, but I personally found that it was a bit too simple. We would be able to create some DOTA maps, but that was it.
Coworkers strongly recommended using the Neverwinter Nights Toolset. I had looked into the Aurora engine earlier, but my initial impressions was that it seemed rudimentary. I thought that the graphics lacked any substance. I took another look at it, this time buying Neverwinter Nights 2 and since I had spent about $30, I would give it much more than a quick glance.
Wow am I impressed. The engine is powerful to look fairly impressive, it runs quickly on my old computer, and NWN2 has a very tight knit developer and mod community. I haven't gotten into much scripting yet, as that will be the deal breaker to see if I stick with this toolset or not. Here's a screenshot of the engine and what I made in a couple hours.
NeverWinter Nights 2 Toolset
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