Customer Reviews

Neverwinter Nights 2 World Editor Guide

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I was disappointed greatly at the time I opened this book. HUGE gaps between strings, LOTS of empty space on pages - all this is for masking the simple fact: this "200 pages book" contents could be easily printed on 80 pages or even less. And, more, these pages are filled with useless "interviews" (who wants to read an interview INSTEAD of explanations?!) and other empty words.

The book is supposed to teach us how to make modules for NWN 2. But it doesn't. See, the chapter about scripts consists of 4 pages - is it REALLY enough for such a great theme? (These pages, I mentioned it already, are less than 2 pages...).

This book is better than nothing. A bit. Because SOME useful information it provides. And that's all good that could be said about it.

Despite it's sharp looking cover (the best thing about this book), this is an utterly useless book, containing maybe 3 to 4 hours of basic info that you can get off of the net, in better form and with better screenshots, in the same time. The rest of the book is fluff. BradyGames has never, imho, done a good job with strategy guides and such, but this one takes the cream when it comes to shovelware.

Do yourself a favor - dont buy it. Get the Dont Panic guide off the net, and a lot of useful tutorials scattered around on the vault and on the official forums. You'll be much happier than if you waste time and money with this trash.

Bought this hoping to get a head start on creating my own NWN2 campaign .. and was sadly not impressed. about 1/3 of the content is pointless, useless examples .. just talking about doing something without ever showing the steps necessary to accomplish it. It DOES help you get through the first few hours of using the GUI .. but then leaves you hanging.

For example, there was a tiny paragraph concerning the overland map and how to implement it .. it doesnt mention that you have to first create a campaign, add your module as the default module the campaign .. then create your overland map .. and THEN hack up your own scripts to open the map and finally, to react to the TRAVEL button once the map is displayed. I probly spent 10-15 hours on google before I found enough examples to piece together a working version of the scripts. NONE of the examples worked as is.

Another example; The book makes mention of how easy it is to setup a store, and that it could be setup to activated any item to open a store .. however, after wasting a night attempting to get this to work .. I added a conversation to a NPC and had the store running in 5 minutes.

So, all-in-all its not completely worthless to get your started .. but you will quickly reach a point where you want to do alot more .. and the book will be of little to no help.

NOTE: Cant believe they wasted a dozen + pages, just on how some of the developers liked to layout thier screen. talk about a waste of space...

I can almost guarantee you will be disappointed with this book. I am returning mine today. It has very little content with sparse double- or triple-spaced paragraphs of text and lots of superfluous white space to inflate the page count. The screen captures are a joke. Like the book will describe something in the World Editor and then they throw 4 or more illegible full-screen captures crammed onto a single page (HERE's where they could have used the white space) so you can't even make out what's on the screen and nothing is highlighted to show you what they're talking about. I feel ripped-off and I got mine at a 30% discount.

All I can say, is AVOID THIS BOOK. It is nothing like the NWN1 builder's manual. Devoid of all useful content and filled with nothing but worthless interviews, you can quickly tell the authors never used the toolset themselves. So much has changed that even the handful of suggestions they provide are meaningless. Please I beg of you all! Check out the forums, vault and fansites for assistance and leave this dreadful guide out of it!

This book teaches you nothing about how to use the interface. It is just a guide to start a world. It simply suggests things you need to do to build your own world but tells you nothing. Skip this book unless you don't have any clue whatsoever about the world you want to make, and don't have any idea where to start.

The NWN2 toolset is a powerful, yet complicated piece of software. If you work through this book page by page, you will not even open the editor until p. 38! The book is filled with story advise, boiling down to "don't do too much this, or too much of that...and be sure to plan ahead!" and other obvious advice. Where is the documentation on the scripting events? Where is the how to do stuff section? This leaves us all a very steep learning curve with no official help. Don't waist your money, go online for community help!

not sure why they would waste their time putting this guide together..all the screen shots are to small to read