It started over a year ago with an impressive pool of talent. Today, the City of Doors Initiative (CODI) is one of the most anticipated projects in the Neverwinter Nights community. The small tidbits we've been shown has amazed each of us by the beauty, ingenuity, and professionalism shown by this dedicated group of artists and programmers. We recently caught up with Papermonk, the project organizer, and asked for an update and some thoughts on what he has learned along the way. Where can I find out more information? http://www.city-of-doors.com/

The last time we spoke with you was April of last year. How has the year progressed for CODI?

Long. :chuckles: But seriously, lots of things have happened since then. Obviously, some projects have taken longer than we originally thought, but it is going very well at the moment. We've become forcibly smaller as we realized a lot of what was actually holding us up was in trying to rely on so many people in a volunteer community, and that affected things a LOT. Since then, we've dropped back to our core group and work has been going at a very nice clip ever since. We are in the final stretch of Foundations being done, and all the new content that is coming with it.

We've also made arrangements with Adam Miller and Stefan Gagne, our community's best module designers, to help them out in our CODI Sponsored Module Initiative. Basically, we're providing them with custom content, early versions of our work, etc. so they can use it. Adam's been a big help, actually creating additional tiles for our interior set. But they'll be releasing projects after Foundations, using some of the content there. We're very excited about these projects and thrilled Adam and Stefan wanted to be involved.

Each new item that you release to the public has been very popular. Can you talk about any upcoming releases the public can expect?

Currently, we have a very nice tool by Saep being polished up that, more or less, eradicates shadow problems on tiles. As most of our tiles have more irregular geometry than usual, this was a huge help. Bat has told me that he did a tile in two minutes that would normally take about an hour. The tool will be out very soon.

In addition, we have more robes and prestige classes that are also getting wrapped up. I was out of commission for a month or so and that put us behind schedule, but I'm on the mend now and things are coming along fine.

The main release is, of course, Foundations. This is CODI's first 'real' module, not to mention the module that brings all our work together in one nice package. It will not be a particularly LONG module, but you can count on it being very complete.

Just to mention a few things that are already in place:

• Well over a 100,000 word count for the dialogs
• Two completely new tilesets
• A nice re-texture of the city interior
• Dozens of new monster and NPC models
• New races
• Over a hundred new placeables
• New music

What state is the project in at the moment?

A very good state. We're getting the tilesets into a nice beta stage soon (they are obviously the beast of this project); the dialogue is more or less complete; the heavy scripting is all finished. Right now, we're just playing touch-up and finish. Once the tilesets are wrapped up, we'll go into a fairly exhaustive QA process and then it'll all be released. I'm very happy with the progress we've made in the last few months.

Do you have any idea when you will be finishing this huge project?

We are in the midst of some QA right now, and primary plot QA will start in about a week. May is still most likely when we'll be done.

What are some of the things that you have changed with the NWN engine for CODI?

We've tried to keep actual engine changes to a minimum. In the earlier days, when we were actually trying to figure out what our limitations actually were, we stayed in a more or less constant state of frustration. Once we had a good idea of those limitations, we decided to work with the tide instead of fight it. So, we're altering very little of the actual engine. I feel we've always tried to focus on making the best possible use of what's available at the time.

That is not to say we leave things to their defaults. We've created an external character creator that allows the use of custom races or appearances, including special abilities, not to mention allowing for multi-hak support and a custom tlk. We've created a very popular A.I. Scripting package. We've spent much time on keeping the learning curve at a minimum for the players, so when they go through our work it isn't going to involve the player trying to relearn the process. That's not to say it won't be a unique experience. I can guarantee it will be.

What have you learned about game development in your time with CODI?

Man, too much for a small article. The realities set in quick. You learn to use your limitations, and not be frustrated by them. You definitely learn to network, keep your team happy, and play advertiser and politician.

I think the most important aspect is just keeping things in a constant state of "scale." You always need to have in mind what anything someone suggests will actually involve. While I'm not much of a scripter or modeler, I've had to learn to be a jack of all trades because I need to know enough about each department to be able to quickly know if something is doable or not, and what will be involved to make it so.

Like I said--a lot. I'm very likely going to do a post-mortem with the rest of the team. We've certainly learned a GREAT deal that will make our next project infinitely easier. But, you learn by doing. This was a first-time attempt for many of us (including myself). I'm shocked at how well it has actually gone as well as thinking, "Man, I can't believe we did that." It's humbling. And we've learned to respect the pros to an incredible degree through this.

What do you see in the future for the NWN's community?

We'll have to see. The bigger projects all approach completion, and these seem to be the ones that will have the most long-lasting effect, due mostly to "mass of content" and "mass of group effort". I think that will drastically change most people's ideas about how these things work. It will also give our community many new tools and things to play with. I'm very optimistic. Our entire team can't wait to start a new project fresh with all of what we learned working on Foundations.