Adventure Author

Special downloadable player character

When you play Neverwinter Nights 2, you are asked to select from a variety of player characters, or to create your own. Abigail Shepard is a special character we have designed to work smoothly with kids' games: she is better at fighting than the other characters, and has the ability to use most of the items you can put in the game. (Designers are often frustrated to discover that players can't actually use most of the special items they have put in for them, due to various complexities of the game rules.)

To download Abigail Shepard, right-click and select Save Link As at this link: download abigailshepard.bic

Place the file in the folder called Localvault, which is inside the main Neverwinter Nights 2 folder. This can usually be found at the following location...

C:\Program Files\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\Localvault

...but it depends where you installed the game. When you run the game, and are asked to pick a character, click Select Character, and Abigail Shepard should be one of the options available to you.

Neverwinter Nights 2 retailing at £7.99 with free shipping

For anybody interested in picking up copies of Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) relatively cheaply, Play.com are offering it for £7.99 with free delivery within Europe. That offer expires this weekend (Sunday 20th July 2008), but you can also get it at Amazon.co.uk for £7.98 plus shipping.

Adventure Author will require Neverwinter Nights 2 to run. However, Fridge Magnets and Comment Cards both run on their own, and don't require a high-powered machine.

(Buyers should also bear in mind that although you can now buy Neverwinter Nights 2 for Mac, it does not come with the game-making toolset that Adventure Author is based on!)

Fridge Magnets released

UPDATE: There was a mistake in our original post about Fridge Magnets - please note that in order to run this software, you must install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - version 3.0 just won't cut it! There are instructions for installing this (free) software further down the page.

The first release of our Fridge Magnets application is now available.

Fridge Magnets is a program for capturing ideas. It runs in the system tray to enable you to quickly capture ideas at any time.

Each idea you capture will be saved as a fridge magnet in your collection. You can arrange the magnets on magnet boards, and save interesting configurations for later viewing.

Fridge Magnets are specifically intended to help children capture ideas about the video games they're creating (with Adventure Author and Neverwinter Nights 2 software). However, we hope they will be useful for capturing ideas on any topic.

Download Fridge Magnets (v0.1)

Fridge Magnets is designed to run on Windows operating systems.

IMPORTANT: In order to use Fridge Magnets, you must first install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. Download it here. (It's free.)

Feedback and bug reports

The Fridge Magnets application is a work in progress, and any feedback is welcome. You can leave a comment on our blog, or email us at adventure.author@googlemail.com.

If you discover any bugs, let us know at adventure.author.bugs@googlemail.com, and we'll try and patch things up.

Spore Creature Creator

Over at the site for the upcoming video game Spore, you can download a free trial version of their Creature Creator software and try creating some new life. You can stretch and squish the creatures and give them any variety of limbs and traits - then, when the (commercial) game comes out, you can see how well equipped your creatures are to survive.

Could software like this have something to teach kids in the classroom? What do you think?

Thanks to our colleague Sean Hammond for this one.

Comment Cards

The first release of our Comment Cards application is now available.

Comment Cards is a program for evaluating games made in Adventure Author. A user will fill out the questions on a Comment Card in order to assess their game. Answers come in three forms:

• written answers
• giving a star rating - between 1 star (least) and 5 stars (most)
• supporting evidence - attaching a screenshot (or something else) which supports your written answer

Teachers can design their own Comment Cards, adding their own headings and questions, and choosing how they want the children to answer (from the list above). They can design a single Comment Card and use it to target multiple ability levels, by selectively showing and hiding particular questions depending on the audience.

Once a Comment Card has been filled in, pupils, teachers and anyone else can add their own comments to constructively discuss the answers given.

Download Comment Cards (v0.2)

Comment Cards is designed to run on Windows operating systems.

IMPORTANT: In order to use Comment Cards, you must first install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 or higher. If you are running Windows Vista, you already have this installed. If not, you can download it here. (It's free.)

(Note: the link above takes you to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, rather than 3.0, since this is the latest version at the time of writing. Either version is fine.)

Feedback and bug reports

The Comment Cards application is a work in progress, and any feedback is welcome. You can leave a comment on our blog, or email us at adventure.author@googlemail.com.

If you discover any bugs, let us know at adventure.author.bugs@googlemail.com, and we'll try and patch things up.

 

Testing, testing . . .

Monday was testing day at Campie PS - peer-testing of the children's games, and a chance for us to road test the third strand of the Adventure Author software we've been developing, as well as some poor souls trying to complete National Tests in the midst of it all! The children were anxious (some felt their games still needed work), but excited, too - they were really looking forward to seeing each other's games, and to getting feedback on their own.

Thanks Adventure Author!

I had a great time visiting the Adventure Author team and Campie Primary School. Thanks everyone for making me so welcome! I was very impressed with the latest developments in the Adventure Author tool. The conversation writer is fantastic (and a huge improvement on the built-in conversation tool in NWN2). It makes it very intuitive and straightforward for young people to create interactive conversations, which is no mean feat! The fridge magnet tool is a great new way for game designers to record and organise their ideas. It is lovely to look at, but the full power of it really only came to my attention when I watched the P7 children in Miss Collins’ class coming up with idea after idea when using it. I saw children who had told me minutes before that they had no ideas for their games adding thoughts about great plot lines, interesting characters and exciting quests. It’s clearly an excellent tool for supporting children in organising and expanding on the ideas they have in an informal, non-threatening and enjoyable way. I hope to be able to come back and see how the class (who took to game creation like ducks to water) are progressing towards the end of the project.

Fridge magnets "lucky dip" feature - can you help?

As well as the children creating their own ideas within the fridge magnets, we would like to build in a "lucky dip" feature that would offer a randomly generated suggestion that might help inspire the creative process. Can you help? We would love to receive suggestions for generic game or story ideas under any of the magnet headings - plot, character, setting, quests, plot items, etc. Please use the comment facility below to add your ideas and help us make the fridge magnet tool even more creatively inspiring. Thank you!

Phun

A physics based game authoring tool

Supporting ideas in Adventure Author

Screen shot of new fridge magnets interface which Keiron is working on.