Focus Testing for NWN Plot Wizard

By Jay Watamaniuk Jan 14, 2003

Don Moar (Lead Programmer - Tools) was walking up the hallway the other day with a determined look on his face. I immediately stood very still in case he could only track his prey by movement.

"Jay, I have this thing myself, Neil and Sydney are working and we would like to get some people to test it. It's called the Plot Wizard and we think it would be a great help to our Neverwinter Nights community."

Dammit! He spotted me; maybe if I played dead. I flopped to the ground.

"Jay? Did you hear me? I was wondering if there are some people we can get to help us test this thing out."

I began to panic. Would nothing stop this creature of the damned? My mind began to race. Escape! Escape!

"Anyway, let me know if you can think of something…and maybe you should see a doctor, you look a little pale."

I watched as the merciless predator stride away down the long white hall. I stood up cautiously and nodded at my retreating foe.

"We shall meet again my nemesis…oh yes, we shall meet again," I whispered under my breath.

So BioWare invited two groups of testers in from our Neverwinter Nights community who lived in our fair city of Edmonton to sit down and take the first crack at our new Plot Wizard and review the huge tutorial that Don, Neil and Sydney had prepared to help use this very powerful new tool. The basic idea behind the Plot Wizard is to remove the need to use scripting, or coding, in the creation of a plot for your adventure. This is huge boon for Neverwinter fans out there who have wanted to create their own adventures, but have been stymied by the scripting component.

The first evening we had the group of 5 folks take a crack at the first 2 sections of the planned 5-part tutorial for the Plot Wizard. If they had any questions they were free to ask Don and his gang about anything and were encouraged to make as many notes as they could on what they thought. The first tutorial was to show how quick someone could jump in and have a working plot in seconds just by picking a template from the pre-made plot list. The second tutorial was far more elaborate and took the module-maker through the process to create plots. After about an hour, we headed out to dinner and to talk about their initial reaction to this new feature of the toolset. Over a fine meal of pasta, our toolset team listened intently to everyone's first impressions and suggested changes that could be made. After the last bit of tomato sauce was devoured, it was back to work for the completion of the first two tutorials. The evening ended with a wrap-up discussion with the programmers about more of the general issues with the Plot Wizard.

Taking the advice and concerns raised from the initial group of testers resulted in a week of feverish work for the programmers. The changes needed a final look, and so, another group of 5 community members came in and tackled the new and improved Plot Wizard and tutorial to see what they thought (including Plot-Wizard veteran Beerfish, in for a second visit). It was another productive evening of questions, input and discussion for the toolset programmers. We had prepared some questions for them to take a look at before getting started and encouraged even more discussion and comments about what they saw when working with the new toolset feature. This time around the tutorial spanned five sections and would explain how to change and embellish a plot already created to tailor it to your needs (Beerfish smacked the tutorials down with ease, I'm happy to say).

I thought it was a really nice way to bring some of the Neverwinter Nights community into BioWare to have direct input into a game that they have invested so much time and effort into since its release.

The suggestions and comments from our volunteers were invaluable to the programming team to make the Plot Wizard as accessible and easy to use as possible.

BioWare thanks all the volunteers for their hard work and input. Special thanks to our local Neverwinter Nights forum moderators who were able to help us out: Beerfish and Urthpaw.

Please note any use of electricity on focus testers, especially that Greg guy, was for very valid scientific reasons that are too complex to get into here <ahem>.