I would pay money for a Eschalon adventure editor...

[crazychop]

...of course, in fairness, maybe after Eschalon 3 is out

[BasiliskWrangler]

crazychop: Our plan is to ship Book III with a full map editor and tools to make your own add-on quests to share with others.

[Randomizer]

That will probably work better than selling it as a stand alone product. Spiderweb Software's Blades of Avernum did so poorly that Jeff Vogel said it almost cost him his company. There is a limited market of people that want to make their own compared with those that just want to play.

[realmzmaster]

I agree with Randomizer. The number of people who want to create an adventure is far different from the number of people who actually have the time and patience to actually do it. Putting the editor with the game or providing it for free enables people to try their hand at creating an adventure. Most may discover the task beyond their means. Not due to lack of creativity or intelligence, but reality has a way of intruding upon our best intentions. A few will actually persereve to the end and produce a finished product.

One of the best example of a editor with the product is the NeverWinter Nights series. A whole community has developed around the editors. I doubt the community would have taken off the way it did if Bioware and Atari had charaged for the editor. By including the editor, people could try it and decide for themselves if they have what it takes to make an adventure. Also people will not feel like they have wasted their money, because they have already gotten their enjoyment and money's worth from the game. The editor is a nice bonus to enhanced the package. People can decide whether they want to take advantage of the bonus.

Jeff Vogel in hindsight may have misjudged the market. Or maybe he look at the sales of Blades of Exile (the forerunner to Blades of Avernum) and thought the same number of sales might be generated. If Blades of Exile did poorly in sales then it was a bad business desicion. I can only speculate.

[macdude22]

It's disappointing that BoA didn't sell well as folks have made some amazing scenarios for it. The editor for BoA was significantly more difficult (but more advanced) than the BoE editor. I've heard this cited as a reason for the poor sales. All I know is you get a lotta game for your buck with BoA. I've never tried my hand at scenario creation but it's great playing the dozens that are out there. I missed the BoE era but I hear there were a TON of great scenarios as well. An editor would be a great way to send off the first (of many) Eschalon trilogy and I look forward to it.

[Dragonlady]

I haven't done a scenario using Spiderweb software, but long ago I did make one for computer game "Azalta". Amiga version and 'author' of the game converted it to PC. I got copies for both machines and sent them to my, at the time, AD&D gamers I dm'd for. It was fun and a lot of hard work!

[waltshooter]

Morrowind and Oblivion both have large modding communities. Though (IMO) it looks like there, players' first attraction to modding was to improve the games - turning them into what players thought they should have been in the first place.

Not as much an issue with Eschalon, IMO.

[Nevermore]

It may cool to have an editor for Book II, but it will works only with Windows or also for Macintosh & Linux?

[Getharn]

crazychop: Our plan is to ship Book III with a full map editor and tools to make your own add-on quests to share with others.

Excellent news! After about half an hour of playing Eschalon, I found myself thinking "wow, this is cool - I wonder if there's an editor for it?". I'd also gladly pay for the ability to create adventures with the same engine.

I spent quite a bit of time working with the Neverwinter Nights toolset, and absolutely loved it. I was involved in a few persistent worlds (multiplayer servers which ran 24/7), especially on the scripting side. In fact, I think it was the power of the NWN scripting language which contributed largely to the longevity of its community. I loved designing a set of spider caves, where the adventurer had to contend with the traps set by different species - being pulled up on to a ledge away from the rest of the party by a cunning bolas spider, or dragged into a pit by a giant trapdoor spider, etc. Without the ability to script, I doubt the game authors would have been able to provide enough flexibility to do that sort of thing, and I think it's little twists like that which make the difference between a good and a great RPG.

Of course, I appreciate that adding generic scripting to a toolset could be really quite tricky, especially if you're trying to limit the author's ability to crash or abuse the game engine. However, it would be truly fantastic if it were possible, given time constraints.

Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself - I haven't even finished Book I yet. Still, if you can't get carried away with wishful thinking on the Internet, where can you?