Icewind Dale 2 Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

J.E Sawyer, Lead Designer

Bards and martial weapons: Bards do not gain a choice of martial weapons in IWD2; they simply get MW: Large Swords.

Highest possible attributes: The limit is either 30 or 40. I can't remember which one.

State of the build: Icewind Dale II has been hovering around 100-150 bugs for the past week or so. At this point in time, I feel eXtreeeeeemely confident in saying that the game is currently less buggy than Icewind Dale I was on release. However, Icewind Dale was somewhere north of Fallout 2 in bugginess -- it wasn't sparkling clean. The bugs we are currently addressing are all relatively minor. However, all things considered, we will probably keep pounding away at them for several more revs. This may make some people happy, some people angry, but it is probably in the best interests of the developer, publisher, distributor, and consumers. The weavings of game development are often confusing and frustrating for everyone involved -- sorry for the vague-y nature of the update, but it's the best I can give.

Now, for some definite good news. Because Icewind Dale II's designers have minimal involvement with the bug-fixing process at this stage, the designer caravan will be moving on to new projects soon. The sooner this happens, the sooner you can get a peek on what we're working on.

Hoo-ray.

Old naked women in Icewind Dale II: No naked women in IWD2, old or otherwise.

I take pleasure in jolting our players with occasional weird things like that. If you can't take the heat*, stay out of the kitchen**.

* heat = sight of an old naked woman with no eyes.
** kitchen = Gloomfrost caves.

Game being ready to go gold: Not yet. We found some odd bugs today that were going undetected because they only appear in very rare circumstances. E.g.:

A fighter advances to 5th level. He has a bow equipped. He has the Rapid Shot feat activated. He gains enough XP to advance to 6th level. Somehow, the Rapid Shot BAB/total attack bonus calculations make the feat selection screen think he has the +8 BAB required for Improved Critical. Weird little things like that.

Sleep: Sleep is a good spell at low levels. It's not a good spell at high levels. In HoF mode, creatures' HD actually get bumped up to prevent them from being easily slain by certain spells.

Drow daylight penalties and blindness: It's kind of tricky; the penalties applied to drow and duergar for being in bright light aren't concealment penalties (like blindness). Drow and duergar are uncomfortable in bright light. Not only does it skew their vision, but it often makes them feel physically ill. Blindness, on the other hand, gives a 50% chance to miss on any given attack, according to 3E roolz. Now, drow and duergar can get penalties for being in bright light AND be blinded, with cumulative effects. Blind-fighting helps negate the effects of the blindness, not the light sensitivity.

Scott Everts, Technical Designer

More information about the new interface screenshot: I should point out there is one more mundane change that probably no one noticed. The portrait character effects icons are about a quarter smaller. Since we made the portraits smaller, they had to be resized so your portrait wouldn't be completely covered with effects icons later in the game.

For the fun of it I tried to see how many effects I could put on a character at once and topped out at 12. That still left about a quarter of the portrait visible. Though I'd be surprised if anyone ever had more than two rows.

At least we got those health bars in. It was one of those things that we needed to do but kept getting shifted down the list for more important bugs. So I think its a good sign we're getting close.

(hit point bar) White- full health
Green- 3/4 health to under full health
Yellow- 1/2 heath to under 3/4 health
Orange- 1/4 heath to under 1/2 health
Red- under 1/4 health

Hope that makes sense.

Actually this is very close to what Torment had. The only real difference is it changes color as the bar drops. Our first version was identical to Torment's health bar. But then we tried it with the bar changing colors as it dropped and everyone liked it much better. In battle the color change is easier to read then just the bar dropping by itself.

The effects icons are a quarter smaller, not a quarter size. And the original sized version can still be seen on the Record screen. So if something is alittle too small to make out, just check your record screen. All effects are listed there with both icon and description.

Avatars yawning a lot: Your avatars won't keep yawning forever anymore. They now rotate through the fidgets like they are suppose to.