Icewind Dale II Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Tiamat)

JE Sawyer, Lead Designer

Open Multiclassing: That means 30 levels in total.

Party Size: I've always liked a party of four, but the first few areas can be kind of difficult with that size.

IWD2 and Competition: IWD2 as competition for NWN? That's quite a compliment, considering that NWN has been in development for over three years and has over 40 people working on it.

Feats: If we were to implement feats, they would be selected by the user. I made a list of "easy-to-implement" feats a while back. They did not include many meta-magic feats (big pain), but included many combat feats (power attack, weapon focus, expertise, lingering song, arterial strike, hamstring, dash, death blow, dodge, point blank shot, etc.).

Energy Drain: In IWD2, some undead creatures will have the ability to bestow negative levels in a manner similar to 3E. When a character gains a negative level, he or she suffers a -1 penalty to hit and saving throws, -5 penalty to max hit points. Negative levels stack. The negative levels persist until the character dies or has a restoration spell cast upon him or her.
Unlike 3E, these negative levels do not remove spells, and they will not ever actually drain a character's level.

Choices: Let us pretend for a moment (pretend in the very real hypothetical sense instead of the Dave Gaider "I can't tell you, but I can hint at it" sense).
If we were able to implement "true" 3E multiclassing and a select, but healthy, number of feats (20-30), would you prefer that over the ability to select kits? I honestly don't know how much people would value kits over 3E multiclassing.
Theoretically unlimited class combinations that advance on a per level basis, do not split XP, and do not divide or take the best of any ability set.
I am curious to hear your opinions.

New Monster: That lovely lad is a feyr.

Kevin Osburn, Designer

Multiplayer Game: I just checked with Josh Grant, the Project Supervisor of IWD II, and he said the multiplayer performance is currently the same as the IWD series. We are of course still trying to improve this.

Magic-Users: Having a magic user definitely isn't a requirement, but it will make things easier on you and your party if you had at least one. Plus there are some really good spells to choose from as you level up.

Tom French, Programmer

State Checks: We've added tons of state checks and add more as we see necessary. We seem to have most of the major ones covered, but it's possible we've missed some down the line. For spells we tend to use CheckSpellState which allows us to test far more states than the old State.ids method. Currnetly it has about 75 spell states in there (it's possible there is some overlap, but we wanted pretty much to use one Trigger for most of these tests).

I'm currenlty rewritting the way spell casting system works for the AI creatures in scripts. There isn't a magic Trigger like NotReadyToSpellCast(). What would that include? The way we do it here is we made a script header file with all the spells in it. Then I made a macro that loads that file if it's not loaded and then tests if there is a specail spell condition for using that spell. If so, it will automatically insert the checks needed so that it doesn't do things like HOLD_PERSON on undead, etc. At one time I was thinking about making a generic trigger for this, but I thought in the long run that would get kinda slow since every spell caster would be calling that trigger everytime before it fires a spell. Now with our new system, it will determine if it's needed or not and add the checks where they are necessary. The problem with this is, that right now I"m not sure if we're going to be releasing our script builder or not. It's kind of locked into Visual Source Safe to a very large degree and I'm not sure how long pulling that out would take. We'll see, though. Plus there's tons of things that bother me about it that I don't know if I'd have the time to change/add plus support. But we'll see, though. I'd like to see it out there since it's pretty easy to use and was a lot of work to put together.

Something we haven't really talked about at all is that we added a few new object types that make life easier too. LastMarkedObject & MyTarget. These actually are the exact same things, but they're just different variables. These allow us to "mark an object" we want to do something to later on in the script, but still process tons of stuff in between. We have 2 because LastMarkedObject is somthing that will mainly be used by the script builder and I didn't want to overwrite the scripter's object with my own object and create strange behaviors in scripts. Plus LastMarkedObject is set by some triggers so that you can do things like:
IF
Or(2)
See(NearestEnemy,FALSE)
See([ENEMY],FALSE)
THEN
RESPONSE #100
Attack(LastMarkedObject)
END
This is just an example. You might be wondering why the See trigger has an extra parameter at the end of it now That's the "I See Dead People" flag. It's because we have tons of scripts that try to see named creatures on the map and if that creature was dead, but in line of sight, it would be true and that got to be a huge pain for testing larger lists of creatures. I did though, want to keep it an option in case we wanted someone who looked for dead bodies, etc. This really only works for named creatures so you'll probably always have that set to False.

As for the CastSpellAtDirRange action, that's a cool idea. After the game's complete, if I have time, I'll look into adding little actions like this. For now we just need to get the game done, balanced, and fun. Currently it's generally a good idea to do a Range test on the object before tossing out a fireball.

Whew. I think that's it. Sorry if some of you have questions and I haven't been on to answer. I've been super busy with everything and haven't had time for the boards as much. Thanks to Mr. Kevin for pointing this thread out.

Alright! Back to the code.

AI: The biggest problem with just using Attack is that it never reevaluates the script unless that creature dies. I think the reason AttackRevaluate and AttackOneRound seem to lose attacks is that it's possible the script has to wait for a reevaluation before it starts to attack again. I guess it could happen, but I'd have to look at those actions when I get a chance, but from what I've seen so far it hasn't been a problem.

Goblin Worg Riders: No you cannot attack the goblin separately while he's still on the worg. That would be kinda cool, but we would add a different dynamic to the combat we have in the game. That would be more like a called shot system or something like that. Maybe in future projects we could do stuff like that.

Dave Maldonado, Designer

Game Variation: I think we've managed to vary the pace of the game nicely in IWD2... there's more "bastions of civilization" - friendly (or at least neutral!) areas - more puzzles/non-combat related challenges, more involvement with key NPC's and the plot, and so on than in the original.
We've also striven to add a more variety to the hack sessions (after all, this *is* still an IWD game we're talking about - you'll be getting your hack on quite a bit): more interesting monster tactics and battle set-ups, event-based modifiers (e.g. if you've done A then the battle starts like X, but if you do B the battle starts like Y), environmental modifiers (hey, try fighting these guys - IN A ROOM FULL OF SPINNING BLADES BWAHAHAHA!!!), etc.
Some of the neutral areas even have the ability to switch from allied/quest-giving area to hostile/dungeon-crawl area (or vice-versa) depending upon how the player goes through it.
Should be cool. ^_^

Are the drow going to have their innate abilities? Currently, no.

Will underground races have weapons or get fatigued more in the light? It's certainly *possible,* yes. As you mentioned, though, not in IWD2.

Design Goals: - We're definitely striving to maintain the same level of graphical quality as IWD/HOW/TotL.
- Yes... the team also spent a few weeks (in the words of our illustrious producer Darren von Monahan) "tuning and optimizing the rendering pathways to allow even more critters on the screen at once for epic battles."
- Both creature type and number may change depending on the area/encounter. A band of orcs, for instance, might have upgraded leaders, more orcs, hired ogres, or additional archers tagging along at higher difficulty levels.
- Some bands of monsters may be entirely absent on lower difficulty settings, if that's what you're referring to.
- In addition to dual-wielding there are currently single weapon, two-handed weapon, and weapon & shield fighting styles to become more proficient in.

What is Shenrical? She's not a demon or devil. A hint, though: that's her "natural" head, not just a helmet... some people (usually those with access to older AD&D books) have been able to determine her peculiar nature based on that alone. ^_^