Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Feb. 09, 05)

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Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 forum highlights, collected by NWVault from Obsidian Forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Brian D. Lawson, Programmer

system requirements?

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red 9500 or higher have full support of Shader Model 2.0. Thus, if NWN2 *only* needs SM2.0 - that means a Radeon 9500, 9500Pro, 9600, 9600Pro, 9600XT, 9700, 9700Pro, 9800, 9800SE, 9800Pro, 9800XT - will ALL run the game. And (if I`m not mistaken) *ANY* ATI card which has a model beginning with "X" will run the game just fine. Since they support Shader Model "2.0b". i.e. X300, X600, X700, X800, X850, etc.

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You are correct. But it should also be noted that while some of those cards "technically" meet the the 2.0 requirement...they may not run the game at acceptable speeds. There's certainly a glaring difference in terms of performance between an x800 and a 9500Pro. It should also be noted that as usual, there will be options made available to you guys in terms of what you want and don't want turned on. There will also be a vertex lighting option as well.

Regarding the 3Dc compression. If I recall, I believe that is ATI specific at the moment. At this point in the development of the new graphics engine I've been able to (purposefully) avoid writing any card specific code. Meaning, that while I write all of my code on a machine with a 6800GT, it also runs on my officemate's 9800Pro with no problems. This helps immensely in terms of keeping code complexity to a minimum.

I must say that both ATI and NVidia have done a good job thus far in supporting the prescribed specifications set forth by Microsoft with DirectX 9.0.

Tony Evans, Designer

ORIENTAL STUFF!

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Disclaimer: I have neither the skills, nor the technical expertise to determine whether this is possible....

But, if it is possible, what would BioWare/ Obsidian's policy be on the removal of Graphic elements from Jade Empire and conversion of the same to tne NWN format? Normally any such conversion would be a copyright violation and not permitted. But does the fact that BioWare was involved in both games change this (i.e. allow them to permit it), or does the involvement of different publishers prevent their encouraging this type of conversion (as I would expect)??

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I don't think it will be possible to use Jade Empire assets in NWN2 mods. If such a thing were possible though, I doubt that any copyright violations would be enforced UNLESS a) someone were to try to make money with it, b) the maker(s) of the mod were to lie about the source of the assets, or c) the assets were to be used in such a way that maliciously defamed Atari, Bioware and/or Obsidian.

Michael Chu, Designer

A little humor would not hurt...

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Comedy has its time and place, and expect some of it in NWN2. Hopefully it'll be enough to make our players at least crack a smile, perhaps even on occasion bust a gut. Whose gut is busted and in what manner, I leave to the audience's discretion.

-Ferret

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And it's a good thing, too, because there's no way I could keep all the bugbear jokes bottled up.

Rich Taylor, Programmer

Script Functions that need fixing
I wanted to summarize some notes on what's been posted so far so that you know that I'm reading them and also to make sure I understand the problems clearly.

Note that at this point, fixing this stuff isn't on my schedule. But I'm keeping a list on my computer of the various issues you're bringing up, making a sort of 'TODO' list of things to tackle when I have time.

Here's what I've got so far:
ActionUseSkill() doesn't work with Set Trap
Not sure how hard that'll be to fix.

GetSkillRank()needs a parameter to get the unmodified level
This shouldn't be too hard. Good chance I'll get that fix in.

AdjustReputation() - Requires a perception event before the creature changes out of combat or into it.
This one I'm probably not going to change. The reason that happens is because it's more efficient (CPU-wise) for a creature to see if it needs to attack another creature the first time it sees that other creature, rather than checking to see if it needs to attack a specific creature on every AI Update. That's why when you change its reputation so that it should or should not be hostile, you also need to prompt it to re-evaluate what it's doing (Clear its actions, or force it to attack). I don't see that changing. I can look into updating the docs accordingly though.

ActionCastSpellAtLocation() doesn't work with Meta Magic, or at all with some spells
Okay, something to look into.

SetItemCharges() - Setting item charges to 0 destroys the item.
So the correct behavior is for it to set the charges to 0 but not destroy the item? If that's the case, that should be easy to fix.

AdjustAlignmentOnAll() and AdjustAlignment() - Alignment changes in script affect everyone in the party via a chain reaction of adjustments.
That should be fixable. I'll try to look into it.

GetAheadLocation...GetFacing() return wrong numbers in combat
Okay, I'll keep that in mind.

Strange things with oPlayer parameters when there's 2 players with the same start to their names but 2 different CDKeys
Sounds like some weird stuff there. I'll look into that, as well as the other CD-Key related problems mentioned in other posts.

BootPC() - have it return a false for some things
That shouldn't be a problem.

EventUserDefined() needs to take parameters
I agree. I'll see what can be done.

ExecuteScript() needs to take parameters
I agree. And our scripts already take paremeters now, so it would make sense to add that functionality to ExecuteScript() as well.

ActionCastSpell() has some issues
DecrementRemainingSpellUses() has some issues
CopyObject() has some problems with item properties
floatTextAboveCreature() not working for objects other than player

CopyObject() - GetObjectByTag() does not seem to get the object just created until the script that ocntains copyobject is done
Does CreateObject() have the same problem? Or just CopyObject()?

gplotAppraiseOpenStore() - Sometimes the players can sell at really high prices
I'll keep an eye out for that one.

EffectEthereal() - Creates Sanctuary effect instead if no enemy is nearby.
Weird. I'll try to look into that.

SetCutsceneMode() works weird
We'll probably be redesigning all that stuff anyway, so we'll see what happens.

GetAge() - Time does not affect the age.
What is meant by that actually?

DecrementRemainingSpellUses() - Messes up with metamagic
GetHasSpell() - same problem

When local variables are stored on objects and the character is exported, the variables are lost unless the object is put inside a container.
I'm not 100% sure what the intended behavior is there. I'll have to look into whether the variables are meant to be exported as well or not.

ActionMoveToLocation() should do pathfinding
That should be taken care of. We have a very robust pathfinding system now.

ActionMoveToObject() - Always run, no matter what parameters
Shouldn't be hard to fix, I'll try to look into it.

Anyway, that's roughly what thoughts came to mind while reading over this. Again, these things are going into a list for me to work on, but aren't a high priority at this stage of development. My hope is to be able to spend some time polishing some of these problems off later in the project.