Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Feb. 17, 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.

Jason Keeney, Programmer

Possible ways for Tileset Conversion from NWN to NWN2
The terrain/environment system we have in place for NWN2 is so wildly different that what existed in NWN1 that there is basically zero hope of being able to re-use any kind of tilset or module data. With the amount of effort it would take to make NWN2 backwards compatible in this regard we could be halfway done with NWN3...

Brian D. Lawson, Programmer

Dynamic lights and shader effects

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You speak about shaders? Would this be like a filter on a camera that essentially overwrites all existing colours? If so I could see huge, huge potential for that.

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Shaders do not refer to that. They refer to little micro programs that can be run on a per-vertex or per-pixel basis when rendering geometry. However, they can be programmed to achive a variety of effects.

Is NWN2 not having enough development time?

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Not to be too harsh I did like the game. Its a good game its just not in the league of Kotor 1. The game failings are bugs, dialog and the ending.

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Well, enjoy your stay amongst the ranks of the minority. As for a Christmas rush for NWN2...there won't be. It's slated for a release mid to early 2006...meaning Christmas will be no where in sight.

Dynamic lights and shader effects
The bottom line is this. Forget the old shadowing system as you know/knew it. It's gone...history. Like I said before, hopefully all previous issues will be addressed.

This is one of those things you guys simply may not understand until you finally see some screen shots. It's just going to be that big of a difference.

Ferret Baudoin, Lead Designer

Pen/Paper vs Neverwinter Nights
From personal experience, some CPRGs have told stories that have blown away anything I've ever played in. But hanging out with good friends playing marathon sessions of PnP games with a character you've developed over years helmed by an experienced and entertaining DM - I agree, a CRPG can't match that. But it doesn't stop us from trying.

Frank Kowalkowski, Lead Programmer

Camera angles
The best way to answer this is to say:
The game is being designed with the isometric camera view as a priority. Encounters, levels, artwork will all be prioritized to work best from that angle (zoomed in or out). That said, we don't plan to remove any angles from the original game and the cutscene cameras will be placeable at whatever angle you want. That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Tony Evans, Designer

Is NWN2 not having enough development time?

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California Labour Law is very strict on who can be exempt in the computer industry. This is the basis for the EA Employee lawsuit.

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There are a lot of grey issues here, and I don't think anyone has the answers. I do think that there are many employees in the game industry who are being taken advantage of, and most of them seem to work for large publishers. However, I feel that most people who work for independent development studios, like I do, are there because they want to be. They could choose to work for a larger company and make more money.

I worry that if the labor laws were strictly enforced in the game industry, it would have minimal impact on the bottom line of large companies like EA, but it could very well be a death blow for independent developers, whose numbers are already shrinking.

The game industry is moving towards consolidation, which may eventually make for a more stable industry, which is a good thing... but it may also squelch a lot of the originality of games. As much as I enjoy playing in the sandboxes of established licenses such as Star Wars and D&D, eventually I'm going to hunger for something new, and many other developers and gamers feel the same way.

I presume this is part of the reason that Bioware opted to develop Jade Empire and Dragon Age instead of making the sequels to KotOR and NWN themselves.

Rich Taylor, Programmer

Script Functions that need fixing
The thread that's sticked right now is for script function requests, with an emphasis mostly on new stuff you'd like to be able to do.

In conjunction with that thread, this thread is to post comments about script functions that /already/ exist, but don't seem to work right (or at all), or their behavior is inconsistant with their documentation.

Again, try to focus on existing script functions that have issues of some kind. That way we can take a look at fixing those over time as well.

[ February 18, 2005, 22:00: Message edited by: chevalier ]