Neverwinter Nights Forum News (Jul. 31, 05)

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Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Trying to find Platinum DVD in Canada
EB games still has it on the shelves, at least last time I went there. Some local Future Shops likely have it as well.

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[... some obvious things ...]neither Bioware or Atari see NWN 1 as a profit source.[... lots more 'obvious' things]

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Wrong. NWN is still continuing to sell a decent rate for a 3 year old game - the fact that it's still on the shelves at many retailers alone gives that away, obviously.Any changes done to add and remove features in the recent patches are to improve product performance and compatibility, support premium modules or the community, they do not imply any change in terms of copyright.It is quite bold to go on our boards and tell us that we don't care about NWN anymore and that it doesn't sell anymore because we chose to make this change. In fact, I think this post could lead to some not so nice conclusions about your mentality concerning copyright and it highlights why publishers insist on things like SecuRom in the first place. Having read your post, it seems obvious why publishers assume that games MUST be released with SecuRom or equivalent checks. Apparently they are neccessary to ensure that people actually do recognize them as commercial product. You won't mind if I bookmark your post to use it as future reference in those threads where people ask about the why's of copy protection? About the open source request - Considering third party rights (i.e. you can't use the rules engine since you don't have the license for the rules anyway (no OGL doesn't apply here)) or the fact that the Aurora engine is a commercial product licensed by several other companies for upcoming games, it is not very likely that there will be an open source version of NWN anytime soon. But asking is free, so maybe retrying the question in a couple of years won't hurt

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Quite bold to say that the agreement between Bioware and WoTC prevents a third party from modifying the rules engine and that bioware should actively discourage such endeavors without first asking a Bioware lawyer that has actually read said agreement.

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This has been discussed on the boards before, many many times. Please do a search for 'ogl' and 'd20' and you will find many of the relevant discussions.

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Before someone says it is quite obvious, do I have to remind you the dozens of scripts, haks and whatnot available at the Neverwinter Vault that modifies (or rather, twist and bend) the NWN rules engine? AFAIK the only hak that has received a cease and desist letter was one using material (as in tilesets) from kotor.

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a) That is the hak *you* know of and that particular hak was taken down because it used unlicensed content from another game.b) A hak by a private person in the community and a game engine released by a game company are about as simple as apples to oranges, different in almost every aspect.

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Lets entertains for a moment the notion that Bioware made feasible to totally modify the game engine from within NWscript and that the people behind the Witcher and NWN 2 said "to hell with an improved graphic engine, Bioware has in the public domain all we need to write our projects". It becomes quite obvius that the EULA prohibits anyone from selling code, tilesets and whatnot written with the aurora engine, so any company interested in selling a game using said engine would have to buy the rights first. So unless I am missing something, how would bioware's potential to sell the aurora engine to other game companies would be compromised?

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You are missing the small parts of the game code that are called 'trade secrets' for a reason. Spilling them open to commercial competition is not good for business, considering how much time and money BioWare spends on R&D.

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But it would hurt, here and now NWN 1 has a vibrant community pushing the engine to its very limit, in two years chances are everybody will have already lost interest or moved on with their lives.

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Perhaps. Perhaps not. There's still a community for the old FR:UA out there, not as many people as in the beginning, but that's a game's life cycle. There's going to be other games in the future such as NWN2 and Dragon Age as well. Until then, NWN seems to do just fine, especially since there are some HUGE things in planning for it

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I suppose (but if I am wrong feel free to pound me vigorously with some heavy and awkward object) that Geoge as a programmer feels a bit threatened by the open source thingy, after all, if the community removes bugs and enhances the game engine, what is he supposed to do then?

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I'm not a programmer, I'm a designer. As such my code (such as many HotU core systems) is already in the open and the community has been fixing many bugs and enhancing features for a long time on it now. So don't tell me that I feel threatened by open source. I never said that I would be opposed to Open Sourcing NWN, I just said it's not likely to happen anytime soon. Sorry if you read a personal aversion against open source in that, that's not the case.

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Look beyond, there are quite a lot of things to add to such a complicated game as NWN, if three years ago the programmers team would have been rid of the tedious bug-squating and rule implementing, how much the game engine could have been improved! Maybe we would have a z-axis or some other feature I can't even imagine.Anyway I do realize I can only ask, whether the powers that be think this is a good idea or think that my sanity is questinable is beyond me.

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This is true for *any* commercial software product out there and sure, it would be nice, but for several reasons already stated, it is just not very likely to happen.

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The whole "you must have a CD in the drive to play the game" business is really annoying.

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I'm an avid gamer, tell me about it. Currently I'm juggling wildly between Silent Hunter III, BF2 and Rome: TW disks and it annoys me to no end. I think we had this discussion many times here already, it's not that BioWare is a huge fan of these things - it's that they are required by publishers and that this is non negotiable. All I wanted to point out is that the reason for going open source in the original post was not a good reason at all and that it actually gives ammo to those who insist on certain measures that make everyone's life harder.Maybe there will be better solutions in the future, i.e. the game lets you chose between online authentification or disk in drive, I would certainly be up for that, but anyhow, this discussion should delve into the old 'boo cd protection' thing again, because then we would have to close it. Let's stay on topic for now.

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In fact, I think this post could lead to some not so nice conclusions about your mentality concerning copyright and it highlights why publishers insist on things like SecuRom in the first place. Having read your post, it seems obvious why publishers assume that games MUST be released with SecuRom or equivalent checks. Apparently they are neccessary to ensure that people actually do recognize them as commercial product. You won't mind if I bookmark your post to use it as future reference in those threads where people ask about the why's of copy protection?

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Aside from the obvious gratuitous rudeness of this response ( notwithstanding) I see nothing wrong with the tone, or subject matter of the original post. It might be that his request is denied, but there is nothing in the original post that reflects adversely on the original poster's "mentality concerning copyright." On the other hand, insofar as Georg Zoeller is speaking on behalf of bioware, either expressly or impliedly, his response speaks volumes about Bioware's views of open source, its customers, and the NWN creative community.

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I agree that taking this point out of the post and ripping it apart ("could lead") wasn't very nice, but I think it drives the point across quite nicely. The line of argumentation "So you removed the copy protection, this means you don't care about the game anymore, might as well give the code away for free" is a dangerous one as it gives support to those who feel that you need to put a certain amount of locks on something in order to get it recognized as commercial property at all. If you want to make a case for Open Source, by god, stay away from the 'you just removed the copy protection' line, it's poisoned.

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Quote: Besides, GPLing the code (a reasonable and prevalent means of "open sourcing" something) doesn't affect the copyright of the original holder, so the response is not only rude, but reflects a singlular ignorance of the original poster's subject.

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Ignorance, eh? I'm aware that copyright is not affected by putting things under GPL, but as said above the question is not copyright, it's a) we can't give away things that don't belong to us (i.e. because we use it under license). GPL means 'we grant the public the license to use the code, retaining our copyright'. We can't grant a license to things we have licensed ourselves. There is a reason why there are no GPL D&D games out there. And OGL doesn't apply here because it doesn't cover electronic media. Think about it, certain companies paid a whole lot of $$$ to make an D&D MMORPG. Let's assume we released the NWN code and people would convert it into a true free MMORPG (you know it would happen, eventually), suddenly in direct competition with said company. Do you think they would take it lightly? b) NWN is not a BioWare IP, it belongs to other parties. Thus we can't just go and say 'NWN now belongs to the public', go for it.c) The engine might contain methods and approaches developed by us that we might not be ready to share with everyone on a commercial marketplace. We are, after all, a corporation, not a charity.d) The rules engine for NWN is really what the original poster was asking for. Removing the rules engine is certainly possible, but that would prevent people from making any significant code change (i.e. adding a z-axis is nice, but if you can't address it from within the rules, you won't have fun with it - i.e. no fly spell, no flying creatures, etc).Again, I'm not opposed to open source and I clearly said that there is merit to ask the question again in a couple of years, but at the moment it is not likely that you will see NWN going GPL.Finally, I think our stance toward the community is well known, no need to elaborate.

More: Hey. Please don't make this a thread over the merits behind copy protections, we have been through this a thousand times already and I think people here know our position on the topic already. Guess that's another reason why mentioning the word copy protection in any post is a bad idea, it just dooms the thread into off topic.

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oh, ok, but could you still explain the other stuff for me please?

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The original poster asked if it would be possible to release some of NWNs source code to the public under an open source http://www.opensource.org/ license.

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d) The rules engine for NWN is really what the original poster was asking for. Removing the rules engine is certainly possible, but that would prevent people from making any significant code change (i.e. adding a z-axis is nice, but if you can't address it from within the rules, you won't have fun with it - i.e. no fly spell, no flying creatures, etc).

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BINGO!!!I know the rule engine by itself would be "limited" in a sense, but I really think it would be a "glass half-full". I understand WotC would need to approve, but I also undestand two things:1) Part of the essence of D&D from day 1 is about modyfing the rules by the end users, WotC has even released a book full of experimental rules. Granting the ability to the community to fully modify/update the rules would be in the spirit of the game.2) Asking is free. The WCS is they simply say "No", but they might say "maybe, lets talk about it".edit: I undestand the trade secrets part, as such it is fully documented in case a member of Bioware leaves the company (otherwise it is only a personal code trick), as such it would be easy to exclude such code from release to the community.

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There are more parties than just WotC involved in electronic D&D products these days - Atari / WotC / Hasbro / Developer at least.Anyway, regarding why there are no free electronic D&D products out there: Click Here

GiveGoldToCreature and OnAcquire Problem
The problem is that if you use GiveGoldToCreature, there is no *Object* given to the creature, the gold stack is just increased - so even if OnAcquire would fire, you would not be able to find out what was actually acquired. Certainly inconvenient.

Exploding Barrel; Is there a better way than this?
Hey, Don't use ActionCastSpell (since it's an action, it goes through the action queue, which depends on what other actions the caster has assigned - and it doesn't work well with placeables as casters) but instead use ApplyVisualEffectAtLocation and duplicate the relevant parts of the fireball spellscript (nw_s0_fireball.nss) in your trap script.You could check out the powderkeg system I wrote a while backhttp://www.gulbsoft.de/downloads/pkeg.zipor the improved versions that can be found on the vaultClick Here