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Neverwinter Nights Forum News

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Aug 7, 2004.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Here are today's BioWare 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.

    David Gaider, Designer

    NWN2 Announced.

    Whats the difference? Bioware gave the impression there wouldn't be a NWN2, and remained silent when people started reporting the information that a "sneak peak" was going to be in a magazine and now your nit picking over the fact you were not actually doing it "at that time"... Pah! Lets hope Obsidian do the same stellar job they did on Torment and that they listen to their customers more and play this "keep the information secret" game less than Bioware does.
    That's cute.

    Until a deal is finalized, there's nothing else to say, and it's no different than a "it's done when it's done" or "we can't discuss unannounced projects". There are always a thousand "maybes" in the works, and if you think anyone is going to start tossing around their plans in public until they're well and actually finalized (least of all Obsidian) then you need to give your head a shake. It would be highly irresponsible of us to go around commenting on that kind of information, especially when other partners are involved, and it has nothing at all to do with how much we listen to our customers. I, too, hope Obsidian does a great job (although only some of the folks there worked on Planescape, incidentally). It is, however, their project and not ours.

    Praise be to Dave Gaider

    *GAG* At least now I have a name to focus my ire at! Now the creator of Tomi deserves some praise!
    Tee hee! What's funny is that I wrote Tomi, as well. To the original poster: you're quite welcome. I'm quite happy with the response to Deekin overall.

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    Patch Status Update?
    Still private beta.

    Port Fowarding.....?
    Windows XP Pro built in firewall/ics supports port forwarding as well as other routing related tasks. Alternatively you could use ssh or netcat ( -> google).

    What the Official Word on the 1.63 Patch?

    Is it true that 1.63 will be the last patch released.
    We never said that, so I wonder who came up with that idea?

    NWN2 Announced.

    Sigh. And here after Georg, David, Stanley et al. denied up and down that it was ever gonna get made.... AND HERE IS NEWS THAT BIOWARE IS ACTUALLY GONNA BE INVOLVED IN IT'S DEVELOPMENT. Grrrrrr. And people wonder why I never believe corporate shills.
    If you recall what was said, it was "Bioware is, at this time, not working on NWN2", which was true.

    DLA Feature, part I
    I think this really deserves a friendly "bump" from a former community member. Click Here Those screenshots are awesome!

    The Impending 1.63 Animation Boon: Animation Repository?

    Swimming and dancing animations, ooh my, for how long have I been waiting for these... *begs* *swoons* You'll be a hero if you pulled these off (a bit like horse riding)
    For things like swimming you actually get a lot more than just 10 custom animations in 1.63, because Craig added a scripting command to swap a creatures phenotype....

    New monsters I would like to see.

    The bulette was an extra creature, along with troglodytes and a sea hag that was offered to people who bought HoTU from certain stores. The sea hag has already been added in a patch. I have a suspicion that the bulette and troglodytes will be included in the next patch.
    I don't know if they will be in the next patch, but as far as I know, those guys are still in the release pipeline, I also spotted several creatures from the list above on the screenshots here: Click Here

    Crafting System Info

    a search for *.rar in my \nwn directory yeilds nothing.
    a search for *.zip in my \nwn directory yeilds only the 2dasource.zip file I already searched. On the other hand, I believe you guys. The link that was pointed out for crafting stuff mentions those files too. They just don't seem to be anywhere I can locate.
    The 2da files are in the game's .bif files. You can open and browse those bif files with a handy tool called 'nwexplorer / nwnexplorer', which you can find on nwvault.

    More: Hey, please keep it civil and please do not engange in further "project x" bashing, I think the thread topic was "1.63", so let's get back on topic with a bit info for custom content (tileset) creators:
    - Increased the limit on the max number of tilesets from 24 to 50.
    - Added more tile path nodes of types f, g, h, i, j, k and l (lower case L) for custom tile set support.
    - Fixed a problem with the experience point penalty not always being calculated properly for multiclass characters that had taken a prestige class.
    And now that we are back on topic ... stay there, or this will get locked down (and no, going off topic again will not produce more information on the patch, better don't try

    Atari announces NWN 2
    Hey Please do not rail this thread into pointless "company a is better than company b" mudslinging. In the end, having two RPGs to play instead of one is a good thing for the community. BioWare is happy to work with Obsidian and we definitly want to see them succeed in making NWN2 a great game. We are providing the BioWare Aurora Engine to Obsidian to help build Neverwinter Nights 2, and we will provide technical support for the engine. BioWare is also providing design advice on the project at Atari’s request so that the original vision of the game is passed on to the new team. I'll leave the thread open for now because I suspect that cutting of one thread will just spawn another on the same topic in a couple of minutes as there are not many other places to go right now to talk about it.

    its a real shocker that Bioware is involved considering they've been routing threads about it to off topic.
    The messaging was "we are not working on NWN 2 at this time", which was correct.

    Atari announces NWN 2

    If I remember right, Black isle is also the creator of the BG series. That is, Bio create the infinity engine and black isle proceeds for the content. Someone correct me?
    BioWare created the BG series (engine, story, and content), BIS acted as publisher through BG.

    Nwn and Laptop
    I found nwn works fine on a notebook (1600mhz, nvidia gforce 4), however you should have a power outlet nearby, nwn or the toolset can drain your battery in no time

    does 9.0 work
    NWN runs fine on DirectX 9.0c on my computer. I recommend getting an update for your graphics driver if you are experiencing problems as well as keeping an eye on your computers temperature - hard lockups are often caused by overheating.

    Disciple HitDie Bugged?
    Yes, 1.63 will fix this problem.

    Atari announces NWN 2

    Did they Lie? Nope... Did they purposely allow the truth to be mislead and to allow misnomers to continue? Absolutely. If you were purchasing a used car and the dealer "didn't lie" to you but your expectations and indications were mislead wouldn't you be upset? Bottom line is Bioware are doing the same thing they have always done... No robes, "Hey guys! Wonderful news, no official vault", No NWN2, blah, blah, blah...
    Enigmatic, I wonder what part of the meaning of "we have no plans to develop NWN2 at this time" escapes you that you feel mislead. If you have problems with this plain english sentence, I strongly suggest that you duke that out with yourself instead of accusing other people of being dishonest to you.

    Also: "we" sounds inflated, try "I" for starters. I have a hard time to believe that many of other people share your opinion that it is disrespectful to customers not to inform them about supporting roles in future business deals between different companies at a time where those deals have neither been negotiated nor announced. Having bought <1/2.000.000 of NWNs total units gives you the NWN owner tag and the privilege to post on these boards - it does not entitle you to post *** and expect it go unchallenged.

    Let's use the car salesman you brought up just to make sure you get the message: If the salesman tells you "we are not selling that new SUV at this time and do not have plans to do so", and month later you see that they now consult a company that is selling that SUV, have they mislead you? Would a sane person go to them and say "Hey, I payed for my last car with you guys - you purposefully mislead me!"? It is also nice to see you complaining about the fact that we added robes to HotU due to popular demand. We love when people remind us that it is far more important to stick to initial assessments and announcements than to change your mind because your community really wants a certain feature. Trying to use the fact that we listen to our community to paint us as people that purposefully mislead the community is bullcrap. In fact, from the point on we knew that there would be Robes in Hordes, we never said "there will be no robes in HotU". Oh gosh, I publicly disagreed with a customer, someone burn me on a stick.

    More: Hey, An "engine" is the framework that powers a game and consists of many parts - it does not necessarily define how the game will look like graphically.

    Here are screenshots of another "Aurora powered" game in development by another company: http://www.thewitcher.com/gallery.asp?l=en

    More:
    You need to exercise more liberal use of words like "possible" "may happen" "if certain things fall into place" "it's being looked at but may not happen"
    Except no one actually listens when Bioware says "Maybe," and bitches incessantly three months later about "broken promises."
    Exactly. People get too excited about "possibilities" that they take them as fact. I think it's best companies don't say anything at all until plans are definite. And even then, I like it best when they announce it when it's already underway (plans change, stuff happens, insert favorite cliche here, etc).
    It's a no win situation You ignore it, some goofy new website will print it as "implied acknowledgement" and you still get all the threads littingering your boards. You say something and some people read into it what they want to read instead of what you write and will blast you on broken promises later. I think most people in the community like that we are pretty open with them about all the stuff that happens and even say that something is not or unlikely to happen, linke "no robes in SoU". If you keep in mind that a situation that was true when a certain thing was posted might not be true later.

    We managed to squeeze enough resources out of the schedule to put robes in HotU". As soon as we knew we would do robes, we stopped saying that there would never be robes, but we also didn't announce it right when we knew it as it was not certain that they would make it and telling people "yea they will be robes" and then failing to deliver would have cause a lot more damage then just falling silent (and having a few people who didn't notice the change in our position blast us because we betrayed them).

    Seriously, some people need to keep in mind that game development and the gaming development industry is a very dynamic environment and that you can't just pull out month old threads and claim we have been misleading the community.

    So in the end it's a matter of what the community wants and how the community wants to be treated, multiple options here:
    a) we can continue to assume that the majority of our community is capable of reading a simple english sentence and not to jump on fast conclusions

    b) we can assume that the majority of our community is not capable of reading a simple english sentence without misinterpreting our clouding it.

    If a) is the case, the community continues to get in close contact with the people working on the games and have the opportunity to discuss things and get answers that has not been squeezed through a multi pass pr filter.

    If b) is the case, you will get anything from "no posts" to "posts without content", but never anything like "This should be fixed in patch 1.63", "We are planning of having feature X in the game" or "Yes" or "No".

    I have been a BioWare community member since BG I before working here and I always had the impression that part of the reason why this community is one of the best communities on the web was that the majority of people here fall into the a) category.

    Right now it escapes my imagination how someone can interprete "at this time" as "never" and "We are licensing our engine and provide support" as "We develop this game". I'm not a native english speaker, but I don't see NO room at all for misinterpretation here.

    I think blasting us for "activly misleading the community" and "playing the keep secretive information game" because we did not disclose whatever knowledge about potential business deals someone was discussing about other companies working on NWN2 is not just wrong, it's trolling.

    So why do I care and post a response to a Troll?Because I think a valuable ingredient that makes our community what it is is being able to trust us when we post something and I don't like to leave things like the post above uncommented, especially when they question my credibility.

    Module stolen and posted live. What do I do?
    Hey, this seems to happen every once in a while and there is not much you can do about it. If you created the module for yourself and it was taken from you without permission, you theoretically have the right to sue, but I doubt that's going to help you much. It seems to be a common way of damage control to make more improvements to your module so people stay with you for the new features and community.

    AI of summoned monsters
    The easiest way would be to change the summoned creature templates do have different spells if you don't like what they are casting.

    More:
    If you where doing this client side and playing on a server (and it actually works) you may find yourself banned. At least on my server you would without any discussion whatsoever. You would probably be better off talking to the builders of the server you're playing and letting them decide what spells the summons should have. Georg... Isn't that "posting an exploit"?
    Nope, you need to do it on the server module as the summoning script is running on the server and taking the creature template from the server.

    More:
    I wouldn't call it "easy". It's a week long project for an experienced modder/coder to update hundreds of resrefs, and even more to work new AI scripts into an existing module.
    Believe me, after creating the eyeball familiar for Hordes as well as various other creatures, I completely agree with you on that - I didn't like the decision to make those creatures harder accessible than other content, but I can understand why it went into the game. It's a pain, but at least you can do it, which is a big plus. At least the levelup wizard helped a bit when creating those templates. The really "easiest" way would be to change the spells to use a different template.

    Spellman Project

    1) I can count on one hand the number of bioware quality VFX people I know of, and ALL of them are involved in a project. The same goes for Icon makers.
    The spellman project VFX look damn nice.

    Rob, something I'm worried about..
    SJ, we have no intentions of forcefully splitting our community or maintaining dozens of different versions for patching. The idea behind the whole DD thing is to allow us to continually support our game and community, so you can rest assured that the Live Team doesn't take the issue lightly. Patience.

    Freaky, fun and 2 things that sux...

    The only thing I'm really curios about tho, will Subrace and Deity option ever be included to the game besides in Character Creation?
    Hey, Just to give you an idea why there are subrace and deity options in the character generation screen:

    At one point during development of NWN, the community started to ask for these fields. I can remember several posts from developers saying it would not make sense, since there was no intention to use Deity or Subrace in the official campaign and people would be confused about it. After a lot of discussion, it was decided to put the fields in so the module builder community could make use of them. I think your post is a good example of why that initial concern was valid (it's not the first post about that topic). Those fields are a tremendous asset to builders, but they also had some (negative) impact on some player's perception of the game ("why doesn't this do anything"). I'm a bit torn on the issue, I think from a GUI design point of view, those fields probably should be on a different page with some text to make it very clear that they have no impact on the official campaign.

    More:
    No impact on the OC, but you and I both wrote systems for it. Go figure. It is *extremely* useful to have these fields.
    As builder I can't disagree with that, as developer reading complaints about it, I have a conflicting opinion. Best thing would have been to put it on a tab enabled on a per module basis (localvault sucks anyway :evilol:)

    something weird in spells.2da
    Hey Ok, that one is a bit more complicated that the rest of the 2da, but not too much. Here's the link to the explaination I put in the Custom Content Wiki a while back:
    Click Here

    Table of Feats
    Sounds like you got that "european" gold edition... no comment on that. There should be a users manual in .pdf format somewhere on your harddrive in the .docs folder if I remember correctly. There is also an excellent community created guid you can find here: Click Here

    More:
    Just as an aside... who the blue hell handles Euro distribution? No manual in the box, that's an atrocity.
    Apparently someone in europe thought it would be cool to have a gold edition as well when Atari US announced it. Too bad they didn't put the same stuff in the box like the US version http://nwn.bioware.com/about/goldedition.html . It's unfortunate because Europeans who read the advertisement of the US version and buy the european one get confused and understandly angry about it (being German, I can feel your pain) - but matters like this are not in our hand, BioWare develops the games, we do not publish them. I've noticed that some retailers are listing the Platinum Edition http://nwn.bioware.com/about/platinumedition.html as DVD. That would be cool.

    How: Disable dm_god

    Yeah i know about the passwords and all of that...im looking for a way to stop PLAYERS that dont have the DM password from using the dm_god script...
    Console commands like dm_god do not work for players in multiplayer. You need to be a DM to run them.

    DLA Feature, part I

    Looks nice plus a nod to the old FRUA days... can't wait.
    So much time, wasted .... I think I buit a several hours adventure back then and when it was finished, nobody really wanted to play gold box games anymore But at least I can say today that all the time I spent on games during high school was just preparing for my future job. "Really, playing 'the Death Knights of Krynn' is a learning. That's what those computer things are for! I'm just polishing my english!" - Take that teachers

    NWN2 concerns

    But according to the reports - Bioware IS INVOLVED in NWN2...... yet Bioware doesn't seem to even want to acknowledge NWN2 plans exist? Something's rotten in Edmonton......What gives? How come you guys aren't talking about it?
    They've answered this already. It isn't their game to discuss -- they will advise Obsidian on its making, but any announcements will be made by Obsidian and/or Atari.
    spot on.

    More: ... or straight from "far up" NWVault interview with Ray & Greg on the topic. Click Here hope that clears some of the questions thrown around.

    Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

    english dialog.tlk neede

    please could anyone email me an english hotu 1.62 dialog.tlk? i´m writing a module at the moment and i need the english monster and items descriptions for further modification.
    You can find one here: http://nwn.bioware.com/support/known.html#19

    can't log on to multiplayer

    Craig: I will indeed. It generally stops working after 3-5 times playing. Theoretically though the file is written to after each game though, no?
    The ini files get written out every time you shut the game down. I believe some of the ini settings also get written out when you start up the game too (I'm going from memory at the moment, as I'm at home since its a holiday in Canada today). Thanks again for sending in those files.

    More:
    Deleting the ini-files didn't help for me. I've got a tcpdump of the session though, if anyone's interested. To see what server and client actually communicated about.
    The client and server use UDP packets to communicate. Gamespy may use tcp, I'm not sure though since that's not an area of the code that I'm familiar with. If you have been monitoring the network communications between the client and the server while the problem occurs and have some information logged, please send the files to nwbugs@bioware.com along with a description of the problem (and as much detail about your hardware and computer setup). I don't know if the information will help or not, but it can't hurt to take a look at it.

    Rob Bartel, Senior Designer

    Rob, something I'm worried about..
    Yes, as part of our upcoming Digital Distribution project, Witch's Wake 2 will be released on a pay-to-download basis. There are many reasons for this decision but the key reason is that developing and releasing the series for free just wasn't proving feasible. We recognize that such a solution may not be workable for everyone and are taking steps to make the modules as broadly available as possible. Thanks for the interest and I hope things get a little easier for you and your family. Best of luck and hang in there

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    Changes for 1.64

    since 1.64 will be the last update
    Since we have never said this and have said there are more updates coming, I am always very curious where this comes from.

    Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

    NWN2 Announced.
    If y'all want yet another reason we like to hedge about possible upcoming goodies: This reminds me of a time before NWN was released, before BioWare Wednesdays (originally called Neverwinter Wednesdays), before Georg joined the company. We'd been releasing goodies to the community a bit at a time, and one week, we "promised" that the next release would be something uber-tacular. Is it a gameplay movie, the community asked. No, we said, it would be better. Then, for one reason or another, we found that we could not release the "promised" "better-than-a-movie" goodie. We released the Model Viewer to the public instead (which I thought was really cool), and the outcry we got from the community over "broken promises" and "betraying the community" was great. Our community was much smaller then, but could still be very loud. So we tend not to "promise" things anymore. Incidentally, you may have seen the term "Ever" tossed around the boards (possibly by me). This is short for "We're never ever ever ever ever ever going to "promise" something again."

    Derek French, Live Team Producer

    1.63 and 1.64 news
    Greetings: Just thought I would update you on what is going on with the NWN Updates. With the announcement of the Platinum Edition of NWN, the version on CD and DVD of this Edition will be 1.63 - which is just 1.62 with some updated Official Campaign modules. As such, the next public release of an NWN Update will be 1.64, skipping over 1.63 which is the Platinum Edition. This is required so that we can keep all the versions identified and in sync when the patching is done. We are hoping to have a Public Beta of this new 1.64 version out to you by the end of next week (~ August 13th).

    [ August 08, 2004, 23:50: Message edited by: Taluntain ]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 8, 2018
    chevalier, Aug 7, 2004
    #1
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