Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by Veldrin)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

Resting: Hmmm. Okay, I have to admit I've been swayed a little. If I make sure there is a decent amount of scrolls and potions I suppose that does provide enough in the way of resources that a player should be able to continue. All those resources should be for something, right? It puts me in mind a bit of a PnP situation that I had almost forgotten about. My entire party, after a long bout of play, ended up being depleted of spells and mostly injured just as the adventure was reaching its climax... they were up against time and they had to go and take out the Big Bad without a chance to rest. The party freaked... until they finally figured out that they had a decent collection of scrolls, wands and potions that they hardly ever used (one always saves them for "someday"). So they went into the last battle and used up almost every scroll, wand and potion they had during it... and won. I still don't agree with applying time restrictions to resting... but this thought does make me feel a bit better about the thought of restricting adventuring areas completely for resting. Not entirely certain, though. I'll have to think about it.

Quote: Any official campaign should have as open rules as possible. If you want to limit your resting. Then DON'T rest. But why should your play style more more important than someone else.

It's not all about play-style, however. From a design standpoint, I have to take into consideration the challenge of the game. If a player can recover all their resources between each encounter, then a challenging encounter would have to be one that forces the player to expend much or all his resources in order to succeed. If, however, I knew that a player could not recover all his resources easily, then having each encounter use up all the player's resources would be ludicrously difficult. I would never want to do that.I have to try and take into consideration not only what is fun and intuitive, but also the challenge that is being presented to the player.

Quote: Well, don't think about it too long. We all want the expansion released afterall!

We've decided to try out limiting resting in dungeons... you won't be able to rest on a given level until/unless certain plot points are met that make it okay (like, say, you've negotiated peaceful passage with the tribe that lives there... or killed them all). I suspect whether or not that even stays in will depend largely on how improved the AI for the henchmen will be. We'll have to see. But that's it as far as resting restrictions go, at least as far as the OC is concerned.

SetAppearance: I can always inquire about the feasibility of implementing SetAppearance for XP2. Seeing as it exists as a console command, one would think it wouldn't be too difficult... but I really don't know. I don't think it would come with a GetAppearance, however.

Official Campaign: Now this is what I call a leading question... the person asking the question isn't interested in an answer at all, but rather is just trying to make a point. So I'll make this quick:

1) No, we don't think the NWN OC is crap. We do (gasp!) realize that it probably wasn't for all types of gamers, but that still doesn't make it crap.

2) Will the SoU OC be equivalent to Fallout/BG2/Whatever? No, it won't. SoU is an expansion release, not a full game. It's going to be short, for starters. It won't be as geared towards the casual player as the NWN OC was, but I bet there's still a good chance (gasp!) that some will find it's still not hardcore enough for them.

Oh, the humanity.

Quote: well mr Gaider, I've seen your comments about the OC and you've said that you werent all to happy with certain aspects of the game (henchmen, how the story was interconnected and so on), and i can only assume that when you say "not too happy" on the games official board you actually mean "not happy at all". I might be wrong though.

Not exactly. I did say I wasn't happy with the amount of time we got to implement henchmen and put the story together, that's true... it wasn't as deep as BG2 was, which is something I like and something I'd like to do more of in the future. But that said, it's not as if NWN was unfinished or that it doesn't have an audience. It also has a great many things in it that I am very proud to have helped with and would gladly see implemented in any game, and it is a long, long way from sucking. That's all I meant. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but implicit in your question was the inference that if we at Bioware don't say that the OC sucks that we are simply not telling the truth because it's a public forum or that we are somehow blind, neither of which is true.

Quote: What I'd like to hear from a Floodgate designer is; I'm a 100% behind this game, it's the best I could do and I think it's a top contender, it's up there with PS:T.

Why does it have to a Floodgate designer?

Quote: I don't wanna read some weakly disguised exuses after the release about time constraints and how they would have done things differently if it wasn't for this and that... I want Floodgate to be proud of the game and I don't wanna hear "the campaign is not worse than BG2 it's just different"

There's a difference between 'weakly-disguised excuses' and a realization that every project is going to have aspects you wish you could have spent more time on or included or implemented differently. I doubt you see it that way, however, and I'm not about to spend more time trying to convince you... but there it is.

Quote: this be the second time I ask this; are Bioware designers involved in the expansion as well? Because it was my understanding that the campaign was all Floodgate...

I'm involved in the SoU official campaign, and I'm a Bioware designer.

Quote: But sure I'll take you word for it, is it a top contender with depth like PS:T?

It's too short to have depth like PS:T or any other full release (this is an expansion), and I don't know what your criteria are for 'a top contender'. A contender for what? I think it's shaping up to be a good adventure, probably more challenging that the NWN OC and lacking elements like infinite respawning and teleporting. We're getting more time for some attention to detail insofar as treasure placement and balancing goes, along with some great writing (so far) and some other interesting elements.
But you'll judge these things for yourself, I'm sure.

Druids and Rangers: I already commented on this in a previous thread, though I don't have a link handy. In short, as far as the SoU OC goes we've got Rangers & Druids getting a lot more mileage out of being able to talk to animals and are using a new "track" placeable in many places to allow them to track creatures and generally get more info. These are not hard-coded systems, however... we just like Rangers and Druids.

Wish we could learn a bit more about these placeables- would they have some kind of script that allows only Rangers to see? Require some kind of spot check like the hidden doors? Would everyone be able to see them once "detected" or just the individual, or party?

They are just a placeable, and everyone can see them... though in some situations they may be kind of hard to visually spot on the floor. In the SoU OC, our scripts do the following:

- when rangers get within a certain range of the track, it gives its feedback automatically.
- the feedback that is given gives a varying level of detail depending on class or Intelligence as follows:

Rangers: highest detail
Druid, Barbarian, High Intelligence: good detail
All others: normal detail

So if you find some tracks, a Ranger might be able to see that it belonged to 12 kobolds who were fleeing north. A Druid, Ranger of High Intelligence character could see that it belonged to a group of small humanoids (probably kobolds) who headed north. Everyone else would see that there were tracks there belonging to a large number of small creatures. All but the Ranger would have to click on the actual placeable in order to receive that information.

NWN Engine: Stuff that is an engine limitation is something you won't see changed outside of the hypothetical sequel. Stuff that is hard-coded you probably won't see changed in an expansion unless we feel it is worth the effort to do so... altering the coding at this point has the potential to introduce a lot of bugs and involves a lot of effort out of a very small team. If the bang involved from the zots needed isn't worth it (in our estimation), then we won't do it.

Underdark: Look, I'll say this much:

Wherever the location of XP2 is, it's going to be accessible to all character types. Total darkness is also one of those things that sounds neat in theory but doesn't work well in practice. At any rate, I don't envision the Underdark as being a pitch-black place where you can't see at all. Dark, yes. Blind-and-groping-dark, not really, and I don't see the point of limiting it to such. I see it as an alien landscape filled with glowing lichen and crystals and having a very dark and dangerous mood to it. If you've ever played Homeworld, you'll see that space looks great when you're not limiting your imagination to just blackness... and the Underdark is the same way.

Harpies: The harpy looks pretty good. Just as a suggestion, however, I think it would look better if you exaggerated the reverse bend of the legs and made the bottom half more birdlike, perhaps with larger talons of something similar.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

Quote: Those pillars have little variation in them (the texture mapping is not even flipped or anything) and the textures on them look to be a bit blurry. It seems to be in dire need of some good ol' polish.

Those pillars are actually placeables. That's why they're all the same.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Linux Client Information: nwclient129beta2.tar.gz is now available on the Linux Client Download page. I would ask that anyone who is mirroring Beta 1 to get rid of it and replace it with this one. Having old Beta 1 files will just cause confusion.

Linux: There are a few issues that we want to resolve before we make a big deal and go with press releases and the like. Once we get those in and working, then we will whip out the marching band.