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

Locking Prestige Classes: If I remember correctly, there is a simple scripting command which allows you to set any Prestige Class to 'locked' within your module... and once it has been locked, it remains so until unlocked (so you could put a simple script to call those commands in the OnModuleStart event of your Module). If you are running an open server, however, there is still no simple way of excluding unwanted classes from coming IN beyond the OnEnter scripts that are already in use out there.

Mirror Image: The tricky part with implementing Mirror Image is:

1) Creating a number of PC models around the PC that don't slow down the game due to the jump in poly counts.

2) Having all those images act exactly as the PC does without doing strange things like bumping other objects and getting caught up in the walkmesh like a gaggle of henchmen.

If we had some kind of 'illusion' system where we could specify that some things existed with inherent non-physical presence, that would be much easier (something to keep in mind for a sequel, I think). Did we solve those problems? You'll have to wait and find out.

Skills: Ahhh, I see. Maximum number of skills, not maximum number of skill ranks. Fair enough. The implementation of the skills is, no doubt, much the same as the spellcaster classes, races and a fair number of other systems in the game: they were done as they were probably due to time restrictions and not on purpose. I suppose that qualifies as an oversight... however the alteration of skills does not fall under the classification of 'custom content' and therefore the skills were not set up with this even in mind. Custom content is when players add new creatures and tilesets and sounds and so forth... what you are talking about falls under the category of hacking. One we officially support, the other we do not. We never claimed that it would be easy or even possible to hack skills, feats, classes or anything else related to the game system itself. Will we go back and change how this works? Possibly... if it is needed for the expansions, but unlikely otherwise.

Thin Body Types: The artists actually hacked away at the "thin" body type before release for quite a while before we decided it just didn't look very good (a few of the bodies looked okay, but on many it looked too skeletal and sometimes downright comical) and it was taken out. While I'm sure the artists wouldn't mind some more time to work on them, the difficulty would be that every race/gender model would need to be worked on and that would take quite a bit of time (which is even harder to schedule as there's no guarantee it will look good and end up having to be left out as in the original release). So there's no plans on doing that right now, no.

Just include a thin phenotype for humans? Hmm. That's a possibility, I suppose. The thin phenotype was cut fairly late, so all the work is still there (though I doubt the art department would want to release it without some touch-up work, despite newc's typically snide comments about our standards). I'll pass the suggestion along. It wouldn't make it into XP1 anymore, but it might be possible for XP2.

D&D Books: The core books are the most important. Our use of the class books has been sporadic (mainly because there were no plans for them when NWN was being done)... but it would be very cool if we could implement as much as possible from them in the future. I'd consider that a pretty complete package. For background info while writing, I use the FR sourcebook (which is very nice as far as sourcebook goes). As far as FR rules therein go, we haven't implemented much (a few creatures, perhaps) and that's likely as much as it'll be for the near future. By the time XP2 comes around, I suppose the Epic Levels expansion will become very important. Hopefully I can keep my gag reflex in check. (Just kidding... sort of.)

Headbands Etc.: Can we do this? Probably. Would it be difficult? Probably not very, though it would take a significant amount of time... time that has already been allotted to the many features that SoU already has. There are a hundred different things that various users really want or think would be cool or "couldn't you just take the time to..." ...but this issue has already been responded to and we are applying our efforts elsewhere for the moment. As has been stated many times, this is an expansion project with a smaller team and whose time must be split up on things that we feel bring the greatest bang for the time used. We cannot just throw more programmers and artists at the project until everyone feels their pet desire has been fulfilled. We may look at this again for XP2, but this board is not the place to ask for that.

Tiles: A big reason why the geography works like it does in NWN is because of the need for the tileset system. Some graphical quality was lowered to allow for ease-of-use when it comes to builders putting land tiles down that mesh together easily. If you build an entire area from scratch without using tilesets, then yes... the stuff you can do there looks amazing, as I'm sure it does in DS. Different intents entirely for the artwork. I like the rounded hills that I've seen on NWVault, and if they could be incorporated easily and are simple to use, who knows? Maybe that's something we could fit into an expansion. Beyond that, NWN will continue to evolve should we ever do another engine for a sequel or whatever... technology advances and we learn as we go, so things improve. I suspect that so long as game areas are designed to be easy-to-use for the end-user, however, they are ALWAYS going to look less impressive then an entire single area made by an artist that isn't meant to be altered. That's pretty much a given.

Quote: though it would probably mean the game areas would need to be "compiled"... and wouldn't be streamable from the server like the tileset built areas are...

Yes, I'd think that would be the biggest difficulty with regards to allowing set-ups like that. I suppose you could just look at it like it's a tileset with one tile (one big, massive tile) and include it in the hakpak, though, right? I think, if anything, the fact that the custom content community has jumped onto NWN so thoroughly will surely give it a higher priority come any sequel. Remember that back when we were creating this we could only hope that was the case... I think the number of modules being made and the amount of custom stuff being created has exceeded our best case scenario by far. Typical company short-sightedness, eh?

Cats: Probably not many. One thing to keep in mind, however: while cats would be a very cool ambient creature, they aren't proper opponents and their standing amongst the other NWN familiars would be pretty dubious (which can all fight), so the priority given to such a model would be fairly low. I'd like to see a decent cat model, myself, but this is something you'd have a better chance of seeing from the Live Team, I think.

Quote: Oh, I dunno about that. I mean, after all, there are fighting badgers and penguins, are there not? Having a dozen wily cats assault the unsuspecting mage could have quite an interesting outcome...

Oh, true enough... how badgers and penguins got into the mix originally I really couldn't say. I'd suspect it's likely because they weren't very complicated (a penguin is a teardrop with feet, basically, right?) and a proper cat isn't the same as just taking, say, the panther model and just shrinking it down. Regardless, cats aren't in the mix now, and the priority to assign an artist the time to add one isn't very high. I do hope one gets made eventually, however.

Epic Levels: We would only do that when and if Epic Levels are implemented. In the standard rules, 20 levels are all that are obtainable... you can't go above that just for the hell of it. You'd have to use the Epic rules or they're just numbers.

Quote: Just one quick concern. Did you guys manage to fix the monster tracking around placeables. They do, from time to time, get confused and will spend all walking square into a placeable.

Monster pathfinding is out of our hands, but I know Bioware is working on lots of deep-down improvements in AI. Not sure when they'll be ready, but I know it's being worked on.

Rick Ernst, Lead Designer

Locking Prestige Classes: Prestige Classes can be locked via script on a per character basis, but this will only work for PrCs, not standard classes. Prestige Classes can be unlocked via script, so a mod builder could enable a PrC for a particular character by trigger, conversation, item acquisistion... or just about anything else.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Player Appearance: In the previous 138 post there are maybe a few dozen constructive comments, suggestions or clever and well though out opinions. Then it degrades into a flame war, which makes me sad, even if some posts are defending our decisions. Player appearance is important, so is game mechanics, the story, usability of the graphic interface, optimizing the code so it can run on an average system, building up the toolset, refining multiplayer, and adding audio. As player appearance is such a re-occurring topic one would think we would fix that. And we should, but we will not do it at the expense of any of the other above features. Our community has very high standards which we really appreciate and we do take the community seriously. We need you more then you need us. The issue of player appearance will always be mentioned and debated, again and again. We will listen. This is the Shadows of Undrentide Forum. We have made the decision on the feature set and we do not plan to change this decision. The time for deciding the feature set is long over, and now we are producing the game. Same thing goes for XP2. Last year we took the feedback at that time to decide the feature set. I lock these topics not because we don?t want to hear about it, but because for SoU they are pointless, and this is the Shadows of Undrentide Forum.