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

Petrification: Since people are arguing based on my comment and jumping to a few conclusions, how about I actually go and check and see what the current implementation is? Okay... this is how it goes...

For non-PC's (including Henchmen), petrification is always permanent based on an unsuccessful Fortitude save.

For PC's, the petrification effect is temporary, with a duration based on the game difficulty. At Normal and below, it's got a duration of rounds. At Hardcore and Difficult, it's got a duration of turns.

Why are we doing this? Because unlike instant death spells (like, say, Finger of Death), Petrification isn't instant death... at least as far as the computer is concerned. It's "stand around and wait paralyzed until someone depetrifies you" death... and you may or may not have someone who can de-petrify you, obviously, SP or MP even notwithstanding.

Without some way of the player being able to signal "Okay, I give up... there's no way I'm going to get out of this so just treat me as dead, already", what are we supposed to do? Force the player to wait and wait until he realizes he should quit and re-load? No, we won't do that (as in will not do that). We considered scripting in a time-delayed EffectDeath to kill the player after a certain time elapses, but that doesn't really solve the problem, does it? So we put it in as a temporary effect (although a duration in turns is pushing the "wait and wait" prohibition, to be truthful) for PC's. As with most spells, the scripting is wide open if you want to change how that works in your game. Is this unreasonable of us? If you have an alternate suggestion (that doesn't involve a new GUI, like an "I give up" button), I'd love to hear it.

Quote: Well, since you're inviting ideas, I'll propose one. Suppose it does kill the player. The death GUI could come up, and players could immediately respawn or reload. However, if a henchman or another player wants to ressurrect you, they can't use the ubiquitous raise dead scrolls. Instead, they have to use a stone to flesh scroll or spell.

The biggest problem that I see with this solution is that the "wait for help" button doesn't always show up, and your henchman may be able to heal you. Of course, the same is also true of being killed by more conventional decapitation...The only way this would work is if we could script Raise Dead/Resurrection and the like to not work if you are petrified and for Stone to Flesh to only work if you are petrified. If we can make that distinction and then apply a raise effect either way, then sure... perhaps that wouldn't be a bad idea. It's still instant death for SP, but it might work the same either way. I'll suggest it and we'll see

Quote: I guess, well, I can see your point in single player, I do think that you should have an option for module builders though, an easy option (not alot of scripting to pull it off and make it work correctly)

According to the script I saw, it's pretty simple. You'd just have to comment out the 'check if the target is a PC' section (which is one line). The mod-maker would still be left with the problems I mentioned, however, but that would be up to them.

Quote: The biggest problem with NWN is respawn though.

I assume you're talking about the OC, here, as a mod builder has options for what they'd like to allow. SoU doesn't have unlimited respawning, at any rate. NWN will never have a big SP-controlled party, however, and is a different type of game from BG. Perceived flaw or not, that's not going to change.

Database Questions: Yes, there is a DeleteCampaignVariable command that deletes a variable (of any type, integer or object or whatever) within a database. There is also a DestroyCampaignDatabase command to delete the entire data file

Romances: I don't think trying to implement a romance in such a short campaign would really do it justice, unless it's something we were to focus on as part of the overall story. We're not doing it for SoU... the focus is on different things... but we might for XP2, we'll see.