Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

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. 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

Time progress: When time does not progress anymore in your module, this is a serious indication that the module is too resource expensive for your current system. This can happen on even the most powerful machine if you are using to many expensive scripts frequently, especially on heartbeat or with complicated delaycommand pseudo heartbeat. We at Bioware, in our "infinite" wisdom, have better things to do than to look out for ways to make life harder for server operators. Things are not as easy as they seem to be.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Witch's Wake: Yes, WW1 is getting a substantial SoU/HotU facelift and we're calling it "WW1: Remastered". It's pretty much ready and entering beta testing right now, well in advance of WW2. If WW2 development goes quickly enough, we'll see if we can release them together. Otherwise we'll release it with some of our other DD launch titles.

Digital Distribution: I think what Topical68's been getting at is that DD needs to present variety to its players rather than simply a bunch of RP-heavy Witch's Wake clones. I totally agree with that and, if things go forward as planned, we hope to have a number of different modules and series in place - some story-based, some combat-based, some based on other things entirely. Some modules should be very familiar, others very unfamiliar and new. I've been drawing up some broad design docs recently for modules that I feel could serve as good counterpoints to what I've done with Witch's Wake and hopefully we'll have the resources in place soon to start making them a reality.

David Gaider, Designer

Cleave: Cleave only activates when you physically kill the creature. If the creature is killed through a spell effect (like dark fire), it will not trigger a cleave.

Skin colours:

Quote: But that is just my (and likely a few others') opinion. I have no expectation of change (although I do think it is something they should keep in mind for future games). No one is suggesting funky weird coloring. Just skin tones which are common in some parts of the real world and which might even approximate the colorations of some of your consumers.

Oh, we hear you, but if not being able to replicate a specific shade of brown skin is our worst offense, I don't think you'll see us losing much sleep over it. *shrug* I'm sorry, I just don't see it being a priority even in a future release, even if some of our consumers could supposedly have such coloration. We'll provide as much variety as we can... being "fair" is not really a factor, nor is accuracy as compared to the real world.

Further:

Quote: However - we all know that BioWare IS working on a secret PC game. In fact, we are all pretty sure that David is working on that game. IN which case, my only remaining point is that both points 1 and 2 above deserve some consideration by the design team for that game. If David does not agree, I hope that his is not the only opinion being considered when that decision needs to be made.

Maybe, but still... *shrug* Meh. This is a non-issue, essentially. It's a given that everybody wants More Better Faster, one has to just glance at any given wishlist on this board to gather that. If we get More in the future as in every human skintone being available, then great. I just don't see this as being something that would get scrutinized as anything other than minutiae. You're implying that we are ignoring our black customers completely and that our marketing should be concerned... but that's not true, is it? You're overstating it. We just don't have every black skin tone you find in life available in the game. In terms of the systems we use in future games, there are larger issues to be dealt with and maybe broader improvements can be made for avatar customization beyond simply ensuring a brown-black skin tone is available. Maybe I'm understating the case, but it seems like an extraneous request to me.