Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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

Patch 1.63:

Here's a list of *some* things the Live Team fixed during the last few month. Most of the stuff were already posted about on the board, but you might find one or another thing that has not been mentioned. The list is quite incomplete, and please do not take it as a "promise" (dreaded word), as long as the patch is not released, there is always a chance that we might remove things if we find them to cause trouble.

Shifter:
- Problems with server autosaves fixed
- Problems with direct switching between forms fixed
- Missing gargoyle hide added
- Epic Dragon hides now granting +6 DR

Red Dragon disciple:
- Now get correct d12 hit die in epic levels

Pale master:
- Deathless Vigor feat now behaving as it should.

Feats:
- Dev Crit now working with bows
- Fixed to defensive stance becoming permanent under certain conditions
- Death attack sometimes missing feedback strings fixed

Spells:
- Dispel magic code rewritten, among other things it will now take the casters level into account (as it should have)
- Tons and tons of fixes to spellscripts and creature ability scripts.

Scripting commands:
- Added GetPhenoType()
- Added SetPhenoType()
- Optimizations to several scripting commands
- SetSkyBox() added
- SetFogColor() added
- ResistSpell() now working with domain spells/subradial
- ActionCastSpellAt* now working with subradial spells
- DecrementRemainingSpellUses() problem with domain spells fixed
- OnStoreClosed() now working correctly
- Potential crashes in GetFactionBestAC(), GetFactionWorstAC(), GetArmorClassVersus() fixed
- GetCreatureHasTalent() stack underflow fixed
- Added DAMAGE_TYPE_BASE_WEAPON to GetDamageDealtByType()
- Fixes to GetIsImmune().

Custom Content Goodies:
- Added new column to VisualEffects.2da "OrientWithObject",
- Increased the limit on the max number of tilesets from 24 to 50.
- Added support for 8 new custom animation types:
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM3
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM4
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM5
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM6
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM7
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM8
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM9
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM10
- Several new pathfinding node types added for custom tileset creators

Game Mechanics:
- You can no longer sell undroppable items.
- Several fixes to the AI include scripts.
- Touch attack code rewritten.
- Several fixes to inventory pages disappearing, items staying gray, etc
- Item properties "Immunity: Damage Type Positive Energy",
"Immunity: Damage Type Negative Energy" fixed

General stuff:
- Optimization to the games resource/memory management
- Several memory leaks fixed
- Security and stability related fixes
- Changes/fixes to the lootable corpse system (i.e. weapons now stay visible until looted)
- Changes to the games behavior to clear all actions when someone joins the party. Potentially problematic actions will still be cleared (to prevent hostility problems), but especially nonhostile actions like rest are not affected anymore
- Game no longer displays "Experience Points Gained: 0" messages.

DM Client:
- Fixes to the DM client (ie. portraits vanishing, quickbar becoming unuseable)
- DMs can now move undroppable (cursed) items between inventories.
- DMs can now drop undroppable (cursed) items.
- Added useful tooltips for all the DM Creator Quickbar buttons.
- Added ability for DMs to create items directly inside placeable

Server Admin goodies
- Bandwith profiling option
- Module description problem fixed
containers (e.g. chests) using the creator.

Finally, Craig just added this the other day, this will make a lot of people happy I guess :
- Added ini setting to nwnplayer.ini [Server Options]
"Saving Throw Automatic Failure On 1=1"

As already mentioned, this is only a partial and preliminary list (in fact, a very partial list) of the things that we plan to have in 1.63. If you don't see your favourite bug on that list, it doesn't mean we have forgotten about it - it might have been fixed already or could be fixed at some point in the future. You will probably find one or another thing I forgot in the list above when browsing through the Vaults news archive.

We know it's been quite some time since the last patch and we know many of you really wait for this one, but I think as you can see from the list above, the changes are quite extensive and the wait should be very well worth it.

The usual:
Q: When is the patch done?
A: When it's done. Sorry, right now we have no estimated release date.

Q: Will there be new creatures or other content?
A: Maybe, I don't know what the Live Team has planned.

More:

---------------
Quote: Is there going to be any consideration of Palemaster summons? Possibly a look at them and see if they can be made to be more powerful, appropriate to their level?
---------------

Unlikely, at least for 1.63. There's a reason for the summons (at least up to level 12) are the way they are.

---------------
Quote: However that doesn't mean that I should have to lke it the way it is. And, as a creator, and server admin I should have the ability to adjust the way it works in MY world and if you don't like it you're welcome to play someplace where you do.
---------------

As for Dev Crit, it this low priority. The feat is implemented by the book, the saving throw failure on 1 that some people felt made it too powerful has been moved to a server configurable setting and there are plenty of ways to design around it outlined in the custom content forum. The bottomline is: If you are complaining about a rule being implemented by the book, you are on very thin ice. I don't think we are going to touch this one anytime soon, changing things that work by the book is about the lowest thing on our priority list, there are plenty of bugs to fix above it. Plus we would probably have to get approval for this one. This does not rule out changes to it, it just makes them unlikely, at least for 1.63. Yes, the power to module builders and server admins, I'm all for that - but please don't forget that NWN's primary scope is "create your own D&D 3E FR module", NOT "create your own world" - the further you stray from that setting, the less likely it is that will be able make your proposed changes.

And More:
We hear you guys, we know you are really waiting for this patch and the Live Team is working hard on getting it out to you ASAP. However, sometimes "as fast as possible" is still pretty slow, there are still some issues to resolve before we can at least go into betaOn the positive side, a lot of the things mentioned in this and other forums have been fixed, server stability is up, security has been tightened, memory leaks have been squashed, resource and memory management optimized and several new features have been added. I really think the wait will be worth it.

Spell Effects:

Each tile that has a placeable or creature on it or is in the path of a creature will have data loaded into memory (i.e. the walkmesh for pathfinding purposes). If you use a large number of different tiles (and thus tilesets), this will eat up a lot of your servers available memory and cause disk swapping, which, in turn, will degrade performance. Another reason can be bad walkmesh data (pathfinding nodes) on user created tilesets (tilesets that have been created from the scratch) or blocked/crowded pathways (i.e. lots of placeables) causing pathfinding to eat up your cpu power.