Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

It's been a while since my last update, so there's a lot to read today. Here's the latest batch of comments from the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Interplay's Demo Video: Just so you know, this was the footage that was playing on the big screen in the South Lobby of the Convention Center at E3. There was other footage playing at the BioWare booth and then there's the half-hour demo itself that the Nexus guys had a capture of (We had someone from ALFA in filming as well - I don't know if that's the same stuff or something separate). Also, Aqua came in and interviewed me in the Interplay booth so that's probably what she'll be releasing at Interplay.com over the next little while. In short, there's plenty of footage out there and, little by little, it should start filtering out to everyone soon.

A Baldur's Gate Toolset: Unfortunately, the BG Tools were never intended for public release. They're needlessly complex, inadequately documented, broken into a thousand little individual *.exe's, and full of nasty bugs that need to be understood and worked around. There may come a time when they get released to the public, "as is," but don't hold your breath.

That said, we've got some amazingly talented hackers in the BG community and a wide variety of user-created viewers, tools, and editors available from TeamBG and other fansites (even an unofficial expansion or two). If you're interested in editing the Infinity Engine games, your best bet would be to hook up with them.

Depth of Global Settings: Hard to tell at this point. That's the stuff we'll be cramming more and more of into the tools towards the end of the cycle. That said, some of those things (such as text bubbles vs. chat windows) make more sense as client-side settings than server settings, if that's any help.

Building interiors in one area: Yes, placing the different floors of an inn within a single area is more than possible. In fact, it's a good way to reduce the number of load screens experienced by your players.

Trent's comments on Pick Pocketing: Trent: There is an animation of Pick Pocketing currently. It will be a small motion of the player bending down and stealing. If you are stealing from another player character and you fail the dice roll, the player will get a message letting them know. If the player notices the animation, they can also catch the thief.

Bob: Don't worry, we don't have our hearts set on this feature yet. Once it's in the game, we'll have a closer look at it. If it sucks, we have no qualms about getting rid of it at that point. That goes for plenty of other things as well.

Guessing Monsters: Just to verify the guesswork, those two monsters are the flesh golem and the red slaad. That said, if they look like Banedead and Gray Renders to you, by all means use them as such (and feel free to change their stats, abilities, and scripts accordingly).

Inventory, Cost, Weight, and Stacking Adjustments: We don't have cost, weight, and stacking adjustment in the toolset interface yet so I can't make hard promises. That said, in Baldur's Gate, a stack of 20 arrows usually cost 1 gp. In other words, while the currency itself didn't go into decimals, the value of an individual item could be thought of as fractional - 1/20th of a gp. Presumably a similar system will emerge for NWN. If it costs 1 gp to buy a stack of 100 runestones, then each runestone is worth 1/100th of a gp and a merchant would presumably consider 1 arrow to be a fair trade for 5 runestones.

Clarification on Inventory: Just to clarify, in the example I gave, you're not creating a single item and naming it "100 copper pieces." You're actually creating a single item that, when you have 100 of them stacked together, is worth a gold piece. Therefore, where a kobold in BG might drop 3 arrows instead of 20, a goblin in NWN might drop 27 of these stacking items, rather than a full 100.

As I said, the interface hasn't been fully defined yet but that was how things worked in BG at any rate.

Coinage: Sorry, folks, I'm still a little bit confused about the issue here, so I'll ask you to bear with me. Questions of coinage weight aside, why are people wanting pennies and dimes implemented?

What would make a lot more sense to me would be units of currency representing $1, $100, and $10,000. That way, when you got a $10,000 coin, you'd be amazed at how cool and rare it is and how you're a 10th level adventurer and this is the first one that you or any of your friends have ever seen.

With gold pieces being so common in the D&D universe, even at low levels, pennies and dimes ultimately strike me as being boring and mundane.

More on Coinage: Okay, so if gems can act as upper-value coinage, why can't other non-coin items act as lower-value coinage? Ultimately, currency is an abstract concept and any item will do (as illustrated by the humorous chicken example already given or by various anthropological examples of currencies based on seashells, carved bones, or -strangest of all- fragile scraps of multicolored paper).

In short, our choices for the official campaign don't limit you. If you want to create a currency system of trade notes or gems or runestones or chickens or huckleberry twigs or little generic bags of whatever you want, by all means do so. You have the power to define their store price, their weight, how many of them can stack together, and so forth.

Now, as for the example given of a torch-based 'qet-rich-quick' scheme, it probably won't be a problem. A wise merchant is as unlikely to buy back such a valueless item as they are to buy back a single arrow when they sold you the quiver full for a gold piece.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Dropped Torches: Dropped torches currently remain lit while on the ground... makes for cool shadows and dramatic battles.