Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by Darien)

Once again, here are some recent comments from the game developers on the official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

The release of Forgotten Realms: Actually... we get our stuff much earlier. When I first started at BioWare in April 2000, we already had copies of the PHB and DMG and some Monster Manual stuff. The problem is that those items change very rapidly from version to version, and are often dramatically different from the final released version.

For example, our version of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting listed the populations of cities such as Neverwinter at around 1,500 or so. To be honest, though, I really enjoyed getting to see their early versions. They generally included lots of comments in their writing which suggested their reasonings for going one direction versus another... you could really see it all get pieced together. And we all know that those guys did a fantastic job

So hope for lots of expansions and hard work from some creative fans, so that together, we can create the total package

PS On a side note, Rob and I were talking about the weird things you can do with the Neverwinter Toolset, stuff that's completely outside of what you would expect from the game. For example, two of our QA guys put together versions of games similar to Pong and Checkers.

I cannot wait to see where the community-at-large will take this...

Cut/Paste: You can cut & paste, and the toolset can be sized, which is nice, because we wrote a lot of our dialogue early, too

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer

Resources: Actually, a couple of clarifications:

1. Areas with no players in them will still process scripts, but will have less AI time dedicated to them.

2. Although monsters are light in memory use their AI is not. Pathfinding and other chores can slow things down.

Cord Grimwinder-8d, Interplaygames.com Moderator

Class limitations: Funny how everyone fears that their favorite class will be nerfed isn't it? Heh, you see a post just like this weekly with a different class each time it seems. Monks, Barbarians, Clerics, Rogues, etc, etc.

I'm sure they are going to be very careful about rebalancing all of the classes, after all they are all going to be missing a thing or three, so don't worry too much ;-). That will include enhancing some things and even adding in things that aren't in the PnP rules. They've made it clear from day one that balance in all things is very important to their design plans and one of the main reasons
that NWN is taking so long to make.

Sound: Though I don't know the details of their sound implementation here are a couple of things that should give you warm fuzzies ;-).

One, sound is so important to them that the tilesets have not only a walkmesh for pathfinding they also have a soundmesh to make sure that when you walk on stone it sounds like it and when you walk on dirt it sounds like it, etc. Details are wonderful things, no?

Two, any sound or piece of music that ships with the game will be fully available for you to attach anywhere you please. These can be anything from continual loop effects (water dripping in a dank sewer) to having a piece of dramatic music triggered by the entry of a villain. You can even script it so that only certain players hear certain things-

Rogue- "Shhh...did you hear that?"

Fighter- "What? Are you hearing things again?"

All in all they've said on several occasions that sounds and music are, to them, just as important as good graphics.

Server Load: There will always be a "base" packet load for the server info no matter how many players you have, so after a certain point more players become slightly "cheaper" to support. Not a huge difference but it adds up over the range of 4 to 64.

Spellcraft skill: Spells of the same type (ie fire spells for instance) will have similar effects and you will still need the Spellcraft skill for your PC to know what the spell is for certain and thus be able to use counterspells.

Castles Tileset: Unless they changed things on us and didn't share the two castle sets (good and evil) will be somewhat Lego-like in nature.

Quote(Marc Holmes, NWN Art Director):

Since tiles are ten meters square, he smallest building essentially fills one tile. Larger buildings are groups of multiple tiles. The ultimate building is a castle, which is really a tileset of it's own. You can use castle tiles like Lego to build your own unique castle.

:End Quote

Disguise Skill: Quote (Marc Holmes, NWN Art Director):

We have not finalized any implementation of this idea, but we are planning for a disguise skill which will allow you to mask your name and class. If DM's don't wish to force players to use the skill, they can script items which grant the ability. Again, this is not working right now, and is only a *planned* feature, (of which we have hundreds yet to implement) but that's the current solution to enhancing this type of plot twist.

:End Quote

In other words, they are all over it ;-), if Disguise makes the cut it will mask your true name as well as your appearance.

Changing Names: From the E3 interview with Rob in the Members area at Interplaygames.com -

Aqua - How will PC names work as far as when they meet someone new, or are disguised? Will you just "know" their name by default, or will there be some type of "introduction" feature?

Rob - Introduction features are neat in a few rare circumstances but they can quickly become frustrating in the vast majority of others. For the time being, PC and NPC names will not be hidden. If, during the testing process, we find that this needs to be changed, we may consider it as a server option. Keep in mind, every creature in the game has a name, so just because a character has a name doesn't mean they are a player character.