Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Once again, a few more comments from the developers at the official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

Creating Armor: You can create a suit of armor to look however you'd like it to look. Anyone who saw the E3 demo may recall Trent's comment about a "suit" of armor consisting of one golden boot... Spiffy! Of course, the protection you would get from wearing one golden boot would be minimal at best (not to mention the disturbed glances you would get from other inhabitants of the game world), but if that's what you want, then that's what you got!

(Of course, armor like this would have to be put together by the DM via the toolset (a task that could take you all of 2 minutes), and then dropped down into the world, either at a store or as a treasure, for example.)

FR Expansion: We have plans to do just that (provided we can do a sequel or expansion). We only just recently got our copies of the FR Handbook, but we have begun in earnest to look for feats, skills, prestige classes, creatures, plot hooks, spells, and all sorts of other things that we would like to implement, and would be easy to implement into a CRPG. Let's just hope that there is enough demand for a sequel or expansion so that we can do one (or more!)

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer

Stationary Sun: A clarification: The lighting model is still being worked out at the time being but, from the looks of it, you should be able to modify the color and intensity of the "sun" on the fly (allowing for a beautiful day/night cycle similar to that found in BG). What you won't be able to do, however, is dynamically adjust the actual *position* of the sun. This involves the dynamic recalculation of shadows throughout the entire area, something that is very processor intensive. Instead, the position of the sun will probably be an area property that you can freely adjust within the toolset. For all of this we will of course have a series of defaults available for those who don't want to meddle with it.

Playing Modules: What you're talking about is the Campaign Layer. We haven't decided on its final form but, yes, there will be some form of in-game or out-of-game interface for selecting which module you want to play within your current chapter.

For instance, in Chapter 1, you might be able to pick and choose between "The Head Gaoler," "The Barricades of Blacklake," and "The Bloodsail Conspiracy," among others. When your character is ready, you will be given the additional option of playing the Chapter 1 climax module: "The Hanged and the Damned." Those initial modules can be played in any order (and there will also be plenty of non-linear options within each module as well). Once you've completed the climax module, however, you'll be presented with a new batch of modules to choose from in Chapter 2.

There will be 4 chapters in total, each one pulling you deeper into our story and closer to your destiny.

Neverwinter: When we first started designing Neverwinter - the city - we were using The North's box set, as well as Volo's Guide to the North (two sources that have been compiled well into the Forgotten Realms Handbook), to make sure that our depiction of Neverwinter and the surrounding locales would be as close as we could get to the actual descriptions. We've found both books to be very inspiring in many ways, and those who have read these books, or the Forgotten Realms Handbook, will spot lots of little things that match up with these texts, once they play the game.

Of course, we couldn't assimilate every detail (I think the art & programming teams would have gone insane if we had even tried to ask), but I think we have more than enough of the feel so that everything will stand out with its own unique Forgotten Realms flavor.

BG to NwN Conversion: To be honest, this is more a question for the Interplay legal department than for any of us at BioWare. While we developed BG, I believe the intellectual property rights are shared between Interplay and WotC. I'd like to think that it would be okay to make such a BG -> NWN conversion but we're unfortunately the wrong folks to ask.

Mark Brockington, Senior Programmer:

On Scripting: Mmmm ... bracket matching. Personally, I wanted the scripting language to be more like Lisp, but take away all the nasty side-effects and things that actually make the language somewhat useful. How many times can you say "car" and "cdr" in the same sentence? In the end, I lost out, and they *forced* me into doing some variant of C and Java.

What do you mean, it's not April 1st? June 1st? Where the heck have the last two months gone? To be serious (for a change), if I remember correctly, bracket matching isn't in place yet, but it will be soon.