Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Steelgem)

Here are some new posts found on the Black Isle Message Boards...

Trent Oster, Producer:

Implementation of a fireball: This topic was sparked by an older quote from Trent...

Fireball functions through a line of sight check with the people in the area of effect. So no, fireball will not expand to fill a long thin hallway. Given the choice between a slightly less dangerous fireball and a massive drop in framerate while the server calculated the volume of the spell dynamically we decided a slightly less dangerous fireball was preferable.

Q. Please Trent, or someone at BW more clarification on what you mean about line of sight in relation to the fireball spell ... If a Halfling Rogue jumps behind a Half-Ogre warrior who is behind the Human Paladin that is the target of the Fireball, isn't line of sight to the Halfling blocked?

A. By Line-of-sight I am referring to walls and other static geometry. If there is a wall between a character and the spell target, the character is not harmed. If the character is in the radius of the spell and there is no wall between the character and the spell target the character is hit. Other characters are not taken into account as this would add extra complexity to the spell script and slow the game. So, in short, no you can't hide behind other characters to avoid the effects of a fireball.

Hex and Binary math functions in NWScript: Right now we have no plans for bit operation support via scripting. You could build your own "layer" on top and perform your operations on an Int if you really needed such functionality.

NWN and D&D (Pen and Paper):
This post by Trent is in response to comments voicing disappointment in the divergence from a perfect pen & paper port of D&D 3rd Edition to the computer.

I understand all the concerns voiced in this thread and I do agree with a number of them. Any closed system modeled on a computer cannot match the freedom and creativity possible in pen and paper. Given the limits of a computer I feel amazingly good about what we have accomplished to date. I also feel the future will be truly amazing. I want NWN to be a game people are still playing in five or ten years. The key to this is going to be attention to community on our part. We have to listen to the community and add in requested features whenever possible. When NWN ships it will be the best game our team could create in the time we had available. It will not have every feature we ever wanted, and there will be aspects we want to improve, but after we ship the game is when even more innovation can start. Given a stable framework and a solid understanding of the system our people can extend and enhance the game further than many of us can foresee. Additionally, by opening almost every aspect of the game to the end users, we can pull innovation from the community. In short, NWN will not be everything that pen and paper D&D is when we ship it. But in the future, with expansions and fan created content it can be something truly amazing which will stand on its own.

Click here to read the posts that lead to Trent's response.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Keyword recognition in the conversation editor:
(Rhodan) No keyword recognition in the conversation editor?

(Derek) That is correct, the CE does not have any keyword recognition in it. That only comes into play if you use scripting for conversations.

(Rhodan) I had thought that tree conversations were limited to text output only. I may not have to go to pure keyword scripting after all!

(Derek) On each line of conversation you can do the following:
- Run a script before the conversation line is displayed to determine if the line should be displayed or if the next branch should be executed. This is for deciding between showing lines like "Get me a Quest_Item_001." or "I see you have Quest_Item_001."
- After/during a text line is displayed you can play an animation on the NPC, play a sound file on the NPC, or even run a script to do pretty much anything. This can be used to show a specific animation while playing your VO line for the NPC while setting a variable to record that the player has talked to this NPC.
I think that the CE is pretty damned powerful myself.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

Previewing your modules: While there won't be any integrated debugger in the NWToolset where you can, for example, set breakpoints in your scripts, we are planning on providing a means to launch the game from there.

Keep in mind that while the NWToolset is using the graphics engine to give the module designers a real feel for how their areas will look at game time, it isn't using the rules engine. This means that while you can write and compile your scripts from within the NWToolset, running those scripts or watching combat isn't possible.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Local Character Vault Interface & Filters: We consider server vaults to be quite important to the NWN multiplayer experience. While we haven't decided on a specific interface for it yet, we are hoping to provide you with a reasonable amount of control over the nature and scope of your vault filters. Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure it won't be scripting-based.

What is a feature: With regards to tilesets, when we refer to a 'Feature,' we mean a special chunk of 10x10 meter terrain - basically something you would want to place specifically, rather than having it appear randomly throughout your painting process. A small cottage might be considered a feature, for instance, as might an ornate fountain. A patch of slightly worn cobblestone, on the other hand, would probably be considered too generic to warrant being a Feature.

Similar to Features are 'Groups.' They are also special chunks of non-generic terrain but they consist of multiple tiles. A large manor house would be a Group, as is that large electrical pit we placed in the dungeon near all the spiders.

It's important to keep in mind that Features and Groups are not things that get placed on top of tiles. They actually are tiles or tile clusters themselves.