Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Tiamat)

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

G-Max Support: As much as Kane asserts that we are not supporting GMax, the actual decision on GMax support has not been made yet.
At this time, we are still investigating GMax support in Neverwinter Nights and will let you know one way or another once a decision has been made.
NWN is not feature complete at this point.

Saying that you have made no decision about GMax means that you will not implement GMax support? You can assume that. Time will tell.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager:

Transitions: From what I have gathered playing the game and messing around with the toolset, if you are walking around a city there is no load time until you exit that map/area or move to an indoor location. Moving around indoors has been both no load for the entire interior to a load for a next, big map. For example, I was walking around a city and went into a large house and went through a loading screen. While in the house I walked from room to room, with the next room appearing as I moved into them (even if I had to open a door or portcullis). At one particular door I opened and moved into I hit a loading screen- I had hit a large transition into a vast secret maze.

In this same house I opened up a door that led back outside (loading screen) at a different point- so yes, there can be different entrances for a location.

I also gathered from using the toolset that I could create several houses on one area. I slap down a single room for a peasant hut, for example, and in the same area I'm working on create a 4 room estate. Both of these have different transition points from different maps. I have seen a tower map in toolset where, from above, looked like a group of smaller and smaller squares. Each square contained a room with stairs leading up that popped you over to the next smaller square on the same board.

Remember that these are my humble observations and I could be a Monkey-Head...

Auto-Spliting Gold: The DM running the game can 'Give' what he wants to each player if he or she feels that needs to be done. I would assume that if you are adventuring with a group of folks and the fighter actually picks up the bag of loot from the dead monster it's basically up to him if he wants to give anything to anybody. The DM can agree or disagree with this, as he also has the ability to 'Take' anything he wants away from a character. So ultimately it's the DM who decides first of all who gets what, and secondly if he even wants a player in his game if that player's style of play runs counter to what the DM wants.

It then comes down to who you want to play with- if you are all against each other and the DM agrees then great. If you want to play a cooperative game and the DM agrees O.K.- it all depends.

If a group of people are playing without a DM then the only thing, I believe, that is evenly shared is XP. Gold is not automatically split between characters and items certainly are not.

David Gaider, Designer:

Limitations On Armor: From looking at the list, the closest thing I think you could do in this respect is lay down Use Limitations with respect to Race. So if you had Large Platemail that no PC race could wear, apply the six Use Limitations to it. If it was small, say, and only Halfling and Gnome PC's could wear it, apply Use Limitations for Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc and Dwarf... and so forth.

The NWN Ad: It's definitely a minotaur next to him, but I don't recognize the model of the big guy. Maybe it was an early giant model? hard to say. None of the giants have such light-colored skin except maybe for the hill giant... but that model is really easy to distinguish and that ain't it.
Maybe if I saw a clearer picture I could tell.

Greatswords: Well, first off, that's not a standard greatsword. You have the ability to alter the appearance of the various pieces of the greatsword... blade, hilt and grip... so it can look like whatever you wish.
Secondly, the size of the sword doesn't really translate in that screen. Put the sword in the hands of your character and see how it looks on-screen and you'll agree that it's a greatsword.

Tilesets: I'll pass along the request to the art department, but I doubt we'll see much change in the tilesets at this point. There's always going to be something that someone wants extra in every tileset... I think we'd be better served by making it as easy as possible for users to modify the tilesets to suit their own purposes.

Interiors: The Cavern Tileset has a generic 'tunnel' tile which has a set width (it's much less than a full tile, 10 meters, but wider than single-file marching).
Houses are different... most interiors have a set tile with walls and furniture grouped about. There are also 'generic' interior tiles if you wish to build your own interior rather than use the pre-set tiles... those will generally be larger than the pre-sets, tho.
There are no walls as placeable objects, for various reasons.

Wall Decorations: The current decorations on the walls do belong to the walls and are part of the tileset. I don't think there are any wall decorations amongst the placeable objects, but there's nothing to stop them from being made and placed against the wall (I think).

Placeable Objects: As far as I can tell, placeables are fully rotatable (on the vertical axis, anyway).
You'd need a different animation to have a 'knocked over' barstool, if the original placeable has it standing upright. Placeables are only rotatable on the vertical axis.

Dialogue and Objects: Any placeable object can have a dialogue file associated with it. We use this for signs... you click on them and they show a pop-up box with whatever's written on them. You could also have fully scripted dialogue with responses... and use any skill checks or stuff during the course of the dialogue that you wanted.
Dialogue doesn't HAVE to represent people talking... that's the gist of it.
For the sign, you could script starting conditions that check the Intelligence of the person reading it... maybe low Int people or Barbarians can't read? I gave an example once before of attaching a dialogue file to a table... and allowing the option of 'searching' the table and being presented with special inventory on a success. You could do very much the same thing with your painting.

Creature Factions: Each creature can only belong to one faction at a time. Each faction can be set to a relationship with every other faction (and the PC's).

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

The Purpose of the Boards: For the most part, the boards are here for a few reasons:

the boards allow the community to discuss ideas with each other (generally ideas that are raised by us). That debate is then examined by us, and we determine if the inclusion (or exclusion, dependant) of those debated-ideas would serve to improve our titles and give the community more of what it wants;

the boards allow for some good ol' fashioned constructive criticism by the community of BioWare's past and current titles and policies;

the boards allow for the developers to interact with the community-at-large, which is fun for all and makes it less antiseptic;

and, of course, the boards allow for free publicity

Generally, if we're going to release information, it's done through the media - whether that be print magazines, on-line websites, or whatever. Eventually, our own website will become more of a focal point for that information as well.

Point Buy System: Actually, the answer is a bit easier (and less exciting) than it (the move from 25 to 30) being an actual tweak based upon gameplay.

We started with 25 points simply because it was the default in the DMG (outside of any specific campaign settings). After a while, we decided to try something closer to what the Forgotten Realms campaign approximates. Maybe it was the powergamers in the office who wanted to try something with a bit more va-voom, so that when they made their characters they could compensate for other inadequacies (kidding).

Either way, I think a lot of the people here have started to realize that 30 points IS a lot. We might tweak the campaign slightly to bring the challenge level up to the 30-point character mark (then again, we may not actually have to) - regardless, we have to tweak the campaign a bit, anyway. We also might reduce the point buy total somewhat. In 3rd edition, there is a lot of magic that raises your attributes. Starting out with 30, and then having that in the game might lead to a type of character that we feel unbalances things.

At this point, it's kind of hard to say for certain where the final number will lay. But more than anything, right now, we're playing with the numbers, basically, because we can. So if this is a subtle way of determining at what stage of the game we're at now, you did a good job We're close to questions like this being very important - in fact, in many places we're starting to explore these territories... but we're not quite there at the moment.

Nathan Frederick, Quality Assurance:

Game Testing: Common misconception, that a game doesnt start testing until its complete. We started testing months ago.

It makes more sense to start testing the components that are ready, when they are ready, and then keep an eye on them, than to leave everything to the end. It also allows you to catch problems in the systems that are ready, when those systems are not being interferred with by other systems. It's much easier to track a problem in system A, which uses system B, and system C, when you know B and C both work.
Or in other words:
Are we testing? - Yes.
Is there still stuff being implemented? - Yes.

Combat Animations: I can try to clarify the answer, but I don't really follow your question. I'll give it a shot though.
If you are unarmed, and are parrying, you get out of the way. If you are using weapons, its a combination of blocks, and dodges.
Your attack animations are different, per the weapons used, as well.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

Model Height: Yes, the model for a human male is roughly 2 meters tall.

Items and Scripting: Items (including weapons) do not have script hooks. That is, it is not possible to assign a script to an item.
An item can be assigned an ActivateItem property, which a player may use to trigger the module's OnActivateItem event. This event would then run a script written to take whatever special action you desire.

The NWN Screenshot: 1. That region is a 2x2 tile group. 2. The chickens were placed separately.