Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by Arwen)

David Gaider, Designer:

Dialogue trees: In any given dialogue file, you're likely going to have several different 'starting points' for dialogue... and therefore several different trees.

If you have a character who starts off saying 'can you help me?' and other times says 'you sure are stupid', those have to be different trees. When a character's dialogue is selected, the game starts running through the various dialogue conditions' scripts... if the conditions in the script are true, it runs that tree. If not, it can fall all the way to the 'default' tree, which is a starting condition with no scripting (meaning it's always true).

As far as the difficulty for scripting starting conditions, it depends on how complex you want to get. Most of the time it will be very easy... you're looking at the setting for a single global or a particular stat (like the Charisma of whoever they're talking to). If you want to mess with timers and the like, it can get a bit more complicated, but chances are that there's going to be plenty of examples of scripts like that already in the game (and those are heavily commented to describe what they do, so you won't be left guessing).

Persuade option in dialogue: The Persuade option is available to everyone, as it defaults to Charisma. The total modifier to the die roll, then, is the Persuade skill rank + the Charisma bonus. If someone didn't have the skill at all, they might make an Easy DC check, but probably not otherwise without a very high Charisma.

The Insight option, on the other hand, will only show up for those with a Wisdom of 14+. Like all links in dialogue, they can be scripted to be either TRUE or FALSE... which will determine whether or not they appear.

Converting to vampirism: There's no function for a conversion to vampirism built into the game, if that's what you mean. Vampires as monsters are included, though, and it's possible you might be able to script someone becoming a vampire...though it certainly wouldn't be easy.

Government: Well, the short answer is yes. What you have to do, though, is think about what direct effect that government/taxation system has on the player. How does the government collect the taxes? Do you write an NPC who demands money from the players? Does this NPC taxman try to search for the party? How does the government react when the players break the law (the 'no magic' rule would be very easy to duplicate with an area-specific script)?

Environment in the campaign: There's really too many to list off. We're using every tileset available to us, though...what the final count is has yet to be determined.

Magical weapons giving off light?: Yes.

NPC's sticking their tongues out?: No.

Sending data from server to server: Quote:
To send data from one NWN server to another, since direct communication is not possible, will we be able to give a character a scroll or some other item, to indicate they have completed an adventure and have the other server look for that item as they enter?

Replace 'server' with 'module' in the above quote and yes... that's completely correct and quite easy to do.

Birds: Sort of. They're flying at head level, after all, not soaring into the clouds. If you think about it, they're regular models with no body, no legs, and big flapping ears.

Phoenixes: Not in the initial release, no.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Mac and Linux ports: Sorry, its been a super busy day here and I haven't had much time for the boards. Yes, at this time the Mac and Linux versions are still happening. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

Elven paladine: Resurrection spam.

What is the NWN team doing?: The biggest misconception is that the first 2 years involved a full team that was coding and generating story and art. This was not the case. NWN has been in full production for just over 2 years now.

BioWare replies: I reply on average once every 2.356 hours.

NWN plug in BG: Yes, it was a plug. But working on TotSC did not impact NWN at all. They were totally separate teams. BioWare usually has about 2 to 3 projects on the go at one time and the work on one has no direct impact on the other. All the work we are doing on NWN does not impact Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

DirectX: It is a common misperception that if a game uses OpenGL for its rendering that it does not require or use DirectX. That is not true.

DirectX is still required/used in NWN. We are using OpenGL for rendering, not Direct3D, but that does not remove/exclude using the other parts of DirectX that work really well.

I don't remember exactly what parts of DirectX we are using in NWN (I will have to check with the guys on Monday), but DirectX is still required for the game to work.