Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by Arwen)

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager:

Races: Playable races include Half-Orc, Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Dwarf.
Q: Can I create my own race and how would that work?
A: As a Game Master or module creator you can create a sub race for a player characters and grant special abilities to that sub race through module scripting.

Knowledge of the rules: The game is designed for both groups of people: the pen and paper gurus and the video game only folks. There will be enough in-game and manual documentation to play NWN even if you think elves only make cookies.

So never fear- everybody should be able to jump in and mash goblins with the most hardened of D&D fans.

DM: Click and drag PCs: As a DM one of the features being tested right now is the ability to call all PC to where you, as the DM, is. This could be used in the case of a DM getting a game going and is waiting for all the players to sign on. Some will go wandering off etc. As the DM you, of course, have the ability to click a creature and put it wherever you want (or destroying the creature and making a new one exactly the same in a different area). I am not sure about clicking PC and making them go somewhere.

DM's Control: DM is not able to alter geography on the fly as the game proceeds. When players are actually in game and rooting around a DM can do many things except add a new area (like a forest or tavern) all of that must be done beforehand in the Toolset.

I was typing up the DM Client Introduction and have spent some time messing around with it to see what's possible, what's easy and what requires a bit more time to do. I was interested in how fast I, as the DM, could do things like place objects, monsters etc. with the idea that players are wandering around the module. I think the Quickbar will be a huge help to a DM as it can be tailored for the type of module you are running.

Blood effects: Blood effects are in. They do not play with every hit however so they remain a bit of surprise. You will be able to see arrows fly and stick into enemies (and you). I rounded a corner once a had two things fire arrows at me. I had two arrows sticking out of my chest for a few seconds before they disappeared. Looked pretty cool.

Larger hits have more of the blood effects. Blood is splashed on the ground- but disappears rather quickly.

I opened up the toolset and managed to put down some blood stains on the floor. They are considered a placeable object along with pile of skulls, dead bodies, scorch mark and so on to add to a creepy atmosphere.

Building a town/city: About 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.

Party 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.

Trent Oster, Producer:

Screenshots: We are anxious to get more information out to you, but we are still sorting out the pipeline for releasing assets such as screenshots. It is a laborious process, but soon the volume of new assets will increase greatly.

Animated PC walkable area: Drawbridges are in. There are no animated tiles in the game where you can stand on them and be moved.

Tilesets: Tiles are very hard to create due to all the various constraints.
Yes, the tiles must match on edge and they can be rotated, so you really have to consider all the iterations that are required for every tile type. For example if you have cobbles and a crosser such as a stream in your tileset you need evy case where a crosser and cobbles interact. If you add grass, you need to constrain where and when the types can interact or create all the possible variant tiles. Typically we think of tiles as four corners of the various materials and we try to avoid 3 terrain type tiles. Right now everyone is buried under a ton of work so we can't really go into detail on tile creation, but down the road we will shed some light on the tile creation scene.

Transitions: First, is a transition always to a specific area, or can we transition to a map and chose a destination area from there a la Baldur's gate?

A transition is always to a specific area. If you want a choice the easiest way is to probably set up a dialoge with an NPC who offers the player a choice on where they wish to go. At the appropriate reply you can script the area transition you desire.

And second, is the time that passes during a transition travel a variable that can be set by us?

There is no time passage when you go through a transition. This is due to the nature of the NWN multiplayer system. In BG the player(s) always stayed together and were often forced to transition at the same time, which makes the passage of time on transitions possible. In NWN everyone can go wherever they want, so we can't have time passing on transitions

Monster resting: I don't think resting is in the generic scripts, but as a DM you can force anyone or anything you desire to rest. So when you script your creatures, feel free to add resting.

Rogues hide ability: The rogue can get a sneak attack any time the opponent is caught "flat footed" (without a dexterity bonus) so the thief is more powerful than you think in melee. As well, in NWN the hide is affected by the perception distance of the creatures. So, hiding in combat is possible, but you may have to retreat a little first.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Areas and Resizing: I'm not sure if I'm understanding the topic, so I'm sorry if I come in sounding clueless about something. When you make a map, you designate the size of the map. For instance, you might say you want a map that is "small" at 4x4. Once you are on the map, you can resize it completely (make it 8x8 now), or you can add and delete rows and columns. Currently, when you add rows and columns, the added rows and columns are added to the top and right side of the map. When you delete, they are removed from the top and right side of the map.

I think some of the confusion might have come across because the current version of the toolset does not have these features implemented properly, but in the newer version the features are implemented properly. I just ran through it now, actually.

Spells in the Manual: Anything can and will change, but I think an alphabetical list of spells (similar to the PHB) would be the most efficient usage of space, and is probably what we will end up doing (as opposed to listing out full spell descriptions with redundancies by class).

David Gaider, Designer:

Sample dialogue request: Do they have different personality types (ie. helpful, polite, rude, aggressive, etc.)?

Not all the town guards are the same. They vary... but more along the lines in that some have full dialogue and information to give while others are more along the lines of ambient characters.

How many PC responses are available in a typical conversation with a town guard? Did Bioware take the time to vary the PC responses based on PC characteristics, or did they go with a more simple, "How do I get to (blank)?" type thing?

It depends on how much information the guard has to give.

For generic ambient characters, such as guards and townsmen, they have a selection of random dialogues that they sift through and they select one line to display. Most of these look at the characteristics of who's talking... are they running around with no armor on? Do they have a weapon out? Are they of a particular race? Are they of a particular class? Charisma high/low/medium?

For the guards that give out information or are specific characters, their dialogue tree gets more in-depth... though I would say there isn't the variety of recognition as above. Most will recognize a few things, however, depending on what type of character they are and how it falls into what they're saying. That is pretty much true for all characters, however... we detail them and add some variation in based on the character when it makes sense (moreso than in BG2), but it can't be in every line... and there simply isn't time to make every town guard their own character.

As far as providing a sample dialogue, that would have to be up to Jay and higher-up-types. I'd love to write you one, personally... though I'm not sure how I would get it to you since you don't have the Conversation Editor to look at them.

Internet Connection: The idea is that you will only need a 56K modem to play. Like with any on-line game, however, faster speeds will give you less lag and better performance. It may also be an issue if you're playing a user-made module that has a large hack-pack to download.

I don't think testing has been extensive on this, yet, so we don't know at this point how severe the difference will be. This is no doubt something QA is working on... the idea is to keep people with lower-end processors and modems still involved and able to play.

Weapons: The weapons are a lot like the ones you found in BG... they follow the D&D standard, pretty much. You have the +2 and +3-type enchantments as well as named weapons with spell-casting powers and modifications to stats, skills and such.

The abilities that can be assigned to objects varies according to the type of object. The current abilities that can be assigned to items are the following:
- ability bonuses
- AC bonuses (optionally vs. Alignment, Race or Damage Type)
- attack bonuses (optionally vs. Alignment or Race)
- base item weight reduction
- bonus feats
- bonus spell slots
- cast spell
- damage bonuses (optionally vs. Alignment or Race)
- damage reduction
- damage resistance
- damage vulnerability
- darkvision
- decreased ability scores
- decreased AC
- decreased attack modifier
- decreased damage
- decreased saves (optionally vs. specific)
- decreased skill modifier
- decreased attack modifier
- enhanced container: reduced weight
- enhancement bonus (optionally vs. Alignment or Race)
- extra melee damage type
- freedom of movement
- haste
- Holy Avenger
- immunities (vs dmg type, misc, spells by level/school/specific)
- improved evasion
- keen
- light
- massive criticals
- no combat damage
- on hit (wide selection of stuff... won't even get into)
- regeneration (optionally vampiric)
- save bonus (optionally vs. specific)
- skill bonus
- spell resistance (SR)
- true seeing
- use limitation (vs. Class, Race, Alignment Group or Specific Alignment)

This list is by no means final and represents only what I saw when I hopped over to the item editor a few moments ago. Some of these may not be included in the final release and some things may be yet to come. It's quite a large list, though, and lots of these abilities may be further edited for variation once they are applied to the item.

Persistant variables: Another way of getting around variables not being transferred between modules is to give the PC what we call a 'quest item'... then have the next module check for the presence of that item on the PC and set the appropriate conditions out for them.

So if you want a romance to carry on between modules, the first time it happens the beautiful lady could bestow her favor (a silk scarf) upon the handsome PC. Said scarf is marked as a plot item, and its tag is looked for in the next module that the PC moves to (either via portal or whatever). If the beautiful lady made an appearance in that module, she would then treat the handsome PC appropriately.

If the character goes to another module, the variables would not be saved on him. He is, in effect, quitting that game and starting another.

If he simply saves his character and logs out of a game in progress... yes, they would be saved on his character just as if anyone else saved their game and came back to it later. Variables are persistent only within the module.

Inventory: The inventory is quite large. You can carry quite a bit. Of course, if you carry around 3 suits of armor, 5 weapons and half the crap you come across... well, yes, you're not going to have much room.

If my PnP players carried around that much, I'd have them ambushed by kobolds who steal most of it and leave them naked and screaming for mercy in the pits (like in that Slave Lords module... I just love that). But I know how computer gaming convention goes.

As for expressing the importance of said items? There's no way to force them not to drop it. Marking it as a plot item will prevent it from destroying itself eventually, at least... so the only way of conveying the importance of not dropping it is by telling the player, either covertly or overtly.

You could, for instance, say in the item description 'DO NOT LOSE THIS ITEM!'. Better yet, you could come up with a logical reason why said item was important to keep... after all, what's the beautiful lady supposed to think if you don't even hang onto her favor? Obviously you're not interested.

Undroppable items: You can't set items to undroppable when they are on a PC. That state can only be set in the creature editor (in its inventory), it's not a state you apply to an item, itself.

Invisible weightless object: I actually don't know if IWO's exist for inventory items. I doubt it... I think the IWO's that we have are invisible placeable objects (handy for placing scripts where you need them). If the player had some inventory slot taken up by an item he couldn't see or get rid of, well, that would be annoying.

There are several 'creature' slots (claw1, claw2, special attack, hide) that would exist on a PC but the PC couldn't access... I suppose it would be quite possible to stick an important plot item in there, so long as your scripting made sure it didn't get full and destroyed the item when it wasn't needed anymore.

Modifying experience in script: 1. How does that work with the Scripting Wizards? Is it possible to modify the wizards such that they use my wrapper function instead of RewardXP()?

Actually, RewardXP() is not a proper command with the scripting language. The proper command is GiveXPtoCreature(). What you're hinting at is exactly what we've done with RewardXP() in the official campaign... we wrote up a seperate script that assigns all sorts of rules to how XP is given out and assigned it to the function 'RewardXP()'.

Then anytime we want to give out XP with a script, we use '#include' to call on the XP script and then, in the new script, use the RewardXP() function.

So yes... it can only be done with scripts (with rewarding XP by scripts, I mean), but you can make your own function scripts and call on them with #include... and you will have an example in the official campaign to work from.

I hope that all made sense. If not, let me know... it's still early.

2. How does this work with experience received from monsters? Must I / is it even possible to modify all monster so that they deal no experience except through script (my wrapper function again) in their OnDeath() event?

I think so... there is a slider when you create a module that allows you to set a ratio for XP. I haven't played with it, myself (which is why I'm not sure), but I believe this affects automatic XP like from monsters. You could set this slider to 0, then, and give out all your XP manually (and refer to your XP function in their OnDeath() event, certainly).

3. Are there any (other) hard-coded calls that reward experience? How would I go about circumventing these?

Nothing else hard-coded... so long as you avoid assigning experience through the journal system.

Beyond that, there is no OnReceiveXP() event and no ability for items to adjust XP percentage... but I think the stuff I've described above should pretty much cover what you want to do.

If I give two levels of Cleric to a goblin, does the Toolset make some automatic adjustment to CR or will that have to be done manually?
If you used the Creature Wizard to make the goblin and assigned him 2 levels of Cleric, the CR would be assigned automatically (along with assigning him default skills, feats, spells and scripts so that you could plunk said goblin down and he would immediately begin Blessing and Curing his goblin comrades... all that stuff being manually changeable, of course).

If you built the Creature from the ground up without the Wizard, you would have to assign the CR yourself.

Races, XP and ECL: There's no scripting method that I can see of telling the computer 'so-and-so needs X amount of XP to go to level 2 instead of Y amount... or to 'treat so-and-so as if they were actually this level with regards to XP'.

I suppose there might be some way of scripting a RewardXP() function in a #include script... that would be fairly complex if you wanted to be 100% accurate. It would probably be easier to have the function detect the subrace and apply a constant XP % deduction, instead.

Armor and spell failure: Hmmm... I believe there is, indeed, arcane spell failure with regards to armor, but there doesn't seem to be a function to change it manually that I can see. I will ask.

Multiplayer quests: There are several plans for 'matching sites' on the web (Bioware's going to have some official co-ordination of that... though even I'm not sure of the details. It's all under Jay's hat) where people can find other players and DM's looking for groups.

Add that to single-player modules being created as well as the hack-packs being passed around, and it's going to be a fairly busy community. This is the hope, at least.

Heights and Waterfalls: There are no height transitions currently in the Cavern and Interior Tilesets. The generic 'Raise/Lower' selection is there, but it doesn't do anything... so this might be changing, I don't know. Doubtful on the Interior Tileset, at any rate... you'd likely need a pre-modeled tile to do a gallery or something similar.

It could conceivably be done, however. The tile height/depth is the same for these tilesets just as it is for City and Forest... there just aren't tiles to accompany the function.

Waterfalls are created in any tileset where a 'stream' is laid down to cross a height transition. So you can have them in the City, Forest and Rural Tilesets currently. There are also quite a number of water tiles in the Cave Tileset which have water gushing down the walls or from the ceiling (which looks quite good).

As always, this stuff could still change.

Areas and Resizing: Currently, you can only set the number of tiles in an area when you create it initially... you cannot go back afterwards and add extra.

Tents in the screenshot: In the screenshot you show, the 'campsite' is a tile of its own.

There are, however, tents and campfires that exist as placeable objects, as well, if you'd like to set up something differently.

Actually, I should correct myself. I thought that there was a placeable tent in the list... upon checking this afternoon, I found that there wasn't. There is a campfire and bedrolls and various other smaller items... but no tents. The tents are tile-based only.

Sorry about the mistake.

Chasms: Quote:
1. are they what is seen in the forest tileset if no tile is painted down on a space?
No, they are a generic tile that can be painted down. The default tile in the Forest Tileset is the generic 'forest' tile.

Quote:
2. if not can you paint down a chasm looking tile in the city toolset?
No, there is no chasm tile in the City Tileset. The pit tile (if I recall correctly) exists only in the Forest Tileset and the Crypt Tileset. It may be possible to 'mix-and-match' by replacing a tile in the City Tileset with the pit... but I'm not sure, yet, how easy that would be to do or what it would look like.

Dragons: Hmmm... considering a Great Wyrm Red Dragon (as an example) has a CR of 32, that means that he should be a challenge for a party of 32nd level characters.

Seeing as the normal level limit is 20th level, that means:

a) it will take characters of Epic level to challenge a Great Wyrm
b) that the Great Wyrm is as tough as he probably should be... you can't go toe-to-toe with him. Characters will have to pull out all the stops or defeat him in some other manner.
c) why are you going straight to the Great Wyrm? Those are not the 'standard' dragon a party will generally meet (I hope). They are the toughest creatures in the entire Monster Manual... I don't know why that should make them 'broken'.

Just my thoughts on the matter, at any rate.

Primary and secondary colors: For creatures of the player races you can change not only their skin and hair color, but have six colors to change on their clothing as well (two for leather, two for cloth, two for metal). This applies to all creatures of these types, whether PC or NPC.

Monsters cannot have their colors changed without giving them a new skin. Some monsters have several variations supplied already, however (bugbear, orc, goblin and ogre spring to mind).

Interior: 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.

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).

Multiple 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).

Castle interior: Good Castle and Evil Castle are a series of tiles in the City Tileset. There is a Castle Interior Tileset and a City Interior Tileset for the indoor stuff.

That's only as it stands currently, though. The Tilesets have changed since they were mentioned in the past and will likely change again... so we'd hesitate to say 'yea' or 'nay' to your list, there, simply so as not to set you up for disappointment (or have something better that you might have wanted otherwise to include).

I hope that makes sense. I have little doubt more tileset information will be released before we're done, as I'm sure you're not the only module designer who'd like some info like this.

Swords: Flipping through the list of weapon types, we have:

Bastard Sword
Greatsword
Longsword
Rapier
Scimitar
Short Sword
Two-Bladed Sword

Each have their own unique selections for their appearance, though some have more options than others.

Greatsword: 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.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Single Player campaign for Multiplayer: It isn't the "Single Player campaign", its the "Official Campaign" and it can be played multiplayer. There is little difference between single and multiplayer Neverwinter Nights.

Nathan Frederick, Quality Assurance:

Weapons: These are the base weapon categories/appearances.

A falchion is, in essence, a short sword with a particular appearance.

There is also a katana category, that Dave missed.