Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

BioWare & Infogrames: Just to clarify about BioWare's involvement with NWN and the difference between a developer and publisher to hopefully address some of your concerns. BioWare is a developer which means they design the game, program the code, and create the art and graphics. We hand over the final product ('gold master') to our publisher who is in charge of pressing the CDs, printing the manuals, the boxes and setting up the distribution to various retailers around the world. In short, BioWare has little to do with the marketing, distribution and sales of the game.

Patches come out in English first because BioWare is a Canadian-based company that consists of English speaking employees so, naturally, all the work we do is in English which then must be translated into different languages. The difficulty with patches for a foreign language is that BioWare sends the patch candidate for testing with our publishers QA in Europe. At that point, all we can do send email everyday asking if they are finished testing. It is entirely out of our hands when it is being tested by someone outside BioWare. this is why we cannot say much about the status of a foreign language patch because the patch is done and being looked at by Infogrames Europe.

Linux: Didn't want to miss the thread. Linux Client is still being developed as awaiting the return of key people. they should be here next week. I'm not sure if they will begin work next week, as they might have a bit of catching up to do at first, but things should be ramping up pretty quick.

Scripting Help:

Quote: Such a list already exists at the NWN Lexicon. Of course, it's not Bioware doing the work, but they have enough on their plate as it is, probably looking for bugs and patching things right now. Go to nwvault.ign.com, and look at their reference scripts database. Then check out the NWN Lexicon link (soon to be a downloadable file!).

Excellent suggestion hahnsoo. they have created an awesome resource that we do not have the time to create ourselves right now. We are waiting on some legal text for our Links Directory to be able to start taking submissions for great resources. We are also in the process of redesigning our site to make finding things easier and more intuitive for searching for and be directed to great info on all aspects of the game including scripting.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

SecureROM:

Quote: 1) Strip the SecureROM from 1.21 patch, call it 1.21b or something and release it until you figure out where you screwed up.

SecureROM is almost totally out of our hands. The agreement for using it on our executable is a contract between Infogrames and Sony. We have made our concerns and issues noted to both parties and something should be happening soon/next week or so. No promises.

Quote: 2) Find a copy of the old SecureROM you used, slap it on 1.21 and release that now.

That is impossible to do. The SecureROM system doesn't work that way. I wish I could explain it to you but the encrytion process does not take place here at BioWare. We cannot "roll back". We have asked about doing this. We are fully aware of this issue and customers not being able to play our games pains us like toothpicks under the fingernails. We are working towards a solution.

BioWare Messages: Let me first clear up some things. We do not send duplicate messages. We are telling you about something new each time. I do see how getting a second message about a new module could seem to be annoying, if you didn't care about the first message. We have received many requests from people that do not visit the main NWN page for this kind of information. Our stats show that the majority of people have the NWN Forums set as their home page. These people will not see the main page and miss these kinds of things. That is why we send these as Official Messages. We aren't trying to sell you a new X10 home camera system. We are sending out information about our game, Neverwinter Nights, which you are obviously interested in. Would separating the info in the My Messages box into Official and Unofficial make it easier for you?

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

There's An X-Pack: Our time is actually a bit divided. Live bugs take priority, then comes the expansion work. On the brighter side a lot of work we're doing for the expansion also benefits the live version of the game as well...

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

NWN: Neverwinter Nights (to install, use the toolset or even just to play) requires you to have Administrator access because it needs to access the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive in the Registry. The decision to put the information the game needs in that hive eliminated the need to manage the situation where different user profiles think they have different game versions (game version is different from executable version). Yes, we could have managed this except that it still didn't solve another problem - updating. If the user installed the game to [system drive]\program files, then XP would prevent a user without Administrator rights from making changes to the contents of that folder. That would mean, you login as a normal user, start the game, connect to play a multiplayer game, get the message that an update is available, only to find that you cannot install it because you don't have permission. You then have to logout, login with an Administrator, start the game, ... Get the idea? We didn't make the decision about requiring Administrator access to use Neverwinter Nights without first spending a lot of time trying to make it work and to come up with solutions to the different problems we saw. Ultimately, to allow a restricted user to play properly would have forced us to make a lot of changes to some of the fundamental systems of the game.