Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

David Gaider, Designer

Robes: We're well-aware that this is a popular request. Considering the inherent problems with implementing cloaks and robes... namely clipping as well as the fact that the engine doesn't support layering (you have noticed that helmets replace the head model instead of layering on top of it, right? This isn't a facet of the engine one can change with a wave of the wand and a bippity-boppity-boo)... it's not a small task, so implementation of all or part of this request depends largely on when it can be fit into the appropriate future project. But, by all means, don't stop requesting it. That's what the forums are here for.

Robes:

Quote: An example model would be good but if the engine were modified to allow a robe type animation that over-rode the body except for hands and feet

See, this is the problem I have with most peoples' comments on robes... they say things like 'if the engine were modified' without realizing the true extent of what they're asking. Not that I don't believe your request to be earnest, I'm just pointing this out. No modification to the engine is minor... and replacing the affected body parts with robe-type 'armor' was one of the first things attempted. The results were not impressive, as I understand it. Having NPC's with robes is not a problem... you simply create the model with the robe in existence. Done. Having a robe that a PC can put on, however, will remain a problem. I don't know the intricacies of everything that's involved (I'm not an artist), so while I can quote various things like 'clipping' and 'lack of layering in the engine' as problems, I don't know how much each of these consists as an actual obstacle. In the end, I suppose it's a matter of how much time do we actually want to spend solving this head-ache... as opposed to spending that time doing other things that we already know we can do. There are a lot of people on these boards who seem to think that cloaks and robes are a really high priority... but I can guarantee you that this is a situation of them not knowing what they're asking for.

More:
I think I understand what you're saying, but 'switching out' the body of a PC to an NPC model while leaving the head in place isn't something that can currently be done (I think, anyway). We're talking about altering the engine, again, and I have no idea personally of what would be involved with that. Basic question is: would an expansion team want to go so far as actually modifying the base engine to include robes? ...Or would they find their time better off spent elsewhere? My point is that while someone may say 'do the robes!' anyway, even knowing the above, they don't realize exactly what they're asking for... or the number of things they would be giving up that would cost comparatively the same amount of work. It's like the little laugh I always get when I see a petition thread on these boards asking "Do you want X in NWN?" Really the question should be "What would you give up in order to have X in NWN?" It's very easy to say "yes, I want this" and "yes, I think this is important" ...but in the end we're the ones who have to weigh the effort involved with the total time and resources we have allotted for the project, not the fan. The fan just wants it done. I suspect that, insofar as PC's go, we may very well see cloaks... but I'm not so sure on the robes part.

And More:

Quote: There are certain things the community can create(monsters,placebles,etc etc) and there are certain things the community cant create(robes for 1) wouldnt an expansion be better dealt with along these lines leave us to build the new monsters,,,and u can do the robes,,,8)

That sounds reasonable on the surface, but we really can't approach an expansion with the idea in mind that the custom content community can or should fill in the gaps with what we're providing. If an expansion is going to be done, we *have* to provide the bulk stuff like new monsters, new tilesets and so forth... we couldn't put aside stuff like that in favor of high-workload projects like robes. That would be wishful thinking. Extra stuff like robes has to come out of the time that isn't spent producing the "bullet point" features that would sell an expansion. As far as a GetAppearance/SetAppearance command goes, I assume that such a thing could be done. How does this enable you to create robes, however? Setting the Appearance for a creature determines which model it uses, right? You're still going to have the problem of the proper PC head being needed, aren't you?

Plot Wizard:

Quote: More crap by BIO. They shouldn't waste our time.

As someone who has used the wizard, I would have to disagree. It's of great use to neophytes and allows more advanced users the ability to create complex plots much more quickly by building upon the provided framework and dialogue.I'd say that that constitutes it not being "crap", even if not every single person chooses to use it.

Robes:

Quote: There are certain things the community can create(monsters,placebles,etc etc)
and there are certain things the community cant create(robes for 1)wouldnt an expansion be better dealt with along these lines leave us to build the new monsters,,,and u can do the robes,,,8)

That sounds reasonable on the surface, but we really can't approach an expansion with the idea in mind that the custom content community can or should fill in the gaps with what we're providing. If an expansion is going to be done, we *have* to provide the bulk stuff like new monsters, new tilesets and so forth... we couldn't put aside stuff like that in favor of high-workload projects like robes. That would be wishful thinking. Extra stuff like robes has to come out of the time that isn't spent producing the "bullet point" features that would sell an expansion. As far as a GetAppearance/SetAppearance command goes, I assume that such a thing could be done. How does this enable you to create robes, however? Setting the Appearance for a creature determines which model it uses, right? You're still going to have the problem of the proper PC head being needed, aren't you?

More:
Gay Russian circus clown. Right. Well, gee, that's helpful. Haven't heard that one before. I can also unequivocably say that there will *never* be an expansion that devotes itself either entirely or mostly towards cloaks and robes or similar. Be reasonable and think that through for a moment. While there might be some people on this board who say that it's the *most* important thing to them and that they would buy an expansion that included only that, people on this board are not representative of the average purchaser of the game. The people on this board are the hardcore players. Do you really think that we could even conceivably put out something like the "Cloaks & Robes Expansion!" and charge $20-$30 for it? How many NWN players do you think would actually pick that up? Anyway... I don't know enough about the specific problems with layering and the engine, so I can't carry on this discussion much further. Thanks for the input.

And More:

Quote: Though this post rapidly declined (not that I didn't help it, mind you) please do consider the request towards some sort of set/get apperance function in the scripts. This would be very useful to many of us.

I actually steered Brent towards this thread and he is discussing some of the ideas brought up with the programmers. He mentioned that the programmers found holes in these ideas (nothing specific, tho) but that the whole robe technology issue is still being discussed.

Guess:

Quote: An OnEquip and OnUnEquip would be nice as well for cursed items and such...

Adding more module-level events, such as these, is already in the vague planning stages. When we'll see them I'm not sure, but we know we want them in eventually.

Tralalala:
I think I can boil down what Papermonk is saying even further.

Does Bioware know that having cloaks and robes would make for better-looking characters?

Yes, of course. We stand behind the choices we made for the way the characters were animated, even if that makes certain things harder to do... it made other important things much easier. We never said we wouldn't try.

Does Bioware know that there are people who would really like having extra character options to look at?

Yes, of course. The topic gets put up repeatedly. Just because something is wanted and easily imagined, however, does not make it easily do-able... not with *this* iteration of the engine, anyway. Again, however, that doesn't mean we won't try.

Will Bioware try?

We may, in the end, try our best... we know it's a popular request. But there are plenty of other things that are needed in the game that are more important than extra clothing options. You can try to convince us otherwise, but it's not really going to wash. Everyone's passionate about something, and this is one of those things... there's a *lot* of stuff that would be cool to include. Like I said, however, there's also cold, hard, reality to consider and we can't ignore that. The cold, hard, fact may simply end up being that robes on PC's are not realistically possible in this engine without major re-tooling... and performing a major re-tooling strikes me as unlikely solely for the sake of robes. But the issue is not dead, and we will try. My original point, and Papermonk's salient one, is that some people (not all) ask for this feature as if it is both easy to implement and a given, really... that this isn't an RPG without it... and both of those just aren't true.

Robes:

Quote: 3. Bioware DID do the research, and discovered it was less of a priority than other things.

Although I wasn't part of the actual process of setting up the animation part of the engine, I'd have to say #3 is it. The original question is telling. Why didn't we set up an animation system that could do robes? We weren't asking ourselves that question. We weren't thinking "Hmmm... how can we set up an animation system that can properly render cloth and robes?" The priority was setting up a system that could easily put together PC's of various races, genders and armor types in a simple fashion that didn't stretch the graphics card. Why *this* particular animation method was chosen, I can't really say. I imagine it has its advantages, however. If we were to do another engine now, with the min specs being higher, maybe it would be different... maybe we would be looking at having deformable meshes right from the beginning and include them as an integral part of the animation engine.

New Spells:

Quote: Hey David, does bioware plan on adding more spells in the expansion?

I don't see why not. As far as effort required versus impact goes, new spells are pretty much a no-brainer, aren't they?

Plot Wizard: The dialogue that the plot wizard uses is not exactly generic. It's not a character who says "Hi! My name is Plot Giver and I would like you to fetch a [insert name of item here] for me!"

They are full dialogues which tend to go beyond their call, allowing for things like telling rumors or giving directions around the town. These extra things can be deleted, after all. Now it's true that some people might choose to leave those dialogues as is and not change them... in which case the worst situation you could have is you'd be running into characters who sound awwwfffullly familiar. Not sure why someone would do that. I doubt many people pound out a module just for the sake of pounding one out. We can't stop people from not altering the dialogue though, but I rather suspect that most people will.

The plot wizard will help those who are a bit more experienced, though, big-time. I can say that from personal experience. It's a LOT easier to go in and add unique dialogue to an already-created structure than it is to go through the tedium of creating that initial "Hello? Who are you?" structure yet one more time. I didn't have the plot wizard back when the OC was made, but we did have the templates to try out manually. In the brothel in Luskan at the end of Chapter 2, both Erb Jansen and Yvette are based on the exact same fetch quest template. Can you tell? Pull them out and take a look... both are quality dialogues that were put together very quickly. Far more quickly than if I had to do both from scratch, and I don't think any quality on those dialogues was lost (and I'm not talking about the OC as a whole, for those of you who must constantly interject every time it's mentioned). So while any tool can be ultimately misused if not used as instructed, and that will happen, I don't think it's indicative of an oncoming epidemic... and will prove very useful to most.

More:

Quote: Hmmm...I think we'll see a lot of duplication, and canned stories myself.

You may be right. But poor writing and/or a lack of imagination are not problems that are specific to the Plot Wizard. If someone doesn't have the imagination or impetus to change the dialogue involved, their module probably won't be much better overall with the Plot Wizard than it would have been without it, I suspect. It'll just have quests that work.

And Even More:
I will point out that a module builder can very easily go into the dialogues created by these wizards afterwards and edit them to your heart's content to make then as non-generic as you please.Fetch-and-retrieve, for instance, just involves getting a specified item and bringing it back to the plot-giver NPC. The number of variations that can be applied to this, especially if you're willing to add onto the existing dialogue, is huge... basically the plot wizard just creates the framework for you so you don't have to worry about the tedium of setting up the basic scripts and conversation structure and can focus instead on all the details. Drawback? For someone that is not very familiar with scripts and/or the conversation editor, altering the basic structure of a quest (such as a fetch-and-retrieve quest requiring two items instead of just one) will be difficult. But someone with that level of experience would likely not have gotten this far to begin with... for them, it's a pre-fab that allows them more versatility then they began with. For people who *can* alter the basic structure, it's a god-send, believe me.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

The Rats Are Coming! Run For The Hills!: OK, we will give you rats.

New Things:

Quote: The things that should be easy to implement in a patch...

Sorry, but I must caution you against making statements like this. You would be shocked at the number of things that are in no way simple or easy to impliment.

Quote:
Get/SetIsStolen()
Get/SetIsDroppable()

The 'Get' portion of these two are in, and will be in the next patch. The 'Set' idea is not really possible at this time.

// Returns true if item is stolen
// - oItem: item to query
int GetStolenFlag(object oItem);

// Return true if item can be dropped
// - oItem: item to query
int GetDroppableFlag(object oItem);

// Returns true if placeable object can be used
int GetUseableFlag();

Quote: Get/SetIsStealable() no chance of being pickpocketed

Interesting. I will look into the Get, but again, the Set isn't really possible.

Quote:
SetDeity()
SetSubRace()

I doubt these will ever happen, but I will look into it. They are only supposed to be part of end-user character creation, but I do acknowledge their usefullness.

Quote: z-axis positioning of objects in the editor

Not really possible as between both the game and the Toolset, they will try to slam items and creatures to the ground. This is only sorta possible for placeables.

Quote: A large 100% weightless "container" that the PC could not see or access (well maybe see) in which the developers can place all kinds of persistant tokens and/or variables about the character. No chance of being pickpocketed or affected by the normal game, only script. Maybe making a "store" that stays with the player when he saves instead of saving in game. This could be useful for in game "Player Vaults" also since its actually still on the character and not in the mod.

Interesting, but I think we have a better idea on this... stay tuned.

Neil Flynn, Programmer

Plot Wizard:

Quote: Hmmm, now the question is, do I continue struggling with the mod I have recently started or do I wait for an undisclosed amount of time for the plot wizard? Think I will progress with what I am doing and then try the plot wizard and see how it differs.

The 1.27 patch will open all previous modules, and the plot wizard will be available in them. There is no need to start from scratch in 1.27. If you wanted to prepare for 1.27, create your areas and get the stories fleshed out.

Who is involved?
What is invoved?
What are the steps in the story?
...

You can build it as you go, but like anything, it is fastest if you already have a plan.