NWN Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Trent Oster has updated the official Neverwinter Nights page with his latest progress report.

NWN Update for May, June, and July 2001

Following our excellent showing at E3 we returned to the halls of Bioware and quickly got to work. In the last three months, a number of new features have been added to the game and a large volume of art has been created. Without further ado, let's get to it:

ART:
We are moving ahead quickly on the creature variant models and textures and are well on our way to completing over 170 visually distinct creatures. The 2D artwork we'll be displaying during our module narrations are moving along well as are the planning and modeling for the cinematics. Spell effects are also beginning to show up in the game, with a large library of effects stacking up. In short, the volume of new art looks great and it continues to grow on a daily basis.

PROGRAMMING:
On the programming front we have been reworking a number of systems and adding in some key elements. Some of this has involved optimizing the memory and bandwidth requirements for the game - The less memory the game requires, the more the module can use :-). Preliminary door and placeable object functionality are now available in both the game and toolset. June was also a month of major advances with NWScript. It seemed for a while every day brought some new and amazing script that demonstrated the power and versatility of the language.

The encounter and factions systems have also been implemented, now, and the designers are hard at work on some of the standard scripts that will accompany them. We're finding that Neverwinter's faction-based approach is much more powerful and useful than the reputation system we developed for the Infinity Engine games. The faction system is composed of two parts: a global faction table for all NPCs and a local faction table for each player character. This system allows us to have a town where half the town is populated by Humans and the other half by Gnomes. If the Humans and Gnomes don't get along we could set up the factions so killing a Gnome commoner angers the Gnomish people and the Gnomish guards, but the human guard don't care or they could even respond more favorably to the player for his or her deeds. In short the faction system allows the modules to have very complex group interactions.

The encounter system is a dynamic method for spawning different types of creatures into the game. Instead of placing a mob of specific creatures, you can now simply place a single encounter. Each encounter has a creature heirarchy that it selects from and a difficulty setting for that encounter. When the players come across it in the game world, it checks the number of players nearby and spawns in an appropriate group of creatures from the hierarchy. The entire system is designed around the D&D 3rd Edition "Challenge Rating" system. A CR of 1 means this encounter would be a good fight for four first level characters. For example, an Orc has a challenge rating of ½, meaning two orcs would be a good challenge for a first-level party of four players. As a Troll has a CR of 5, it would be a good fight for four fifth-level characters. Through the system you can create an exciting and scalable adventure quickly and easily.

DESIGN:
As mentioned above, the designers are working on a lot of the supporting system scripts right now, making the gameworld behave as you would expect it to. Data entry is moving along at a good pace, with a wide range of tables and lists being constructed and entered into the game on a daily basis. The behavior of spells and special abilities is also being defined and showing up in the game world. Meanwhile, critical path conversation for the bulk of the modules has been written and a number of those have also been scripted. Once the critical path is complete, we'll be making another pass through the modules to include stores, taverns, ambient encounters, non-vital combat encounters, and so forth.

SUMMARY:
NWN is moving towards functional completion at a very fast pace. Every day a new widget appears in the toolset or a new feature shows up in the game. The game is taking on the feel of a partly completed puzzle: looking at it, you can see actually the big picture and how amazing it's going to be, but equally obvious are all of the empty spaces which still need to be filled. The team is doing a great job and I count myself lucky to be involved with such talented and dedicated people.

Trent Oster
Producer - NWN
Bioware Corp.