Trent Oster of Neverwinter Nights

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Voodoo Extreme had a couple of questions for Trent Oster, Producer of Neverwinter Nights, the first one regarding the release schedule for the game, and a "rumor that they were around 60% done with NWN."

Trent: While it is true NWN is a good while away from shipping, 60% is a little harsh. The big issue with NWN is going to be testing and polish time. We don't want to ship this game until it is the best thing we can create. When the game is awesome. we will ship it, but not before.

Our current completion target is winter 2001.

The next question is about game visuals, wrapping up a series of comments from several game developers.

Billy) Ok, the "next" holy grail in visuals, what do we need to see the hardware manufacturers do? They seemed to have really done a lot with the GeForce 3, but, of course, more needs to be done. What are some of the key areas that need to be focused on / added / etc. for, what I would assume be the GeForce 4, to really bring us to the "next level"?

Trent Oster) I believe the next level in computer gaming visuals will depend on a few features. First and foremost is more rendering horsepower for fill rates. We can drive large polygon counts at medium resolutions, but for higher resolutions the fill rate becomes a serious bottleneck. I'd love to see NWN running at 2048x1536 at a solid 60 fps. The second desire I have is for more internal precision in the pixel pipelines. No matter what game you are playing you can still see visible banding artifacts where multiple passes are rendered. The third major improvement is an understanding of what is possible with pixel shaders and where they can go. Right now everyone is just starting to play with pixel shaders and no one has even implemented the intended features, let alone really pushed the hardware. Think about the original Sony Playstation. It took a number of years before the games started to really push the hardware and every year some group managed to wring extra performance or features out of the hardware, many of which were never intended by the designers of the system. In short, I see a learning period by developers and hardware vendors. As the developers start to push the hardware, the hardware companies can see where the developers are going and push that area in the hardware.