Rotku
Wed, 23rd Nov '05, 7:42am
Not sure if this has been posted up in the News section, but it's a great overview of the toolset (amoung other things), from Eurogamer. About a month old article, but I just saw it today!
The Neverwinter Nights 2 editor is a complicated-looking tool, but a quick demonstration suggests it won't be off-limits to anybody who's ever dabbled in MS Access or any other multi-paned utility - and it has the same kind of layout flexibility as Photoshop, allowing you to position panes where you want them. Navigation's tabbed between areas, conversations and scripts, so you can edit them simultaneously instead of, for example, having to remember a lot of specifics from one when it comes to sorting out another. Selecting a simple building, Baudoin demonstrates how easily it can be rotated at any angle on the terrain, and actually overlapped with other similar buildings to form unusual layouts. Placing curbs, crates, barrels and benches is point-and-click, and the same goes for things like creatures and trees.
Most of everything can be modified to a certain extent on the right side of the screen. Spawn a pit fiend for example and you can alter his height and hitpoints. I wanted a tall one, obviously, because I'm childish. It's also possible to select multiple buildings of the same type at the same time and tweak their values collectively - tweaking the colour scheme and trimming, for example. This'll be particularly useful if you want to build up forests, actually. Baudoin talks of "speed trees". By changing their seed values you can spawn incredibly varied foliage, sprinkling them around with the left mouse button. One of the great things about a project like this, Baudoin confirmed, is that all the work that the artists do can be made available, even if it's not used in the main game - so in other words, they made too many trees. As well as numbers and variety, it's possible to make things a lot taller - there'll be elevation changes on externals this time.
More interesting than simply making villages and forests though is the prospect of shaping them. The terrain tools look excellent - allowing you create hills and valleys, painting them with grass and other flora of your own selection, even blending the textures together for realistic transitions. Within the world-viewer, the grass waves in the wind - just as the clouds swirl around in the sky. At your command, obviously - you can even speed up the day and night cycle. Head indoors and you can position everything where you want it rather than having to rely on pre-fabricated areas, and wherever you go you have a lot of control over the lighting. Light and shadow is largely dynamic, but you can play with light sources and indeed the way they affect things. Once you're all done, you can test how things look by heading straight into the game itself to have a go.A few things there that really stood out to me:
-> Navigation tabs! No longer will you have to exit out of one window to open up another. You can simply flick between them without shutting them down! Will make thing a lot faster!
-> Can alter placeables scale without too much worry. They used a pitfiend example, but it seems it can be done with Houses and Trees as well (I hope!). Will allow for much more customisation than the original NWN Toolset!
-> Easy forest making! No more of those horrible forest tilesets where every second tree seems identicle; nor having to place hundreds of placeables just to get a realistic forest!
-> Last but certainly not least - Overlapping buildings! :D
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61457
The Neverwinter Nights 2 editor is a complicated-looking tool, but a quick demonstration suggests it won't be off-limits to anybody who's ever dabbled in MS Access or any other multi-paned utility - and it has the same kind of layout flexibility as Photoshop, allowing you to position panes where you want them. Navigation's tabbed between areas, conversations and scripts, so you can edit them simultaneously instead of, for example, having to remember a lot of specifics from one when it comes to sorting out another. Selecting a simple building, Baudoin demonstrates how easily it can be rotated at any angle on the terrain, and actually overlapped with other similar buildings to form unusual layouts. Placing curbs, crates, barrels and benches is point-and-click, and the same goes for things like creatures and trees.
Most of everything can be modified to a certain extent on the right side of the screen. Spawn a pit fiend for example and you can alter his height and hitpoints. I wanted a tall one, obviously, because I'm childish. It's also possible to select multiple buildings of the same type at the same time and tweak their values collectively - tweaking the colour scheme and trimming, for example. This'll be particularly useful if you want to build up forests, actually. Baudoin talks of "speed trees". By changing their seed values you can spawn incredibly varied foliage, sprinkling them around with the left mouse button. One of the great things about a project like this, Baudoin confirmed, is that all the work that the artists do can be made available, even if it's not used in the main game - so in other words, they made too many trees. As well as numbers and variety, it's possible to make things a lot taller - there'll be elevation changes on externals this time.
More interesting than simply making villages and forests though is the prospect of shaping them. The terrain tools look excellent - allowing you create hills and valleys, painting them with grass and other flora of your own selection, even blending the textures together for realistic transitions. Within the world-viewer, the grass waves in the wind - just as the clouds swirl around in the sky. At your command, obviously - you can even speed up the day and night cycle. Head indoors and you can position everything where you want it rather than having to rely on pre-fabricated areas, and wherever you go you have a lot of control over the lighting. Light and shadow is largely dynamic, but you can play with light sources and indeed the way they affect things. Once you're all done, you can test how things look by heading straight into the game itself to have a go.A few things there that really stood out to me:
-> Navigation tabs! No longer will you have to exit out of one window to open up another. You can simply flick between them without shutting them down! Will make thing a lot faster!
-> Can alter placeables scale without too much worry. They used a pitfiend example, but it seems it can be done with Houses and Trees as well (I hope!). Will allow for much more customisation than the original NWN Toolset!
-> Easy forest making! No more of those horrible forest tilesets where every second tree seems identicle; nor having to place hundreds of placeables just to get a realistic forest!
-> Last but certainly not least - Overlapping buildings! :D
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61457