chevalier
Mon, 9th Aug '04, 5:09pm
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Live Team Producer</font>
1.63 and 1.64 news (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=372957&post=3072473&forum=77&highlight=)
<hr>Curious though if the people who have payed out the money to get all the expansions will get access to the "updated Official Campaign modules". Or would we be required to buy Platinum to get access to this content.<hr>
"updated Official Campaign modules" just refers to some minor bug fixing that was done in the Prelude and Chapter 2 modules of Original NWN, and some minor fixes in the HotU Official Campaign. There are no fixes for SoU in this update. The details will be in the patch notes. All of these fixes are in 1.63 and 1.64. All we did is put the OC fixes into 1.62 for the Platinum Edition and labled it 1.63 for sync reasons.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
Click Here ("]ping 1.63 ... respone timedout[/url]
<hr>So where is it?<hr>
In private beta. It will be released when it is done. Derek Posted the last update here: [url="http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=372957&forum=77)
<hr>Invisibility is worthless - anyone, including NPCs, can see invisible creatures by equipping a ranged weapon.<hr>
Fixed in 1.64 For a list of things that have been already posted on this boards, check the link in my signature.
<Hr>As for people not reporting problems in beta versions, I can understand how that might irritate the development team, but it's probably at least as irritating as reporting bugs and having them completely ignored for over a year.<hr>
Bugs are prioritized, not ignored. If a bug is classified as "low priority", or there are many "high" or "very high" priority bugs in the system, they will not be fixed until they are in the line. Prioritizing bugs is done by us so in some cases we might have a different opinion about how important a bug is. If you are running a PW and your bug only affects NWN in PW setting, the bug is automatically less important to us than it is for you. We will still fix it, but any issues that affect i.e. the official campaign have higher priority. Anyway, 1.64 is close and it has a lot of things in it that have been on our bugtracker for quite some time.
More:
<hr>HWW thats only the beginning of the bug/exploit list... I could name about 50-100 more and some are documented in my Builders Notes of my second module.... But I am confident that with this patch they will finally fix some of the long standing bugs... Thats why I had mentioned in one of the threads that I think there should be 2 types of patches.
1) small hotfixes that integrate into the system like a plugin. These would be fixes to 2da, scripts, etc.
2) engine patches which would require a little more testing. This would be fixes to the engine.
The hotfixes could be ditributed through gamespy and fix the "simpler" bugs. These could be posted every 1-2 months. Then every 3-4 months there could be the patch for the engine. Just an idea, but maybe Bioware can tell us why its not possible, or why it doesnt make sense to do it that way.<Hr>
Simple: Testing requirements. Things we roll out that modify NWN needs to be qa'ed and by contract, approved from several parties. These processes take time ... a lot of time. If you are running a MMORPG where your customers pay a monthly fee and have to run through the patcher every time they start, your modus operandi allows this stuff. For NWN, this would create support nightmare and block the live team from doing anything else.
Party = Lag (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=370169&post=3072841&forum=56&highlight=)
<hr>Seems to me that since there can in theory be 64 players the game engine should have taken this into account.<hr>
That's why there is a "only one party" switch right on the server. If you switch it off, people can form parties for themselves which usually self regulates the server.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Tim Smith, Tools Programmer</font>
looking for files, plz help (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=370501&post=3072653&forum=74&highlight=)
Yeah, that is an internal thing. So when people modify NWSCRIPT.NSS or the given C/C++ source file, they know to edit the other file too. You won't ever see those files because you guys don't need them.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Live Team Producer</font>
1.63 and 1.64 news (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=372957&post=3072473&forum=77&highlight=)
<hr>Curious though if the people who have payed out the money to get all the expansions will get access to the "updated Official Campaign modules". Or would we be required to buy Platinum to get access to this content.<hr>
"updated Official Campaign modules" just refers to some minor bug fixing that was done in the Prelude and Chapter 2 modules of Original NWN, and some minor fixes in the HotU Official Campaign. There are no fixes for SoU in this update. The details will be in the patch notes. All of these fixes are in 1.63 and 1.64. All we did is put the OC fixes into 1.62 for the Platinum Edition and labled it 1.63 for sync reasons.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
Click Here ("]ping 1.63 ... respone timedout[/url]
<hr>So where is it?<hr>
In private beta. It will be released when it is done. Derek Posted the last update here: [url="http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=372957&forum=77)
<hr>Invisibility is worthless - anyone, including NPCs, can see invisible creatures by equipping a ranged weapon.<hr>
Fixed in 1.64 For a list of things that have been already posted on this boards, check the link in my signature.
<Hr>As for people not reporting problems in beta versions, I can understand how that might irritate the development team, but it's probably at least as irritating as reporting bugs and having them completely ignored for over a year.<hr>
Bugs are prioritized, not ignored. If a bug is classified as "low priority", or there are many "high" or "very high" priority bugs in the system, they will not be fixed until they are in the line. Prioritizing bugs is done by us so in some cases we might have a different opinion about how important a bug is. If you are running a PW and your bug only affects NWN in PW setting, the bug is automatically less important to us than it is for you. We will still fix it, but any issues that affect i.e. the official campaign have higher priority. Anyway, 1.64 is close and it has a lot of things in it that have been on our bugtracker for quite some time.
More:
<hr>HWW thats only the beginning of the bug/exploit list... I could name about 50-100 more and some are documented in my Builders Notes of my second module.... But I am confident that with this patch they will finally fix some of the long standing bugs... Thats why I had mentioned in one of the threads that I think there should be 2 types of patches.
1) small hotfixes that integrate into the system like a plugin. These would be fixes to 2da, scripts, etc.
2) engine patches which would require a little more testing. This would be fixes to the engine.
The hotfixes could be ditributed through gamespy and fix the "simpler" bugs. These could be posted every 1-2 months. Then every 3-4 months there could be the patch for the engine. Just an idea, but maybe Bioware can tell us why its not possible, or why it doesnt make sense to do it that way.<Hr>
Simple: Testing requirements. Things we roll out that modify NWN needs to be qa'ed and by contract, approved from several parties. These processes take time ... a lot of time. If you are running a MMORPG where your customers pay a monthly fee and have to run through the patcher every time they start, your modus operandi allows this stuff. For NWN, this would create support nightmare and block the live team from doing anything else.
Party = Lag (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=370169&post=3072841&forum=56&highlight=)
<hr>Seems to me that since there can in theory be 64 players the game engine should have taken this into account.<hr>
That's why there is a "only one party" switch right on the server. If you switch it off, people can form parties for themselves which usually self regulates the server.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Tim Smith, Tools Programmer</font>
looking for files, plz help (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=370501&post=3072653&forum=74&highlight=)
Yeah, that is an internal thing. So when people modify NWSCRIPT.NSS or the given C/C++ source file, they know to edit the other file too. You won't ever see those files because you guys don't need them.