chevalier
Fri, 18th Aug '06, 7:05pm
Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 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">J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer</font>
Combat Animations. A plea. (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492794&post=4266037&forum=95&highlight=)
The underlying animation system in the NWN engine is unusual. It doesn't use a traditional finite state machine to drive the logic of how animations play, link, and blend into each other. We also have a Granny layer on top of BioWare's animation code to make it do the things we need it to do. Because of this, it has taken us a long time to get our animations to interact properly. As we implement other animation-related things (not assets, but code), the systems can get buggy and break. Blend times, transitions, hit reactions, and so on can all be disjointed or broken during this process.
The main "take-away" is this: there are animation system bugs which we are fixing. When they are fixed, you should see proper hit reactions and combat fidgets during "down time". If you have hit sparks and weapon trails enabled, you should also see those.
A few side notes:
* I think it's great that different people can refer to "Nintendo-style" combat with the intention of suggesting either stilted, slow combat or garish, frantic combat. Baten Kaitos and Fire Emblem are the former, Tales of Symphonia and most Zelda games are the latter. Even the GameBoy and DS have more variety than people are suggesting.
* Motion capture would only work well for humanoid characters and even then, not always. Unless you know where we can find a dragon, we probably couldn't mo-cap any monsters. Even then, we'd probably need about a thousand balls and really a lot of cameras.
More: <hr />Well, "Nintendo" is just another way of saying "console", which in turn if a synonym for "bad". Basic RPG/strategy forum terminology.<hr />Which is, of course, hilarious. GBA/DS/GC have more turn-based strategy games out now than PC games do.
<hr />That said, Josh, do you guys regret the Granny design decision?<hr />Personally, I think Granny works fine. We used it on The Black Hound/F3 and it only had a few glitches. I think our problems arise from using Granny as a layer above BioWare's code.
More: <hr />re: personal space and blocking
Do character models still block? In other words, can I run through a monster/character as in games like WoW? How does the new implementation of 'personal space' affect this?<hr />Yes, creatures can still block paths. Friendlies normally get bumped.
Locking out base classes? (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492981&post=4266388&forum=95&highlight=)
Yes. In classes.2da, you can just mark the PlayerClass column to 0 for that class' row.
More: <hr />Would this apply to races/subraces also?<hr />Yes, in races.2da.
Tumble and AC bonus (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492712&post=4266799&forum=95&highlight=)
Just so there's a dev post in this thread, Jeff Husges is correct; the skill now grants a +1 bonus to AC for every ten ranks. It also still allows the player to avoid AoOs from movement with a successful check.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer</font>
Combat Animations. A plea. (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492794&post=4266037&forum=95&highlight=)
The underlying animation system in the NWN engine is unusual. It doesn't use a traditional finite state machine to drive the logic of how animations play, link, and blend into each other. We also have a Granny layer on top of BioWare's animation code to make it do the things we need it to do. Because of this, it has taken us a long time to get our animations to interact properly. As we implement other animation-related things (not assets, but code), the systems can get buggy and break. Blend times, transitions, hit reactions, and so on can all be disjointed or broken during this process.
The main "take-away" is this: there are animation system bugs which we are fixing. When they are fixed, you should see proper hit reactions and combat fidgets during "down time". If you have hit sparks and weapon trails enabled, you should also see those.
A few side notes:
* I think it's great that different people can refer to "Nintendo-style" combat with the intention of suggesting either stilted, slow combat or garish, frantic combat. Baten Kaitos and Fire Emblem are the former, Tales of Symphonia and most Zelda games are the latter. Even the GameBoy and DS have more variety than people are suggesting.
* Motion capture would only work well for humanoid characters and even then, not always. Unless you know where we can find a dragon, we probably couldn't mo-cap any monsters. Even then, we'd probably need about a thousand balls and really a lot of cameras.
More: <hr />Well, "Nintendo" is just another way of saying "console", which in turn if a synonym for "bad". Basic RPG/strategy forum terminology.<hr />Which is, of course, hilarious. GBA/DS/GC have more turn-based strategy games out now than PC games do.
<hr />That said, Josh, do you guys regret the Granny design decision?<hr />Personally, I think Granny works fine. We used it on The Black Hound/F3 and it only had a few glitches. I think our problems arise from using Granny as a layer above BioWare's code.
More: <hr />re: personal space and blocking
Do character models still block? In other words, can I run through a monster/character as in games like WoW? How does the new implementation of 'personal space' affect this?<hr />Yes, creatures can still block paths. Friendlies normally get bumped.
Locking out base classes? (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492981&post=4266388&forum=95&highlight=)
Yes. In classes.2da, you can just mark the PlayerClass column to 0 for that class' row.
More: <hr />Would this apply to races/subraces also?<hr />Yes, in races.2da.
Tumble and AC bonus (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=492712&post=4266799&forum=95&highlight=)
Just so there's a dev post in this thread, Jeff Husges is correct; the skill now grants a +1 bonus to AC for every ten ranks. It also still allows the player to avoid AoOs from movement with a successful check.