chevalier
Fri, 15th Sep '06, 2:21am
Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 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>
rar files (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496782&post=4311481&forum=83&highlight=)
<hr /><hr /><hr />Better compression than ZIP<hr />Agreed.<hr />Although 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) is generally better than rar.<hr />Yes, 7-zip is the best of the LZMA compression group over almost everything else. Its drawback is exactly what you said, not being well known.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance</font>
Error Page (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496797&post=4311186&forum=23&highlight=)
Thanks. http://forums.bioware.com/_commonext/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif
There are a few stability issues going on here (I think Dups has spilled "tea" all over the server again) at the moment. That page may pop up until the team can fix the issue.
the future of NWN1 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496705&post=4312545&forum=42&highlight=)
Currently we have no plans to change the online verification system. It could happen some time in the future, but it's nothing we're planning for at the moment.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
Anyone know what's planned for our LAST patch? (v1.69) (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496654&post=4311285&forum=42&highlight=)
Mostly content
More: We haven't finalized the patch yet and, more importantly it hasn't been approved yet, which has traditionally been always a complicated part of the whole process, so there isn't really not much use in confirming anything at this point.
As always, once we know for sure, we'll let you know.
Premium Moduls without Internet (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=494370&post=4311405&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Oh I never heared of a Kingmaker compilation pack, and I wonder if I can get this anywhere in germany. All I found was the Diamond Edition together with games and modules I allready have.<hr />Hi, leider wurden die Premium Module nie ins deutsche uebersetzt und deshalb auch nie von Atari Deutschland angeboten.
CEP v1.52 -> NWN1.68 Patch (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496807&post=4311409&forum=83&highlight=)
stickied(tm)
A plea for Patch 1.69 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496556&post=4311682&forum=42&highlight=)
Hi, I'm Random(15)+20 years old and I have (Random(3)) children, which may or may not increase the credibility of my post by Random(25) percent.
All our patches have always required compatibility updates from external hackpaks.
All our patches will always require compatibility updates for external hakpaks.
We can not and will never take external content not produced under our direct control into account, especially if that content has not passed WotC approval or BioWare QA.
We certainly do not intentionally break things and usually are careful not to make choices that bring much grief on the community (like changing scripting commands), but our options regarding not community content are extremely limited.
The reasons for this have been explained numerous times and include time, resources, legal issues and technical framework limitations. A search on the topic should find more than one post with in depth explanations.
Apparently, at some point, some people forgot this was the case and started to believe that this policy has changed and as a result were aggravated when the patch was doing what it always has been doing. I'm not sure where the sense of 'we are entitled to BioWare checking compatibility with external content' came from, given that we have always, from the start, been crystal clear about this policy and that everyone who got involved with creating content for NWN had to understand this the moment they encountered their first patch.
If 'the community' really wonders why we release a patch that 'breaks things' (oh my gosh, we have only done that 24 times before...) now, the answer is - because breaking external content is the way introducing new content in NWN and many other games (see: World of Warcraft) works and adding content to a product over its lifetime is our understanding of product support. We believe that people see what we have done for NWN and take that into account when deciding to buy Dragon Age...
That's unfortunate, but really, the situation with 1.68 is not any different than 1.67 (adding tridents) or 1.64 or previous patches.
More: <hr />Tell us, is there any chance that you'll consider making these alterations to base item behavior something optional, or atleast do something in patch 1.69 to make the cloaks less intrusive? Setting the default cloak appearance (if none has been selected by the item creator) to None, would be a huge improvement. That would mean any legacy modules, including your own OCs (which you still sell games for) will not be glitched with random NPCs wrapped in brown cloaks. And users who build modules or items for their characters can just select another, visible appearance (which they'll have to do anyway, since the default is just plain brown). That would make visible cloaks something you choose rather than something forced over your head (no pun intended). Sounds like a sensible compromise?<hr />We are not going to make the default cloak appearance to null, sorry, that's kind of the counter point introducing cloaks in the first place.
We do not consider the existence of brown cloaks a glitch and think they are still an improvement over nonvisible cloaks. I know this is subjective, but anything in game development is and we have to live with the fact that some people will always disagree with a choice we make.
Thankfully in NWN these people have the power to change our choices, most other games don't allow for that level of freedom.
Believe me, we understand people get passionate because they care about the game and a lot of strong personalities here have a very strong opinion of how the game is supposed to work, but in the end, especially given our limited resources 4 years after the game was initially released, we can not make everything optional, even if we wanted to do it.
If I find time, I might create a couple of scripts to put into override to auto replace brown cloaks with better, more stylish versions on the fly.
If possible we're hoping to include a null model, which could be used with a script or template in override or a hakpak to make the changes as the community wishes to.
Enseric / helping the Valsharess (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496830&post=4311784&forum=82&highlight=)
You can not free Enserric, sorry. We originally wanted to do a specific quest for this, but never ended up doing it.
Suggestions for Patch 1.69 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496778&post=4312109&forum=42&highlight=)
<hr />There is one thing I would love to see in the last patch and that is to allow the mod owners to take off the click on a creature or use tab and know it's name and if it is a player or not.
I would rather people didn't know who is who and let RP tell them.
'You come up to a area with a man fighting several bugbears you have no idea who it is just that he is asking for help. You join in and help the man then afterwards introduce yourselves.'
If at the lease beable to turn that feature on and off in areas that are full pvp. I just find it annoying sometimes when people use it to find out a person's name and dont' rp it.<hr />This would be scriptable already, however not on a per player basis.
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4312159&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Hardly to you actually... I read through the message you get when buying the game, and though it mentions having to validate the game online in order to play anything but the demo of the game, the wording leads one to believe that this is only a one time validation. <hr />Click Here (http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/viewPhoto?uname=georg.zoeller&aid=4970757560800903185&iid=4970757587128483858)
If you experience trouble with your validated copy of Infinite Dungeons, please contact support and they will help you.
Dealing with Exploits -- Critical Hit Exploit? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=493033&post=4312677&forum=56&highlight=)
The larger your playerbase, the higher the chance that someone among them will experience a period of extreme luck...
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brian Chung - Technical Artist</font>
What is your Memorable/Funniest Moment in Nwn? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496772&post=4312085&forum=42&highlight=)
In one of the first multiplayer games I played, due to lag or some bug, my character somehow ended up as a loot bag.
Then I got turned into a skeleton.
Order of haks and Folders (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496857&post=4312086&forum=48&highlight=)
The order is top-most hak to bottom most, then the /nwn/override/ folder, followed by the patch BIFs then the original game BIFs
So you can consider your override to be at the bottom of the hak list.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Live Team Producer</font>
rar files (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496782&post=4311481&forum=83&highlight=)
<hr /><hr /><hr />Better compression than ZIP<hr />Agreed.<hr />Although 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) is generally better than rar.<hr />Yes, 7-zip is the best of the LZMA compression group over almost everything else. Its drawback is exactly what you said, not being well known.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance</font>
Error Page (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496797&post=4311186&forum=23&highlight=)
Thanks. http://forums.bioware.com/_commonext/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif
There are a few stability issues going on here (I think Dups has spilled "tea" all over the server again) at the moment. That page may pop up until the team can fix the issue.
the future of NWN1 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496705&post=4312545&forum=42&highlight=)
Currently we have no plans to change the online verification system. It could happen some time in the future, but it's nothing we're planning for at the moment.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
Anyone know what's planned for our LAST patch? (v1.69) (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496654&post=4311285&forum=42&highlight=)
Mostly content
More: We haven't finalized the patch yet and, more importantly it hasn't been approved yet, which has traditionally been always a complicated part of the whole process, so there isn't really not much use in confirming anything at this point.
As always, once we know for sure, we'll let you know.
Premium Moduls without Internet (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=494370&post=4311405&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Oh I never heared of a Kingmaker compilation pack, and I wonder if I can get this anywhere in germany. All I found was the Diamond Edition together with games and modules I allready have.<hr />Hi, leider wurden die Premium Module nie ins deutsche uebersetzt und deshalb auch nie von Atari Deutschland angeboten.
CEP v1.52 -> NWN1.68 Patch (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496807&post=4311409&forum=83&highlight=)
stickied(tm)
A plea for Patch 1.69 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496556&post=4311682&forum=42&highlight=)
Hi, I'm Random(15)+20 years old and I have (Random(3)) children, which may or may not increase the credibility of my post by Random(25) percent.
All our patches have always required compatibility updates from external hackpaks.
All our patches will always require compatibility updates for external hakpaks.
We can not and will never take external content not produced under our direct control into account, especially if that content has not passed WotC approval or BioWare QA.
We certainly do not intentionally break things and usually are careful not to make choices that bring much grief on the community (like changing scripting commands), but our options regarding not community content are extremely limited.
The reasons for this have been explained numerous times and include time, resources, legal issues and technical framework limitations. A search on the topic should find more than one post with in depth explanations.
Apparently, at some point, some people forgot this was the case and started to believe that this policy has changed and as a result were aggravated when the patch was doing what it always has been doing. I'm not sure where the sense of 'we are entitled to BioWare checking compatibility with external content' came from, given that we have always, from the start, been crystal clear about this policy and that everyone who got involved with creating content for NWN had to understand this the moment they encountered their first patch.
If 'the community' really wonders why we release a patch that 'breaks things' (oh my gosh, we have only done that 24 times before...) now, the answer is - because breaking external content is the way introducing new content in NWN and many other games (see: World of Warcraft) works and adding content to a product over its lifetime is our understanding of product support. We believe that people see what we have done for NWN and take that into account when deciding to buy Dragon Age...
That's unfortunate, but really, the situation with 1.68 is not any different than 1.67 (adding tridents) or 1.64 or previous patches.
More: <hr />Tell us, is there any chance that you'll consider making these alterations to base item behavior something optional, or atleast do something in patch 1.69 to make the cloaks less intrusive? Setting the default cloak appearance (if none has been selected by the item creator) to None, would be a huge improvement. That would mean any legacy modules, including your own OCs (which you still sell games for) will not be glitched with random NPCs wrapped in brown cloaks. And users who build modules or items for their characters can just select another, visible appearance (which they'll have to do anyway, since the default is just plain brown). That would make visible cloaks something you choose rather than something forced over your head (no pun intended). Sounds like a sensible compromise?<hr />We are not going to make the default cloak appearance to null, sorry, that's kind of the counter point introducing cloaks in the first place.
We do not consider the existence of brown cloaks a glitch and think they are still an improvement over nonvisible cloaks. I know this is subjective, but anything in game development is and we have to live with the fact that some people will always disagree with a choice we make.
Thankfully in NWN these people have the power to change our choices, most other games don't allow for that level of freedom.
Believe me, we understand people get passionate because they care about the game and a lot of strong personalities here have a very strong opinion of how the game is supposed to work, but in the end, especially given our limited resources 4 years after the game was initially released, we can not make everything optional, even if we wanted to do it.
If I find time, I might create a couple of scripts to put into override to auto replace brown cloaks with better, more stylish versions on the fly.
If possible we're hoping to include a null model, which could be used with a script or template in override or a hakpak to make the changes as the community wishes to.
Enseric / helping the Valsharess (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496830&post=4311784&forum=82&highlight=)
You can not free Enserric, sorry. We originally wanted to do a specific quest for this, but never ended up doing it.
Suggestions for Patch 1.69 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496778&post=4312109&forum=42&highlight=)
<hr />There is one thing I would love to see in the last patch and that is to allow the mod owners to take off the click on a creature or use tab and know it's name and if it is a player or not.
I would rather people didn't know who is who and let RP tell them.
'You come up to a area with a man fighting several bugbears you have no idea who it is just that he is asking for help. You join in and help the man then afterwards introduce yourselves.'
If at the lease beable to turn that feature on and off in areas that are full pvp. I just find it annoying sometimes when people use it to find out a person's name and dont' rp it.<hr />This would be scriptable already, however not on a per player basis.
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4312159&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Hardly to you actually... I read through the message you get when buying the game, and though it mentions having to validate the game online in order to play anything but the demo of the game, the wording leads one to believe that this is only a one time validation. <hr />Click Here (http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/viewPhoto?uname=georg.zoeller&aid=4970757560800903185&iid=4970757587128483858)
If you experience trouble with your validated copy of Infinite Dungeons, please contact support and they will help you.
Dealing with Exploits -- Critical Hit Exploit? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=493033&post=4312677&forum=56&highlight=)
The larger your playerbase, the higher the chance that someone among them will experience a period of extreme luck...
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brian Chung - Technical Artist</font>
What is your Memorable/Funniest Moment in Nwn? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496772&post=4312085&forum=42&highlight=)
In one of the first multiplayer games I played, due to lag or some bug, my character somehow ended up as a loot bag.
Then I got turned into a skeleton.
Order of haks and Folders (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=496857&post=4312086&forum=48&highlight=)
The order is top-most hak to bottom most, then the /nwn/override/ folder, followed by the patch BIFs then the original game BIFs
So you can consider your override to be at the bottom of the hak list.