February 2003

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 21:38 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Linux: Sorry that we weren't able to answer your questions on your schedule, but we do try and keep track of things. The team has been working really hard for the last month on the Linux and Mac Clients and its just been in our best interests to keep our heads down and keep working away.

Quote: can you please provide us with some information about the development of the GNU/Linux client?

We have been doing that on the Linux Client page, but I gather that you are looking for something different.

Quote: Can you please tell us what you think of GNU/Linux development in general?

For NWN, the process hasn't been too painful Since the game was designed to be crossplatform from the start, there wasn't too much re-writing that was required to make things work.

Quote: Are there specific strengths or weaknesses compared to MS Windows or Apple Macintosh development? What has been the biggest hurdle in the development of the GNU/Linux client? What was the biggest surprise (positive or negative)?

The above questions are simply far too involved to be answered here in this thread. Maybe at a later date, in another format.

Quote: See, I'm _genuinely_ interested in these things. I'd like to know what the developer(s) think. What's your GNU/Linux development workstation specification?

Dual PIII-1000, 512 Meg, GeForce 4Ti, Red Hat 7.3

Quote: GNOME or KDE or other?

KDE

Quote: vi or emacs or other?

Pico! But Andrew uses Emacs.

Quote: Debian or Red Hat or Mandrake or Gentoo or Slackware or other?

We use Red Hat here at BioWare, but I am a Slackware man myself. It just feels more like Unix.

Quote: Dedicated GNU/Linux or dual-boot?

Dedicated.

Quote: Do you use GNU/Linux at home, or just at work?

Andrew only here at work, but I have a Slackware server at home for my own projects.

Quote: How long have you been working with GNU/Linux?

Anderew has been programming under Linux for the last 5 years and before that, 4 years under Unix.

Quote: Do you think it _should_ be called GNU/Linux as RMS asks us?

No comment.

Quote: What do you think of the GPL?

It has produced some of the best software out there. The BioWare Community Site runs almost completely under software that is covered under the GPL.

Quote: Do you read Slashdot at -1?

0 for me.

Quote: Does Bioware have any plans to release any code under a Free Software or Open Source license?

Not at this time.

Quote: I find it interesting that some developers participate in some discussions, but not this one. We've yet to hear from anyone who is actually _working on_ the GNU/Linux code. Why is that? Would anyone mind sharing with us what that reason is? I know you're all busy. I know that you have jobs, and those jobs have certain responsibilities that need to be met. I have a job, too, and my job requires that I do things. I'm not asking for anyone to go out of their way to have a heart-to-heart with me. I'd just like a few answers to get a glimpse into commercial GNU/Linux development. *sigh*

Well, once the Linux Client Public Beta gets going, I am sure we will have more to say then. Although, if you have been in the Server forum and have talked with Andrew, then you have spoken to someone working on the Client.

More:

Quote: Bink. Miles.

Miles exists for Linux. Of the 2, its the only critical one. Works great!

Quote: SecuRom.

What about SecureROM? We aren't using it for Linux, nor the Mac version. It is a Windows-only requirement. Thankfully, the 'not implimenting' of something is extremely cross-platform.

Quote: I learned to code at school. And from what I learned there, real crossplatform means you can just copy the source to another system, and recompile with no changes at all.

Ah, yes, the endless battle between school and reality. I love that one.

And More:

Quote: I am not talking about BioWare's blessing or not of OpenKnights, but the fact that Don Moar had mentionned unofficially that there was a possibility to provide us with some libs and headers, and/or information to help in the effort, which BioWare hasn't made any comments on ever since. At least not to my knowledge, since we haven't had a meeting in about two weeks (Ras K'cir, our meeting moderator, being away and all). If as you state BioWare has no plans of releasing any code to the open source community, then am I wrong to assume that this also includes to OpenKnights?

We are still working away to find the best way to properly support OpenKnights. We haven't finalized our level of support at this time. Now onto the completely separate issue of source code... The majority of the questions asked about source code are asked about the game engine itself. My statement stands, as that is the code that most people want. We have no plans on releasing that code. What you are talking about, is Tools code, which is different in this specific case. If (and I am speaking completely hypothetically) we provided you with documentation and/or libraries to support the proper creation of all the files that make up a single module file, and you used it to create a module editor, I think we can say that we have supported your efforts while at the same time, not released any of our source code. And you would have created a NWN Module editor. Again, this is hypothetical and we are still figuring out the best way to support OpenKnights.

Rick Ernst, Lead Designer (Floodgate Entertainment)

Shadow Jump: I don't want to give away any more information than you all have wrestled from us already this week. (Damnable Tom!) But I want to nip this in the bud... there will be no player teleportation mechanic like 'shadow jump' in SoU. But you'll just have to wait and see what we replaced it with.

David Gaider, Designer

Custom Skills:

Quote: Was this an oversight or was it done to purposely stop us from creating custom content relating to skills?

Ha!

"We better stop them bastards before they make any custom content, you know!"

"Yeah! Arrr!"

"Arr!"

Hehh... and no, it isn't an oversight. 20 is the practical maximum until and unless epic levels are included. Checking to see if a character has an appropriate level of skills is part of the character validation system for servers.

Cloaks:

Quote: Now wait just a minute here... how come you suddenly start making up a bunch of rules for cloaks that don't apply to any of the other stuff you decided was professional enough, or whatever, to include in the game?

Making up rules, eh? Why is that? Because everything else we did in the game is so unprofessional, I suppose? You've got a lot of nerve.

Quote: Wait... what other items work like that? There's a boots slot, but putting things in that slot does not add boots to your character... boots are entirely determined by the armor. The same goes for gloves and belts, so why couldn't cloaks be done like that?

Do we have visible boots or gloves or belts that are seperate from the armor? No, we don't, last I checked. If we did make boots or gloves or belts that had their own appearance, like cloaks would be, then it'd be a given that their inventory slot would be tied into their appearance. Enough said.

Quote: Lets see.. first of all, clipping is a pretty major problem in game at the moment. Create practically any character with the "large" body type and then give them some armor and a shield... the armor will poke right through the shield, fairly substantially in some cases. If you do many animations, such as salute, with a weapon in your hand, you stick it right through your own head! That does a lot more to ruin the immersion for me than a cloak sticking through the floor. Characters and their items clip through themselves, each other, and the environment constantly, so why suddenly say that cloaks should never clip anything?

I rather think that having your cloak sink into the floor or through the back of any chair would bring clipping problems to a whole new level of unrealism beyond those you mention.

Quote: In addition, can you sit or kneel by default in the game anyway? As far as I was aware, that had to be added in with scripting as a static part in the module, or with the great wand of emoting that allows such things. I think the only time you normally sit is when you rest.

And, gee, you don't rest very often in the game, do you? If stiff cloaks were the only possible issue, it wouldn't be such a big issue, but it's not. Despite what this poster petulantly calls excuses and unprofessionalism, we will only do it right if we do it. And here I said I wouldn't comment on cloaks any more. Man, I'm so easily baited.

More:

Quote: Please correct me if you guys have actual data on this, but the impression you get from reading the threads is that the great majority of players would be happier with dumb-looking robes and cloaks than with the status quo, which is dumb-looking jumpsuits.

So what are you saying? That we should knowingly endeavour to make dumb-looking robes and cloaks? If they had been in the game to start, maybe I could see that. But I have a hard time imagining us parading dumb-looking robes and cloaks as one of the great few additions we spent our limited time on with the expansion.

Caster Prestige Classes:

Quote: So, let me see if I've got this straight. When BioWare was setting up the way to code spellcasters, it never occurred to anyone that they might someday want to do a PrC which adds to an existing class' level? Ye gods.

Well, as mentioned above, at the time the class implementation was being designed I don't even think we had any information on Prestige Classes at all... never mind that they might implement them in a way that adds to an existing class's abilities. If anything, we might have known that they were including some version of the 2nd edition class kits, but even in that case putting together an implementation of the spellcasting and class system in such a way as to allow easy future expansion is a luxury that limited time doesn't always allow. Not to mention that hindsight always tells you that maybeeee you should have done this part just a little bit differently... You think there isn't a programmer or designer who doesn't wish he could jump back a couple of years and nudge himself/herself in the shoulder?

"Ummm... you might want to leave that part a LOT more expandable, there."

"But I don't have the time!"

"Believe me, you'll thank me for it later."

"Okay. Gee, thanks!"

Heh... it's like a Freedom55 commercial. Wouldn't that be great?

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Shadows of Undrentide Info at NW Vault
Posted Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 14:29 CET by Mollusken

Neverwinter Vault have recieved a couple of new screenshots from the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights. They've also got some stats on the stinger class which we've seen so many screenshots on, and some facts about two new spells called Quillfire (druid) and Displacement (bard, wizard and sorcerer).

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 14:26 CET by Mollusken

The Shadows of Undrentide will include several new creatures, and this week you can learn more about some giant ants called formians.

New spells are also part of the expansion pack, and three new ones are featured this week: Acid Splash for the wizard and sorcerer, and Drown and Blood Frenzy for the druid.

With the announcement of a total 5 new prestige classes in the expansion, BioWare have updated the Shadows of Undrentide FAQ. They've also updated and made corrections to the harper scout profile, including spell updates and a new class skills list.

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Neverwinter Nights Linux Client Update
Posted Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 14:14 CET by Mollusken

Here's the latest update from BioWare on the Neverwinter Nights Linux client:

We are about ready to go for the Linux Client Public Beta, but we are waiting on some standard commercial issues to be completed. This is a normal, expected step in publicly releasing material. This does not add any new obstacles or complications to the mix. It’s about as ready to go as can be from our end and after these commercial issues are finished up we will get it out to you. Sorry, but we cannot give you an exact time estimate right now.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 21:57 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Animations: We wound up re-using a lot of effect animations in IWD2 because there were so many spells and creating/rendering out effects took so much time (that's why the bull's head for Bull's Strength wound up on the barbarian rage). The Visual Effects Group editor for Jefferson is really, really excellent. We can create a pretty wide array of visual effects without much effort at all.

Quote: Having a mouse control party and a mouse control camera just sounds very awkward to me. Moving the party and then having to play catch-up with the camera. Or indeed having to move the camera ahead of the party then moving the party into that space...

Huh? That's the way IE and Fallout games did it. That's the way Jefferson's doing it. You can control camera rotation with the keyboard or with little buttons on the interface. Scrolling is "standard".

Quote: So that means there is a fog of war effect in place ?

There is right now, yes. I've never really been a fan of Fog of War, personally. I like the Fallout camera system, where you have a free-roaming camera area defined as a distance around a character or characters. However, I do like the idea of characters and other objects being invisible if they are out of the character's line of sight.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 21:30 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Patch 1.29: Patch detail summary:

Fixes the 3 known issues with 1.28, plus some misc.

Since this is a Beta, if you really want to know, download the Beta patch and read the text file inside the zip.

More:
French, German, Spanish, and Italian 1.29 Beta 1 files are available.

And More:
The Road Map is out of date, and will be fixed up this week. The 1.29 update is not adding anything new.

Tom Ohle, Communications Assistant

Horses *Hears sound of beating*: Horses will not be in XP2; I can pretty much guarantee that. Sorry.

Prestige Class Update: And just a note: We will be updating the Harper Scout profile soon. There were a few omissions in what we posted the first time around--we (the web team, actually) noticed the discrepancies between what was posted and what happens in-game when we actually started playing with the PrCs. So don't get your panties in a knot about the Harper until we show the updated profile. If, at that point, you're still disappointed, please continue griping!

More:
We actually had planned on doing 2... but then found a way to incorporate 5. Trust me, if we would have known we could do 5 all along, we would have told you.

David Gaider, Designer

Arcane Prestige Classes: Not putting in arcane prestige classes wasn't for lack of trying. While it may be easy to imagine, believe us... the equivalent of "and while you're at it, pretend to be a level higher for the class you didn't progress in with regards to spellcasting only" just couldn't be made to work. The engine just wasn't built that way when it comes to the spellcasting classes, for good or bad. We can't do it yet, at any rate. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't try again later.

Zots?: Making an expansion is all about alotting a smallish amount of man-hours to a limited number of projects... all of which will hopefully provide some bang for the buck. It's not a full-project team with the time to work on everything. So you have 20 zots (zots being a completely made-up unit of time and man-hours) and have to split them up amongst the projects, each costing some zots. What do you do? When it comes to new PC heads, some more certainly was an option, I'm sure. Mind you, we're not talking about 'a few more elf heads' or whatever. If they're going to be done you'd have to give a little love to every race and sex, period. BUT we decided to use those zots towards more tilesets, placeables and creatures (these are artist zots we're talking about, incidentally). You want PC heads, they gotta come off of those... and a sizeable chunk, too, because a mere 1 or 2 zots just won't get the job done when it comes to a full range of new PC heads. So where would you like to start cutting? At any rate, we've allocated our zots... at least for XP1. Putting some more work towards heads and other appearance stuff may be possible, so long as it's what's being demanded.

More:

Quote: though I will admit, when "2 prestige classes" was announced, "small pop for cents" was the phrase that was going through my mind

And you wouldn't be the only one. We have these discussions (read: arguments) ourselves, and hence the reason it got changed. Not that the decision was an easy one. Lot of extra work, there.

And More:

Quote: Though if it makes it feel better, I've seen many people say that they've gone from "maybe" to "definite" about getting sou due to the 5 prc announcement...

Which is kind of sad, in my opinion. Personally I don't even use Prestige Classes at all in my games. I can think of a hundred better uses of the programmers' time. But hey, demand is demand, I guess.

Guess:

Quote: So, cloaks ARE possible, & that one addition ALONE makes so much difference it isn't funny. With that in mind, I stand behind my criticism of the reasoning that led to Prestige Classes. I'd FAR rather have a stiff-as-a-board cloak that's visible, than a handful of Prestige Classes that I won't allow players to have, anyway

Yes, but keep in mind, Imperial Aerosol Kid, that the cloaks made by the community are a half-measure that we can't duplicate. Because it's made by the community, you and many others are willing to overlook problems with these cloaks... but would you honestly feel the same if we presented you with the same thing? If we ever did cloaks, at the very least we would have to:

1) Make the cloaks appear and disappear based on the item being placed into the cloak inventory slot, not part of the armor item itself. The color might be controlled by the armor, but the presence of the item shouldn't be.

2) You should be able to sit down or perform any kind of sitting/kneeling animation without the cloak clipping through the floor.

3) You may think stiff cloaks are okay, I'm not so sure many others would... at least when they're coming from us.

The issue is not that they are impossible... we never said that was the case. The issue is that we don't have enough zots available to do them properly. Not without sacrificing a lot of other art in the expansion that is much more necessary. Cloaks are a dead issue, however, as far as we're concerned. That's as far as I comment on them.

Caster Prestige Classes:

Quote: None of the prestige classes that use the "+1 to caster level" mechanism have been selected for SoU, but this seems like it may be a viable option for XP2.

I already said in another thread that we tried the "+1 to caster level" thing and can't do it yet. Why you think this is a cinch I'm not sure.

Point Buy System: The point system is what was presented in 3rd edition as the preferred system to generate a character. Plus, it's fairer all around, especially when you take into account multiplayer. Add to that the plain fact that rolled stats tend to be higher. 3rd edition is designed with the idea that a +1 stat bonus is good... I don't know how many players from 2nd edition I've played with that have looked at their character and found a 12 to be absolutely unacceptable (since of course you don't get a bonus in 2nd edition until, what, 16?). Not only is a +1 good, but having +3's and +4's in everything would skew the system at low levels. Anyone who's played 3rd edition with a monk in the party with high stats should know what I mean.

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Neverwinter Nights 1.29 Beta Patch
Posted Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 15:49 CET by Mollusken

Following the alpha release of the 1.29 patch on Monday, the beta version of the patch was released yesterday. Here are the release notes:

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Lack of Comments
Posted Tuesday, February 25, 2003 - 18:40 CET by Sorcerer

I've been wondering why with the huge amount of news we post here on the front page, comments on the news are such rare animals... Is the Comments link at the bottom of each news post not obvious enough? I renamed it to Post Comments, but I'm at a loss for more ideas.

If anyone can clue me in as to why no one wants to post news comments, I would be interested in hearing it...

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, February 25, 2003 - 16:02 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Trent Oster, Producer

Prestige Class News: Glad you fellows like the new Prestige Classes. We had planned to leak it out slowly, but somehow the message got out. Enjoy.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

Prestige Class Ad: Heh. I have to admit this, though: it's not truly marketing's fault. It was a matter of miscommunication--I had seen this ad, just didn't know that it had new copy (text). I missed that detail... but regardless, the info is out, and people are happy.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Helmets and Headbands:

Any news on this?

Nothing yet, but it doesn't look good. The head is still gone after my helmet uses it's last charge. Seriously, it doesn't look like we can change the engine for this feature in an effective and cost efficient manner.

1) I think Darcy was making a little joke with the head blowing up comment - in reference to the discussion that was going on in that thread while we waited for a response. Perhaps he should have been more clear and perhaps making jokes when delivering bad news about an issue that many people care greatly about is not the greatest idea.

2) Because I might be wrong and Darcy may STILL not understand what we want, I would appreciate a statement of clarification.

3) Maybe we should move this to the General Discussion Forum? I do think they underestimate the return in the ROI calculation of this. Either that or we underestimate the I.

let me find what people want. I'm going to ask a question so the request is clear to me.

Yes or no: 1. You want something to put in your head slot in the inventory panel, which is not a full face covering helmet?

Surely a lot of bug fixes and other development work includes changing the engine.

Changeing the engine in this way is much more complicated then it seems. Bug fixing, for the most part, is a diffrent process. and in this case much easier to do. I don't feel there is much left to discuss on this topic, so I'm going to lock it.

Prestige Class News: I'm very pleased with the response i've seen about the udated information about the presige classes. We'll just have to find something else to rave about every Wednesday.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Screen Resolution: Greetings: The Neverwinter Nights Toolset currently has a minimum desktop resolution limit of 800x600. This means that we constrain all forms to fit within this resolution. We are thinking about increasing it, and allowing the Tools programmers to have more room to play with and adjust some forms to be less crowded. We did a survey a short time ago, and 71% of you responded that you run your desktop at 1024x768 or higher, with regards to using the Toolset.

Do we want us to raise the desktop resolution minimum spec for the Toolset to 1024x768 in an upcoming patch? Please stay on topic as we only want to have responses to this survey in this thread. Off-topic posts will be removed.

More : Just to clarify, this would only affect the forms and dialogs. You would still have the same basic viewport for the tiles as you normally would.

Patches: The best patch Bioware could release would be to not release a patch as they seem to break more than they fix...

There are three known issues in 1.28. Two of them are completly visual issues. They have no effect on the actually playing of the game, other than rendering the location of some NPCs in the incorrect location at a distance.

The other issue is more serious. There are about 4 or 5 doors in the official campaign that may not open in the 1.28 update. There are 2 main workarounds. You can either revert to 1.27 (gah! Pain!) or use either a debug command or the Stone of Recall to get around the stubborn door. Two visual issues and one serious one do not equal "breaking more than we fix" considering there are almost 200 individual improvements to the game system in the 1.28 Update.

We do apologise for the hassle that this has caused some people, but we do have an test build (as it pre-beta) of the 1.29 Update that should address these issues. You can read about it here.

More : The major changes in 1.29 will be to fix the three known issues in 1.28.

More : Heh, this is the first time we have ever released an Alpha, but it has been around to others in private since Friday and looks good so far. Not sure on the Beta time frame right now, though.

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Neverwinter Nights Patch 1.29 Alpha
Posted Tuesday, February 25, 2003 - 15:53 CET by Z-Layrex

Derek French, BioWare's Live Team Producer has posted a notice on the official forums that they have an alpha version of Patch 1.29 for Neverwinter Nights that fixes a few of the urgent bugs that creeped in since patch 1.28. Here's what he had to say:

We have an Alpha build of the 1.29 patch that should fix the above listed problems. If you want, you can download this patch and see if it works for you. BE WARNED, this is a manual patch, and you must manually back up the files that it will affect before patching, or you will break your ability to patch in the future. You must know how to do this, as well as how and where to extract the files from the zip file into your Neverwinter Nights directory. If you want to test this 1.29 Alpha patch, download it here. This version is NOT play-compatible with 1.28, though. If this build addresses the listed three issues, please post here.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Tuesday, February 25, 2003 - 2:14 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Dialogue: Jefferson is a Protagonist-centered game. The Protagonist does the talking. CNPCs talk only when they specifically have something to say. Sometimes the CNPC bursts in without the Protagonist being able to stop him or her, and sometimes the player has a reply that says, "CNPC X, you look like you have something to say. What is it?" If an NPC sees a CNPC and he/she wants to initiate dialogue, he/she will either a) not initiate dialogue or b) float something to the effect of, "If you're not , I'm not interested in talking to you. Beat it."

Quote: Is the viewing angle fixed, or can you tweak it within a small range, as in NWN? I already know you can zoom in/out, but I don't know if the angle itself is flexible.

The viewing angle can be adjusted between 38.5 degrees above the horizon to 90 degrees above the horizon (straight down).

Quote: You do realise that, with a 3D engine, you're going to have hordes of people demanding an unlocked camera and a first person mode? Better start preparing your reasons why it can't be done now...

Feel free to demand away, it's not going to change how the engine is optimized. You can't take the camera into the large intestine of an enemy and navigate through its body, either. If people want to play a first-person action RPG, they can go buy one. Jefferson is an isometric third-person RPG.

Quote: Not why it can't be done, but simple the fact that they don't want to do it.

Radically switching what geometry is being displayed in the camera frustum is a good way to ruin any efforts made towards optimization.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, February 24, 2003 - 22:37 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Time Stop: I did some quick tests with timestop (with just one player on the server) and didn't encounter any problems. Is any one else encountering this problem?

1.29 Waypoint Bug: After patch 1.29 comes out, will it repair all of the waypoints already in a module, or will we have to start from scratch?

I assume you are refering to the NPC warping issue. This is a rendering issue only and should not affect your waypoints already in a module. Check out the sticky.

DM Password: Hi there was 1 month a havent play, so yesterday i reinstal my game, i do the update, i login to the multiplayer session but when i wantr to join a server (unpassworded) they ask me everytime password DM. i have read that DM == dungeon master but i dont know wat i must tape :/ help me please

You can only join a server as a DM (Dungeon Master) if you know the DM password for the server. Most servers don't want just any one joining their server as a DM (as you can really ruin every ones fun if you're not careful). If you really want to DM a game, try starting your own server as a DM. Note: If you leave the DM password empty this will stop all DMs from logging into your server.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Custom Palette Categories: Unless and until we get around to this, as a temporary measure, try using non-Plot Wizard-managed plots to organize the creature, door, item and place-able blueprints.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

CGW Ad: I've actually never seen that ad. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll see what's going on.

More: CGW has nothing to do with the ad process--they get an advertisement from a publisher, and they put it in their magazine. As I said, I'll see what happened, and then I'll get back to you guys. Tomorrow. It's 6:30 on a Sunday, and I'm at work... I want to go home.

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Greyhawk Official Site Online
Posted Monday, February 24, 2003 - 22:00 CET by Mollusken

Troika Games have updated their site, and an official Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil section is now online.

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5 Prestige Classes in Shadows of Undrentide
Posted Monday, February 24, 2003 - 20:19 CET by Sorcerer

Well, after some speculation going on back and forth on the possibility of 5 prestige classes being included in the upcoming Neverwinter Nights expansion Shadows of Undrentide, it has now been confirmed that SoU will indeed feature 5 prestige classes, instead of the announced (and expected) 2.

Here's what Tom Ohle, Communications Associate, had to say:

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide will now feature 5 prestige classes, as opposed to the originally planned 2. Due to popular demand, here are the currently planned prestige classes:

Arcane Archer
Assassin
Blackguard
Harper Scout
Shadowdancer

I had planned on unveiling these additional PrCs as a bit of a surprise, but hey... when life gives you lemons, make lemonade (sorry to dust off an old cliche). But anyway, yeah...5 PrCs. And there they are.

Hope you're happy now. You've all made me cry.

Well, well... We're certainly happyER now! Thanks to BioWare's Community Manager Jay Watamaniuk for the scoop.

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Site News - New Additions
Posted Monday, February 24, 2003 - 1:33 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Books

Forgotten Realms Books subsection: Condemnation added.

Dragonlance Books subsection: Darkness & Light updated, Warrior's Journey added.

Miscellaneous Books subsection: Plague of Ice added.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Planescape: Torment

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: The Complete Guide & Walkthrough updated.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: IWD, HoW & ToTL Walkthrough updated.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: The Complete FAQ & Walkthrough updated.

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: 1 mod added.

Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection: BG2 & ToB Equipment Guide added, BG2 & ToB Class FAQ updated.

Miscellanea subsection: 1 wallpaper added.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale 2

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: 4 soundsets and 1 mod added.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Neverwinter Nights

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: NWN expansion details page updated.

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: 2 soundsets added, 1 hack updated.

Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection: Cleric Guide updated.

Toolset & Related subsection:

Subsection #1: 1 tutorial added.

Subsection #2: 7 tilesets added.

Subsection #3: 1 tutorial, 13 scripts added/updated.

Subsection #4: 4 items/item packs added/updated.

Subsection #5: 21 creatures/creature packs added/updated.

Subsection #6: 10 placeables/placeables packs added.

Subsection #7: 5 various new additions.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil

Subsection opened, and there was much rejoicing!

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: ToEE Introduction and UberFAQ added.

Miscellanea subsection: Press release and chat log added.

Screenshots subsection: Concept art added.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 19:31 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Changing Updater Skins: Just right-click on the current Updater picture and you will get a menu to change your skin.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Understanding Quests: You should try out the Plot Wizard. The tutorials can be found here.

Robin Mayne, Bioware Webmaster

Forum Mod Thanks: I agree - our Mods on these forums do a great job!

Hip-hip-hooray!
Hip-hip-hooray!
Hip-hip-hooray!

You guys are the greatest. (seriously - thanks to all of you)

Bug: Please report bugs to nwbugs@bioware.com so that we can accurately track and fix them. And for your peice of mind, I believe the 'Too Many Instructions' error is a result of a problem that is currently being looked at, and should be fixed in 1.29 which will be out in BETA soon. But please report your specific details to the e-mail above so we can get as much accurate info as possible!

Collector's Edition: I would like to buy the NWN CE, anybody got any ideas or suggestions (realistic ones please)?

I just did a search on Ebay UK, and it seems there are many auctions at the moment for the Collector's Edition. Make sure you "Search items available to United Kingdom", and not just "Items IN the United Kingdom".

Mac/Linux Updates: Update? Please? Or if any of the Web Primates has stayed late and know that we won't get one, how about dropping a line to that effect here.

Web Primate here... (I can take a joke ) Just wanted to let you all know that the reason there was no update today was that there is nothing new to report. In truth - the updates were never planned to be weekly or every Friday - that just sort of happened. We knew you all appreciated a regular update (good or bad) and we have tried hard to give you as much info as possible. But alas, we have reached a rather boring stage of development, so there is just nothing to report on today. Rest assured that when there is something worthy of reporting, the site will get updated!Thanks for hanging in there all. Hope you have a good weekend.

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Neverwinter Nights 1.28 Patch Bugs
Posted Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 11:32 CET by Mollusken

The 1.28 patch for Neverwinter Nights brought a few new bugs to the game, but BioWare hope to fix these bugs with the 1.29 beta patch (which will be available soon). Read more about this at the official forums.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 18:24 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

German 1.28 Beta Patch: The German Beta 1 patch that was missing a file. The German Beta 2 patch was released about 4 hours after the Beta 1 patch to fix the issue. Using the German Beta 2 patch will work and is play-compatible with the other 1.28 versions.

Bugs vs. Crashes: For the most part, when we are talking about bugs, we are taking about problems that manifest themselves inside the game while playing. Crashes, are a technical issue and can come from many things. If a crash is not reproduceable, it is extremely hard to track down, as almost anything can cause it. When it comes to a crash, it is critical that the details from the error box are reported as well, especially the Offset value, because then we can look up the exactly where it crashed and go from there.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

Expansion Resources vs. Demo: Correct, but if people would have ripped resources out of the Neverwinter Nights demo, they wouldn't have been able to use them. Now that people have the full game, they could use any resources we released.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 18:14 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Portraits: Portraits will just be faces. There is no "paper doll" other than the in-game character model that's rendered on the inventory screen. The socketing system used on the model has slots for body, back, hands, head, feet, eyes, beard, mustache, and hair.

Quote: JE, Will these head shots be artist renderings or just a close up of the 3d model face you choose and paste together?

Player choice.

Quote: I got the impressions that Josh meant you could either buy individual items, or choose pre-determined packages.

Correct.

Quote: Don't you understand that limited-class or classless games are vague and shallow: when you determine a character it isn't by analysing the abilities he has (note: abilities that any other character can get!)

Did you play Fallout? SPECIAL is no less restrictive. Many of the Perks in SPECIAL have extremely steep prerequisites. When someone takes the Slayer Perk, it's because they've put a lot of effort into qualifying for it. "Any character" can qualify for a PrC given enough levels. Similarly, "any character" can qualify for a Perk in SPECIAL given enough levels. Well, actually, a lot of Perks in SPECIAL are more restrictive when it comes to ability scores, so it's actually harder in some ways.

Quote: The main point of PrCs or kits is that you have a specific character with special skills that other can't get, but those abilities are gained at the cost of other abilities.

The ultra-specialized character class is the ruin of class-based systems. The ultra-specialized character (like a kensai or Red Wizard of Thay, for example) often voluntarily "opts-out" of performing their restricted/sucky abilities in favor of always using their totally awesome (and often overpowered) abilities. The other members of the party often cover that "gap" in 99% of the cases (unless the DM just contrives situations for the character to suck, which is extra lame in a CRPG).

What sucks about being a kensai in BG2? Almost nothing. Armor restrictions, that's it. In the old kensai class, it was even worse. OMG, U CAN NEVER EVER USE ANYTHING BUT YOUR CHOSEN WEAPON. Yeah, but who cares when your chosen weapon can do max damage on request n times/day and has inherent mega bonuses to damage?

Quote: What I want to say is that classes make the character special and not his simple abilities: the latters are defined by his class.

I still have yet to hear why this is true only for classes. Your argument seems to be:

* It is cool to have a character with abilities that "only" he or she can get.
* Classes determine this.
* Ergo, more classes make even more coolness.

This ignores the following facts:

* Given enough levels, anyone can qualify for a given prestige class.
* Feats in D&D and Perks in a classless system (SPECIAL) can also have very high requirements that involve the player making sacrifices (often in a more balanced way).
* A very significant body of Fallout players can testify to how cool it is to get a Perk like Sniper or Living Anatomy. You have to work towards those goals and make choices about how you make and level up your character.

Because of this, you still haven't convinced me that more classes/prestige classes are necessary.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 21:42 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

NPC's & Waypoints: I just saw a fix for this exact thing entered in the last couple of days into the patch notes. You'll probably see it in the next patch.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Human Heads: We are investigating this issue currently. I cannot say yet, if we will be fixing it until we know the exact scope of the problem.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Quote: Is there a way to save a text file of the "game log" that appears in the scrolling window above the quickslots?

In you nwnplayer.ini make sure you have the following setting under game options.

[Game Options]
ClientChatLogging=1

This will log all chat to your game's log file (in the logs directory).

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Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Forum News
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 21:34 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's official Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Steve Moret, Lead Programmer

Money: There will be the 4 primary coin types:
platinum
gold
silver
copper

And I believe that many of the dialogs refer to them by their native mint type too. We did drop the idea of weight for coins. We felt that the realism it added detracted from the game more than it added.

Quote: Is the EXP cost of creating items going to match that proscribed in the d&d rules?

They are the updated prices, many of the prices in the 3rd ed rulebook have been adjusted (see the FAQs and Errata) because they were really WAY to cheap.

Quote: Is there any way that other characters can "assist" the item creator and contribute EXP to pay for the creation? I know that's not core rules... but I think my poor wizard is going to be paying a LOT of experience.

Nope, not o­nly is it not core rules it severely reduces the cost of making the items. I really think it would be too unbalancing to allow this to happen. Sorry.

Quote: If I have 4 characters at the level 10 cap, and o­ne character at level 9, will the level 9 character get all the experience, or just their share of it?

Just his share. The other guys did help.

Quote: Will characters continue to gain experience after they hit the level 10 cap, but just not be able to level up?

We're not sure if we are going to stop you right before you hit level 11, or right as you hit level 10.

Quote: What kind of items can we make? Scrolls, potions, weapons, ammunition, armour, shields, wonderous items?

The following feats are implemented: Brew Potion, Craft Wand, Craft Rod, Scribe Scroll, Craft Wonderous Item, Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

The kinds of potions, wands, and scrolls you can make with Brew Potion, Craft Wand, and Scribe Scroll come from a list that are is limited by your spell list (and the requirements to make specified item).

Craft Rod and Wonderous Item comes from the list of rods and wonderous items that are implemented in the game.

Craft Magic Arms and Armor allows you to add enhancements to existing masterwork or magical items. It is limited by the enhancements that are implemented for the game. The unique magic arms and armor are most likely not going to be craftable.

Quote: ie, can we make a "Dagger +1, Flaming, Returning"?

We aren't certain that the returning enhancement will be implemented, but as of right now you can make a dagger +1, flaming.

Quote: Do flaming weapons have to have their Flaming affect activated with a command word? (technically they do in the pnp game, we o­nly just noticed that). same with the frosty and shocking weapons.

I didn't know the flame and frost enhancements needed to be activated. I thought they were always o­n. Right now they are always o­n... hmm... I'll have to double check the rules.

Quote: Can we name the items we create? Give them a description? What about wonderous items?

Right now you can name the magic arms and armor you create. I'm working o­n a system that will autoname them as well.

You cannot give descriptions to them.

Nor can you name wands, scrolls, wonderous items, etc.

Hope that handles your questions...

Huy Nguyen, Interface and Magic System

Thanks: hey thanks a lot EVERYONE for the great responses! good points for me to ponder o­n ...forgive me for the broad thanks, i'll try and talk about each good point/comment brought up maybe later, hehe.

Quote: 1. how will G:ToEE go about cooperation with skills?

Hmm... not sure what you mean here? clarification please?

2. will synergies be handled?

It's how it's supposed to be, e.g. +2 to intimdate if you have 5 or more ranks in bluff.

3. when an item's durability (assuming there'll be durability for items)...

No broken items (i.e. no item durability). was ruled not fun.

4. how will jumping work?

No jumping (no climbing, no ride). engine would not support these kinds of skills that well.

Sean Craig, Core d20 Implementation

Aiding Another: As for helping others in skills, it's planned to be part of the Aid Another action. So Fen the Thief will select Aid Another, choose Vurt the Wizard as the target. o­n Vurt's turn (or just select him if you're not in combat), Vurt would choose the skill Heal and target Moosebumps the Master of Chains. Fen would check vs DC 10, and if he succeeded, Vurt would get +2 to his skill check.

Aid Another also wakes sleeping characters, gives people a bonus to their to hit rolls , etc. It o­nly works o­nce/round though; if you wake a character, they don't get a skill check bonus.

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Feargus Urquhart Interview at HLF
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 19:43 CET by Mollusken

HomeLan Fed have interviewed Feargus Urquhart, chief of Black Isle Studios. Here's a couple of the questions:

You recently announced that you want to get Fallout 3 under development at some point. Have you thought at all about what the general gameplay design will be like for the sequel?

That's a tough question to answer without having a horde of screaming people at my door asking for my head. :) However, I can say what I've been saying for a while, which is that Fallout 3 will still feel and play a lot like the previous Fallouts. It will need to be a more modern game though in relation to how the game plays and the graphics engine involved. What I mean by that is that we will be using a 3D engine and there will most likely be a real-time combat mode. I know there are people out there that feel this ruins Fallout, but I think they will be surprised as to how well it works once they play it.

What do you think people will be most surprised with the gameplay of Lionheart?

Feargus Urquhart - I think they will be surprised with how the action aspects of the game and how the RPG system used in Fallout works well in the game. While many people often say that they don't like action RPG's because of what they have played before, I really feel that fans of our previous games will be surprised to find that they enjoy Lionheart just as much even though it is faster paced.

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 19:36 CET by Mollusken

The Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack will add two new prestige classes to Neverwinter Nights, and BioWare have made a profile on one of them: the harper scout.

A few of the BioWare guys have played Neverwinter Nights together with the Ancient Mystic Order of Old Fogeys guild, one of the more professional guilds at the Guilds and Registry system at the official Neverwinter Nights site. Read more about this here.

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 16:53 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which Baldur's Gate 2 (or ToB) NPC would you vote for president?
(689 votes total)

Minsc (168) 24%
Keldorn (104) 15%
Sarevok (81) 12%
Edwin (56) 8%
Jaheira (47) 7%
Viconia (45) 7%
Jan (34) 5%
Imoen (30) 4%
Mazzy (27) 4%
Aerie (19) 3%
Valygar (17) 2%
Haer'Dalis (16) 2%
Korgan (16) 2%
Anomen (10) 1%
Nalia (9) 1%
Cernd (7) 1%
Yoshimo (3) 0%

You'd have thought that people knew better by now than to support politics whose motto is "Swords, not words!", but since this is a purely fantasy poll, you can be excused for voting for Minsc, who has managed to beat all other NPCs in the presidential race with a majority of 24% of votes.

Keldorn the paladin would be the people's second choice, with 15% of votes. Looks like even divine grace can't help you get elected. Ahem...

Sarevok is also pretty popular with 12% of votes, and the third place in the presidential race.

Fourth place goes to the mage Edwin, with 8% of support. Say hello to dictatorship when this guy becomes president.

Jaheira and Viconia both received 7% of votes each. Well, at least the females were not totally neglected...

Jan received a 5% support from his fans. Looks like presidency is a bit out of reach for this gnome, however.

Another female duo are Imoen and Mazzy, both with 4% of votes each. Curious. Incidentally, Aerie is just below them with 3% votes.

The rest of the NPCs combined received about 10% of votes, but none more than 2%. Yoshimo is the grand loser of the poll, with 3 whole votes out of nearly 700.

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Shadows of Undrentide Delayed?
Posted Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 16:14 CET by Sorcerer

I have just noticed that Amazon.com has changed the shipping date for the Neverwinter Nights expansion Shadows of Undrentide from the end of March 2003 to May 27, 2003. While store dates are usually not very reliable indicators of actual release dates, it is practically unheard-of that a game would be released BEFORE the date they list. The usual custom is to keep shifting the release further back, as it has happened now. Which obviously wouldn't have, without a very good reason...

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 19:30 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Quote: I still think complaining that something you are making is overcomplicated is not giving the 'umble masses the right impression at all. If anything he should be saying 'look at all this neat data we implemented just for you guys cos you are all so great!' Not 'its not fair, my own item tables that I wrote I made too complicated to manage properly'.

No, what I'm saying is, "Someone went through an inordinate amount of effort to create and maintain this, and all players can do is complain about it, why make it so complicated?" 99% of those complaining players would spin their eyes in wonder if the list was 1/3 the size but produced more balanced results.

Look at that table. You would have the play through the game about... I'll just throw out a figure here... one hundred million billion times, in order to exhaust all of the random item possibilities. Who's going to play through the game one hundred million billion times? No one. Most players don't even finish RPGs once, let alone multiple times. If we have three to five options for each random drop, with a limited number of drops, that should be more than enough for all but 0.001% of the people who buy our game. Those 99.999% are the same body of players who don't notice thinks like walking up a ladder in the Athkatla sewers and ending up in a level of Durlag's Tower, you know?

Quote: Um, thats not our problem JE.

Sorry, but it isnt.

That looks like a lot of code but thats why you employ people to write it. Innovation is hard sometimes.

I'd like to back up a moment to address this.

Random treasure isn't innovative. At all. And your frequently described issues with treasure disbursement would be much more easily solved with smaller, more controlled tables.

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Icewind Dale II Review at Gaming Invasion
Posted Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 17:31 CET by Mollusken

The reviewer at Gaming Invasion claims the graphics, storyline and game engine in Icewind Dale II aren't that good, and gives the game only 60 out of 100 points.

To make IWD2 not only play dated, but it also looks dated as well with its graphics. The characters and monsters haven’t been improved, instead it is the recycled sprites we have seen years ago, and the areas aren’t that pleasing to look at. Making matters worse, the animation is stiff and ugly, giving more into that dated feel. In one scene in the game, where a Goblin Shaman blows up a wall using a fireball, the wall simply went from “unharmed” to “destroyed” with no detail whatsoever. It literally flashes from one state to the next, not even leaving a trail of proper animation. The spell effects haven’t been improved or changed one bit, leaving that wonderful recycled-feel like the sprites suffer from. IWD2 looks more of an expansion then a full game, offering nothing new in terms of graphics.

Read everything here.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 1:20 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Demo Module: What we have found is that some people have had and unfortunate coincedence when playing the Gnolls demo module. It is possible, based on your level, for the encounters to fire and spawn more guards and thus they wipe out all the Gnolls before you can see them. When we tested the demo module with the recommended level we didn't have any issues, but we have found situations where by waiting too long, the Gnolls have already met an untimely demise. Nothing wrong with the patch. Just a wierdness in the Demo module.

Patch 1.28: Hi there. We are taking the various issues seriously. Just because we are not posting in every single thread and responding in minutes does not mean that we are not addressing issues. It is important to understand that most users are not encountering any problems. This is not a denial of any issues, just a simple statement of fact. "Whining" as you call it, has absolutely no effect on the release of a patch. It is also important to note that none of the mentioned bugs were discovered in either internal, INA, or the public Beta. DM Client display, even after we were informed of it, took quite a while to duplicate. The other issue is that there is a similar DM Client bug and it was masking our ability to see this new bug for what it was. Too many instructions is just a warning message. We are still investigating as to why it is more prominant now. Server logs not rotating. We will take a look at this. All of these valid issues will be addressed in 1.29. No ETA as yet.

Bugs: Wow, Jass, I am not sure if I can properly describe just how wrong you are. We have been responding to all issues as best we can, but how much do you expect from us over a long weekend? We are aware of most of what has been mentioned, but there is nothing I can do without programmers on hand. I personally read every single bug e-mail from all three addresses. They are reporting addresses, not support ones, so we rarely respond there unless we need more details. Maybe you should view my list of posts from the last 3 days.

Many people have suggested some sort of public bug tracking, but the problem with that idea, is that the end result is that more of you know what is going on with bugs in the game. It doesn't buy us anything. We already know the current bug lists and have them managed. Stopping bug fixing for several weeks just to present this information, means many bugs get delayed in fixing, just to show you that we are fixing bugs. Its not a good tradeoff in our opinion.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Quote: Well heres another one to chalk up to 1.28, the '~' key crashes the game, I believe that 1.27 had this problem as well. Need to get into Debug mode to test my model but every time I hit '~' it crashes.

You should be able to type some thing like the following in the chat line to enable debug mode:

## DebugMode 1

Hope that helps

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 18:51 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Jefferson Size: Well, right now Jefferson has five "regions", each with about five areas. Each area has anywhere between two to five maps. In towns, this rises to about twenty to over one hundred maps. The areas are pretty evenly balanced between critical-path and side-path.

Quote: Well, regardless of whether it was done the way you wanted it or not, it does make sense for folks to make references to your earlier work. I'm not saying that I disagree with your assessment, just that the circumstances are irrelevant.

One might argue that if you made an octegenarin crippled asthmatic swim the English Channel, his failure would be a good indication that efforts towards swimming across the English Channel are hopeless and pointless. I would not be one of those people.

Quote: A logical counterargument. My question then is this. Taking balance into account, will fighters who choose to play evil be given access to feats ect which allow them in effect to become the negative counterpart of the paladin without mucking up the game. If I read your argument correctly, adding the blackguard would skew the imbalance in frontloading of powers even more. Is there a way to correct this in game without penalizing one style over another?

If I were to make a D&D game with a level range that fell within the baby steps of PrCs, I would prefer to do the following:

* Not implement PrCs.
* Based on the organizations/fighting orders/groups of cool dudes in the game, create a number of specialized "buddy feats" that can be taken by a variety of character types.
* Hide those feats from the player until his or her character becomes a trusted friend of organization/fighting order/group of cool dudes x.
* When the PC becomes a member of that group, the group tells him or her, "Dude, you will now have access to secret things that only we can teach you!"
* When selecting feats on level up, put those special suckaz at the top of the list and show that "member of organization x" is one of the pre-reqs. for the feat.

This would be in addition to general role-playing benefits that the player/character might enjoy. For example, let's use the Zhentarim, a nice well-known FR evil group. You become buddies with the Zhents. They say, "Hey, dude, join the Black Network and become cool." and you say, "Okay."

The Good:
* Access to the Poison Use feat (adapted from the assassin ability), Black Network Guile feat (+1 bonus to Innuendo and Bluff, +2 to Intimidate), Discerning Eye feat (+2 to Appraise, +2 to Sense Motive), and the Paranoid Agent feat (+2 to Initiative, +1 to Spot, Listen). Nothing dramatic, but things that are definitely geared towards the flavor of the Zhentarim, or, more specifically, the Black Network.
* Ability to sell stolen goods and buy poison or drugs through Zhentarim agents in cities throughout the game without fear of discovery from the local authorities.
* Can influence the direction of the Zhentarim organzation within the confines of the game through growing reputation and character abilities.

The Bad:
* Though local authorities don't necessarily know for whom you work, a lot of other fancy people do. They may dislike you, not associate with you, or even attempt to kill you for your membership in the Zhentarim. Even other evil organizations distrust the Zhentarim, so widely are they loathed and mistrusted.
* The Zhents are a back-biting lot, and unless you take no sides at all in their bickering, someone will eventually hate you and attempt to crush your skull in/spray a barrel of poison down your throat.

That sort of thing would be what I would go for.

Quote: Furthermore, looking at a supposedly "balanced" game such as IWD2, I can comfortably say that all the effort spent on "balancing" it was thoroughly wasted.

When people try to use IWD2 as anecdotal evidence for or against a particular aspect of 3E, it honestly makes me laugh. IWD2's 3E implementation was done under bad, bad conditions in terms of time and technology. We did as much as we could, but it's still fairly far away from 3E "for realz". And you know that not everything was implemented the way that I would have liked it to be (if at all). Pick pocketing, wizard spell access, cleric domains, some of the races and many of the feats wound up contrary to how I would have liked them to be in the game (if at all). Why use IWD2 as anecdotal evidence for or against something in 3E, when it's so obviously out of kink with both core 3E rules and the desires of the game's lead designer?

Quote: It is proposed that evil is more a "role-playing" choice than a class choice, and therefore the PrC blackguard is twink and out.

Never written, nor implied. Evil is a role-playing choice, end of statement and implication. Whether blackguards are "twinkish" or not is irrelevant. There are tons of good-aligned PrCs, access to which makes no difference in whether a player can role-play a good-aligned character or not.

Quote: I remark that this is an excellent idea and look forward to the removal of paladin as a class, since it allows "good character" players more choices while providing no comperable options to the "evil character" player who is expected to make do with dialogue options to express his vile naughtyness.

There just aren't enough evil deities to make up for access to the paladin class? I'd like to see a poll on which was liked more in IWD2: paladin-specific dialogue responses or Dreadmaster/Stormlord dialogue responses. People on our boards certainly seemed to get more satisfaction out of the evil cleric responses.

Quote: It is posited that the paladin isn't really that good anyway, and a decent fighter/clerk should fulfill the role just fine.
I say "yes" and wonder aloud at the notion that the paladin is considered CORE while a similiar choice for the evil player character is considered twink.

A paladin is core because it's one of the core character classes. Blackguards are not core because they are not one of the core character classes. If you want to subjectively wonder in writing about this, the place to do it would be the WotC boards. If the blackguard were simply a twelfth character class, that would be preferrable to having it as a PrC, IMO.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 - 20:07 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

Talking To Laying Down Characters: You need to do three things:

1) Have the character perform the looping DEATH_FRONT or DEATH_BACK animation... this will cause them to lie down upon spawning. Remember that if they ever stop performing this animation they will stand back up, so give it a long duration.

2) Remove the "ClearAllActions()" command from their OnConversation event. This command would make them stop performing the above animation when they are selected, which is bad.

3) In any dialogue that they have, go to the scrolling menu on the bottom right where you can select animations. You should be able to select "No Animation". Make sure you do this for each dialogue piece they speak. This prevents them from performing the "head bobbing" animation when they speak and will allow them to continue lying down.

That's from memory, anyways. Hope it works.

Hak Paks: I think a lot of people are going to have to reconstruct their hak paks at least a little. I'm pretty confident that it's a situation of short-term pain for long-term gain. The distribution and application of hak paks should be made monumentally easier by this, I think.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Clothing Fix: To be honest, you can all thank yourselves. This was a request from the Community that was evaluated as a good feature, and was eventually added to the Toolset. Its kinda what the whole BioWare Community Site is all about. I don't think that even Visceris could take this away from us.

Non-English Patches: We should have 1.28 Beta patches for most non-English versions sometime this week. These versions will be play-compatible with the English 1.28 build.

Patcher: This is the launcher that will be in XP1. We have released it early. Of course, when SoU is out, it will either say "Now Available" or "Installed". Sorry you don't like the launcher, but its the one that is shipping with SoU.

More:
Just standard practice. We replaced the launcher in BG1 when the expansion came out. We replaced the launcher in BG2 when the expansion came out. We just did it earlier this time. Sorry, I am just not quite sure why this is either a surprise or offensive. But then, momma said I was an insensitive boy.

And More:

Quote: I don't want to speak for anyone else, but somehow I doubt it's a matter of not liking the art on the launcher. It's just that I've installed a patch, and without warning, my launcher has been turned into a billboard. As Chad said, it's...tacky. I'm a bit disappointed.

Um, its not your launcher. Its ours. We were just giving you a preview of what the XP1 launcher will look like. Showing you new art. That was the intent. Guess we better stop releasing screenshots and content on the community site, too, because its offensive, right?

And Even More:
If you find the new launcher offensive, please create a shortcut to NWMain.exe or change the existing launcher shortcut to point to NWMain.exe. Then you won't see the new graphic ever again. The DM Client can be accessed by making a shortcut to "NWMain.exe -dmc" See? Nothing but options and control over your install of NWN. That is the power we give you.

Korean Version: The Korean version of NWN can only connect and play with other Korean versions. This is because of the character set difference between Korean and other versions.

Jonathan Epp, Quality Assurance

Tokens In Journals:

Quote: I haven't tried it yet, but theoretically, you should just be able to type into a journal entry.

Yes, that is exactly right. You can also use almost all other conversation tokens as well, such as , , , etc.

More:

Quote: Hmmm... I assume then that any token used in the Journal is "decoded", and the resulting text is what is placed in the Journal entry, and changing a custom token won't have any effect on existing Journal entries? Or will changing a custom token change existing entries (already in a PCs Journal)?

Once the text is set in the journal for the player, it's set. However, if you want to change the custom token in an entry for the player, you can change the token and then just remove and re-add the entry. When it adds the entry back into the journal it will re-parse the custom token. Slightly annoying, but it's fairly simple to do.

And More:
Heh... I just figured out something neat.

- I set to "blah"
- I add a journal entry to a party using that custom token
- Player 1 in the party opens his journal, and sees "blah"
- I set to "monkey"
- Player 2 in the party opens his journal, and sees "monkey", NOT "blah". But Player 1 still sees "blah".

I guess the tokens in the string are parsed when the player first views that journal entry.

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Neverwinter Nights Patch Bug
Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 - 19:37 CET by Mollusken

A new bug in the Aurora Toolset has been introduced with the 1.28 patch. More info about this can be found at the official forums.

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Icewind Dale II Review at Silven Crossroads
Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 - 19:34 CET by Mollusken

Silven Crossroads have also reviewed Icewind Dale II, and just like in most other cases it was right behind Neverwinter Nights with a score of 7.75 out of 10. Here's an excerpt:

Although our tests found the game to be bug free after installing the latest patch, we did find some logical errors in the game mechanics. On numerous occasions we moved from one area to another, and appeared in the middle of an enemy encampment or right next to a group of adversaries. It would seem logical that the party would have sighted them if they were so close to the area entrance, when coming from the previous area.

On the upside, the Dungeons and Dragons feats and skills are wonderfully implemented allowing a PC to use his Wilderness skill to detect details in his surrounding area and using Animal Empathy to calm enraged beasts and so on.

Get everything here.

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Neverwinter Nights Review at Silven Crossroads
Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 - 19:28 CET by Mollusken

Silven Crossroads have reviewed Neverwinter Nights and the Witch's Wake: Fields of Battle module, and they gave the game a score of 8.25 and the official module 8 out of a possible 10. Here's an excerpt from the Neverwinter Nights review:

At launch of the game the DM client showed some bugs and weaknesses but over the last few patches it has grown in stability. The last few weeks I have run games with almost no lag and no crashes at all. Bioware has been excellent in responding to user feedback and the cry for stability and reliability in the DM client and the NW server tools. Nice to see a game company this dedicated to its user community.

And here's a bit from the Witch's Wake review:

One of the strongest points of this free campaign is the options available in conversation. Each character has an outstanding conversation tree, that is consistently well written and rewarding to run through even multiple times. Conversation options change depending on your character class, race and available feats. Consequences are excellently implemented. Your PC's choices in conversation decide how the character you are talking to responds to you and they will remember a slight or an unsavoury action taken against them.

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Project Entropia
Posted Friday, February 14, 2003 - 19:18 CET by Mollusken

The online universe Project Entropia have sent us words that they've gone gold with the release of their latest version update 4.2. Here's a couple of the fixes and addons:

PVP Introduced - The calls for Participant versus Participant combat have been answered. It is now allowed in a specially marked area of the map. The area itself is quite valuable with rare mineral deposits and unique creatures roaming about.

Newbie Guide Online - While downloading the client, newcomers are offered a helpful guide about what to expect and how to begin orientating themselves on Calypso.

Exploit Info Reward System - Participants who encounter exploits (bugs that can be manipulated into cheating) and report them to MindArk can now be rewarded with up to 1000 PEDs!

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 21:02 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

Prestige Classes: There are no rules for creating Prestige Classes in 3rd edition, other than 'use your judgement'. Unfortunately, that's not something that translates well onto the computer. "Okay... we're going to try and put together a system of class abilities that are, um, pretty much anything... with spell abilities of, ummm, pretty much any type... with pre-requisites that are, errrr, hopefully scriptable..." There's a few common themes that you find amongst the prestige classes, but not many. Trying to include enough of a variety to make a complete "system" (even a minimal one) would be kind of a nightmare. Then, too, we have to take into account that the way classes were added makes adding new ones (especially those prestige classes with spells) fairly problematic. And that's disregarding any issues with the do-it-yourself-rules that made us leave out the ability to build your own classes and spells and such in the first place. Could we eventually add in the ability for a mod-maker to include custom prestige classes? Maybe... but generating a complete enough system and re-tooling the entire class system to accomodate them easily lies strictly in the realm of a sequel.

More:

Quote: So at best bioware could leave the back door open for us to sneak in and make prestige classes as a form of custom content and distribute the modified 2da files in hak paks.

That's all well and good, Torias, but just what abilities would those prestige classes have? You wouldn't be able to give any of them spell lists (that's hard-coded, unfortunately), and while you would be able to determine changes to BAB, hit dice and saving throws, all the other class abilities would have to be added as custom feats... which would mean that in order for custom prestige classes to be at all meaningful we would have to go in and include not only the ability to create and insert custom feats easily but to make sure that they covered a wider breadth of abilities than they do currently. Not only that, we'd have to insert the ability to put all that together in the toolset... we'd never make such a large change only to have it restricted solely to custom content creators. You might say "Yes, do that, sounds great"... and, I agree, in theory it sounds ideal (short of the lack of spell list changes)... but the amount of total work it require to do all of the above is fairly prohibitive to say the least.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Patch Bug: Yes, we just noticed this and there will be a fix up later today. Stay tuned! This will cause a "missing resource" / "resource not found" error when compiling the module, but will not prevent saving the module and does not break the game. If you wish to avoid seeing these errors until the fix is ready, create a simple script named "resref" (without the quotes) with an empty void main() function. Sorry, 'bout this guys.

Tom Ohle, Communications Assistant

Tilesets: The next anything (non-desert stuff) you see will be Ruins tileset-related. I think. Again, all this stuff needs to go through Hasbro/WotC/Infogrames approvals--so if I submit stuff, it takes about a month for it to get approved (a little less, but I pretty much factor in a month for any approvals).

NW Wednesday: Unfortunately, there won't be any new screenshots this week. We've still got shots wrapped up in approvals. Today's stuff is pretty cool, though--it'll take a bit of time until we start releasing more really juicy info.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Patch 1.28: The 1.28 Update will be out today. It is all packaged up and we are doing all the last minute web page updates and server file transfers. It shouldn't be too long. The English 1.28 Critical Rebuild will be later this afternoon, though. Sadly, we do not have final version of the non-English versions of 1.28, but we hope to have Beta versions of them this week. The non-English Betas will be play-compatible with the English 1.28 version.

Tumble: Correct. Tumble is a skill.

Non-English 1.28: Localization has been backlogged and is not ready. However, we expect to have compatible, albeit Beta versions of the non=-English languages ready tomorrow.

Module Load Times: Sydney rocks. We didn't want to make too big a deal about it, but opening Chapter 2 dropped from 10 minutes to about 1 minute. Again. He rocks.

Leto & Patch 1.28: That message is the generic warning that we put up to cover the cheat/hack fixes we put in the game, in terms of server-side code. It doesn't have anything to do with Leto...

Patch 1.28 RESREF Error:

Greetings:

There is an issue in the current 1.28 English Toolset for Neverwinter Nights where deleting a script on a creature, etc. and it will replace the script with the word 'RESREF'. You can save and run your module and it won't break anything, but this is a significant enough problem that we are going to handle it outside of the normal patching process. We have a fixed version of the Toolset available for download right now, BUT you must also either back up your old Toolset or download the original 1.28 Toolset from us, otherwise you will break your ability to update the game to 1.29. This issue is an English version only issue, and will not be in the upcoming non-English versions of the 1.28 Update.

1. Back up your existing 1.28 NWToolset.exe file to someplace safe.

2. Download the fixed 1.28 NWToolset.

3. Unzip the contents of this zip file into your Neverwinter Nights directory.

4. Enjoy a 'RESREF'-free version of the Toolset.

When the 1.29 patch comes around you must either:

1. Restore your backed up Toolset from step 1, above.

- OR -

2. Download the Original 1.28 NWToolset.

Our apologies for this inconvenience.

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Shadows of the Undrentide Interview at ActionTrip
Posted Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 20:51 CET by Z-Layrex

ActionTrip has posted an interview with Rick Ernst, the lead designer working on the pending expansion pack "Shadows of the Undrentide", being produced by both BioWare and FloodGate Entertainment. Here's an exerpt:

AT: There was much talk of new items. Can you reveal some of them?

RE: Well, BioWare's Aurora toolset makes it really simple to add new magic items such as weapons, armour, rings, amulets, staves, etc. So expect to see lots of those. But we're also adding some new 'wonderous' items, as they are called in D&D. Two of my favourites are The Rod of Wonder? a crazy chaotic item that produces a random effect each time it's used, and our own 'Deck of Hazards', which is based on the classic artefact 'The Deck of Many Things.' We didn't want to use the actual DoMT as it appears in D&D, because many of the effects didn't really make sense in a CRPG. So we created our own artefact, a magical deck of cards that has been soaking up the ambient magic of an ancient ruin for centuries. Talented module builders should have little trouble modifying our Deck of Hazards to fit into their campaigns, even recreating the original DoMT, if they want.

Read it here.

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Neverwinter Nights 1.28 Patch Released
Posted Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 18:40 CET by Mollusken

BioWare have released the Neverwinter Nights version 1.28 patch, which can be downloaded with the "Update" function from the game launcher. Here are the release notes:

Neverwinter Nights Game

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Greyhawk Interview Part 2 at RPG Vault
Posted Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 18:36 CET by Mollusken

RPG Vault have posted the second part of their Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil interview with project leader and lead designer Tim Cain from Troika Games.

What kinds of opponents can players expect to face in Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil? Will the game include the Juggernauts and fungal growths that were first introduced in the module?

We have a large variety of creatures, from the common bugbears and gnolls to cool outsiders like demons and efreeti. There are lots of undead too. I think we are at 60-plus different types of monsters, and counting. We have lots of variations on each type that are not included in that figure. For example, there are seven different bugbear models, depending on temple affiliation, and there's a separate model for female bugbears too.

Of course, we have elementals (you can't have a temple of elemental evil without them). And yes, the Juggernaut and the fungus creatures (ascomids, basidironds, phycomid, zygoms, etc) are all in there. I think the artists had some fun with these creatures.

What factors prompted the decision to use 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds? To what further extent are you using 3D technology for spell effects, fog, lighting et al? And what do you think the system requirements and recommendations will be?

For a given amount of memory space, 3D characters give us a bigger range of animations and personalization than sprites. Pre-rendered backgrounds give us more detail in the scenes than 3D backgrounds, so we like that combination. And we are using 3D particle effects everywhere, from smoke in the village chimneys to magic items like flaming swords and frost arrows, to each and every spell having an individual spell effect.

Our min spec is a 700 MHz processor, with 128 Meg of RAM and a second-generation 3D video card, running DirectX 8.1. We are using a system like this as our in-house test system, so the artists and programmers can see how the actual maps run in the game.

We haven't made a recommended spec yet. In-house testing shows the two biggest factors that improve performance are video cards with high fill rates and CPUs with lots of on-chip cache.

Get everything here.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 2:44 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Quote: I guess you guys miss the main point of my thread: what do you have against prestige classes?

I have already made a post explaining why I think PrCs are not a good idea in theory and practice.

Quote: Don't tell me that a few feats and skills can replace a whole kit: take iwd2, you could take the weapon focus feat only once (same thing for most of the attack feats, like envenom weapon), while in bg2, if you picked the kensai or assassin kits, you could get those abilities for many uses, in addition of having a special character.

Limitations on Weapon Focus / Weapon Specialization are arbitrary. I could make a feat called Fancy Specialization and Super Fancy Specialization that stack on top of WF and WS. I could take the increased specialization powers given to a Red Wizard of Thay and turn it into a feat called Increased Specialization. With the exception of the supernatural powers that some PrCs gain, all of the abilities they gain could just be turned into feats.

Quote: No really: aren't you bored with the 11 standard classes? They do not offer any variety, it's always the same.

I wrote this in my earlier post: two ninth level Specialist Wizards have more freedom to look different from each other than two sixth level Specialist Wizards / third level Red Wizards of Thay. Look at the requirements for a RWoT: human, non-good, Thayan, 8 ranks in Spellcraft, specialized in a school of magic, Tattoo Focus feat, 3 meta-magic or item creation feats. Every RWoT must meet those requirements. One of my two non-RWoT characters could be a chaotic good gnome illusionist with all his skill ranks in Move Silently and Hide, and his free feats towards Dodge, Martial Weapon: Battle Axe, and Combat Casting. The other could be a chaotic evil elf enchanter with skill ranks in Diplomacy, Spot, and Knowledge, feats in Skill Focus: Diplomacy, Weapon Finesse: Dagger, and Spell Focus: Enchantment.

Quote: Most people will find it cool having unique, peculiar and no so-standarized characters.

Their class requirements make them more standardized than any other character class/combo.

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 21:10 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: If you have seen the second The Lord of the Rings movie, how would you rate it?
(509 votes total)

5 (excellent) (268) 53%
4 (147) 29%
3 (32) 6%
I haven't seen it (28) 6%
1 (awful) (22) 4%
2 (12) 2%

I won't comment much on this poll since the results speak for themselves, so only a few observations:

The majority of people who voted (53%) really liked the movie, rating it 5 stars (excellent).

The next big group of voters (29%) gave it 4 stars, still a very good score.

6% of people who voted rated it 3 stars, and another 6% haven't seen the movie.

And finally, combined, 6% of all poll participants rated the movie either 2, or 1 (awful).

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 20:58 CET by Z-Layrex

Yep! It's that time of the week again! Yet another Wednesday o' delights from the almighty Bioware. Here's what we've got this week:

There's a new Shadows of Undrentide wallpaper, which features an abundance of many-legged creatures massing in the desert!

Also, in upcoming weeks, Bioware will be showcasing aspects of the 3 new Shadows of Undrentide tilesets, starting this week with the Giant Statue Head, Chasm Stairs and Oasis tiles from the Desert tileset!

And finally, there's a couple of new DM profiles. BioWare's Jay Watamaniuk talks with two of the top DMs around, Sweeny Todd and Duncan.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 16:42 CET by Z-Layrex

Here are today's official Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

David Gaider, Designer

NWN 2: Hmmm... suddenly the temptation to make my own wishlist becomes too strong... must resist... programmers will throw rocks... ahhhh!!

1) Have to agree on the z-axis thing: climbing, swimming, flying, the whole 9-yards (not sure what that means... 9 yards of what?) is required for any sequel to be an evolutionary step forward. Whether or not the current engine could be retooled to include that, however, is the scary part... I would be pretty leery, personally, about starting all over again with a new engine. Having a working engine to start from is what's supposed to make working on sequels so sweet, design-wise. I don't actually lump in riding with the z-axis... and I don't think it's necessary... but maybe that's just me. What is necessary is having dragons that can fly and swoop down on you, wizards that levitate, a nice climbing puzzle to grab that statue's eye-gems which lets your rogue shine and some nice underwater combat. All that stuff alone is a major endeavour that would require most of the work in the sequel... but wouldn't that be sweet?

2) I won't go into a long list of appearance options, as the bang-for-your-buck only goes so far on that point... but evolutionary-wise you can't get much sweeter than cloaks flapping in the wind along with realistic-looking draping cloth and hair. Graphical layers will be a must.

3) More omniscience/omnipotence for DM's. I say lose the avatar. Let the DM have an omniscient, multi-window view. Allow them to possess anything (including a PC) and give the DM a mini-toolset which will allow them some ability at creating on the fly and also allow them to import anything made in the toolset proper... including new areas. Oh... and editable save games. (Ow! Damn programmer just hit me in the noggin!)

4) Greater editing control over toolset creations. Allow for more color control and on-the-fly sizing of creatures and placeables. Built-in support for custom models and textures. Allow for item creation with less limitations. At the same time, allow for a local server to control their own security and set their own parameters for what can be brought into their game.

5) Allow players to make their own face textures (a la the Sims), portraits and voice files and have these all plopped into one directory and transferred automatically during play. (Ummm... hopefully broadband is the standard by this point...)

Heh... tall enough order for ya? I could probably come up with several more, but I think I just made myself depressed. Time to go pop some Xanax.

Tom Ohle, Communications Assistant

Spells: When a spell is modified for use in NWN, it is for a good reason--usually play balancing. Stuff that's balanced for a PnP game isn't necessarily balanced for a CRPG, where things need to happen much quicker.

NWN Resolutions: Sorry, but we had to drop the official 640x480 as there was just not enough room for all the GUI elements. I will get that part of the FAQ fixed up tomorrow.

More:
There were reasons, I'd imagine. The design team is chock-full of D&D nuts, so the chance that they don't know the rules is slim to none.

And More:

Quote: It is your silence that most offends.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Unfortunately, the design team is extremely busy with our next... 6 projects (including the two expansions and KotOR Xbox and PC). Designing the game took a substantial amount of time. I'm sure the designers wish they had time to document and post every design decision they made... but they simply don't. I'm just giving you a general statement that holds true for most of the gaming industry (which includes D&D-based games). I'd like to be able to explain the design decisions in further detail, but the fact is that I don't know why decisions were made; only that they were made for good reason. Whether it be time constraints, play balancing, or poor translation to a CRPG...

And Even More:

Quote: Tom, ?it is your silence that most offends? is a quote form Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, act 1) and was not intended to be taken literally. I mean only to say: we want to know what we can and the more we are told, the happier we are. At least where we = me. I don?t presume to speak for everyone. Sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I also don?t expect every nit noid decision to be put before the tribunal of the community for adjudication. There isn?t time or money for that. I am also a person who has to make a living, turn in projects on time and on budget, so I understand the realities. But in an industry which is dependent on a fickle fan base, I think I could demonstrate (with some research) that the ROI from a strong communications policy was strongly positive, and paid for itself. I have said this same thing to Darcy. You have a fan base which wants to be involved, the fans want to love your product. We can help.

I'm aware it's shakespeare :) But anyway, the fact is that we do listen--many of the things being implemented in SoU, Witch's Wake, and XP2 are direct requests from fans.

Helmets & Headbands:

Quote: Screen shots don't mean much to me anymore. if you look at the pre-release BG2 SS the things depicted are things that could not happen. Icewind Dale did the same thing. Look at the box pictures. All are made to look great but do not really show the real game. I am sure the expansion will be good but what is the word on the invisible headgear? If you like the look of helmets on mages, monks, etc. so much why don't you put them in the screenshots? It is because you know how stupid they look.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. All the shot