March 2004

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 21:33 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Module design: Our stance is pretty clear on this - the individual module designer, server operator, DM is completely in charge of balancing his own realm. Computer Roleplaying Games today are often played in a variety of ways, some people actually role play, other's love to powergame, some just like to *** about the game or the rules. So, whatever restrictions we would try to impose, they would at some point collide with the vision an a modulebuilder has about his world. There is a simple solution to your problem, play on ServerVault games. LocalVault was meant for those who play with a small group of trusted friends, they will never offer the level of balance/protection that the operator of a ServerVault can give you. So, please don't call for regulation from Bioware, we have no interest do do that. What we do, and continue to do in the future is fixing exploits or bugs, but we won't balance LocalVault games for you.

Dispel Magic:

Quote: That's great news, Georg! Is there any word on whether or not Dispell will now correctly remove "Continual Flame" from an item when directly cast on it (as per the description of the spell)?

No, it doesn't and that's intentional. Dispel Magic in NWN will never delete permanent item properties.

HotU writers: Yes, your observation is correct, the third chapter was written by a different writer than the first and the second one. To a certain degree the different style is certainly intentional, chapter 3 was supposed to feel very different from the rest of the game, after all, it's a special place...

NWN Copies: There is not a problem with having the game installed on your windows and linux pc. I have my game installed on my notebook and my destop. The key is that you are not allowed to use both installations to play at the same time, because then you will need a second key.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Digital Distribution: Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done right now. All of the contracts are in the pipeline and it looks to be just a matter of time. We're currently waiting to get some internal approval on a preliminary budget but that, too, looks to be just a matter of time. I suppose one thing you could do is write letters or emails to your favorite gaming mags and news sites, telling them what you know about our DD Project and letting them know that you want to hear more about it. E3 is coming up in May, after all, and hopefully we'll be in a position to talk more freely about it at that point.

Post Comments (0)

SP Happenings #43
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 19:28 CET by Sorcerer

A site update was due before this issue of SP Happenings, but circumstances beyond my control unfortunately prevented it. I've been doing my best to discover what the issues that have been bringing the server down for the last two days are, but have only managed to get near the root of the problem by now, with no practical (read cheap) solutions at hand. The fact is that the server SP and the hosted sites are running on is running out of the 512MB of available RAM. If I can't bring this memory usage down, the only solution will be to buy another 512MB of RAM, which will cost us $30 and raise the monthly hosting expenses for another $20. So, as you can imagine, I'm doing my best to find some way to deal with this problem that won't require pouring more money into hosting than we already are. I'll have more news on this next week, but in the meanwhile, please be patient if SP goes down now and then... I'll either be conducting tests on the server, or the server might go down because of the lack of memory. Either way, I'll try to get it back up ASAP.

I should also have the site update ready soon, but how soon now totally depends on when I get the server back in order. This is obviously my top priority at the moment.

Post Comments (1)

No Neverwinter Nights 2
Posted Monday, March 29, 2004 - 14:19 CET by chevalier

After several days of rumours and speculations as to whether NWN2 will appear or will not appear at E3, Stanley Woo, BioWare's Quality Assurance Ninja, has made it clear that it will not. Also, BioWare has no plans for NWN2 at the moment. Blame GameStar and their translation. Here's what he says:

Since we currently have no plans to make an NWN2, it would be highly unlikely that Trent would be talking about it at E3. This has been discussed on the HotU board as well, with the explanation being that the translation is incorrect. There has also been mention of GameStar being, perhaps, an unreliable source of accurate information.

The same position is supported by Georg Zoeller, Designer, later in the same discussion:

Combined with the fact that we are indeed not going to reveal NWN 2 on E3 (because we are not working on a sequel to NWN), and the other incorrect/badly researched "news" I found on this site ("Bioware is secretly working on BG3", "Bioware releases free community expansion pack", "Bioware announced they work on three original titles, NWN2?") it is pretty safe to say that you can disregard this newspost. I don't know what Trent really said, but whatever it was, it was almost certainly mangled up very badly in translation.

So again, we are not working on NWN2 and we are not working on another expansion pack for NWN, through we are working on other things to support NWN in the future (see Witch's Wake forum for details).

Read the whole thing at BioWare.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 14:46 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

CEP & Official Campaign: Please don't replace the OC modules in your nwm folder with edited copies. Doing so will break your ability to patch using the supplied updater. If you have replaced the original OC nwn files with edited copies (in the nwn folder), then you will have to use the critical rebuild when the next patch becomes available. Which will replace your edited copies of the files with the BioWare originals causing you to lose the changes. Please leave the edited copies in your modules folder and select the module to play using the "Other Modules" button.

CEP portraits: Since we currently have no plans to make an NWN2, it would be highly unlikely that Trent would be talking about it at E3. This has been discussed on the HotU board as well, with the explanation being that the translation is incorrect. There has also been mention of GameStar being, perhaps, an unreliable source of accurate information.

German translation: When I talked to the guys who were translating SoU to German for Atari they told me they had to translate using the official German D&D terms from the German sourcebooks, even if those sounded incredibly stupid. I don't think the translators had the option of deciding if or how they wanted to translate names for popular characters or locations. I still shudder when I think of the box title for SoU in Germany - ahh the joy of licenses

Dispel Magic: Yes, dispel magic never worked correctly (the caster level parameter was not taken correctly into account) ... until today [and there was much rejoicing for the bugsquashing zealot CraigW]. Which means that, unless we experience other problems and are forced to revert back, patch 1.63 is going to put an end to this topic

BioWare: As Derek already pointed out elsewhere, Bioware is a privately funded company that does not disclose financial details. Combined with the fact that we are indeed not going to reveal NWN 2 on E3 (because we are not working on a sequel to NWN), and the other incorrect/badly researched "news" I found on this site ("Bioware is secretly working on BG3", "Bioware releases free community expansion pack", "Bioware announced they work on three original titles, NWN2?") it is pretty safe to say that you can disregard this newspost. I don't know what Trent really said, but whatever it was, it was almost certainly mangled up very badly in translation. So again, we are not working on NWN2 and we are not working on another expansion pack for NWN, through we are working on other things to support NWN in the future (see Witch's Wake forum for details).

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

CEP: The Community Expansion Pack (CEP) was publicly released March 24, 2004. This collection of .hak files contains new creatures, clothing, placeable objects, 2 new playable races and much, much more. Woooot! Some points to keep in mind:

1. BioWare did not create or produce any of the new content that is contained in the CEP.

2. The CEP is not a series of modules or adventures. It is a collection of content such as creatures or weapons. The CEP team has created two modules to show some of the new content that comes with the CEP download. BioWare will post coverage of modules using the CEP as they become available

3. The vast majority of CEP content was created by members of the community and each item is available in one form or another at community sites such as NWVault.

4. The CEP package has been tested for bugs, compatibility and other errors to the best of the CEP team of volunteers could reasonably do. The CEP team has created extensive documentation on how to install and use the CEP as a player and as a builder and credits, where at all possible, all individuals whose work is used.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance Ninja

NWN2: Since we currently have no plans to make an NWN2, it would be highly unlikely that Trent would be talking about it at E3. This has been discussed on the HotU board as well, with the explanation being that the translation is incorrect. There has also been mention of GameStar being, perhaps, an unreliable source of accurate information.

David Gaider, Designer

BioWare products: I know the thought to interpret "our own intellectual property" as "we make up a story as always" is real tempting, but that's not what it means. It means "we're making a game not based on outside licenses" like Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons or any other movie, TV show, comic book, novel, game or what-have-you. For the people squirming in their seats and ready to pee themselves in anticipation over the idea we just might be working on KotOR 2 or BG3 or NWN 2, this gives them pause to object: "Wait a minute... if those projects aren't based on anything that makes it incredibly hard for me to make assumptions and get prematurely excited!"

To which we say: "Indeed."

Which makes threads on the topic a rather pointless exercise, and I know there are some folks who might be stunned that Bioware might make a game where the phrase "bastardized implementation" would be meaningless, but there you have it.

Post Comments (0)

Bioware Launches CEP Forum
Posted Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 1:27 CET by chevalier

BioWare have launched a separate Neverwinter Nights forum section for Community Expansion Pack. Here's what Jay Watamaniuk says:

The Community Expansion Pack (CEP) was publicly released March 24, 2004. This collection of .hak files contains new creatures, clothing, placeable objects, 2 new playable races and much, much more. Woooot!

Some points to keep in mind:

1. BioWare did not create or produce any of the new content that is contained in the CEP.

2. The CEP is not a series of modules or adventures. It is a collection of content such as creatures or weapons. The CEP team has created two modules to show some of the new content that comes with the CEP download. BioWare will post coverage of modules using the CEP as they become available

3. The vast majority of CEP content was created by members of the community and each item is available in one form or another at community sites such as NWVault.

4. The CEP package has been tested for bugs, compatibility and other errors to the best of the CEP team of volunteers could reasonably do. The CEP team has created extensive documentation on how to install and use the CEP as a player and as a builder and credits, where at all possible, all individuals whose work is used.

Find out all at BioWare.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, March 26, 2004 - 17:05 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Live Team: Don't be too terribly alarmed as, to a certain degree at least, I'm exaggerating the facts to make a point.

My personal vision for the Live Team (the emphasis is on personal - this may or may not reflect the vision held by the company as a whole) is an aggressive one that might just allow everyone to have their cake and eat it too. NWN was a huge game with a lot of different elements competing for attention. As everyone here knows, we got raked over the coals by a lot of people for the quality of the Official Campaign on the one hand. On the other, we ended up releasing an almost entirely undocumented toolset and a DM client that had severe stability issues. We've come a long way since then and, thanks to all of you, NWN is stronger and better than ever before.

In reflecting on NWN's development, some of the people involved have decided that NWN's focus on the community was a step backwards in that it distracted us and even actively hampered us from creating the rich stories that were the focus of BG and KotOR (for the record, KotOR sales appear to be outperforming NWN's). Others have taken the exact opposite interpretation, believing that NWN's community focus was incredibly innovative, carving out a new, highly successful niche for ourselves in the growing RPG genre - abandoning mod-focused RPGs would be a step backwards (for the record, NWN sales appear to be outperforming those of the BG series). Personally, I'm of the opinion that rich, BioWare-style stories and robust, publicly-released toolsets aren't mutually exclusive. It's just that creating both of them is simply too much for any individual Lead Designer to be expected to wrap their brain around.

So my theory is that we let the core development teams focus on doing what they do best - making an amazingly fun RPG with rich stories, gorgeous artwork, rewarding combat systems, and great depth-of-play. Meanwhile the Live Team (in collaboration with the tools and programming teams, of course - we won't be doing this entirely on our own) works behind the scenes on designing an overall architecture that meets your needs rather than solely the needs of that core design team (because, let's face it, the two sets of needs are often very different). If all goes well, I think everyone wins and our fan-base most of all - not only do you get a great RPG experience right out of the box but you also get high-quality, well-documented tools with which to build your own games.

And where would we get the funding to make this crazy two-team dream a reality? Well, obviously, I hope the DD Project is successful beyond our wildest imaginings - after all, if the Live Team can do what it needs to do based entirely on it's own revenue stream, it will be pretty hard for the rest of the company to say "no." More realistically, we'll probably have to present a budget to Ray and Greg and to our publishers and explain what it is we're trying to accomplish and what kinds of benefits we feel it would offer to the project and the company as a whole, blah, blah, blah. BioWare is an innovative company that's open to new ideas and calculated risks. They value the community and they recognize the contribution that a mod-oriented game can make.

So what happens if this idea tanks for some reason and doesn't come to pass? Well, it's by no means doom and gloom. I think everyone's still keen on releasing some form of toolset with this secret PC project. Without the two-team approach, I expect there'll be more stress and anguish involved on BioWare's part as the various leads feel themselves pulled in two different directions, much as was the case for Neverwinter. I expect that both the toolset and the official campaign will be good but one or the other or both will probably end up being less than what the could have been. Only time will tell but, as I mentioned earlier, I think the Live Team's in a unique position right now where we can help everyone have their cake and eat it too.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Custom talktables: Yepp, that's a post I made in the custom content forum, I think Mayseth from the Vault is probably just a bit mad at me for making his life harder by posting a lot

The purpose of the "custom talk table"

The custom talktable feature was added because it was one of the last things blocking the community from adding new feats, spells, races, etc into NWN using hakpaks. If you add a new spell to the game, you need to modify spells.2da to add it - and inside spells.2da you need to define StrRefs (string reference) that point to strings in dialog.tlk for "name", "description", etc. These strings are displayed on the players GUI and are directly fetched from dialog.tlk. Basically if I enter StrRef 333, it will fetch string number 333 from dialog.tlk.

However, dialog.tlk can not be put into hakpaks and it is a global resource, meaning you can't just add strings to it and distribute it to your players, as your changes will affect all games that are played and will break compatibility with the auto updater. To allow the community to define their own strings, Tools came up with a scheme that allows module builders to add their own, custom talktable to a module. This talktable can NOT redefine existing strings, it can only add new strings to the game. Thus, you can't simply take dialog.tlk and copy it, you need to create a new, empty talktable and add the strings you want to add to the game there. There is NO way of overwriting existing strings - If you want to change the name of a spell, you would instead change the StrRef in the Name column in spells.2da to point to your new string in your own talktable. So back to your example of the champion of torm:

- You create an empty talktable (plenty of tools for that on the Vault) and add three new strings

0 bad strref
1 Divine Champion
2 Description for Divine Champion

- You need to modify the name and probably description column in classes.2da to point to your new, custom strref. In order to address entries in the custom talktable, you need to add 16777216 to the index number the string has in your custom talktable.

the classes.2da entry would look like this:

... name description ...
...
... 16777217 16777218 ...

There is a good source of information on the DLA team's custom content guide at ccg.dladventures.com, but I think the talktable page is down at the moment.

CEP: You reallize that Lisa is currently working on the DLA project. Coincidence? I think not. Doing a search you will also find me saying "aahhh" and "oohhh" to Lisa's (and a lot of other people's) work in quite a few threads here and on the Vault, and if you care to search a bit more, you will find I do this for a lot of custom content that manages to capture my eye. So no, I don't think I am biased when it comes to community created work, I rather blame you for only seeing the more prominent comments I make. Feel free to browse the Archives of the Custom Content Board or NWVault if you like - you will find that the claims in your post are not accurate at all.

There is a reason why I am often hailing CODI and DLA (and Lisa by the way) - these guys put out high quality content on a regular basis, and, in case of DLA and CODI, they provide the community with a stream of quality editing, modelling and custom content tools, frankly, without them there would be far less content overall. Also, these guys are working in a team, they put out more content than the average builder. And, by the way, Papermonk and rtRifts were pretty good at sucking many of the best people in the custom content community into their black hole projects, so most of the things that actually come out of these holes have to be pretty good. As for the "other combo haks", yes, been there, done that (was a member of the community for quite a while). I think I elaborated quite enough why I think CEP is something different.

I also think that there is nothing preventing people from contacting us if they think they made something important for the community and want it featured. Surely, we are out there on the Vault and our boards and notice cool projects - Jay is following up on them and at one point they may become a Bioware Wednesday item if we think they should get more spotlight - but chances are that we may not notice the humble builder next door who made this awesome tileset that sits like a hidden gem on the vault with only a few people knowing about it (That's the reason why you need PR today - i.e. contacting Maximus on the Vault and asking him to run a newspiece about your invention. Company A could have the best product in the world today, they still would sell less than Company B if they don't advertise it. Blaming Company B or the Ad guys in this case is stupid). So please, don't interprete our spotlighting of a certain project as "all other projects don't deserve recognition", because that's not what it means when we spotlight something. If someone says "Ann is a good programmer" - this doesn't implicate "Bob is worse programmer than Ann".

Finally I like to add something else: I find it annoying when people, on the day of the release of a free community project that certainly took a lot of people's free time, enthusiasm and energy during last months, jump in and complain that we give them the limited support we can to give - the attention we think they deserve, because there are other projects that deserver praise as well. - Good idea, let's all jump to some guys graduation party, smack them in the head for passing out invitations flyers when so many other people graduated at the same time and don't throw a party - after all it's nothing special.

I find it weak if people, right at release date, jump in any thread they find about this project to point out "better solutions" and "failures" in the project. There is plenty of time for critique and I am sure the CEP team is open to all suggestions, but with the right (or rather wrong) timing and tone, it is easy to damage or ruin their well earned satisfaction of having released their awesome project (I know what I'm talking about here). Sure, constructive criticism is fine, "They are not worth the attention they are getting" isn't nice for sure. And to clear up that myth: Neither Jay or Tom are telling me or anyone else here on the boards what to "hype" or praise or whatever - if I find something I like, I say it. If I don't like something I say it as well (see above). That's one thing that sets our community boards apart from so many other developer boards on the internet, and probably one of the reasons why I am posting here, even if I am no longer activly working on the NWN project.

CEP 2H katana:

Quote: Which one? Ive been wondering about this for awhile with the fairly common katana is a twohanded sword/ one handed sword threads, would it be possible to make a two handed katana and assosiate it with the existing katana feats?

The problem here is that the game wouldn't know that the 2handed katana is actually a katana. The connection between feat and weapon is hardcoded - if it wouldn't be, there would be no problem with just using "katana" to include "2handed katana". Basically baseitems.2da would need a "HardCodeFeatRef" column that would link to the internal hardcoded feat that would need to be used for the weapon - something currently not in the game. Maybe, if your DD project is successful, this feature could be added to the game at some point - currently I don't think there is manpower available to make and test this change.

CEP Portraits:

Quote: Wouldn't this be really trivial to do? Just need a new version of portraits.2da that cuts out the offending portraits.

Which throws up a good questions - should you settle for the least common denominator in order to ensure that you are don't offend some users - or should you include a greater number of things in order to offer the most options - and leave it up to the user to remove things they don't like (which can be done via a .2da override)

There is no real answer to this except that you can't please everyone, even if you try, and is somewhat similar to what we face when developing NWN - should we clean our game from the controversial elements in order to avoid alienating people (evil path? romances that go beyond "hold my hand and walk into the sunshine"?, the harpy picture (from the monster manual). Where do you draw the line? Should we remove casting spells because there are still people out there that think this is blasphemic? I can remember the backlash on these very boards when there was the rumor that there will be no children in Hordes...

As said, I don't think there is a real answer to this questions, it's all opinions, and in the end everyone has to decide for himself how much tolerance he has to different views or if it would be better to settle for the least common denominator so nobody gets offendend. Through, and that's my personal, probably european view -How much would be left of i.e. the internet if you would take out all content that is found to be questionable in one or another country?

NWN 2: I have to point out that the same magazine claims for several years now that we are working secretly on BG3. Bioware is currently not working on a sequel to NWN, thus it will be hard to present it at E3 - unless Trent secretly did all the work at home

Official campaigns: You can not post a modified version of NWN, SoU or HotU's campaign on the internet, sorry - this part of the game can not be redistributed. Sorry.

Get*ObjectInInventory Functions:

Think of it like this (simplified illustration)

4 objects in a player's inventory:

o1->o2->o3->o4

1. You call GetFirstObjectInInventory(), the pointer get's set to the first object

o1->o2->o3->o4
^

2. You call GetNextObjectInInventory, the pointer moves forward

o1->o2->o3->o4
-----^

3. You call DestroyObject, but DestroyObject always takes place after your script has finished, so nothing happens right now

o1->o2->o3->o4
-----^
4. You call CreateObject which adds another object to the inventory, unfortunately at the position in your linked list the cursor was pointing to:

o1->oNew->o2->o3->o4
-----^

5. Your chain of objects is now messed up. You call GetNextObjectInInventory, and the situation looks like this:

o1->oNew->o2->o3->o4
-----------^

Since we are evaluating object 2 again, jump to step 3. above, an infinite loop is created. You add more and more new objects to the game, but since o2 never gets removed (as DestroyObject will run when your script has finished), you end up with a "too many instructions" error).

Technically this is not 100% what is happening, but I think it conveys the problem.

2DA editing: The color for the input parameter of that function can be found by opening an armor in the toolset, bring up the appropriate color palette and counting from up to down, left to right starting with 0 to the color you want to find. So 8 in the example below would be the first color in the second row of the color palette (no weird binary math involved here, sorry)

[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
[8][9]...
[64]

Patch 1.63: Sounds weird and unintended - could be some resource limit being hit (i.e. max number of files of a certain type or so), through I'm not aware of any major limitations to tilesets.

I know 1.63 has some changes to our resource manager, I would suggest retesting with 1.63 when it comes out and if it still persists and you can provide us with a way to reproduce this, send a bug.

Post Comments (0)

Charles Feduke Interview at Planet Neverwinter
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 22:12 CET by chevalier

Planet Neverwinter have interviewed Charles Feduke, project manager of the NWN Lexicon. Here's an excerpt:

A: Before going into the subject of the Lexicon itself, Charles, it would be interesting to know more about yourself, the project manager of this well-respected community resource that is the Lexicon. Basically, who are you? What's your background in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons? And Neverwinter Nights? Is the Lexicon your only project in the NWN community?
CF : I'm a computer programmer by profession, and an occasional writer and artist as well. I've been programming for about a decade and got my start when I was still in high school. I have done few things for longer periods of time than program, and one of those is Dungeons & Dragons. I started playing D&D when I got my hands on a copy of the "D&D Expert Set" sometime in the late eighties which soon led to AD&D 2nd edition, and now D&D 3.0/3.5 that I still avidly pen and paper on the weekends. I would also like to note that al-Qadim was the greatest campaign setting TSR ever introduced, with Forgotten Realms being the best campaign world. My first introduction to NWN was prior to the BioWare NWN that we've all come to know and love: the NWN client which was played in conjunction with the America Online software (at the time AOL 2.5). That was a chaotic but fun game - but at $2.95 an hour it quickly got expensive. Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I heard that the news that a new game named "Neverwinter Nights" was in the works and even though it was nothing like the original, the name alone brings back fond memories (not to mention the reincarnation is a better product in all ways). My one failing with NWN is that I have yet to complete the standard campaign or any of the expansion packs and I haven't written any playable modules; orchestrating the NWN Lexicon expands to fill my free time as free time is found. The Lexicon is my only project within the NWN community.

Read the whole thing at Planet Neverwinter.

Post Comments (0)

Latest Poll Results
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 21:16 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Would you be interested in playing any non-RPG D&D games on PC, for example first person shooters or real-time strategies set in the Forgotten Realms?
(305 votes total)

Maybe, depends on the reviews (126) 41%
Yes, definitely (90) 30%
No, never (89) 29%

The majority of poll participants (41%) are obviously skeptic about non-RPG D&D games, so their decision whether to play one or not would be based on reviews of such games.

On the other hand, 30% of those who voted expressed definite interest in playing non-RPG D&D games.

Nearly as many (29%), however, voted that they would never play any non-RPG D&D games.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Patch 1.62 International Released
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 20:21 CET by chevalier

BioWare have released patch 1.62 for all languages other than English. More info at BioWare.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 20:18 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

BioWare Future: First of all you have to recognize that, at 175 employees and 3-5 separate projects, BioWare doesn't abide by a single unified vision for where and what we want our games to be in the future. Some teams are working on console titles, some are on PC titles, some are taking approach x, some are taking approach y, some are focused on this aspect of the larger problem while others have focused on other aspects. In other words, don't read too much into Darcy's statements in that interview or Georg's comments in this thread, or mine either, for that matter. We're all approaching the notion of game development from different angles and it will all come together by the time our games make it into the hands and hard drives of our fan community.

What I can promise you is that the Live Team is focused on all issues surrounding you, the community. During the three years that I led the design on Neverwinter, the concept of a community such as this was always foremost in my mind. Tile-based area development is just one result of that having been a priority. Overall, I feel Neverwinter has done a stellar job of building and sustaining BioWare's present community, even to the point of blowing away our own high expectations. What can I say, you guys are phenomenal and that's why I made the choice to join the Live Team and continue pushing the envelope with Witch's Wake and our (hopefully) upcoming DD project.

But Neverwinter can't be the be-all and end-all of this community. We have every intention of growing, adapting, and changing over the coming years and ultimately that will mean helping this community migrate over to future BioWare titles. Games like KotOR have been great games and highly successful but, from the Live Team's perspective, they haven't contributed in any direct way to the BioWare community and the BioWare community hasn't been given any substantial means of contributing to it. The same will likely be true of Jade Empire, though there may be a little more potential there given the fact that it's based on our own intellectual property.

Ultimately, the Live Team is setting its sights on BioWare's upcoming secret PC project as 'the next big thing' for this community and we're going to be working alongside the core development team to make that happen (after all, our jobs and the continued existence of the Live Team kinda depend on it! ). We've learned a lot from NWN's development and will be putting that experience and insight to use over the coming years.

So what does this have to do with tiles? Well, as Darcy has said, the art and design teams for KotOR and our upcoming titles are considering a return to the BG tradition of heavily customized, art-driven landscapes. There's a lot to be said for that approach and the Live Team fully supports them in that decision. As rtrifts has suggested, however, relying solely on that framework is not going to be in the best interests of this community and of the Live Team. And rtrifts should know, as he's leading the very impressive DLA mod team with which I'm sure most of you are already familiar. Ultimately, my personal hope is that the Live Team will be in a position to put our proverbial money where our mouth is and hire the necessary personnel to develop community-oriented tools and resources capable of plugging directly into the tools being used internally by BioWare's core development teams.

This may or may not involve tiles. Imagine a push-me-pull-you (PiMPY) sort of terrain editor, for instance, that's capable of rapidly generating very organic, non-tiled landscapes. What if you are then able to import arbitrary chunks of 3D geometry (whether from a library that ships with the game or downloaded from an equivalent of the Vault) into that landscape. Then consider the option of being able to spray-paint waving grass or budding flowers or entire forests of trees onto that landscape with ease. Tiles aren't the only means of achieving ease-of-use so don't lock yourself into that mindset.

Now maybe none of the above will prove feasible or maybe the Digital Distribution project won't generate sufficient revenue to enable it or maybe other complications will arise along the way. Regardless, the Live Team is here to ponder and address these sorts of questions so that the core development teams can focus on developing fun games and getting them out the door in one piece with the minimal amount of grief, loss of life, and spontaneous combustion. They have their jobs to do and we have ours. Personally, I think it should work out pretty darn well for everyone, yourselves included.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Famous characters: BioWare has no plans to release 'official' versions of some famous characters for folks to check out...I would suspect that there are some fans who could do a faaaaar better job of recreating famous characters than we could. I have read several of the books for example but I am certainly not any kind of expert. There is also the angle of out of repect to our publishing partners we do not release anything that has not been approved by all the D&D stakeholders.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

CEP: Sorry, I don't see your point. So far, for me, CEP is the easiest to use, best documentend and most comprehensive hakpak I have seen. Yes, surely it still has some "low quality" stuff in it, but then again, everyone is free to use whatever he/she wants in a module. Futhermore, I really don't understand why the hell people get mad when a project gets well deserved attention. I've already noticed that whenever DLA and sometimes content is featured on the Vault, there are always people trying to find reasons why they shouldn't get this kind of attention.

- Yes, there have been high quality hakpaks before, obviously some of them went unnoticed
- Yes, CEP was dormant for quite a while (through I would blame that on partially on us as well, it has been only since the release of HotU that many things in custom content can now be done that were not possible before).
- Yes, they have some a few pieces of lower quality content in there (not hard, given the total number of pieces they have).

So what? Does that take anything away from the value CEP will have for the community?

No. Because the CEP hakpak is the first one to combine excellent documentation, excellent file structure, an approach that is not modifying or effecting the original game, a huge amount of content matching some kind of quality filter with promised constant support. That's what makes it special in my eyes. Their idea may not have been revolutionary, but they were the first to do it "right" and they deserve an recognition for this huge task. Not everyone can download content from the vault and repackage it, and more important, not everyone wants to do that. CEP is a partial solution to this problem (which is, at least partially , a problem with NWN's hakpak framework). People won't have to browse through 30 hakpaks to update them later on to the next version of the game that breaks 2da compatibility, they just download the CEP update and that's it.

Further:

Hey, I think you have trouble understanding the concept of CEP. To be blunt, almost any hakpak will conflict with CEP. Of course - CEP includes many .2da files with it's files. In a nutshell, if you want to make a hakpak work with CEP, you need to extract the .2da files that are altered in the new hakpak from the CEP 2da hakpak, merge them together, and put them into a CEP_PLUS_ROBES_2DA hakpak on top of the hakpak hierachy. If CEP decides to put the robes into an official update, you will just need to remove the new hakpak you added and that's it.

Installer: CEP is not a Bioware product, our updater will never support community releases, due to already discussed legal implications, sorry.

Further:
The auto installer this link is talking about is the tool that we added in one of our later patches that allows builders to create executeable installers for custom content (check your local nwn\utils folder.)

Updater:

Quote: I plan on using it in Gemstone as soon as it's supported through the updater

As I explained in the other thread, this will not happen. CEP is not a Bioware product and thus can never be supported through the official updater. CEP is a community created content expansion - Bioware has no involvement with it (except for giving them some exposure through BW Wednesday to help spreading the word).

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights 2 Rumours
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 20:08 CET by chevalier

A topic has appeared on BioWare boards, discussing breaking news about supposed Neverwinter Nights 2 from a German magazine. They claim that NWN2 is going to be presented at E3, which is far from being confirmed by BioWare. Find out about everything at BioWare.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 1:42 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Digital Distribution:

Quote: Don't forget, we do have the Vault, to provide us with plenty of free modules. IGN has the infrastructure to support a pay-per-download system. That isn't saying that IGN would be a better method, moreso that they already could do it. Again, it's entirely possible that BioWare could do it themselves, however why reinvent the wheel?

If we do go ahead with DD, it will be integrated into the BioWare community site just like these message boards are and the original Witch's Wake module was previously. If the DD projects does well, our hope is to continue it across future titles that may or may not have the same support from IGN that we've been so fortunate to have for NWN. By maintaining a close integration between the DD project and the BioWare Community Site, we're ensuring that the DD concept can have a life of its own and travel beyond NWN. Maximus and the Vault provide an invaluable service to the NWN community and we'll be working together with him to ensure that the DD project doesn't undermine his work or the free community in any way.

Further:

Quote: Now if you are saying that the current dribble of NEW content will become a healthy stream (ie SIGNIFICANT amount of free content in updates)then it helps resolve this issue.

Our goal with the DD project is not simply to sustain existing Live Team efforts but to improve and expand on them. The Witch's Wake series, for example, has proven infeasible within the Live Team's existing funding structure and we've had to scrounge up art content like the Sea Hag and the Bulette and stretch them out to make them last. With steady, reliable funding in place, the Live Team can definitely play a much more significant role within the NWN community, within the communities of our future games, and within BioWare itself, where we can serve as an advocate for your interests.

Further:

Quote: Well, I have seen prepaid cards at 7-Eleven for a variety of online things... was really surpised to see a Napster one even (at 7-Eleven?).. sign of the times I guess. What would be nice is for a universal prepaid game card. If enough developers/publishers jumped on the bandwagon.. a universally accepted prepaid card could go a long way to solving this problem. Not sure the best way to get everyone on the bandwagon, tho. Perhaps it's an issue for discussion at GDC? Neverless, if it were useable for multiple online activities, ranging from MP3 purchasing, to MMORPG's, to Digital Distribution, it could be a successful venture.

An interesting idea and it makes a heck of a lot of sense from a player's perspective. From a developer's perspective, I can see it being a nightmare, however. The trouble lies in keeping track of which developer(s) get what amount(s) of the $20 the gamer just handed over to the 7-11 clerk for the card. Ultimately, you'd need some kind of dynamic statistical checking system where, in Week 1, it determines that 30% of the total value in the system were spent on Developer A's products, 65% was spent on Developer B's, and a lowly 5% was spent on the really bad title by Developer C so that the money can be dispersed appropriately. So what happens if Developer C starts fudging their numbers to get a bigger slice of the pie? Ultimately, I think such a system could be developed by some third-party company and then licensed (together with the corresponding secure storefront technology) to various developers in the same way that PayPal or various credit card handlers are. Anyone want to launch an aggressive dot.com startup? Anyone? Lots of potential.

Further:

Quote: I think you should take a poll to find out how strong the demand for new "staple" monsters from MM is. I'm hoping th model for DD will be something like "new monster released with every module."

We'll definitely try to make sure that each module is chock full of new content, though it might take us a while to ramp up production. In the end, we hope to let the modules themselves dictate what content gets added rather than insisting that every module must use 1 of item X and 3 of item Y.

Talktables: I think you misunderstood the idea of custom dialog talktables. You can not override any existing strings in the game, thus, making a copy of dialog.tlk does not have any merits. custom talktables, when attached to a module, allow you to define your own strings that can be referenced from .2da files or scripting commands in the same way the StrRef's in dialog.tlk can be addressed, you can however NOT override any existing strings.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Expansions:

To give an official answer:

You do not need the Shadows of Undrentide Expansion to be able to play Hordes of the Underdark. Both expansion do not require each other. As for giving away "so many" SoU features in Hordes, that is not correct. You do not get the official 20+ hour campaign, the tilesets, sound, music and some creatures featured in SoU with hordes. You also do not get the prestige classes from Shadows of Undrentide in Hordes and, as far as I know, you also do not get access to many of the spells and feats featured in SoU as a player.

Modules: The module you are playing determines who can play with you. If you play a NWN module, everyone can join. If you play a module created with the HotU toolset, people will need HotU to play with you (of course, because without the underdark tileset, they might experience some really bland environments when the party enters the Underdark, etc...)

Post Comments (0)

BioWare Wednesday
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 22:08 CET by Sorcerer

(Only the D&D-related part posted.)

NWN Community Expansion Pack Released!
The CEP team has just released the much anticipated Community Expansion Pack! Once you download the free CEP you can use it to run any CEP-compatible modules. If you have never used custom content before, don't worry: the CEP does not affect your NWN game installation. It's simple and takes minutes to install. You will be amazed at what it can do for the look and feel of you game. The CEP also contains a fully playable module, so you can try out the new content right away. Be sure to check out the CEP trailer for a guided tour as well. Discuss.

Post Comments (0)

Community Expansion Pack Released
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 14:51 CET by chevalier

Community Expansion Pack for Neverwinter Nights has been released. It is a huge collection of community-made custom content, ranging from items and creatures to tilesets and artwork. It is meant to become a standarised set of such content present in most player's system and thus remove the necessity of finding and downloading countless hak packs and minuscule expansions.

With the successful release of Bioware's two NWN expansions, and
the community has thrived! With over 1.6 million registered members there is an ever expanding universe of community made custom content, such as unique weapons, creatures and artwork! Truly, NWN allows you to enjoy far more than what's included in the box.

Community Expansion Pack is downloadable for free from its homepage.

Post Comments (1)

Tim Cain Interview at Troika Chronicles
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 13:36 CET by chevalier

Troika Chronicles have posted an interview in which they ask Tim Cain about ToEE, roleplaying games and Troika plans. Here's a snip:

1. Although many people probably have heard of you, could you please introduce yourself and tell us something about yourself? For example, what was your first contact with roleplaying games?

I first started playing RPG’s in high school, and I had an unusual first contact with them. I played AD&D with my mother and some people from her office (she worked at the office of the Judge Advocate General, or JAG, for the US Navy, of all places). I was hooked immediately and got all the books, and then I discovered the Ultima series on my Atari 800. I knew then that I wanted to make these games, but I went to college and then graduate school before applying for a job at Interplay in 1992.

Read the whole thing at Troika Chronicles.

Post Comments (0)

Community Expansion Pack Trailer Released
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 2:03 CET by chevalier

NWVault have a one and a half minute long WMV format trailer of the Community Expansion Pack for Neverwinter Nights.

Promotional trailer for the Community Expansion Pack done by CEP team members Loki Hakainen and Devon_v. Loki did the screen capture and Devon did the actual headers, trailers and music. 1 Minute 30 seconds. WMV format. The low-res version can be found here.

Find out more at NWVault.

Post Comments (0)

Dungeons and Dragons Online Interview at CVG
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 - 0:30 CET by chevalier

Computer and Video Games have posted an interview with Ken Troop, lead designer for Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online project. Here's an excerpt:

What valuable lessons have you learned from developing and launching Asheron's Call's one and two, and how will/do these influence your work on Dungeons & Dragons Online?

Troop: Too many to list, but I'll pick a couple of the big ones. One lesson that has shaped our dev philosophy extensively is that we need to provide fun that isn't strictly tied to achievement.

Achievement is fun on its own. But if the means of achievement isn't fun, you've only made half a game. A lot of massively multiplayer games have fallen into that trap.

With D&D Online we're trying to make a game that will be fun to play, even if at the end of the night you didn't score a huge pile of loot or a new level. Just playing needs to be worth it.

The second has more to do with our process of making games. We really pushed ourselves to get a playable version of the game much earlier than we have done in the past, and to iterate on it.

The result is that we've been able to see and assess the changes we make, rather than debating about abstractions on sheets of paper. We've got a long way to go, but the game today is already feeling like a game, and we think it's a fun one.

Read the whole thing at CVG.

Post Comments (0)

SP Happenings #42
Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 23:36 CET by Sorcerer

So much for the site update slated for the end of last week. I've got some relatively free time on my hands over the next few days, however, so I'm confident that the site update will go up by the end of this week for certain. Work on the redesign has been temporarily frozen, though it will resume in about 2 weeks, after I wrap up a couple of exams coming up shortly.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 21:49 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Digital Distribution: Syrsuro's correct in stating that the cost structure for DD would be different than for a printed magazine (magazines favor bulk content due to high production costs while DD favors separate content due to low production costs). As both of you allude to, however, there are often marketing benefits to bulk content and, once we develop a sufficient catalog of released content, we may choose to explore those kinds of options. Some possible approaches are as follows:

1) Completed Series - Once all of the WW mods have been released, for instance, we may bundle them together at a discounted price or even consider releasing them as a traditional retail expansion (though it might be hard to convince a publisher about the viability of the latter).

2) Starter Pack - If we have multiple series' underway, we may bundle them together at a discounted price to increase exposure and generate interest in upcoming instalments.

3) Gameplay-Related Pack - Once we have a bunch of previously released action-oriented modules or competitive play modules in our catalog, we may bundle those for people who enjoy that particular style of gameplay.

4) Asset-Related Pack - If we have a bunch of modules that all share the same or similar new art assets, we may bundle them together so you can get see the new asset in a variety of settings. As we'd like to avoid exclusive assets due to the splintering issues addressed in other threads, however, this approach probably isn't as valuable as some of the others.

5) Author-Related Pack - The may be some value in grouping modules by author, as well, so those who find they really like this module created by Joe Bob may be interested in getting all of his past work at bulk discount pricing.

6) Greatest Hits - As time passes, some clear 'hit modules' may emerge. After their download counts begin to fade, we could breathe new life into them by including them in some sort of Greatest Hits package.

I'll probably get into some sort of trouble for even speculating on this kind of stuff, but it was too interesting a question pass up. It's all pretty far into the fantastic future at this point and there's no way of knowing what we'll actually do when and if we ever get there. For now we have to focus on getting the project off the ground and an initial trickle of content into the pipeline. Baby steps.

Witch's Wake: For the record, "WW1: Remastered" will require both expansion packs (a huge thanks to all of our international players for waiting so long for us to release Hordes overseas. Apparently the bulk of the European language versions are just starting to appear on store shelves now). It's not so much an attempt to force you to run out and buy them but rather a desire on my part to use some of the resources made available in both expansions. I always envisioned the opening portions of the module to take place in a snowy, windswept mountain pass. With the Icy tileset from HotU and the Winter Rural tileset from SoU, I can finally achieve the effect that I had always wanted.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Coloured names: Colored names were an exploit and have been removed. Colored names also have nothing to do with PvP. Colored names will never come back. The damage vs. none was also a bug and has been removed, and since it was removed from everyone, it will not affect PvP fairness at all. We will continue to fix any exploit brought to our attention. From patch 1.63 on, any invalid sign in your characters name will automatically render the character invalid. And, finally, this gets locked because colored names are now a non topic. Gone for good.

Future:

Quote: I would interpret the comments from bioware that they are moving away from tile based artwork that future products will use the "good old" style of artwork for cost reasons. As to the prospect of another expansion for NWN I think the biggest factor will be the sucess of their IP game. If I am not mistaken I think that NWN is the largest product they have. If the IP works out and becomes a big seller then they will probably concentrate on that and the chance of a 3rd NWN expansion will be even less than it is now. If the IP fails my guess is that bioware will make a 3rd expansion to cash in on the large NWN community. This is after all a business.

Actually one of the main problems with a tile based approach is (among others) that locations get a very generic look and feel (and there are quite a lot of reviews that point this out). If you check the reviews for KotOR and Hordes (which features a several tiles that were made for the story .i.e. the well room) you see that people enjoy visiting exciting, special locations. Exploration is a good part of CRPGs and people really enjoy it - as good as our tilesets have become, they can't compete with the breathtaking sights you get when playing KotOR or Jade Empire (blunt advertisement for the game I'm working on). Not to mention that making those "custom tiles" like the well room is quite a lot more work for the same effect you achieve with creating a fully custom level geometry as I understand it.

Bottomline is: If the environment of the game is custom made for the story (as opposed to making the story based on an existing environment), your game gets more immersive and compelling. Ask around how hard it is to create a "non flat" level in NWN (i.e. rolling grasslands), or to have buildings you can enter without having to load a new area. Check the screenshots for Jade Empire to see what difference it makes. If you check out the few screenshots from the DLA campaign, you will notices that they have a similar approach - they model custom made level geometry and slice it into tile groups later on, leading to those breathtaking environments like shown in their last years teaser movie - making you ask "is this really NWN?"

I know that the tile based approach is the heart of NWN, making it the far best "create your own world / rpg" kind of toolkit in the field - many of us, including myself, would never have gotten as deep into building for NWN if we couldn't build our own worlds. A non tilebased engine would certainly have limited our (speaking as ex community builder) options, but I also think that we probably would have seen quite some amazing custom levels on the vault nevertheless. Making a tileset today takes a lot of work, and people capable of creating new tilesets probably would have the ability to create whole new new level layouts as well (think of them as just very large tilegroups, similar to DLA's approach). Currently, I don't think any hard decision has been made what kind of technology we will use into our next generation games, however, as Darcy pointed out in the interview, the general consensus seems to be that custom levels have an edge over a tile based approach - and after working a while on Jade, I wholeheartly agree with that. The optimal solution probably would be an engine that supports both approaches, but I'm not sure how possible something like that would be.

Quote: If the IP fails my guess is that bioware will make a 3rd expansion to cash in on the large NWN community. This is after all a business.

a) Jade will succeed, I know, I played it :

b) Let's stay realistic, NWN's age isn't exactly supporting the idea of a new expansion pack. Creating an expansion pack takes some time (about a year), which would set the release date for your "cash in" expansion pack around early 2006. By that time, computers can buy pizza and serve breakfast, I don't think people would feel compelled to buy another NWN expansion pack 4 years after the game was released.

Note: By all means, do NOT take this post as any indication regarding modability, toolset inclusion or custom content support in our future games, no decision on these topics has been made yet, so don't try to read anything from the above post, it's purely my personal opinion.

Post Comments (0)

Namco Enters PC Game Market in Full Force
Posted Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 0:47 CET by Sorcerer

While not really D&D news, I am currently replaying the original Diablo and this news is about what its authors have been up to lately, so I have an excuse to post it.

NAMCO ENTERS PC GAMES MARKET IN FULL FORCE, FORMS PUBLISHING PARTNERSHIP WITH FLAGSHIP STUDIOS

Namco Hometek and Flagship Studios are teaming up for the publication of an exciting new PC title. This secret new PC release has been quietly in development since Flagship Studios’ formation in 2003, and this partnership marks Namco’s official entry into the PC games publishing business. Click here to find out more.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, March 22, 2004 - 10:02 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Text colour:

Quote: Well, primarily I'd like to have my party's chat in one window and module related conversation (i.e. talking to people) in another.

If you right click on the bar at the top of the text window, there are options for filtering/displaying different types of text. If you open your nwnplayer.ini file (located in your NWN directory). Then look for the following section. You can change the numbers to change the in game chat colors:

[Chat Colors]
TalkColor=240,240,240
ShoutColor=255,239,80
WhisperColor=128,128,128
TellColor=32,255,32
ServerColor=176,176,176
PartyColor=255,102,1
DMColor=16,223,255

The numbers represent a RGB color scheme. First number represents the amount of Red in the text, the second number represents the amount of Green in the text, and the third number represents the amount of Blue in the text.
Thus
TalkColor=255,1,1
Will make the text red. The values can vary between 1 (none of that color) to 255 (the most of that color)

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Devastating Critical: Hail of Arrows will not include any other special effect in NWN, and that IS intended. The arrows shot by this feat are not targeted precise to carry out any kind of sneak or critical attack. Sorry, no mass instant death for Arcane Archers.

Hacked characters:

Not entirely sure what this topic is about, so I randomly throw in this:

Craig has been very busy on patch 1.63 and there are going to be a lot of improvements to security.(Any invalid sign in your characters name will now render the character illegal - no more bad strref properties either). Otherwise I suggest playing on server vault servers, local vault was created for the occasional D&D session with friends you know, not for "fair" online gaming - for those there is server vault.

Future:

We have no plans for another Expansion Pack.
We do have plans to support NWN well into the future.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, March 19, 2004 - 21:00 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Adding a weapon: Adding a new weapon to NWN is a major undertaking, mainly because of the huge number of different areas it affects - programming (feats) , art (weapon, probably animation) , design (ai, feats, treasure systems, 2da) , qa (testing) - this makes it highly unlikely that we are going to introduce another new weapon in the future - the manpower cost is too high.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Witch's Wake: I've retooled the Ability Use system I created for WW1 so that, for WW2, it will be capable of tracking success and failure on a per character basis (the NPC may have been successfully intimidated by the half-orc barbarian but the halfling sorcerer is going to have to whip out the Scare spell if he expects the same result). I may not be able to accommodate all of your requests or expectations, Enigmatic, but I'm hoping to handle most of them.

Digital Distribution: I've been seeing some speculation in this thread and elsewhere that the DD Project has been approved and is definitely going ahead. Just to squash rumors and set the matter straight, here's the current status:

1) While we're getting very close to having the necessary contracts signed by all interested parties (BioWare, Atari, et al), it hasn't happened yet. Once it has, we'll definitely let you know, both here on these boards and probably through some accompanying press releases. Until you see those announcements, the DD Project remains unofficial and purely speculative.
2) Despite the fact that no contract has been signed, BioWare is committed enough to the project that we have launched a limited beta test of multiple modules that we feel have DD potential. The remastered version of Witch's Wake 1 is among these but we are not yet ready to discuss the others. Our hope is that these modules will be the first of many more to come.
3) The potential of the DD Project has already invigorated the Live Team. Without it, Patch 1.62 would probably have been the final patch for NWN. Substantial work has already been completed for our upcoming 1.63 patch, however, and you can expect to see a lot of long-awaited fixes and improvements. Feedback from the community and from the testers and builders of the various DD modules has been instrumental in helping us identify and prioritize the ongoing improvements we intend to make to NWN. We expect the 1.63 patch notes to be among the longest and most complete yet.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, March 19, 2004 - 0:58 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Multiplayer: You can only play together if you are both patched to the same version of the game. If you don't have the expansion packs installed (most likely if your friend is running the mac version), the module also determines whether or not you can enter the game. If a module was created with an expansion pack installed, then the expansion pack will be required to play in that module. If the module was created using only the original NWN, then anyone should be able to join in.

Pausing: In addition, if you are running your own server you can allow players to pause the game by enabling the "Player Pausing" option (which is accessed through the Load Module/Load Saved game screen by clicking on "Advanced Options").

Skyboxes:

Quote: Is the Sky in the game yet? if so how do you get it working?

The skys have to be set in the area properties of the module, by the module creator. For HotU, none of the underground areas have a sky. To turn on the sky, go to Options->Video Options and turn on "Enable Sky Boxes"

Georg Zoeller, Designer

DM client:

nwmain.exe -dmc starts the DM client directly

I would advise you to contact Atari Support about your problem with SecuRom, I think it is important for them to be aware problems customers have with SecuRom.

Setname:

Quote: Correct, there is absolutely no reason bioware shouldn't be able to do this. They just won't. Perhaps there are better things they could be doing.. but I can't believe they can't see that this would be useful, and that seems to be their response whenever it's requested.

SetName will most likely never be added. We can see that it is useful, and we know that it is a very requested functionality (heck, we asked for it ourselves during hordes development), but adding this functionality is not an option with the available resources to the NWN project and we certainly won't do any weird hacks to add it. So: Even if this topic is brought up 200 times, it does not make it more likely for this function to be added - SetName is a closed topic for us AFAIK.

Crafting Arrows: Elmwood and Feathers

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Digital Distribution & multiplayer: Oh, we're by no means steering away from multiplayer DD content. Of the content currently in testing, we have two singleplayer-only adventure modules and one that is quite multiplayer friendly. I've drawn up some designs for further multiplayer-friendly or even multiplayer-required modules and we hope to start work on those sometime in the near future. Diversity is going to be key to the DD Project and it's much more economically viable for us to target a niche market than it is for an expansion pack or full title to do the same.

David Gaider, Designer

Assassin Class:

1) Neither Georg nor myself are on the Live Team. We post here on the boards and are therefore very identifiable with NWN, I know, but we are actively working on different projects now.

2) That said, I do know that there are no plans at the present time to make changes to any classes or prestige classes beyond fixing bugs. And, no, something not working the way you think it should does not constitute a bug.

But I'm positive the Live Team appreciates the input as well as the creative manner in which it was delivered. Something like this may come down the pipe in the future, you never know.

Further:

Quote: Chaotic Neutral is, in this rogue's view, can be just as moral-lacking as evil, meaning one important bit of those requirements ticked off.

Being Chaotic may certainly bring a disregard for the law into the picture, but murdering people for no other reason than profit hardly strikes me as a neutral position on the good/evil scale. I know that murder is pretty commonplace in most entertainment these days and that we all are quite inured to the idea, so I know the concept that murder could require a little more than a simple lack of morals could be considered quite shocking. At any rate, that's also one of the requirements for the Assassin prestige class in the official rulebooks, and I doubt WotC's of the mood to approve such a deviation.

Further:

Good call. How a PnP ability is implemented on the computer (three-round observation requirement included) is a far cry from changing something more fundamental that can be easily included. And who knows? Maybe WotC would approve a non-evil assassin. I don't think we're about to ask them to.

Further:

Quote: David used the SRD verbatim to defend Bio's implementation of a different rule but then Bio chose to ignore the SRD when implementing poison and assassin abilities. Sounds like they are using the SRD when it supports their decisions but ignoring it when it refutes them. I'm not saying this is wrong, it just sounds very hypocritical and inconsistent.

That's not very fair. I'm not trying to justify anything at all. I simply said that implementing an alignment restriction as per the book is a very straight-forward thing to do. Naturally when it comes to other things that are not so straight-forward we're going to have to use our judgement in how they're going to be implemented, even if you don't agree with them. I did not, however, point to anything beyond the alignment in terms of how any prestige class abilities were done. Good or bad, these abilities are simply unlikely to be changed at all by us anytime in the near future.

Post Comments (0)

Dave Arneson Speaks in Favour of Neverwinter Nights
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 21:25 CET by chevalier

Dave Arneson, the father of D&D roleplaying together with Gary Gygax, has been interviewed by Digital News. He reveals that Neverwinter Nights is one of the three games he has installed on his computers and speaks appreciatively about BioWare's work. Here's a snip:

If you could jump on a development team and direct a project, who would you join?

Oh, I'd probably like work with the Neverwinter Nights people at some point. They seem to have a good notion about what to do. I'm sure some of the things they don't do are their decisions, machine decisions, etc. I've learned enough about computers and programming from this school to understand this better over the last four and a half years. It's easy to say "Oh, they're not doing it right." But, could they do it any other way? Well, the answer is probably no, at this point. Also, you've got to get the game done in a couple of years.

You get these teams, they've been together for a while. Maybe they don't have a lot of new ideas, but they know each other. But that's the problem, you have a 30 to 40 percent turn-over rate on projects, It's hard to keep an act together because you're still talking about a couple dozen people. You know, we've got the old core team from 4D Interactive systems (a company Arneson founded in the early 80's). That's eight guys. They've been working together for 25 years. It's kinda spooky to watch them. They don't seem to talk to each other. I think it's a telepathic link between them all. But that's an old team. They know what to do, they know who's doing what. They're not afraid to ask each other questions. Get a new team, and somebody new on the team. Is he going to squeak and say something to someone who's been doing it for five years? Probably not.

Read the whole thing at Digital News.

Post Comments (0)

BioWare Wednesday
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 18:31 CET by Sorcerer

(Only the D&D-related part posted.)

CEP Coming March 24!
BioWare is excited to announce the official public release for the highly anticipated Community Expansion Project (CEP) will be March 24th! For more information about the CEP, visit BioWare's CEP info page. While you have your calendar open, note that NWCon II: Hordes of the Internet will take place online April 16th-18th. Play in games and attend expert panel discussions on a wide variety of topics! Want to get involved? Visit www.neverwinterconnections.com. Discuss.

NWN Epic Character Builds: Part III
This week, we feature two more awe-inspiring epic character community contributions. The Devastating Kukri Master is the consummate combatant, combining a blenderific attack style with a stainless steel defense. The Rogue Archer was built to deliver the best sneak attack damage and employ hit and run guerilla tactics. Discuss.

Post Comments (0)

Latest Poll Results
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 16:51 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Have you ever read any novels set in the Forgotten Realms?
(281 votes total)

Yes (201) 72%
No, but I intend to in the future (42) 15%
No, and I probably never will (38) 14%

The wide majority of poll participants (72%) have read at least one novel set in the Forgotten Realms.

15% voted that they haven't read any yet, but that they intend to in the future.

The remaining 14% said that they have never read any novels set in the FR, and that they probably never will.

Post Comments (0)

New NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Increase NWN Performance
Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - 21:52 CET by chevalier

NVIDIA have released new drivers for their graphics cards based on GeForce graphics processing units. According to the release note, they increase performance in Neverwinter Nights by 48%. Here's a clip:

Thanks to the NVIDIA unified driver architecture (UDA), NVIDIA ForceWare Release 55 delivers a free performance upgrade for NVIDIA GPUs, both past and present. With the new driver, GeForce(TM) FX 5900XT GPU performance in F1 Challenge '99-'02 can increase as much as 120(i) per cent. In Gunmetal, GeForce FX 5200 GPU performance increases up to 22(ii) per cent and GeForce FX 5950 Ultra GPU performance in Neverwinter Nights goes up as much as 48(iii) per cent faster.

Read the whole thing at PR Newswire.

Post Comments (0)

SP Happenings #41
Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - 20:00 CET by Sorcerer

Nothing really new since last week. With any luck, however, I should be able to put up a site update by the end of this week.

Post Comments (0)

The Temple of Elemental Evil Patch 2.0 Coming Soon
Posted Monday, March 15, 2004 - 18:13 CET by chevalier

Grok, of Atari Forums, has shared the news about Patch 2.0 to ToEE. Here's what he says:

Well, I have good news -- the second patch is indeed in the works and actively being tested now.

Unfortunately, I do not have a set release date at the moment -- it could be tomorrow or two weeks from now...

I'll try to secure a fix list in the interim so you'll all know what to look forward to.

Way to go Troika!

Grok

Read the whole thing at Atari.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, March 15, 2004 - 14:01 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Server bots: I don't know if any exist but I definitely know that they can be created. Download BioWare's blackjack module for an example of how some of that could be handled.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

New PC project: It's far to early to discuss the next projects for many reasons. Disapointing the community is one. Apparently during the development of NWN, some features were discussed on the forums but they were axed from the final release, and we were torn apart on the boards for it. Mainly we're not going to talk about anything until we at least get a publisher, and deals are signed. Until that happens nothing is finalized about the project. We could change any part of it at any time for any reason.

Voiceover outtakes: I highly doubt we could release the Deekin outtake. It would have to be approved by Hasbro, and WoTC, and when the actor went off, he was not thinking about either of those companies. Maybe the other one's could be released though.

David Gaider, Designer

New PC project:

Quote: For a start we know the category = RPG. you could keep stringing the fans along for months on this basis, with one word descriptions, maybe 1 per month. so march you'll say 'fantasy' or 'SF' or 'horror', in april maybe say 'blasters' or 'victorian' or 'monkeys', etc, and just refuse to answer any questions, until the next month.

Hmmm. I think that would be more indicative of cat-like cruelty than saying nothing at all. And besides, it's counter-productive to release that little information. Let's say I was to supply a one-sentence blurb about the game and swear to say no more... the plain fact is that many fans would just start filling in the blanks themselves and start making all sorts of assumptions. "Oh, that sounds just like X and I hated that..." or similar. We'd like to be free to provide lots of info at once so everyone gets a clear picture of what we're working on and can be properly appreciative... when it's ready to talk about. No more cooks needed in this kitchen, thanks.

Further:

Quote: Right for who? I love statements like this. it's somehow meant to be reassuring that Bio will tell us 'when the time is right' but all that really means is that they'll tell us when they tell us and not a moment sooner. it's a statement that's both 100% accurate and completely lacking in worthwhile information. Not only do we not know what the untitled undisclosed PC project is (other than that it's an RPG using Bio's own IP), we also don't know when we will know.

Oh, come on. What exactly are we supposed to talk about? We don't discuss projects at an early stage because there's not much to talk about. Hard to keep any kind of talk going about it when 90% of our responses to curious questions would be "Ummm... we don't know about that just yet". Whenever we announce a project there's automatically a million and a half questions and we'd like to be at a point where PR can start actually putting out solid info like screenshots and design docs rather than "well, we've got this sketch of a, ummm, creature... it might be in the game, we dunno, we haven't finished that part just yet. But it looks cool, eh?" So while we appreciate the fact that just knowing we're working on something might cause fans a bit of kvetching and anxiety, but we keep our cards close to our chests to spare you some grief rather than out of some sense of cat-like sadism. Well, maybe that's a little bit of it. But not much.

Post Comments (0)

Community Expansion Pack Scheduled on March 24th
Posted Sunday, March 14, 2004 - 19:27 CET by chevalier

A formal announcement has been made by Eligio Sacateca from BioWare boards. Community Expansion Pack is to appear within a tenday. Here's what he says:

Let's start a countdown together, shall we? Today is March 13. That puts us 11 days from release of the Community Expansion Pack.

Holy avenger, batman! That means the CEP will be released on Wednesday, March 24th!

Please consider this a formal announcement; you can mark it in your calendar. I'm sure the trolls and naysayers are just waiting to pounce on this announcement and, in spite of their ignorance, will quickly claim it is another release date we will miss. Let them. You and I know, after all, that we are 11 days from release of the CEP.

More details to follow in the coming week about the packaging and the sites where the CEP will be available, including mirrors.

See you in 11 days.

Read the whole thing at BioWare.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Saturday, March 13, 2004 - 21:27 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

ALT+Tab: ALT-Tab isn't a officallly supported feature in NWN, so it may cause problems. However, I have found that if the mouse doesn't seem to work in game after alt-tabbing, some times pressing the ALT key after returning to gameplay will make the mouse work again.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

HotU AI: We did a fair bit of AI improvements for Hordes. In fact we also looked at the available Community AI's - Brent, our Lead Designer on Hordes, had a nifty simulator module running for several days and nights, having different AI systems fight each other in various constellations to gather data. We did find that in most cases, Jasperre's AI was winning - with some exceptions when it came to group based combat, and some of our AI got tweaked with the resulting data - however we also found that we could go only that far - as good as many community AI projects are, they are not compliant with the internal rules and goals we had for Hordes - some of them cheat (i.e. setting plot flags to prevent certain actions from being interrupted), some are too cpu intensive, breaking on minimum spec machines and some eat memory by storing a lot of tactical data (i.e. interesting foes) as local objects. I certainly can recommend the advanced module builder to use CODI or Jasperre's AI (I didn't test the DLA AI yet)if they want to have something refreshingly different for their modules - but be aware that this might cause problem on minspec machines (server or client alike).

A number of tweaks (far from complete list) in the Hordes AI over the NWN main ai (which are retroactive in most cases):
- better reaction to area effect spells, including better handling of using dispel magic.
- better friend/foe identification for OnSpellCastAt
- expanded matchtables for spell/feat selection (mainly to include the new HotU and some SoU spells)
- some improvements to the spellcasting AI
- vastly improves henchman/familiar/follower AI and lot more options to tweak it (i.e. the autostealth option)
- new henchmen radial commands
- numerous bug fixes to the AI (i.e. handling of some special feats, spell or feat selection)
- whirlwind AI

We also went a great length to enable community AI builders to influence AI decisions and even overwrite the default AI:
- introduction of variables to set behavior like offensive rating, magic use rating and compassion rating

- introduced the ability to overwrite the default ai with a custom AI without modifying scripts as seen with the custom beholder and mindflayer AI.

- introduction of x2_inc_switches.nss which includes some AI specific switches.

As for scaling back the default AI because players have a too hard time - I don't know if that happened for NWN, but I know these decisions happen, yes - IF a too powerful AI ruins gameplay. Let me give you an example: I added the "dispel enemy AoE" spells AI routine to Hordes, and, while testing, found it highly annoying - enemy spellcasters would always immediatly kill off your AoEs the moment you cast them. Now this might be realistic and intelligent of them, but it also completely ruined the day for any sorceror that was using AoE spells as main weapons - it was just not fun anymore. So I decided to put a little randomization in to make it happen a bit more infrequent. Technically this can be seen as "dumping down the AI", yes, but it is also "preserving the fun", and that is the most important thing IMO. (I think I left a variable you can set to tweak this, not sure)

So, bottomline: Yes, the community AI projects are very advanced and often better than our AI, because they don't have to worry about Bioware's internal limitations (like those pesky minspec machines or just compatibility with the two previous NWN campaigns) - plus their creators have "unlimited" time on their hands - something completely unheard of in this industry. Yes, if you are a skilled module builder and know what you are going into when replacing any Bioware specific scripts, there is no reason not to give those community AI projects a try.

Random name generator: Err, yepp ... but then again, the overall value of having the random name generator spitting out more names is very very low in my opinion, as it does not really add anything to gameplay - most people want to name their characters themselves anyway. No, there are far more interesting things on the list of "nice to have features", so I would rate this "very unlikely to ever happen".

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, March 12, 2004 - 1:36 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

David Gaider, Designer

Character Portraits & Models:

Quote: Potential portraits for future game editions (DnD or whatever) may simply involve a headshot picture of my specific character, as already appears in the character construction menu; not a specific picture painted by an artist, but rather a simple computerized reproduction of my Human Female with Head 03, medium phenotype (or whatever), with appropriate skin and hair tones.

I would tend to agree. Having portraits that match your in-game avatar would be ideal... and considering that the in-game avatar is likely to get more and more detailed and lifelike as polygon counts go up, that's probably a good thing.

Quote: One may conversely argue "what's the difference between the twelve-odd "white" skin tones? one is mid-light-light-white versus mid-light-light-light-white

I suppose that's fair.

Quote: Not merely a non-priority, but a non-issue as well? Are you then saying that darker skin tones in the game are minutae? again, you may personally see this as inconsequential from a design standpoint, but i gather BioWare's human resources department may not.

That's just the thing. This is not a human resources issue (and by that I assume you meant public relations), it is an art issue and a question of our time and resource allocation. You are implying that I am disregarding the importance of a certain segment of our customer base, but I'm not... it is not as if black skin tones are not represented in the palette, we are talking about a particular hue of brown not being in the skin palette. We made an effort to include as many colors as we could in the GUI to provide for a wide range of options of customization (reds and greens and blues, too, remember); yes, there could be more... but there can always be more. All I'm saying is that "fair racial representation" is not a consideration in the matter.

As Shadowhawk mentions above: the look of elves, how cool your monk moves, what kinds of creatures you can make... these are the issues that take precedence in our minds. Should it be otherwise? It's debateable, obviously. What I am calling minutiae is the process of color selection versus other considerations... there are so many other important considerations that getting hung up on this non-issue due to the perception of controversy would be a mistake. That's all.

Quote: Completely ignoring black customers has in no way been implied; this is perhaps simply an over-statement itself. Rather, an imbalance between lighter and darker skin tones may merely have been referenced.

That's just the thing, you can't have it both ways. Some people in this thread are agreeing but not agreeing... you can't say it's just a hue missing from the palette and imply that it's lack is not representative of a group of people. That's politicizing an issue that isn't one. I do believe that we are very fair overall, even if that isn't the point. Maybe I should have just stuck with the "thanks for the input".

Georg Zoeller, Designer

BioWare plans: While we won't comment about unannounced future projects, it is pretty safe to say that we are certainly not leaving the rpg market for a while. Same is true for the PC market.

Post Comments (0)

NWCon II Announced at Neverwinter Connections
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 20:24 CET by chevalier

Neverwinter Connections have announced NWCon II, which is going to take place on 16-18 April. Here's a bit of what they say:

NWCon II

Dates: 4/16-18

That is 2 weeks after US time change, and the weekend after Easter.

Format: Pretty much the same as NWCon I (why mess with success?)

Gaming: What I saw last time was we scheduled early, but all the signups happened about 2-4 days before the game. So I think we won't do much scheduling until after 4/3 when the time changes in the US.

Featured Games: We need to select new features. I would also like to feature 1-2 good MP mods that do not require a DM to be used for pick-up games

Highlight Games: No change.

Bastions of War: Lord Alex and the BoW guild will be hosting games!

Panels and IRC: Only change will be the use of NWN meeting hall for panels where the game engine would be helpful for the subject matter

Other things: We got 4 months! I hope to have prizes, t-shirts, etc again. Put on your creativity hats!

Find out about the rest at Neverwinter Connections.

Post Comments (0)

BioWare Wednesday
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 18:24 CET by Sorcerer

(Only the D&D-related part posted.)

NWN Epic Character Builds: Part II
This week, we feature two new cool epic character community contributions. Whirling Death was designed to maximize the odds of getting critical hits and doing massive damage against multiple melee opponents in a round. The Damage Adept was built around the concept of delivering the most damage in one hit with a scythe. Discuss.

NWN Community Expansion Pack Team Profile
Meet the masterminds behind the upcoming Community Expansion Pack for Neverwinter Nights. Learn why the project got started, who is a secret geneticist in disguise, and what the team hopes you'll use the expansion pack for. The CEP is an upcoming, community created, simple download that contains a ton of high-quality, custom content for Neverwinter Nights. For more information and screenshots, check the CEP information page. Discuss.

Post Comments (0)

Latest Poll Results
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 16:12 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Would you be interested in buying & downloading any digitally distributed Neverwinter Nights content (like new modules etc.), should BioWare decide to offer it?
(227 votes total)

Maybe, depends on the price and/or payment options (68) 30%
Yes, definitely (67) 30%
No, never (61) 27%
Maybe, depends on the reviews (31) 14%

30% of poll participants might be interested in buying & downloading DD NWN content, but their decision would depend on the price and/or payment options offered.

Another 30% of those who voted are very interested in the possibility of digitally distributed NWN content, and would definitely buy & download it.

27% of poll participants have no interested in DD NWN content whatsoever.

Finally, the last 14% of people who voted might be interested in DD NWN content, but their decision to buy it or not would depend on the reviews.

Post Comments (0)

D&D Games in Development at Atari
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2004 - 0:39 CET by chevalier

Grok, of Atari Public relations, has spoken on the Atari forums about the D&D games in development.

Thank you for taking my rather obvious bait!

I expect to have an official announcement about the first title out in the next week or two. However, this is a console game and very unlike Temple, NWN, BG, etc. That said, it is absolutely fantastic -- so if you own a PS2 or Xbox you'll want ot keep an eye out for this one.

We'll also be announcing a new D&D title in May. Solid developer but not a RPG. More details to come then.

D&D Online -- this one has been announced and is being handled by the fine folks at Turbine. We'll be showing this game off for the first time in August of this year in Mexico!

There are however, two tentative annoucements we're planning for E3 that should be very big and just what you folks are looking for. I'm a big RPG geek myself and I'm excited...so that tells you something.

We've also got some new NWN stuff in the works that should be pretty cool.

So, lots of D&D goodness in the future.

Grok

Read the whole thing at Atari.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 23:32 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Time progress: When time does not progress anymore in your module, this is a serious indication that the module is too resource expensive for your current system. This can happen on even the most powerful machine if you are using to many expensive scripts frequently, especially on heartbeat or with complicated delaycommand pseudo heartbeat. We at Bioware, in our "infinite" wisdom, have better things to do than to look out for ways to make life harder for server operators. Things are not as easy as they seem to be.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Witch's Wake: Yes, WW1 is getting a substantial SoU/HotU facelift and we're calling it "WW1: Remastered". It's pretty much ready and entering beta testing right now, well in advance of WW2. If WW2 development goes quickly enough, we'll see if we can release them together. Otherwise we'll release it with some of our other DD launch titles.

Digital Distribution: I think what Topical68's been getting at is that DD needs to present variety to its players rather than simply a bunch of RP-heavy Witch's Wake clones. I totally agree with that and, if things go forward as planned, we hope to have a number of different modules and series in place - some story-based, some combat-based, some based on other things entirely. Some modules should be very familiar, others very unfamiliar and new. I've been drawing up some broad design docs recently for modules that I feel could serve as good counterpoints to what I've done with Witch's Wake and hopefully we'll have the resources in place soon to start making them a reality.

David Gaider, Designer

Cleave: Cleave only activates when you physically kill the creature. If the creature is killed through a spell effect (like dark fire), it will not trigger a cleave.

Skin colours:

Quote: But that is just my (and likely a few others') opinion. I have no expectation of change (although I do think it is something they should keep in mind for future games). No one is suggesting funky weird coloring. Just skin tones which are common in some parts of the real world and which might even approximate the colorations of some of your consumers.

Oh, we hear you, but if not being able to replicate a specific shade of brown skin is our worst offense, I don't think you'll see us losing much sleep over it. *shrug* I'm sorry, I just don't see it being a priority even in a future release, even if some of our consumers could supposedly have such coloration. We'll provide as much variety as we can... being "fair" is not really a factor, nor is accuracy as compared to the real world.

Further:

Quote: However - we all know that BioWare IS working on a secret PC game. In fact, we are all pretty sure that David is working on that game. IN which case, my only remaining point is that both points 1 and 2 above deserve some consideration by the design team for that game. If David does not agree, I hope that his is not the only opinion being considered when that decision needs to be made.

Maybe, but still... *shrug* Meh. This is a non-issue, essentially. It's a given that everybody wants More Better Faster, one has to just glance at any given wishlist on this board to gather that. If we get More in the future as in every human skintone being available, then great. I just don't see this as being something that would get scrutinized as anything other than minutiae. You're implying that we are ignoring our black customers completely and that our marketing should be concerned... but that's not true, is it? You're overstating it. We just don't have every black skin tone you find in life available in the game. In terms of the systems we use in future games, there are larger issues to be dealt with and maybe broader improvements can be made for avatar customization beyond simply ensuring a brown-black skin tone is available. Maybe I'm understating the case, but it seems like an extraneous request to me.

Post Comments (0)

SP Happenings #40
Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 22:29 CET by Sorcerer

It's days like these when I wish I was able to run SP as a daily job. Apart from regular maintenance, nothing much happened this past week, as all of my free time was spent on real life issues. And sadly, the prospect for next week is no better, as I will be similarly busy in the foreseeable future. Oh, well.

Anyway, a site update is very much due, so I'll try to squeeze it in at some point soon, but I can't give you an exact date because it'll depend entirely on how much free time I can take away from other pressing matters (like my studies), and when. So - stay tuned.

Post Comments (0)

Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, March 7, 2004 - 18:52 CET by chevalier

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. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that a