April 2003

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New Shadows of Undrentide Site
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 22:32 CET by Gopher

Bioware has announced that the new Shadows of Undrentide site is now live. The site contains new screenshots and plenty of information on the upcoming expansion for Neverwinter Nights, plus a cool new theme. Visit it here.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 22:03 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Petrification: Just as an aside: using dialogue is not going to work. You cannot initiate dialogue with people (including PC's) who are dead or under petrification... that's part of those effects.

Quote: After using a permanent paralyzation effect in the toolset as a proxy, I found it rather easy to pop up the gui panel every few minutes asking me if I wanted to respawn. And I wasn't even dead. In fact, the gui pop up can be called by any event, regardless of (or dependent upon) player state. No new GUI is needed as the current will suffice. David, I'm not here to insult you because I'm positive your scripters have brought it to your attention, if you hadn't thought of it yourself already. Just now very curious as to why you would state something so easily proven untrue.

Actually, I hadn't thought of the PopUpDeathGUI command... I'm not a big scripter, myself. I'm sure this would have gotten mentioned eventually... if we were working on petrification right now (which we aren't). Thanks for pointing that out, though. That's a good idea.

Okay... just as an update, we did a quick test and the PopUpDeathGUIPanel idea seems to work, so we're going to play around with it a bit and make sure it will function in both SP and MP modes well. If it does, this is what we're aiming for:

Normal difficulty - no change from current (the effect wears off after a certain number of rounds on PC's, permanent on NPC's)

Hardcore or higher - in SP, it's reload time. In MP, you can wait for help or die.

This is not a promise... this is just what we're trying out for the moment, based on your feedback, and if we can make it work without too much trouble it's what we'll use. One possible hitch is the 'wait for help' button... there's no way to tell it's been pressed, and since the PC isn't dead the GUI won't come up again unless it's on some sort of timer. But we'll see. EDIT: In case you were wondering, we did test out using the petrification effect followed by the death effect. Didn't work... you explode into stony chunks (petrification death)

Quote: Thank you David. As long as I know this idea is getting some consideration and testing, I am happy. It was the fact that it was (or seemed to be ) being dismissed that concerned me.

No, not dismissed. We only have so much time to look at these things, however, and the spells and effects were a long time ago. *You* people have all the time in the world to obsess over one effect. I said what we were doing and why... but that's part of getting feedback, here. If there's something reasonable that's suggested, we'll always at least consider it. But what's with all this head-banging? Am I missing something, here?

Okay... the argument appears to be continuing. Maybe I missed something. Petrification is being made permanent on the Hardcore mode, which is what was being asked for. It's being left the way it is on the default mode, consistent with how just about every effect is on Normal. So what, exactly, is the problem?

Quote: a) By making the effect by default non permanent - thats how it will usually be.

If your concern is that the NWN games you play in are using Normal difficulty as opposed to Hardcore difficulty, wouldn't your concern be a bit broader in terms of the challenge that game has chosen to play at rather than in our implementation? I mean... we're going to at least provide a choice in its implementation that doesn't require re-scripting, so if someone wants the more difficult version it's right there. If I'm not mistaken, that's what was being asked for. People who want the difficulty for its own sake will be playing on Hardcore anyway, no?

Quote: b) By making this effect (much like death itself as handeled in NWN OC) non permanant, it seems that Bio is just trying to remove challenge from the game - making it simple, and accessible with almost a complete lack of taactics, and strategy required... (The Idiot proofing we keep talking about).

It's non-permanent only on Normal difficulty and below and only for PC's. If challenge is what is important to you, play at Hardcore mode. I can see how you might have an issue with overall challenge even on that mode, but not with how it relates to petrification, itself, as you are getting exactly what you're asking for at that level. If your problem is really with the overall difficulty and not with petrification itself, then why not start another thread addressing that point? If your problem is that you believe everyone should be playing at Hardcore difficulty just because, then obviously I'm paying too much attention to this thread.

AI Questions: The SetAILevel is really only going to be of use, I think, in situations where the creature is in an area where the PC's aren't but still needs to path-find. If it will be of greater use in combat, where AI level is already set to high, I'm not really certain. The AI scripts, themselves, are indeed being upgraded, however... the spellcasting AI in particular.

Quote: Which reminds me, David - what was the final decision on how resting was going to be restricted? Area based? Time based? AI upgrades (patrols etc.)? Random encounters? Some combination of those solutions?

We won't have random encounters until XP2. What we're using in SoU, currently, is no resting at all in a dungeon unless it's a one-exit room and the door is closed (Brent has developed a 'resting trigger' that works like this). The system is still being tweaked, which is why I didn't mention it before. It might yet change, though I doubt it at this point.

Spell Failures: There is an EffectSpellFailure, but no way to alter the ASF percentage on armor just yet. We are looking at that for XP2.

Hak Paks: This is not being changed in SoU. If it's to be changed, it's likely to be something done by the Live Team... they've got several big changes planned for the way hak paks are used.

Quote: As can be seen by the lack of any death penalties (you don't really lose anything by dying), resting restrictions (just p[lop down and fully heal and respell yourself)

I would just like to point out that the resting and respawning in SoU does not match the OC. There is a "recall stone"-type item in SoU, but it both operates on charges and cannot be used in combat. As well, it is only available in Chapter 1. In the rest of the game, if you die, it's reload or quit. As well, inside a dungeon that is still dangerous you can only rest in a one-exit room with the door closed (as it's currently implemented). Just pointing this out for accuracy's sake. Continue on with commentary or whatever.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

The Second Expansion Pack: Let me state in the strongest possible terms that XP2 is NOT Witch's Wake.

(Ed. Note: If I got rid of the 'NOT' do you think Derek French would get mad?)

Quote: The strongest possible terms? did you guys not like Witch's Wake or something?

We love the Witch's Wake. That is why we made it. The issue is that we have stated that the Witch's Wake will always be free and I wanted to quash any notion that we are going to turn around and start selling its sequel as XP2. I want to keep the line between retail and free as clear as possible.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 0:19 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Quote: Give us choices for different kinds of players. Don't lock in a hardwired, hardcore concept for petrifying spells that will just frustrate a large percentage of the players who own this game.

No, the only "hard wired" part of petrification is the effect, itself. This has the visual part (which is, more or less, the Stoneskin effect) combined with the "freeze" to the animations (which is what was not possible without great headache previously). The spells and abilities (like a medusa's gaze) are all open to scripting, otherwise.

Quote: So... then what's the difference between petrify and paralyze? Nothing? oh ok.

There's a big difference to a non-PC. And even to the PC there's a big difference insofar as duration is concerned. Plus it is an effect that was really wanted, so even if you don't agree with our reasoning, you can make it what you want. If you don't agree with our reasoning, however, I would hope you would actually address my points instead of just crying 'cheeze'.

Quote: What if you just did this: Give anyone who is permanently petrified the option to commit suicide and respawn, but have it be so even if they get raised or rezed, they're still stone.

But how do we do that without a new GUI? The problem, as I said, is that there IS no way for the player to indicate "I give up" so he can die and then respawn. Just killing the player and allowing him to wait for help or respawn as per the death GUI might work... but only if petrification and death effects can stack.

Quote: Ok, how's about we address the point that NWN is too easy and getting easier all the time? I like the game, but the campaigns made by Bioware just aren't challenging.

It's my understanding that we've only done one campaign for NWN so far. If you didn't find that challenging, that's fine, but how does that necessarily follow that SoU is less challenging? At the very least, we've implented rest restrictions in appropriate areas and changed the recall stone so that it's a charged item available only in the very first part of the game (and not usable during combat). You might feel that's not enough, but it is certainly more challenging than before, no?

Quote: If you get petrified, it shouldn't just wear off on it's own like a light stomach virus. Also, I certainly don't like the trend that Bioware seems to be playing fast and loose with the DnD rules and mores, and relying on the community to fix mistakes. That, in my opinion, is cheesy.

We're not relying on the community to fix any mistake with this. I simply said that the spell is easily changed if a mod-builder wishes to do it differently. We're implementing the petrification for PC's in this way for very good reasons, and it's not at all out of a spirit of playing fast and loose with the rules. Is it your assertion that we should implement this exactly as per the PnP rules regardless of the playability? Petrification was asked for and we wanted to include it. We could make it work exactly for PC's as it does for NPC's... but what do we do about players standing there permanently paralyzed? We could simply make it 'instant death' to everyone, but that both eliminates any need for the Stone To Flesh spell and is not the spirit of petrification in the rules... which, if we didn't care about, wouldn't be an issue to begin with. Our other option would be not to include the spell at all until and unless we could also include the coding and GUI to handle this exception to make it exactly as per the rules. This would also deny the mod-building community the medusa and cockatrice as well as an effect they've been asking for. Is that preferable? Hopefully we can work on this. In the mean-time, please do tell us what you'd prefer. Feedback is what these boards are for.

Quote: when you die in multiplayer, don't you get the option to respawn, reload or wait for help. Couldn't the death options gui you get be slightly modified for petrification? If you wait for help, you are waiting for someone to stone to flesh you..

Yes, this was suggested already a page before you posted this... if we could apply the petrification effect followed by a death effect and allow the death GUI to do our work for us, then that would be great. There are (just from speaking to the programmers involved) all kinds of problems that could impede this, however... though that doesn't mean it's impossible in the long run. I'm all for petrification being permanent for PC's just as it is for NPC's... but it's got to have an implementation that is playable, as well. Whether we would have time, at this point, to try ironing out something like this and test it as well remains to be seen, but it might be worth the attempt.

Database Questions: No, there's no inherent function for the game to perform maintenance like you suggest on the database files that are produced.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Experience: The XP value in the journal category was never intended to be awarded automatically upon completion. Our designers say that XP can be awarded at any point in the category. They would write a script to award a percentage of the total XP value for the category at a particular point. That way, if as a result of testing, it is decided that the amount of XP the category awards needs to be adjusted, the designer can simply make the change in the Journal Editor without having to recompile the scripts. The next time the module is played, all the scripts that award XP from that category award the right amount of XP (this assumes the percentages are correct, of course).

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Shadows of Undrentide Interview at VE3D
Posted Saturday, April 26, 2003 - 18:01 CET by Mollusken

Voodoo Extreme have done an interview with Darcy Pajak and Tom Ohle form BioWare, and the questions were of course related to the first Neverwinter Nights expansion pack: Shadows of Undrentide. Here's a preview on a couple of the questions:

How much involvement does BioWare have with the expansion's development?

Lots! BioWare has handled all of the programming for the title, implementing new functionality like henchman inventory control and the new Prestige Classes. In addition to that, our designers are currently finalizing the design side of things.

What kinds of improvements are going to be included in the Aurora toolset?

Well, module creators will have access to all of the new content, including the three tilesets (Desert, Rural Winter, and Ruins), the new creatures, etc. In addition to that, they’ll get the ability to add projectile traps to modules, dress up rooms with loads of new placeable objects, easily create quests with the Plot Wizard (which was released by the BioWare Live Team a few months back), and create cool in-game cutscenes with improved cutscene scripting functionality.

Get the rest of the interview here.

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BioWare on E3
Posted Friday, April 25, 2003 - 15:54 CET by Mollusken

HomeLan Fed have asked different game developers a couple of questions about the event. Tom Ohle answered on the behalf of BioWare:

Will you be attending E3 this year and if so what will you be showing off at the expo?

Of course we'll be there! This year at the BioWare booth, we're planning to show off Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for both PC and Xbox, as well as both Neverwinter Nights expansion, Shadows of Undrentide and XP2 (you'll know the name by the time the show rolls around)!

What games are you most looking forward to seeing at E3 this year?

I'm not too sure how much time I'll have away from our booth, but I've got a few games on my radar. I'll definitely try to get another look at Doom III; last year it just blew me away. Then we'll add World of Warcraft and SC: Ghost at the Blizzard booth, Arena.net's Guild Wars, maybe some Pirates of the Carribean at the Bethesda booth... who knows. There'll be so many cool games to see, and so little time to see them! Oh, and I'll probably take a look at Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, too. If being so involved with Neverwinter Nights has its downside, it's that I haven't had a chance to look at KotOR since Christmas!

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Greyhawk Chat at RPG Codex
Posted Friday, April 25, 2003 - 15:49 CET by Mollusken

RPG Codex will be hosting a chat with the developers of Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil. The event will take place on Thursday the 1st of May, at 8 PM eastern time (5pm pacific), and the channel is #rpgcodex on irc.gamesnet.net.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, April 25, 2003 - 0:14 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Petrification: Since people are arguing based on my comment and jumping to a few conclusions, how about I actually go and check and see what the current implementation is? Okay... this is how it goes...

For non-PC's (including Henchmen), petrification is always permanent based on an unsuccessful Fortitude save.

For PC's, the petrification effect is temporary, with a duration based on the game difficulty. At Normal and below, it's got a duration of rounds. At Hardcore and Difficult, it's got a duration of turns.

Why are we doing this? Because unlike instant death spells (like, say, Finger of Death), Petrification isn't instant death... at least as far as the computer is concerned. It's "stand around and wait paralyzed until someone depetrifies you" death... and you may or may not have someone who can de-petrify you, obviously, SP or MP even notwithstanding.

Without some way of the player being able to signal "Okay, I give up... there's no way I'm going to get out of this so just treat me as dead, already", what are we supposed to do? Force the player to wait and wait until he realizes he should quit and re-load? No, we won't do that (as in will not do that). We considered scripting in a time-delayed EffectDeath to kill the player after a certain time elapses, but that doesn't really solve the problem, does it? So we put it in as a temporary effect (although a duration in turns is pushing the "wait and wait" prohibition, to be truthful) for PC's. As with most spells, the scripting is wide open if you want to change how that works in your game. Is this unreasonable of us? If you have an alternate suggestion (that doesn't involve a new GUI, like an "I give up" button), I'd love to hear it.

Quote: Well, since you're inviting ideas, I'll propose one. Suppose it does kill the player. The death GUI could come up, and players could immediately respawn or reload. However, if a henchman or another player wants to ressurrect you, they can't use the ubiquitous raise dead scrolls. Instead, they have to use a stone to flesh scroll or spell.

The biggest problem that I see with this solution is that the "wait for help" button doesn't always show up, and your henchman may be able to heal you. Of course, the same is also true of being killed by more conventional decapitation...The only way this would work is if we could script Raise Dead/Resurrection and the like to not work if you are petrified and for Stone to Flesh to only work if you are petrified. If we can make that distinction and then apply a raise effect either way, then sure... perhaps that wouldn't be a bad idea. It's still instant death for SP, but it might work the same either way. I'll suggest it and we'll see

Quote: I guess, well, I can see your point in single player, I do think that you should have an option for module builders though, an easy option (not alot of scripting to pull it off and make it work correctly)

According to the script I saw, it's pretty simple. You'd just have to comment out the 'check if the target is a PC' section (which is one line). The mod-maker would still be left with the problems I mentioned, however, but that would be up to them.

Quote: The biggest problem with NWN is respawn though.

I assume you're talking about the OC, here, as a mod builder has options for what they'd like to allow. SoU doesn't have unlimited respawning, at any rate. NWN will never have a big SP-controlled party, however, and is a different type of game from BG. Perceived flaw or not, that's not going to change.

Database Questions: Yes, there is a DeleteCampaignVariable command that deletes a variable (of any type, integer or object or whatever) within a database. There is also a DestroyCampaignDatabase command to delete the entire data file

Romances: I don't think trying to implement a romance in such a short campaign would really do it justice, unless it's something we were to focus on as part of the overall story. We're not doing it for SoU... the focus is on different things... but we might for XP2, we'll see.

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 21:11 CET by Sorcerer

Another week's around and here are the latest NWN Wednesday goodies:

Danmar's 3D Modeling Tutorials
Danmar has created a series of tutorials using .avi movies that step through everything from creating placeables and weapons to creating new creatures and adding animations. This week we profile Danmar and his tutorials!

Got Balor?
You can now download Texture Bundle 5 from the Textures Download area, which contains the Bodak, Bugbear, Balor, and Ettercap textures that can be used in our re-skinning creatures tutorial!

New Community Site Portraits
We have added new portraits that you can choose from for your community site account profile! Your portrait is seen by others when they search for players in the Guilds and Registry system, or "view your profile" when reading your forum posts.

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2003 - 17:38 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: What kind of campaigns do you prefer in 3e D&D?
(302 votes total)

Mid-level (131) 43%
Epic-level (98) 32%
Low-level (40) 13%
High-level (33) 11%

It appears that the majority of poll participants (43%) prefer mid-level 3e campaigns over all others.

Epic-level campaigns are also quite popular, with 32% of votes.

Low-level campaigns are favoured by only 13% of those who voted.

And, curiously enough, high-level campaigns are the most popular with only 11% of poll participants.

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Greyhawk: ToEE Trailer Leaked
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2003 - 20:34 CET by Sorcerer

The Gamer's Hell website posted a 12MB long trailer of Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil, and promptly removed it shortly after per request of Infogrames. The trailer was obviously leaked as it was missing the legal info at the end (there was only a placeholder for it present), but it looked spectacular nonetheless. While it didn't show any of the game's interface, the gameplay, spells & monsters shown looked VERY nice.

Another important thing the trailer featured was the confirmation that the game will indeed use the 3.5 edition D&D rules. (Explicitly stated in the trailer.)

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 19:22 CET by Veldrin

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

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Quote: Oh, Derek, just to confirm - SoU will update NWN to 1.30 automatically, right?

Correct.

Quote: Also, have you guys decided on how you're going to have the patches work post SoU release? Will there be separate patches for NWN and NWN + SoU customers? If so, would that be temporary or would you be supporting both for quite some time?

There will be separate patches for both, for all time.

Quote: Can you post the list of fixes in this release?

Not at this time.

Quote: Linux and Windows SERVERS will be part of the DB beta.

No, only Windows at this time. Because of the Linux Client Beta ongoing right now, we are not able to branch the code to allow for this DB beta at this time. If the Linux Client is finalized before 1.30 comes out, then we will be able to release the Linux version. Otherwise, we would have to maintain two code bases under Linux and that would be a Bad Idea.

Quote: You will only be able to *test* using the WINDOWS CLIENT (which is a modified 1.29).

No. Only the DB enabled server is required to test this. The Clients do not need any modifications.

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Neverwinter Nights Community Interview at NW Vault
Posted Monday, April 21, 2003 - 18:26 CET by Mollusken

Neverwinter Vault has posted an interview with Wynne McLaughlin, creator of the Company of Thieves modules for Neverwinter Nights.

You have two modules out in a series titled "Company Of Thieves". Could you give us an overview of what the story is about and do players have to start at the first one in order to play the second?

My original idea was to create a series of modules that were all set in the same city. I didn't want it to be an enormous, sprawling city. I wanted it to be a cramped, claustrophobic maze of a city. (The Thieves World series of books was a big influence, and there are obvious tributes to it in the module.) I thought it would be really cool as a PC to play a module, learn the layout of a city, and then return to it in later modules and see how it might have changed. In Part One you arrive in the city and nobody knows you. At the climax of the module, you join the Shadowdwellers, an influential guild. When you start Part Two, the major players in town already know you. Peripheral characters from Part One become a bigger part of the story in Part Two.

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Shadows of Undrentide Delayed Yet Again
Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003 - 23:07 CET by Sorcerer

I have just noticed that Amazon.com has changed the shipping date for the Neverwinter Nights expansion Shadows of Undrentide from the end of May, 2003 to June 17, 2003. While store dates are usually not very reliable indicators of actual release dates, it is practically unheard-of that a game would be released BEFORE the date they list. The usual custom is to keep shifting the release further back, as it has happened now. In short, don't expect SoU before June 17.

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Happy Easter!
Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003 - 13:47 CET by Sorcerer

On behalf of the whole sorcerous crew here, I wish a happy Easter to all of our visitors!

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003 - 1:54 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Henchman Inventory: My understanding is that the inventory control is not optional... that the henchman associate state allows the master to always access inventory. There may be a scripting solution to preventing that, but I'm not aware of what it might be (I've never tried it, but I can inquire). Using the non-droppable flag to prevent items from being taken from the henchmen has also, apparently, not turned out to be workable. Maybe we can try again for XP2, but for the moment we're still playing with exactly what (if anything) can be done with this. I'll mention to the team that some people would like the inventory control as optional. If there isn't a good scripting solution, however, a better one might have to wait for a patch. Don't get too excited just yet, however... my knowledge of how this works is limited and there may very well be something that can easily be done if you want OC-like henchmen for your modules.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

Pit Fiends: that's what I get for not being a total fanatic heheh. And the Pit Fiends look awesome. There should be some images surfacing sometime soon.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Quote: I was curious if portions of SoU content will be made available to non-SoU owners via Live Team patches in the future, or if the 1.30 patch will be the only time when content merges with the official release.

Yes, but nothing massive. One or two creatures, a few placeables, those things are possible, but nothing definate at this point.

Quote: Does this mean that baring any major bugs that 1.30 is around the corner? =)

No it does not. To allow for the most compatible method of testing, the Beta will be using database-enabled 1.29 executables. Sorry, we should have made that clear in the first place.

Quote: Wonder if the Beta-Test includes Linux-Servers. Else it would be of no use for my world.

Database access will be coming to the public in the 1.30 Update, for all released platforms that exist at that time, which would include Linux. Due to the nature of the development of the Linux Client Beta that is currently ongoing, we cannot branch the code at this time for this Beta, without affecting the Linux Client Beta.

Quote: In other words, this beta will be for Windows servers only until 1.30 is released -- at that time, it will cover Linux and Windows server.

Pretty close Chokra. Once the Linux Client Beta is finalized, then we can do the branch and release the Linux DB stuff. No legalese reasons, BitRaiser, just the fact that trying to develop and manage two code streams at the same time is a Bad Idea.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Exporting: You export the particular resources (areas, conversations, scripts, blueprints, etc.) from one module using File | Export. This creates a file containing those resources. Then, you open the module into which you wish to import those resources and select File | Import. Select the export file you just created and then choose the particular resources in which you're interested.

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Neverwinter Nights Review at Game Reviewers
Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003 - 1:02 CET by Mollusken

Game Reviewers have reviewed Neverwinter Nights, and came to the conclution that it was good enough for a score of 8.8 out of 10. Here's their final words:

Neverwinter Nights is, overall, a very nice game. Great graphics and a solid soundtrack, bundled together with a very large game involving a surprisingly solid plot. Fans of Baldur’s Gate, or indeed any D&D style role playing game, will undoubtedly find NWN a rewarding, if very time consuming, experience. Though the combat interface requires little more than selecting a weapon or spell and clicking on the unfortunate to meet it at the other end, as a contribution to the world of D&D, you can be assured that Bioware’s latest offering is a significant and worthwhile one. If you’re a hardcore D&D player, you must have this game. Just don’t expect to pick up any hot chicks with it.

You'll find the rest of the review here.

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Shadows of Undrentide Chat Log at GameSpy
Posted Saturday, April 19, 2003 - 12:51 CET by Mollusken

The chat log from the Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide chat event two days ago has been posted at GameSpy Arcade. The participants from BioWare were Trent Oster, Darcy Pajak, Dave Gaider and Jay Watamaniuk, and they answered questions from about 140 GameSpy Arcade visitors.

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Greyhawk Development Diary at RPG Vault
Posted Friday, April 18, 2003 - 13:21 CET by Mollusken

Tim Cain of Troika Games has written the first part of a series of Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil development journals. You'll find it at RPG Vault, and here's a short preview:

Infogrames wanted the new game to have a classic "feel" and to be set in the Greyhawk campaign world (as opposed to say, the Forgotten Realms or Planescape). These restrictions were fine by us, since we are somewhat traditionalists ourselves. But then they said the magic phrase "We own the rights to all of the classic modules. Pick one." I had already gone through my extensive D&D module collection, organized alphabetically by series and date of publication (did you just call me a geek?), and I had my answer ready - the Temple of Elemental Evil.

ToEE was the perfect choice. The module assumed level 1 characters at the beginning and took them up to levels 8 through 10. There was a small introductory dungeon that would be perfect for a demo, and a larger, more complex dungeon beneath the temple itself. There was a "good" village and a "bad" village, really cool monsters (including demons), and lots and lots of NPCs of various alignments and agendas. There was even an artifact (or two) waiting to be discovered, and some planar travel to be experienced. And ToEE was written by Gary Gygax himself and existed in the Greyhawk universe. Like I said, it was the perfect choice.

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Shadows of Undrentide Chat at GameSpy
Posted Friday, April 18, 2003 - 0:14 CET by Mollusken

Today GameSpy will host a Shadows of Undrentide chat with several members of the BioWare team. Here are the details:

GameSpy details:
On Thursday, April 17th at 4:00 PM PST GameSpy Arcade will host a chat with the folks from BioWare to talk about its upcoming expansion to Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide. The BioWare team (Trent Oster - Producer/Project Director, Darcy Pajak - Assistant Producer, Dave Gaider - Designer and Jay Watamaniuk - Community Manager)working on this first expansion to the popular AD&D role-playing game for the PC will field questions from chat participants and offer further insight into how the game's development is moving forward. Swag will also be given out at random to chat attendees, including a signed copy of the game! To learn more about the chat visit GameSpy Arcade and PlanetNeverwinter. It's important to note that you'll need the latest version of GameSpy Arcade to attend the chat. If you already have it installed you can simply jump to the chat event lobby by following this link.

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Shadows of Undrentide Interview at IGN PC
Posted Friday, April 18, 2003 - 0:11 CET by Mollusken

IGN PC have posted an interview with Tom Ohle and Darcy Pajak from BioWare, where they discuss the upcoming Neverwinter Nights expansion pack from BioWare and FloodGate Entertainment. Here's a short preview:

General Information: How long has the game been in development? How many are currently working on the game - how is the team split? What, if any, are the reasons for delays in production? And, of course, what is the release date for the game?

Darcy Pajak: The game has been basically in development since the original game shipped. We learned so much from making the original game that we really wanted to show everyone what could be done with the toolset. While making the expansion, we were also keeping up with what the community had done, and this pushed us to do everything we could to make sure people who bought it would be very satisfied. BioWare and FloodGate will release the game once we get to the point we think it is ready. Specific release dates are up to Infogrames and Atari.

With the development of Shadows of Undrentide, what new design focus did you primarily have for the game? Where do you want to take original Neverwinter Nights gamers?

Tom Ohle: One of the primary goals was to allow for more role-playing options. To that end, there are several ways to play through most situations. Evil characters may just choose to let someone die, whereas a good player will work to help the person in need. The evil character would then steal the item from the corpse, while the good player may receive it as a reward. The designers are also making the game engine do some amazing things. I didn't think it was possible to have a Kobold go flying through the air... but apparently it is!

Get everything at IGN PC.

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Neverwinter Nights Community Interview at NW Vault
Posted Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 23:16 CET by Mollusken

Neverwinter Vault has posted an interview with community member SuTech on their D20 Modern project which aims to introduce modern day elements into Neverwinter Nights. Here's a short taste on the questions and answers:

Could you give us an overview of what the D20 Modern Mod team is all about?

We are all about expanding the resources of NWN to include tools to help people make games set in modern and sci-fi settings. There is not a whole lot of multiplayer modern based computer RPG's out there. So members on the team are all working together towards one shared vision while supporting each other's work. Whether it's the members on the team working on a Fallout genre or one person on the team working towards a Dune setting. Fantasy can only go so far, but with modern and sci-fi tools, expandability is limitless.

Could you tell us what resources you have put together so far and at what stage you consider them at?

I'm sure many people who have download the complete or different HAK packs for the Alpha version of the mod, awed at some of the work. I still awe at the skyscrapers Geekfiend did for us. But the two releases were more meant for proof of concepts and to see what kind of response was generated. So the different haks were all in a beginning stage. Somewhat playable for small groups with a host who knows who to set up their dialog.tlk and other files and where they belong.

The team itself has finally gotten past the "How do we share things" phase. That's always the hardest part when you have a team composed of people from all over the world. We use our forum and site extensively and another member has volunteered to run a part time FTP server to help distribute files internally.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 21:18 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

SoU Campaign: I won't go into how the SoU campaign is going to be different in style and content... I've done that in numerous other threads, and I won't repeat myself here. It will be different, but the proof (as they say) is in the pudding. So if anyone cares to try it they'll either find it to their taste or they won't. BUT I will say that I downloaded Dreamcatcher 3 out of curiosity last night due to this thread. I ended up staying up a little late (until 3 am) because I got wrapped up in it... very nice. While I have a few niggly beefs, I really do like all the interaction with Idola. That part was especially well done and was quite novel-esque. The story (so far) is also quite interesting. I've never seen Danmar's dungeon in actual use before, either, and it looked a lot better than a thought it would (not that I expected it to look bad, it just looked a bit... clean and sterile, I guess, in the Toolset). So that was a pleasant surprise. Will I learn from it? I learn stuff all the time, and the other people at Bioware are no different. I wouldn't copy it, if that's what you mean, and there's a lot I would do differently... and there's a lot that would have to change if such a module was to be targeted at a broader audience in a commercial release. But, yes, it does look like it's a great effort, for sure.

SoU Character Level: Well, the mileage of the individual obviously may vary... and we're still doing a lot of tweaking... but so far it looks like characters are ending up around level 12 or so, yes.

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 17:20 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which type of spells do you like better?
(313 votes total)

Arcane spells (187) 60%
Both equally (84) 27%
Divine spells (42) 13%

The most popular kind of spells are obviously the arcane ones, with 60% of poll participants voting in their favour.

27% of those who voted like both arcane and divine spells equally, however.

Lastly, the divine spells alone are preferred by only 13% of the people who voted.

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Thursday, April 17, 2003 - 12:52 CET by Sorcerer

Another week's around and here are the latest NWN Wednesday goodies:

Database Access Beta Test Contest
We want to run a beta test of the upcoming database access stuff, and we are looking for the best minds in the community to help us out. Full details inside!


Rustic Shelters and Shipwrecks
This week's builder profile showcases Shipwrecks and Rustic Shelters placeables created by Brother Roth that you can use to to breathe life into your campaign.


Grenade-like Weapons

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide is introducing grenade-like weapons into combat. These items can be thrown at your enemies for different devastating effects.

Thunderstone

Carefully prepared explosive elements that need only a sharp smack to detonate. One is advised to carry these with the utmost care. When striking a hard surface, a Thunderstone creates a deafening bang. Any target that fails a Fortitude save will be temporarily deafened.

Tanglefoot Bag

This material is very handy for bogging down those who seek to do our adventurer harm…or authorities that are getting too close. This round, small leather bag is full to bursting of an alchemical goo. Once this goo is exposed to air, it becomes tough and resilient, and will make movement very difficult for those caught.

Caltrops

Caltrops are small, jagged metal pyramids to be thrown on the ground making the terrain dangerous to move across. Caltrops can be scattered over a small area of even ground in hopes of deterring pursuit.

Choking Powder

Choking Powder is made from various caustic herbs and causes uncontrollable coughing fits. A pouch of choking powder can create a small stinking cloud that will last for 5 rounds. The cloud forces anyone within it to make a Fortitude saving throw or become dazed.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 21:20 CET by Astin X

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

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Quote: "Right now Jefferson has five "regions", each with about five areas. Each area has anywhere between two to five maps. In towns, this rises to about twenty to over one hundred maps." Being the non-linearity freak I am, I was just curious as to what this meant. Now the 5 regions sounds like the three IWD2 regions. Is Jefferson going to have 5 overland maps/regions similar to NWN where entering a new region meant not being able to go back to a previous one?

After re-classification, there are essentially three main regions on Jefferson's main overland map. They are geographical regions with socially recognized boundaries, not separate maps.

Quote: In past BIS RPGs (with the exception being Fallout), your party could finish the game in as little as 2 weeks and as long as, well, forever I guess. I would like to see a change for future games where the passage of time not only occurs, but effects everything.

History has shown that putting time limits on quests and events in RPGs tends to *beep* off the vast majority of players. However, there are time-sensitive things in Jefferson, like seasonal celebrations and weekly meetings at specific locations.

Quote: My major concern is about doors, I presume we will be able to smash doors, right? There will be situations in Jefferson where high strength characters such as fighters can resolve by smashing?

There are no doors in Jefferson that are "special game locked" doors. There are no characters in that game that you can kill that will result in the game ending prematurely.

Quote: Ok, so Jefferson is 3D right? Will one be able to rotate the camera?

You can rotate the camera around as much as you want.You can zoom in and out (probably not quite as close as in NWN) and there is a degree of up and down. Default is isometric.

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Black Isle Studios CEO Resigns
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2003 - 20:53 CET by Sorcerer

RPG Codex has just confirmed the rumour that Feargus Urquhart, the head of Interplay's CRPG division Black Isle Studios, has resigned today. Along with him supposedly (unconfirmed) also quit J. E. Sawyer, the Lead Designer on the unannounced "Jefferson" project. Even more people could follow.

Read more at RPG Codex.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2003 - 22:22 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Missing Features: Besides polymorph "not being worth a damn", it's set up on purpose to prevent players from using items while in their alternate form for very good (and I thought pretty obvious) reasons. If you want some alternate form that's still going to be able to use items (to fly? eh? well, whatever...) you're not looking at polymorph but some kind of SetAppearance ability, really. Which I doubt is going to happen anytime soon. And what was the other thing? I'm forgetting... Oh yeah. Carrying non-dead players. Hmmm... we haven't even tried implementing corpse-carrying yet (though as Papermonk points out it's scriptable), I'm not even sure how you would go about carrying other players... or just how useful a feature that would be, sorry.

Quote: I would like to point out to you David - in no uncertain terms - I take this as an invitation to hack the executable or create a DM bot so we can get around this deliberate CRIPPLE in Bioware's code. The commuinity is just damn tired of waiting for a simple change to code over a difference in design philosohpy of what it an appropriate game ability. At some point - the person who said "no" might want to consider that maybe the original decision has evolved into a mistake. Not blaming you specifically David - but if its a hack Bioware wants - it's a hack you'll get.

You can make ultimatums if you like, but that doesn't make a SetAppearance function any more of a priority compared to all the other things we have going, rtrifts. We know that people are interested in SetAppearance and that it's necessary for some things builders want to do, etc etc... along with a great number of other things. All have someone crying how bloody urgent it is and what an oversight it would be not to include it, no? XP2 has a pretty full plate as it is and there's no way we'll get to everything. We'll consider it, but as I haven't heard any discussion about it up to this point that's why I said it probably wasn't coming soon.

CODI and DLA and 2/3rds of the CC forum have been asking you guys to unmake that choice for 8 months. If Bioware was interested in doing that by now, in my estimation - it would have been done by now.

So if we haven't done it by now we never will? And I'm a frequent visitor to the CC forum, rtrifts. SetAppearance has certainly been asked for and there have been a couple of threads on it in the last 8 months, but I wouldn't even go so far as to say it is the most requested feature there. I could go into my opinions on how useful a SetAppearance function actually would be in reference to what it's wanted for, but that's not important, I suppose. What's important is that you obviously consider it a priority and have decided it's past time that we provided it.

Fair enough. We'll consider it, amongst many other things that we have to divide our efforts for the expansion. And if we can't fit it in (or come up with a final determination as to its feasibility) then the Live Team will have to do so after us. As for the community coming up with some great stuff that's been of benefit to all creators and many end-users... absolutely true, and we encourage it. The fact that there are people out there who will step in and make that stuff is great, and I don't look on it at all like they're a slap in our face that arises out of impatience. If there's a need out there, it will be filled... we'll do our part insofar as we can, considering that we have different needs, restrictions and resources than the average community member. Just hopefully we have the same goal. As far as your implication that we've made it necessary to hack the code to get what you want... well, obviously I really can't comment on that. You've got your own requirements for your project as you've stated many times... a project that looks quite interesting, from what I can see, and I wish you well on it.

New Familiars: But wouldn't you expect those animals to be really BIG? I wouldn't mind seeing them, myself, but the chance seems smaller if we had to re-do the model. Any ideas?

D&D Rules: Well, DeQuester, you certainly have a right to your opinion. No argument there. As far as the 3rd edition ruleset goes, I'm pretty certain that we are required to use them in order to make use of the D&D license. You will not see any more official products using rulesets from 2nd edition or earlier, and should you want to see such your argument is with WotC and not with us. That said, I will add that I'm a player of D&D, myself, back from the original Basic boxed set. Out of all the versions that have come since, I'd have to say that 3rd edition is by far the best in many respects, not the least of which is its versatility and friendly success systems (while I was indeed used to the way thAC0 and such worked, I can look back on it now and certainly recognize how abominably difficult it had become). Regardless of any of it, however, my basic belief is that it's not the rule system but what you make of it. One of the funnest PnP campaigns I ever had was with the original Marvel Super Heroes boxed set rules ("I use my Remarkable Strength!"), oddly enough.

I also remember the reaction when 2nd edition D&D first came out. You could hear the sacred cows being slaughtered en masse. I remember deciding not to buy all the new books and ended up dropping playing D&D altogether... it was not until something like a decade later that I got in with a group playing it and decided it wasn't so bad after all. But all that's just my opinion. Unfortunately, when it comes to this sort of thing there is no accomodating everyone. Progress is what is it is, and you may feel like you're tilting against windmills fighting it, so you have my sympathy.

Farms: Wow, those fields look really good. I know that agriculture in such a medieval-esque society is on a lot smaller scale than ours, but still I always thought our fields were a bit too "vegetable-plot"-sized. I'd have to agree with Aethelwyn's comment on the scattering. Every wheat field I've seen looks more like a carpet of waist-high stalks. You generally can't see through them... although I suppose older-style agriculture might not have been so uniform. One thing I'd like to see, personally, is a proper wine orchard. I *think* we did a placeable for it... but as I recall the plants were spaced a bit far apart and it was pretty small and fenced-in. Heck, on my last trip through Austria there were plenty of orchards that were farming pretty much as they always had and those orchards practically lined the hills. But, anyway, it's looking great so far. I can totally see a small farming community surrounded by large, communal fields... a picture which appeals to my need for a certain amount of reality in my fantasy, you know?

Quote: Yeah, I'm as glad to see Defensive casting as the next person, but that means we have to sacrifice a feat to get it.

Ummm... no, no. Defensive Casting is a combat posture that's available to any spellcaster. It simply means you're paying more attention to combat and are attempting to avoid an attack of opportunity for spell-casting... though you run the risk of failing and losing the spell, as well.

Quote: ha HA! Things are said here that make no sense to me! On the first hand these people say "We couldn't do xxxx because we don't have enough resources" and on the other way they say "Its done when its done!" These things lead me to believe that there is an unspoken deadline! Ah! I am making no sense and this is frustrating to me. What I am saying if I make respeak myself is that even a few guys can add very much if they have "no deadline". ha HA! That is what I am meaning!

Ummm... we have internal schedules and targets, obviously. Whether or not we meet them is a constant struggle and our internal schedule is constantly getting shuffled and updated. That's not the same as having no deadline. And you can't just keep adding stuff until one day the game is done... it still have to be tested and the bugs fixed. The dates the public receives are based on our estimates. There's no way for us to be more accurate then that, as we never know how long testing and bug fixing is going to last. Heck, I'd love to have exact dates that never changed (sort of... we'd ship on that date whether the game was ready or not, but at least I could plan a vacation for once. ) That's the way the industry works out of necessity... it's not lying, so whoever is crying about that just has to suck it up.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

Windows: There is a placeable window in SoU.

I don't think there's a placeable sunray, no...

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Hak Packs: I believe the game will not load a module if it can't find a .hak pack that the module says it requires. However, the game should be able to handle missing resources (such as sounds, scripts and blueprints). So, I think it should be possible to make an empty .hak pack with the same name as the one that contains all your sounds. This would allow the game to load the module and then the game should run fine.Keep in mind, I haven't actually tried this. :)

Coloured Boxes & Radeons: Yes, we are aware of this issue. Not being a graphics programmer however, I can't actually comment on it. Keep in mind that posts like yours made on a weekend are _unlikely_ to receive a response from the development team (it's a fluke that I spotted when I did) until at least the start of the next week, so please be patient.

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Site News - New Additions
Posted Monday, April 14, 2003 - 20:14 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Books

Forgotten Realms Books subsection: Legacy of the Drow Collector's Edition paperback added.

3rd Edition D&D Books subsection: Ghostwalk added.

Subsection Updates -> Community

About Us subsection: Bios for Gopher & Sprite added.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: Baldur's Gate Super Script updated.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Planescape: Torment

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: PS:T Fix Pack added.

Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection: PS:T Fix Magic List added, PS:T Unimplemented Files List added.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: 4 mods added, 1 mod updated.

Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection: BG2: SoA & ToB NPC Interactions Guide (a must-see!) added, Secrets of Journals updated.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale 2

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

Subsection Updates - Games -> Neverwinter Nights

Walkthroughs & Guides subsection: NWN expansion details page updated.

Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection: NWN Character Creator added, Bladesinger Prestige Class added.

Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection: NWN Character Creation Guide added, NWN Traps table added, NWN Bard FAQ updated.

Modules subsection: 1 module added.

Toolset & Related subsection:

Subsection #7: 1 new addition.

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Shadows of Undrentide Update at GameSpyDaily
Posted Monday, April 14, 2003 - 19:18 CET by Mollusken

GameSpyDaily have got the latest status update on Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide. Included with the update is also three new screenshots from the expansion, which is scheduled to ship this spring.

Development continues on the first Neverwinter Nights expansion pack, Shadows of Undrentide. Chapters 1 and 2 are both nearing completion with the designers now primarily focused on chapter 3 and bug fixes. Art resources are still being tweaked: final fixes to the three new tilesets are being made, and the 16 new creatures are being checked for any problems.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, April 13, 2003 - 16:15 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Skills: No no no, Tumble and Appraise are in. I'm talking about after this point. Whatever they did to put those skills into XP1 (whatever that was) is, at this point, a fait accompli. There's no changing it now, whatever the purpose might be.

OnHit: Well, there is no "on hit" poison system in existence, yet... so that can't be a consideration at this point no matter how cool it might be. We are seriously looking at adding Aura of Despair and possibly some kind of Lesser/Greater Planar Binding ability for the BG. We'll see.

AoO And Casters:
Quote: I would have reported it as a bug, but I thought it was actually an intended feature. Well, it's a huge relief to hear we can file that under Bard songs and Barbarian rages drawing AoOs.

Well, it's not quite a bug like those two are. In this case, it's a gameplay bug... it's doing something that it's supposed to, but having a negative impact on gameplay. As you say, what wizard in their right mind would chose to abandon his spell so he can slap the warrior running past him? Tempting, but not smart... and wizards are supposed to be smart, right? In the mean-time, though, spellcasters can gurgle contentedly at the thought of being able to cast defensively after XP1. As I recall, this was once a hot topic back before release.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Exotic Weapons: I think that any weapon that would not be part of what I would guess would be a 'standard' bootcamp type training in fighting would be considered 'exotic' as it would require additional training to use it either as a weapon (because it's standard function is not for warfare)or because it is so foreign (i.e. kama) that you would need additional training to use it effectively. Of course training would need to be for each weapon separately if you wanted to stick closer to reality of course.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Japanese: The English version of NWN does not include a Japanese font. As a result much of the text (all?) will look garbled.

NWN uses a custom font file, so the only way to get a Japanese version of a font that will work with NWN is to purchase a Japanese version of the game.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Quote: Wat are they i can't join multiplayer cause it says i don't have them wat do i do? (Hak Files)

A Hak file is a custom content for the game that was made and added by a user. If the module that the server is running uses a Hak file for custom content, then you need to have a copy of the Hak file in your Hak directory in order to play the module. If you go into Server Details for the server that required a hak pack and look at the Server Description it may tell you where you can download the hak pak file from.

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Troika Games Hiring
Posted Saturday, April 12, 2003 - 19:39 CET by Mollusken

Troika Games, the developer of Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil, is looking for a senior programmer to aid in the development of an upcoming action/RPG hybrid title for the PC. Read more about this position at Troika's job pages.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Friday, April 11, 2003 - 21:43 CET by Astin X

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

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Quote: What sort of animation will "Jefferson" have for the avatars?

The PC models have over 300 animations each. They include things like:
* Regular ol' attacks
* Combination (multiple) attacks
* Attacks against helpless foes
* Charge attacks
* Knockback/prone animations from multiple directions
* Lying on the ground dying in agony animations
* Limping
* Multiple talking gestures
* Salutes/bows
* "Use" animations (standing and kneeling)
* Pointing animations (standing and kneeling)
* Armor equipping animations
* Weapon equipping animations
* Jumping animations
* Acrobatic animations
* Climbing animations
* Reloading "launcher" weapon animations
* Unarmed punches, kicks, double kicks, jumping kicks, spinning hook kicks followed by twin punches, "Bolo Yeung"-style foot stomp on helpless victims, and a charge attack terminating with the attacker running up the target's body, kicking off, and flipping over.

The creature/character avatars in Jefferson are all ~1,000 polys. They all have about the same amount of detail, but individual creatures/characters might look more or less detailed based on a number of factors.

Quote: What sort of graphics card will be sufficient to run Jefferson with full details in 1024x768?.

The performance difference between a GeForce 2 and a GeForce 3+ is significant. That I can say with certainty. Some of the things we do in Jefferson will kill the fill rate of a GeForce 2, and most players will have to disable those effects for solid performance.
That said, the most important hardware requirement after a GeForce 3+ video card is having plenty o' RAM. Some of these levels are big.

Besides, if you want to live large, you have to go 1600x1200x32, volumetric shadows, and dynamic per-pixel lighting.

Quote: So what would be a good system spec for playing Jefferson with all options on at a 1024X768X32 resolution?

I can't say with any certainty until more testing is done with heavily populated areas. Sorry.

Quote: Will armors in Jefferson be a complete set, or can one combine pieces like a breastplate, bracers, boots, gloves, helmets and so on?

It depends on the armor. Ultimately, though, armor comes in "suits", though the player is often free to replace/add cosmetic/special pieces.

Quote: I really want hand crossbows in a CRPG.

I think that if enough people like hand crossbows that we would include them in a D&D game. However, I can't say I understand the reasoning for their classification as an "exotic weapon" in terms of proficiency. They really aren't very good weapons. Now, if drawing a hand crossbow were always a free action, that might make it a little more worthwhile.

People like their crossbows, and I'd like to have hand, light, heavy, and repeating crossbows in. Dual-wielding any missile weapons gets a little weird for animation and other reasons, so I probably wouldn't push too hard for that.

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Neverwinter Nights Community Interview at NW Vault
Posted Friday, April 11, 2003 - 21:08 CET by Mollusken

Neverwinter Vault have sent us word telling that they've conducted an interview with Halfelf, creator of the newly released Neverwinter Nights Character Creator, and Papermonk, leader of the City-Of-Doors Initiative. Here are a few of the questions from the interview:

You've just released your software titled "NWN Character Creator". Could you tell us what are it's major features?

Halfelf: The Character Creator (We call it the CC) allows you to create new characters, same as in NWN. The difference is that there are no artificial limits placed on characters created with the CC. If you have weird races enabled in your racialtypes.2da file, you can make characters with those weird races.

Currently, the feature set includes the ability to create characters with custom races, spells, sound sets, feats, familiars, companions, and more. It allows you to choose a different appearance than the one that the racialtypes.2da selects for you. It also allows you to be more selective about color, allowing the metallic shades, black, etc. You can also be choosier on tattoos – if you want your character to only have a tattoo on your right forearm, you now can.

You can also designate special abilities, which are basically innate spells. There's a lot there, and more coming. I'm very willing to entertain suggestions on what else should be added. For instance, support for a custom deity.2da is planned, which restricts domains and alignments to different deities, if that character is a cleric. If you're not a cleric, it's a convenient dropdown box.

The CODI project had originally planned an introductory module titled "Planescape: Foundations" to be released this month. Is that still in the works? Could you also give our readers who are not aware what it is, an overview?

Papermonk: Still in the works. Had some of those normal "things that slowed us down" but we're still expecting a late April or early May release.

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Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Forum Highlights
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003 - 22:19 CET by Gopher

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

Huy Nguyen, Interface and Magic System

Feats: Another notable exception off the top of my head is rogues at 10th get a "special ability" (crippling strike, slippery mind, etc) which may be substituted with a "normal" feat if he/she so desires.

Not necessarily a "feat", but certain races - elves, for example, get a free weapon proficiency (longsword or longbow or something) - not exactly the all-encompassing weapon proficiencies that some classes get, but notable still.

In short, there's a lot of crap in the core books, and if you want the nitty-gritty details, the PHB will have to be scoured ...but the previous posters are on the dot with the general feat/skill gains per level.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003 - 21:32 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

OnHit Function: Yes, yes, we've also looked at an OnHit event (though it would likely have to be something like OnCreatureHit, module-side, rather than scripting applied to the weapon itself... which can't be done). This is something that the Live Team would do, if it's done. Not sure if there's a chance we'd see it in XP2 or not, personally.

Quote: Oh yeah, David, If you have the time to answer I was wondering about OnPCHit and the reasons it cant be implimented.

I just mentioned that, didn't I? OnCreatureHit/OnPCHit... whatever. Same thing. And I never said it can't be implemented. It isn't being implemented. Not yet, at any rate.

Quote: I was wondering, will the OC plot characters (like Aribeth, Nasher, etc in NWN) have their own models? And will these models be a part of the creature list (hope not -> means having less creatures)

One of the SoU characters has a unique appearance, yes. It's not an entirely new model but a re-skin. And, yes, it is available in the creature list just like the SoU NPC's are.

Quote: Does it have the same... "attention to detail" as the aribeth model?

Let's just say that that sort of feminine appeal is not something that this NPC particularly needs.

New Portraits: As far as I'm aware, there's new portraits for the characters of the SoU official campaign but not new generic ones. I might be wrong, however, and just haven't seen them.

Petrification: There is, indeed, a petrification effect. I haven't seen it in-game, but my understanding is that it gives you a Stoneskin-like effect and completely paralyzes you at the same time (no animations being performed). On the regular difficulty setting, the petrification effect is temporary. Not sure what it is on hardcore... it might be permanent, but I'd have to look it up.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

New NPC Portraits: Dave's right--there will be new NPC portraits, but no new generic ones. We'll be getting to those later--there just aren't enough art resources available; everyone's working to finish up the final tweaks on the tilesets and creatures.

Gamespot Screenshot Info: Yeah, the caravan has a door.

Quote: Wagons should be placeables.

They're not, though. As for that blueish-white creature, Odin, that's just a PC with ghostly visage cast on it.

I don't believe there's a specific "Caravan interior" tile, but if you dress up the city interior tiles with all sorts of carpet placeables and such... it can look fairly gypsy-ish.

Psuedo Dragon As A Familiar: Yes.

Petrification: Naturally, petrification is in. Otherwise, these creatures would not.

Gorgons: The confusion is in what a Gorgon is. A gorgon in the D&D sense (and in a number of other fantasy worlds) is a bull-like creature. A gorgon in the mythological sense is what Medusa was (or a Medusa is, as is the case in D&D). Hope that clears it up.

Greek gorgons were women with snakes for hair. Medusa was the most powerful of the gorgons.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

New Spells: There are 50+ spells in the works for XP1 and we have not had any sort of special way we are releasing them so the fact that no Cleric spells of note have appeared is no indication that there are none in the works. The game will remain balanced as we have nearly a year of playtesting to gather feedback on various issues concerning spellcasting upon which to base our design calls.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Quote: I'm wondering more if paladin levels will count for some of the blackguard abilities - like smite good. Or maybe if the bonus added to inflict spells' damage will be helped by them. Or, for the purposes of turning the undead. It looks like blackguard will only be able to advance 10 levels total in that class, so it would be handy if you could count your total number of paladin and blackguard levels - Especially because all your natural paladin abilities will be no good once you lose your alignment. Then you can't use that class for turning undead, or smiting, so at least it would be nice if that didn't hurt you.

Actually, how it works in NWN is that if you become evil you do not lose your paladin abilities; you just cannot level up in that class anymore. So if you plan it well, you can have both Paladin, and Blackguard abilities.

New Portraits: Actually, Floodgate created four new generic human portraits; two male, and two female. They have a desert style and will stand out as distinctly new art.

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2003 - 17:58 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Do you think Peter Jackson should make a film version of The Hobbit once he is done with The Lord of The Rings?
(387 votes total)

Yes, definitely (231) 60%
Only if he sticks strictly to the book (100) 26%
No, heaven forbid (56) 14%

The majority of poll participants (60%) are obviously strongly in favour of Peter Jackson making a film version of The Hobbit once he is done with The Lord of The Rings.

26% of those who voted are a bit less enthusiastic, only wanting him to film The Hobbit if he sticks strictly to the book with his version.

14%, however, have absolutely no confidence in Jackson and would not want him to film The Hobbit under any circumstances.

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Neverwinter Nights: SoU Placeable Objects
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2003 - 21:36 CET by Sorcerer

As an extra to the NWN Wednesday, Community Manager Jay Watamaniuk sent a few screenshots of various Shadows of Underentide placeables (and their usage) out to fansites. Here's what he had to say:

This week I thought I would start taking a look at some of the fabulous new placeable objects that are being included in Shadows for the module builders out there to use. I took a few screenshots of a bare room (Empty Room 1 and Empty Room 2) and few shots of after I use some of the new placeables to dress the area up (Dressed Room 1, Dressed Room 2). The following are the objects I used in addition to some of the old placeables such as tuft of grass and the fern:

Hanging Ivy	Broken Pillar	Rubble #1
Rubble #2	Ruined Fence	Moss

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2003 - 20:56 CET by Sorcerer

Another week's around and here are the latest NWN Wednesday goodies:

Blackguard Prestige Class
The blackguard epitomizes evil. He is nothing short of a mortal fiend. The quintessential black knight, this villain carries a reputation of the foulest sort that is very well deserved. Head over to RPGVault to see a first look profile of this anticipated prestige class!

Gorgon and Cockatrice Revealed
What's a rodeo clown's worst nightmare? A Gorgon. And where can you read about this beast? IGNPC! They have an exclusive profile of the new Gorgon and Cockatrice creatures included in the upcoming Shadows of Undrentide expansion!

Pseudodragon
A profile of the playful and curious Pseudodragon was released to fansites last week, and in casses you missed it, you can noew read about this fascinating creature here.


Alleys and Doors Hak Paks
In the upcoming weeks we will take a closer look at some of the excellent community made Hak Paks out there that can be included in your own modules. This week we profile Alleys and Doors by ThallionStellani and Na.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, April 8, 2003 - 23:32 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Quote: 1) I know one could swap out an NPC's equipment after levelling up, but can this equipment upgrade be included in the command? For example, are there templates that can be used (specifying class, skills, feats & inventory) when levelling an NPC?

No, the equipment isn't included in the command. The way it works is this:

1) In the toolset when you create the creature, you can now specify the package being used for its initial class (a la the packages the PC can select).

2) In the LevelUpHenchman command, you can specify the class the henchman is to use to level up. If it is the initial class and a package is selected for it, it levels up according to the package selected. If it is a secondary class, it levels up according to the class's base package.

Now, I assume that custom package .2da's could be created, but that's in the realm of normal experimentation by the end user. It does, as well, just apply to the things that are normally leveled up on a character, and not the equipment... any equipment changes would have to be done via custom scripting.

Quote: 2) Can any NPC be levelled up this way, or only one currently in the PC's employ?

I don't know the answer to that. I would assume that any NPC can be leveled up, but I might be wrong.

Quote: 3) Do I need custom templates for each NPC I want to act as a henchman, or (using Deva Bryson Winblood's NPC Activities wrapper scripts) can I switch any NPC into a henchman and level them up appropriately? (I think it would be really cool if just about any NPC with whom a PC interacts could join the PC's party.)

So long as the NPC has the appropriate scripts used by henchman, they can act as a henchman does.

Oh... and I suppose I may as well just post the full layout for the command:

int LevelUpHenchman( object oCreature, int nClass = CLASS_TYPE_INVALID, int bReadyAllSpells = FALSE)

- Levels up a creature using default settings.
- If successfull it returns the level the creature now is, or 0 if it fails.
- If you want to give them a different level (ie: Give a Fighter a level of Wizard) you can specify that in the nClass.
- However, if you specify a class to which the creature no package specified, they will use the default package for that class for their levelup choices. (ie: no Barbarian Savage/Wizard Divination combinations)
- If you turn on bReadyAllSpells, all memorized spells will be ready to cast without resting.

Quote: Does the limit of 3 different classes still apply? It looks like you could call this function 5 times with a different class each time...

The limit of three classes still applies. If you tried a fourth, the command would simply return FALSE with a failed level-up.

Quote: Do NPC's gain experience, and if they do, do they level up automatically? Or should one simulate this through scripting, e.g. making an experience variable on the NPC and level him if the experience reaches the next level.

NPC's do not gain XP, and while you can assign XP to them through scripting they also would not level up unless specifically scripted to.

Incidentally, in case anyone was wondering, we actually do offer you some choice with regards to the way the henchmen level up in SoU. Basically they will have a "default" level-up scheme that they will use if you don't direct them otherwise. Through dialogue, however, you can direct them to apply themselves in one direction or the other. One of the henchmen, for instance, starts off as a rogue and will take some cleric levels as she levels up by default. You can speak to her, however, and tell her to continue from that point as either a rogue or as a cleric until you direct her to do otherwise.

Quote: Currently, it is not possible to delete waypoints. I wonder if we will also gain that ability with the new expansion pack?

Yes... as I understand it, waypoint objects will become both createable and deleteable.

Quote: While we are talking about creatable waypoints, do you know if the waypoints will only be able to be created at locations that are "in" rooms/corrdors, or will they be creatable at any location, including locations that are "in the walls"?

I've never tried it. I suspect that before any object is created it looks to see if the location is a valid one... it probably won't change that check solely for waypoints.

Quote: Also, I was wondering if there was a "David Gaider's list of all the stonkin' new scripting features in XP1" somewhere? Or is it a question of "scouring the boards for posts of new features as David Gaider finds them"?

No, there's no list of the scripting commands I've talked about. There are a few posts in the SoU section that talks about a few... the rest I'll probably leave as surprises.

Familiars: Here's the thing, though. Way back when we were implementing familiars in the first place, we had a decision to make. We didn't have many small creatures... as a matter of fact, at the time small creatures were considered to be impractical to create and use at all (this was before the chicken came along... or was it the egg?). Heck, we didn't even have a rat! So we had to use larger creatures. And while we could have implemented inherent bonuses and perhaps even the familiar-delivers-touch-attack ability (although that seems a little more problematic), it was decided that the inherent combat bonus that these larger familiars brought with them made that unnecessary, especially considering the needed balance that brought to the lone wizard/sorcerer in the single-player game (which isn't a consideration for the end-user, perhaps, but we had to consider it). At this point, we could definitely go and finish up the list of small familiars and implement them more as per the PHB. I wouldn't mind that, myself... make a feat called "Improved Familiars" to get the others, or something. BUT that still leaves two very big questions:

1) What do you do with all the wizards and sorcerers out there who already have their current familiar? Do you give them "Improved Familiars" for free? Do you force them to pick from the proper list suddenly?

2) The biggie (for us): how does this affect the single-player game? It's pretty obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the game that D&D isn't really balanced for a single class to play. It wouldn't be too hard to make a module geared for a specific single class... but all of them? What happens to the single-player wizard or sorcerer that suddenly starts the NWN OC now with only a toad in his pocket? Call the decision to make the single-player game a bad one or what-have-you, it's not something that can be revoked at this point and we have to keep it in mind.

Now we may eventually decide to sort this out and re-vamp the familiar system officially. But it's going to take some careful consideration and a fair amount of work... not something we want to take on lightly when, in all real consideration, the current system is not really broken. I hope that answers your question, at least with regards to our point of view on the topic.

As Syrsuro pointed out, I said that familiars were made as they were partly to even up wizards and sorcerers with the melee classes in the single-player game. That doesn't relate to the overall difficulty of the OC and is not in and of itself "idiot-proofing", as you put it. I was simply explaining some of the reasoning behind the decisions that were made regarding familiars and how they affect possible future approaches to changing that system.

Quote: David, any response to Carl's proposed solution regarding familiars?

Well, it's not really a solution since there isn't actually a problem... but overall it sounds like it's not a bad idea. I rather suspect that seperating familiars into ones that take up XP and ones that don't would not be a trivial issue... we could certainly have them exist as an inventory item that could occasionally be "brought out" like in BG2, but if they're out during combat I'm not sure that it would be easy to make it so that they didn't take up XP like normal.Plus we would still need the models for all these new familiars, first.

Quote: Are any changes being made to familiars/animal companions?

Other than the new ones, no, not for SoU. I haven't heard of any plans to change familiars for XP2, either, but if we thought the change was relevant enough we might consider it.

Quote: It might be too much work, but is there a possibility of having interactions with the familiar be persistent, like with the SoU henchmen?

To what end? It could be done... I'm just not sure of the pay-off for having one's familiar remember if his master beats him regularly or not, and the module-specific advice thing is not something I'm very keen on (in my PnP group, I think the wizard asked his familiar for advice a total of one time... and it was good for a laugh, but not much else). If someone could suggest some form of interaction with familiars/animal companions that would be more meaningful (and not require a monumental amount of work... and, yes, a different dialogue for each type of familiar or animal companion DOES fall under that category), I'm all ears. I'm just not sure what kind of interaction you're looking for. As for having them level up on their own... I'm not sure it would be necessary to do that, as familiars basically level up when their owners do anyway. You'd also have to consider what would happen when a familiar or animal companion dies. What then? They don't get a new one until next level up? While, sure, that removes them from the possibility of being cannon fodder, it probably also means they wouldn't be used period. That's not better.

Custom Content: I believe there are plans for the Live Team to look at getting some functionality for the toolset to handle custom content better... it's not something the expansions are going to deal with, though.

Quote: *bump* on this until we hear it gets resolved...(memory leak)

The post above mentions another post on the General Discussion forum where I talked about this. A fix for this has already gone into our system, according to my last discussion with Derek French, but there ended up being more involved than was originally thought. A fair number of major files had to be changed, so there's quite a bit of testing to be done. Should all go well, this should be included in 1.30.

Quote: I suppose that there is a ClearAllActiosn being called here but i have no idea where and i have no idea where i would ask teh wolf to contimue running that waypoint. Is the wolf being "disturbed" when they bump into teh PC?

Sounds like you're running into a similar problem that our scripters have generally faced when trying to direct creatures about. Basically this is part of the way the pathing works... the wolves have already calculated their pathing back when they started running. When they run into an unforeseen obstacle (the PC), they stop. Because they aren't calculating new pathing, they don't continue moving. The trick, which isn't always possible, is to have the wolves figure out when they haven't reached their destination and to then re-calculate their path. The force move commands simply tell the creature that if they haven't reached their destination point in x seconds to teleport their... this was put in to solve some of these sorts of problems. My advice would be to set some sort of half-way waypoint that's a bit off to the side (have the wolves circle around), lessening the chance of the PC's getting in their way, and then have the wolves move first there and then to their destination. Beyond that, the force move commands may be your best solution.

Class Packages: Some of the classes have more than 4 packages (the bard and rogue, for instance, have 5 while the Wizard has one for each school)... but I don't think any of them are new. The prestige classes, meanwhile, have a base package but that's it. Since they'll always be non-primary classes, the LevelUpHenchman command would only use a default package for them anyway.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

2 NPC Conversations: Just to be clear, the actual conversation should look like this:

PC: Did you...
--NPC1: No,...
----PC: Are you...
------NPC1: I'm sure...
--------PC: [Continue]
----------NPC2: Nonsense!...

(Notice the PC's [Continue] node.)

Now:
1. The node where NPC2 speaks should have NPC2's script tag in the node's Speaker field.
2. The conversation has to be assigned (at least) to the instance of NPC1 that's in the area.
3. An instance of NPC2 has to be in the area and reasonably close to NPC1.

That should do it.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

SoU: To update on the ability to play SoU characters on non-Sou servers:

We have begun the testing of SoU and Non SoU resources working together in multiplayer, and so far things look good. That's all the detail I can say at the moment, but we do think that we are going in the right direction.

(P.S. The game will be released when it is ready.)

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Neverwinter Nights Mac Update
Posted Tuesday, April 8, 2003 - 17:58 CET by Mollusken

Here's the latest status update on the Macintosh version of Neverwinter Nights:

We understand the frustration in having to wait for something and we do appreciate your patience in this matter. There are a few cool things that are in the pipe for the Mac version of Neverwinter Nights. One of them is a Neverwinter Nights Mac Tech Trial that will be released before the game goes gold. Part of this Tech Trial will be to garner feedback on the performance and compatibility of the Mac version, to ensure that we provide you, the Mac gamer, with the best experience we can manage. We do appreciate it has been a while since our last update and want to ensure the community that we are diligently working on the project. The Macintosh community and the Mac version of Neverwinter Nights are important to BioWare and we want to ensure the final product meets our fans expectations.

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Neverwinter Nights Linux Client Beta 4
Posted Tuesday, April 8, 2003 - 17:51 CET by Mollusken

BioWare have released another beta version of the Neverwinter Nights Linux client, and here's the list of improvements:

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Icewind Dale 2 for $8.99
Posted Monday, April 7, 2003 - 22:34 CET by Sorcerer

In case you haven't bought Icewind Dale 2 yet, and you shop at Amazon.com, you can get Icewind Dale 2 there for just $8.99 after a $20 mail-in rabate. The offer is only valid till April 20, so click here to get your copy now!

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SP Exclusive: Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Interview
Posted Monday, April 7, 2003 - 20:53 CET by Sorcerer

Sorcerer's Place has conducted an interview with Troika's Tim Cain, the Project Leader on Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil.

Due to the size of the interview it will be posted in two parts. The first part is a very interesting read and, among other things, reveals a complete list of feats & skills that will be implemented in this upcoming D&D title.

Read it all here.

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"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Sunday, April 6, 2003 - 23:33 CET by Astin X

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

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Quote: I asked for it long ago and JE said that probably won't be swimming in jefferson.

There will, however, be wading. The wading animations are.

Quote: Hopefully this will actually add something to the game other than cosmetics.

It does.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, April 6, 2003 - 17:03 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Scripting Functions: Ah, what I wouldn't have given for these commands when I was doing my "Town AI" project back before NWN's release. I encountered a road block when I realized that NPC's became paralyzingly stupid when a PC was not in their area. But now, voila...

int GetAILevel(object oTarget=OBJECT_SELF)
void SetAILevel(object oTarget, int nAILevel)

Where nAILevel =

AI_LEVEL_DEFAULT - Default setting. The game will take over seting the appropriate AI level when required.
AI_LEVEL_VERY_LOW - Very Low priority, very stupid, but low CPU usage for AI. Typically used when no players are in the area. AI_LEVEL_LOW - Low priority, mildly stupid, but slightly more CPU usage for AI. Typically used when not in combat, but a player is in the area. AI_LEVEL_NORMAL - Normal priority, average AI, but more CPU usage required for AI. Typically used when creature is in combat. AI_LEVEL_HIGH - High priority, smartest AI, but extremely high CPU usage required for AI. Avoid using this. It is most likely only ever needed for cutscenes. ...one caveat, though. While I am pulling these functions out of the current list and ooohing and aaahhing at them, it is still possible that they might not make it to the final cut if they don't end up working properly.

I'm not sure you're quite correct in your assumptions, Kem. The 'AI Level' does not affect intelligence insofar as what the creature is scripted to do... it affects the priority that is given to the creature by the CPU so that it calculates pathing efficiently and runs its heartbeats more regularly. An example of "low intelligence", for example, is how a creature calculates a path if a player is not in the same area... it checks a straight line to its destination and if there is anything barring its path, it just doesn't move. A higher AI Level would cause that creature to start sucking up some processor priority to calculate a path to its destination that would work. When it comes to whether or not a lich or a kobold would act more or less intelligent when it comes to combat and spell selections... that's different (although setting a low AILevel to a creature in combat would certainly cause them to make decisions much slower and probably not move around very well).

Data Storage: I've only used the data storage dealie once before, so my memory is not exactly the best regarding it. However, basically there are two types of commands:

1) There's the Get/Set for each data type (except objects), similar to how it works now with GetLocalInt and so forth... except you're using the command GetCampaignInt along with an extra field, the "database name". So you could store an integer with SetCampaignInt( "Campaign", "Plot_Done", 1, GetPCSpeaker()); and then store a location in the same database with SetCampaignLocation("Campaign", "Teleport_Location", lLoc, GetPCSpeaker());

Then in the other module I can use the Get version to retrieve that info... or simply use DestroyCampaignDatabase( "Campaign"); to remove all data of whatever type that was stored under that name.

2) Objects work a bit differently. You use StoreCampaignObject (which returns TRUE if successful) and RetrieveCampaignObject (which returns an object, obviously). The thing I like about this is that objects are stored inventory and all... so bringing a henchman along with his current inventory into another module is a quick, one-command operation. Where the data is stored and where the other module reads it from... pffft, you got me. But it works just fine. Once again, a caveat: this is based on my imperfect memory and the functions may yet change. You were warned.

Quote: I think the next big step would be to have the henchpeople actually level up just like a pc, and have the pc able "suggest" possible advancement paths to the henchperson through dialogue...

Well, I rather suspect that would involve the new command LevelUpHenchman... but I'll talk more about that later.

Quote: Now for an Odd Question. If I Store a player object (assuming it stores everything about a character). I'm curious as to if I can set a player back to that object.

No, because there's no command to "set a player back" to anything, is there? I assume you could store the player state at some point and, say, use CopyObject to create a duplicate of the PC at that point... I'm not sure, though, as I've never tried storing the PC object.

Quote: Sweet Now, are they REALLY levelling up, or destroying themselves and recreating the next version still?

They are really levelling up. There's only one version of the henchmen in the OC modules, not twenty.

Quote: I've got a further question about the SetCampaign* functions. When you tell it the "table name", will it automatically create that table?

Yes. There's a seperate command to destroy the entire table, but it is created by SetCampaign*** automatically.

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Greyhawk Interview at RPG Vault
Posted Friday, April 4, 2003 - 16:10 CET by Mollusken

RPG Vault have posted the first part of an interview with Tim Cain and other members of the Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil development team. Both designers and programmers talk about the D&D campaign, the module and its monsters.

What are a couple of monsters that you consider as favorites in the Temple of Elemental Evil module, and why?

Steve Moret
Lead Programmer
Giant Frogs. Easy low level monsters that in Temple of Elemental Evil appear out of nowhere and scare the crap out of you - both in pen and paper, and in the CRPG. Their tongue attacks rock and make them a great dynamic, "Hey, you wouldn't expect that!" kind of monster. Not too much of a challenge but a great part of the game. Perfect monster for the beginning of the game.

Speaking as a gamer, what are a couple of things you find particularly interesting, memorable or otherwise noteworthy about the Greyhawk campaign world in general or the Temple of Elemental Evil module in particular?

Tom Decker
Producer and Assistant Designer
The Greyhawk world is rich with history, containing many characters of complex motivation. It's a world where good and evil do fight for supremacy, but the predominant faction by far is neutral. This results in a fascinating world where people frequently switch sides, and the world is in a continual flux.

Our game reflects this as we have followers who may desert you in your time of need, leaving at times for purely personal reasons or at others simply because they want to be on the winning side and you are losing. The sleepy town of Hommlet may seem like a safe haven compared to the dungeons beneath the Temple, but you should watch your back wherever you are. Likewise, you may find friends in the most unlikely places.

Read everything at RPG Vault.

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, April 3, 2003 - 22:19 CET by Veldrin

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

David Gaider, Designer

Placeables: Have you ever seen that many mushrooms placed together in the caverns tileset? It's available as a placeable. As is the wall ivy, as are ground patches of moss/snow/dirt/cobblestone.

Quote: What all can the ivy cling to?

It doesn't actually cling. It's just a vertical placeable... you can have the ivy crawling up air, if you like. It looks really good against a wall, a gate or a pillar, though.

2DA Access: You guys are incorrigable. Now all of a sudden it just isn't good enough unless it also comes with convenient integer-converters and built-in search functions.

Quote: To answer the other question - I had assumed that it would have to be on both the client (via a Hak Pak) and the server (as with modified .2das), but you are correct - it might not. That would make it much easier. Any clarification on this point, David??

I would assume that if the .2da is custom it is handled like any other custom content. Could be wrong, though... you'll have to see for yourselves.

Rural Tileset Changes: One problem with this, however: the creatures are all designed to stand on flat surfaces. You won't notice much of a difference with the two-legged humanoids, but when the creature is four-legged or much larger (like a dragon) you're going to end up with one side visibly off the ground and one side clipping into the side of the hill when they are on a slope. I'm not saying that it doesn't look nice visually... it does... but I don't think we would put that kind of change in without also fixing this issue, and I'm not even certain exactly what that kind of fix would take.

Quote: Add more placeables. For instance, see the work of Martin E. His placeable trees completely put the standard ones in the toolset to shame. With good tree placeables, it is possible to turn the rural tileset into a forest. If we had more hill transitions/styles, we could create hills or even mountains. With more houses, we could have true rural communities in a variety of settings (mountains, hills, lightly wooded, plains, etc.)

Placeables are great, and I do like Martin E.'s trees. I would caution people against an over-reliance on them, however. For starters, placeables can wreak havoc on the walkmesh... creatures can't take placeables into account when calculating their path points, so if you have placeables littered about your area you can make pathing quite problematic. This can be doubly dangerous if you intend to have combat in the area. That said, there are a good deal more placeables in SoU, including many that can be used outdoors. (While the Rural tileset is indeed the work-horse of all the tilesets, we actually haven't used it in the OC at all. Fancy that.)

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Quote: I believe I have seen this happen when changing area and the server is autosaving.

You could try switching autosave off if you have it on. Yep that's the cause. When an autosave occurs while you are going through an area transition, this problem may happen (depends on a few other factors too). We've made a fix for this problem and the fix will be in an upcomming patch (don't know at this point when that will be).

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Last Week's Poll's Results
Posted Thursday, April 3, 2003 - 17:26 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which of the following CRPG party models appeals to you the most?
(515 votes total)

One player character and several joinable NPCs (Baldur's Gate series) (378) 73%
Several player characters (Icewind Dale series) (110) 21%
One player character hiring henchmen if needed (Neverwinter Nights) (27) 5%

The overwhelming majority (73%) of people who voted obviously like best the party model used throughout the Baldur's Gate series of CRPGs, where there is one player character and several joinable NPCs.

The second popular choice is several player characters, as in the Icewind Dale series, but with only 21% of votes.

The least popular option of all is the Neverwinter Nights variant where there is one player character who can hire an additional henchman if needed. This option received only 5% of votes.

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Shadows of Undrentide Interview at CRPG.RU
Posted Thursday, April 3, 2003 - 15:55 CET by Mollusken

Darcy Pajak from FloodGate Entertainment and Tom Ohle from BioWare answer a few new questions about Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide, this time a the russian site CRPG.RU. Here's a couple of the questions:

One of the new prestige classes is the Harper Scout. What abilities does it offer, and what characters would be most interested in obtaining it?

Darcy: The Harper is just one of the five new prestige classes we are adding for Shadows of Undrentide. The other prestige classes are the Assassin, the Blackguard (an evil Paladin), the Shadowdancer (magic-using rogue and spy), and the Arcane Archer (use magic to enhance their archery skills). All of these classes have feats exclusive to them. For example, the Harper will gain the ability to gain extra lore, better saving throws, and better attacks against certain monsters. They will also gain the ability to cast spells once they reach a high enough level. The Harper class is interwoven into the Forgotten Realms mythology, and fans of the Harpers will enjoy the opportunity to play as one of these mysterious guardians. For those people unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms, the Harper is a great prestige class for a Bard or Rogue to choose, but is available to all classes who meet the requirements.

The music for the game is written by Kemal Amarasingham of Looking Glass fame, which is definitely going to add atmosphere to it. How much music will be present? Are you planning to preview the soundtrack on your website?

Darcy: Kemal has created quite a few beautiful original tracks for Shadows of Undrentide. He has at least two for each new area: Rural Winter, Desert, and Ruins. His music really adds depth to the exotic locations the hero travels too.

Read everything here.

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Neverwinter Wednesday
Posted Thursday, April 3, 2003 - 0:45 CET by Sorcerer

Another week's around and here are the latest NWN Wednesday goodies:

New Creature: Faerie Dragon: Faerie Dragons can be familiars only to the worthiest of magic users, and companions to the powerful. The Faerie Dragon is one of over a dozen new creatures included in the upcoming Shadows of Undrentide expansion. Another extra creature has also been released to SP:

Pseudodragon (picture)

These tiny members of the dragon family are described as playful and curious. In contrast to this they have also been described as having a personality of a common house cat which, in my book, makes them cold, aloof, merciless killers who will randomly scratch a welty scar across your hand just because they're peevish about the color blue or maybe they thought wood should smell different on Wednesdays or something. Not to say I'm bitter about cats, no sir that would get me in trouble. These flying vermin are also immune to sleep… which really doesn't sound like any of the cats I've met.

Level: Dragon 2
Hit Points: 15
AC: 17
Alignment: Neutral Good

Abilities
Str: 11
Dex: 11
Con: 13
Int: 10
Wis: 12
Char: 10
CR: 1

New Spells Revealed: New spells from the Shadows of Undrentide spell list: Wizards and Sorcerers flame enemies with the power of Firebrand, Druids crush enemies from above with the new area of effect spell Bombardment, and there is a new cantrip, Flare. Two other spells have also been released to SP:

Gust of Wind

Caster Level(s): Bard 3, Wizard / Sorcerer 3
Innate Level: 3
School: Evocation
Descriptor(s):
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Medium
Area of Effect / Target: Huge
Duration: Instant
Additional Counter Spells:
Save: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

This spell creates a blast of air that knocks down any creatures failing their saving throws. It is also powerful enough to disperse any area of effect spells (such as cloudkill) that are in the path of the wind gust.

Divine Favor

Caster Level(s): Cleric 1, Paladin 1
Innate Level: 1
School: Evocation
Descriptor(s):
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Area of Effect / Target: Caster
Duration: 1 Turn
Additional Counter Spells:
Save: None
Spell Resistance: No

The caster gains a +1 bonus to attack and weapon damage rolls for every three caster levels (at least +1, to a maximum of +5).

Hak Pak Attack: Myconids, Galleons, and Scarecrows, oh my! This week's builder profile showcases custom content by Schazzwozzer, including fungal myconid creatures and galleon-style ship tiles, as we launch a new series of profiles examining excellent community made Hak Paks out there that can be included in your own modules.

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Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Forum News
Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2003 - 17:30 CET by Gopher

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

Tim Cain, Lead Designer and Project Leader

Quote: Spell Components

Spells that have significant material components (i.e. components with a GP cost specified in the spell) will cost gold to cast. So while you don't need 500 gp diamond to cast Raise Dead, you do need 500gp. For spells like Fireball that need bat guano and sulfur, you don't need anything nor do you need to spend any gold. We just assume you have those components o­n you.
I mean, who doesn't carry bat guano around?

Steve Moret, Lead Programmer

Quote: Game Art

As far as I know, we are implementing all of our own art. And all concepts and 2d artwork (portraits, interface, etc.) are being done by Chris Glenn. What he is using for reference I'm not sure. But personally I think his stuff is freaking amazing.

Quote: Skin Tones

Currently our engine incurs severe penalties and does not have an easy API for manipulating colors or hues o­n a subset of colors of a texture o­n the fly.

One idea was to have our texture artists redo a bunch of different skin tone textures with all the armors but I don't think this will be feasable within our estimated time frame. I think it is something that we want to add, but probably wont make it for our ship date.
But you never know...

Quote: Using o­ne-Handed Weapons With Two Hands

A little FYI, I think the way o­ne handed weapon attacks are done right now assume that if you have nothing in your other hand that you are using it two handed. We thought and thought and thought (for hours, or maybe minutes, we started playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos after a few minutes) and could not come up with a reason why you'd NOT want to wield a o­ne handed weapon two handed if you have a spare hand (you get 1.5x strength bonus). If you guys can come up with a good reason why we will probably change it.

Quote: More o­n Attack With Two Hands

Currently, it does render you with o­ne hand holding it and Weapon Finesse is o­nly used if the damage it will produce is higher than the damage that not using would produce (IIRC). However, Deflect Arrows does provide an interesting issue.

I think the way it is right now is kinda cheating because you will be switching from 1 handed to 2 handed during the same round (if you were to deflect arrows). I don't know how big of an issue it may be. Perhaps balance and playtesting will show whether or not we should have a option for changing it.

I'll ask Sean if we can add an option to Attack /w Two Hands to the Standard Attack action.

Sean Craig, Core d20 Implementation

Quote: Putting Away Your Weapons When Casting Spells

At some point you have make allowences for how the game is actually played. It would be a pain in the butt if you had to go into your inventory and put away your two handed sword every time your wizard/fighter wanted to cast a spell. So in our game it's assumed you can switch as a free action. We go past that, actually - even if you've got a dagger in each hand you can cast spells. You put your weapons away, cast the spell, and then pull the weapons back out again as a single standard action. This might seem unrealistic but believe me, it's better than the alternative.

Similarly, we're not requiring an empty hand for Weapon Finesse or Deflect Arrows.

Huy Nguyen, Interface and Magic System

Quote: Purchasing Enchanted Items

Dheylin, do you mean enchanting your own weapons/armors? ("buying" enchantments?)
If so, item creation is in. if you meant purchasing already enchanted items, then (as the others have mentioned), most likely high-powered enchantments won't be sold in stores near you. tim could tell you for sure about what kind of magic items are sold by vendors

Quote: Subraces

As for the drow question, I believe the concern is not whether they are too powerful or unbalancing, but the design team does not want to introduce a PC selectable Race that *should* evoke certain types of responses (dialog or otherwise) but won't, given our timeframe.

*ahem*, more succinctly, if we don't time left to properly script/dialog how NPC's should react to a party of Drow waltzing into Hommlet, then that is a strong argument for not including Drow. This is more important to the design team then just throwing in the Drow for their (IMO) awesome bonuses.

I hope that makes sense. in short, no guarantees o­n subraces (either way) ...the subraces that are just a set of modifiers and require little or no extra scripting are more likely to make it in, if any of them do. (i.e. this same argument can be made for the half-dragons, celestials, half-ogres, etc - but something like a Wood Elf would be nice and easy).

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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2003 - 22:55 CET by Veldrin

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

Trent Oster, Producer

Spell Sequencers: We didn't put in spell sequencers in the original release because we never had the time.
I love the idea of waking up in the morning and quick casting all your normal protection spells with one click. I'm hoping we can free up a little time in the future to look at sequencers in depth.

David Gaider, Designer

Quote: it just didn't seem like THAT big a deal... since you can fake it with a list of constants in the scripting...

I suppose it's true that there are many things this function does that are currently possible... but you try creating a wandering monster table or a random treasure table via regular scripting and then try it with a .2da and then tell me how big a deal it is.

Quote: Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but can this be used for custom content like creatures? As in a new creature can have its own .2da files (appearance/portrait/etc) instead of having to include modified default .2da files?

No, not that. The game itself accesses the info off of the default .2da files when the game initially starts up... it grabs the info and then doesn't look at those files again, afterwards. The scripting command allows you to look up a .2da file (whether one of the defaults or one you made yourself) and get the information out of a specific row/column at any time. So you can grab some information out of the appearance.2da, but that's not the same as how the engine uses that file.

Quote: But as always, it's up to the module builder to put that stuff in. Either way it still has to be scripted in by somebody. This just makes it easier to manage. Hopefully this will be how they do the SoU wandering monsters so we can all get a good peek at how they use it.

I'm not sure how the wandering monster system is being done, but it probably will use this, yes. That's being done for XP2, though. What we want to use this command for right now is our random treasure system. It will probably also be extended to the summoning system as well as controlling the XP we give out in the OC... having one clear, central table where you can adjust all this stuff is a god-send. If anyone's ever looked at the random treasure script for the NWN OC, you'll know what I mean.

Quote: Wait wait, you mean we can create our own 2da files? Say I create a file and call it temreksencounterlist.2da, with the first colum being a monsters name, the second its blueprint reference and the third the amount of creatures? And then read from it?

Correct. Anything you pull off the table that isn't a string you can convert, like with StringToInt. And you can make the .2da as complex as you need... blueprint reference, number of creatures, chance of other creatures appearing, a waypoint tag they appear at, the name of another .2da file that determines the makeup of that encounter group... whatever.

Brent Knowles, Co Lead Designer

Craft Systems: We really like the D&D item crafting system and have explored various ways of implementing it (as well as examing the various crafting systems that the builder's community have developed). Unfortunately for SOU we will only be able to put in a couple of item crafting teaser's (like the Harper Scout ability). This is definitely something we are looking into for XP2.

Class Abilities: For XP1, class feat-spell abilities *will* show up dynamically, though there is a cap of 7 active abilities on the radial, if I remember correctly. So this means you could add Feat X which calls Spell X for your new prestige class and it would show up on the radial menu in game if you set the data up correctly.

Tom Ohle, Communications Associate

NWN Wednesdays: There's a reason we haven't shown as many creatures as we have spells and feats: there aren't as many. 16 creatures... 50 spells.... 30 feats. That's a 5 to 1 ratio... thus, mathematically, creatures get less lovin'. They'll be coming, though.

SoU Treasure System: Yeah, there is a better treasure system in SoU. Part of that is that there aren't as many random treasures laying around. If there's a barrel in a kitchen, it's highly unlikely you'll find money in it; a fish is much more likely. That said, I played about the first 5 hours of SoU on the weekend... it's a lot of fun. Can't wait until it's done; there are definitely way more non-combat options for those inclined.

Oh yeah, you still get experience for combat--but you also get experience for solving things diplomatically

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Greyhawk Chat at Adrenaline Vault
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2003 - 16:18 CET by Mollusken

The Adrenaline Vault have arranged a forum chat with Tim Cain, the man in charge of the development of Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Readers posted their questions in the AVault forums, and Cain answered them over a three days period. Here's a couple of the questions:

Is this possible because you're reusing the engine from Arcanum? How is development coming?

We are using a heavily modified version of that engine, which now uses 3D characters and particle effects. We began modifications after Arcanum was completed, and when Infogrames came asking about the possibility of doing D&D, we showed them a demo of the new engine's capabilities, and they really liked it. Without having such an engine available, we would never have agreed to such a tight schedule (18 months to make an RPG!). So we have spent that time primarily making content and encoding the D&D rules into the game layer, but we did continue to add new features like cloth rendering, so we could do robes and capes, and procedural spell effects, so spells like Chain Lightning can behave as they are supposed to, in this case leaping from one enemy to the next.

I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about ToEE, what kind of peripheral type activities we can expect considering the source material is a dungeon crawl?

Well, D&D is a combat-intensive game, but we have tried to make a lot of non-combat solutions to quests. I don't think it's possible to finish the game with no combat at all (although please feel free to prove me wrong), but there are low combat paths and ways to finish the game that avoid combat at the end.

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