July 2004
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - 13:26 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
What the Official Word on the 1.63 Patch?
He's putting those threads up about once a month to remind us about the patch. Good thing, prevents Craig from forgetting what he's working on daily I suppose
1.63 is pretty much feature complete and in closed beta at the moment. This will probably followed by a number of fixes and then we'll have one or two open betas, followed by fixes from those and then release. The exact release date for that will be "when it's done". We are aware that it's been quite a while since the last patch, but when 1.63 is out, I think it will be clear why it took that long
More:
Ooh, ooh, can I beta test this patch? (i.e. let us know when it's available for public beta?)
We usually post in this forum when we go into public beta, after all we want people to use it, that's the point of a public beta
Used Neverwinter Nights from Ebay
When thinking about buying a used copy of NWN from ebay you need to remember that you need to trust the person you are buying from about the CDKey. If the person keeps the CDKey as well you might see "cdkey in use" errors or even deactivation of the key, if it's used on too many machines at once. NWN has been reasonably cheap in many stores lately so I would do a bit of shopping around for a new copy before deciding to buy a used one.
What the Official Word on the 1.63 Patch?
Bioware should add remove hardcore levecap in nwnmain, and instead used 2da. IT should have be possible to advance a charchter to become 40 level wizard and fighter.
40 is enough.
eternally green
You should update to the latest patch. I believed that fixed the problem.
The patch that fixes that problem has not been released yet
LinuxDedServer loopback IPs
add a ipchains/iptables rule to deny connection attempts from all unwanted interfaces.
Robin Mayne, Webmaster
21 Jul 2004 - NWN CEP Race Profile - The Wemic
Ooh btw - I wonder if you could do one for the Brownie too. I just HAVE to love those guys, especially being so tiny an' all.
Brownies are on the menu for this Wed
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - 13:21 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Complexity = good!
I think the optimal experience is easy to learn, hard to master through this has somewhat limited application in a RPG. Complexity is good as long as it is presented in a way that makes it easy for the player to understand what's going on.
Will DA be difficult and long enough?
Let's put it this way: When you are moving on new ground (i.e. own IP, new rules system, etc), you better make sure that the game you are developing still retains some of the elements that made people buy and love your previous games.
It wouldn't be very smart to *completely* change your winning recipe in one step, because if you throw too much of what you've done in the past overboard in a single game you
a) lose the advantage of your team's experience. If you start over with too many things at once, you lose technical and creative experience you gained with your previous games and your development time will skyrocket.
b) run a huge risk of alienating your loyal fans/customers and potentially losing them.
Innovation is good and necessariy to keep on top, but there is no need for radical innovation if your system works. Stepwise improvement is much smarter
BioWare is innovating - with Jade we are entering new ground in many ways (Action based combat, no "classbased" system, etc), with NWN we entered new ground (modable RPG, 3D engine) and with DA we will again enter new ground. But all of these games also have BioWare signature elements that most of the people that buy our games expect from us. NWN went a small bit too far from what people expected and there was quite some critique about it - and we went in with hordes and tried to fix those (i.e. henchman interactivity, number of henchmen) and the review scores tell us that we were on the right track.
In the end there is only space for so much innovation in a single game, and you will do a risk analysis and see if "that piece more of innovation" is really worth a significant higher development time or potential lost base customers.
Finally, not doing certain things doesn't mean we are not willing to innovate, it can also mean that we think these things don't work, don't work in a BioWare game or that market / technology are not ready for them yet. If we think that i.e. "turnbased combat" or "learning by doing" doesn't belong into a BioWare game, there is no way you will see it.
I mean, if it was all about the big buck and such, it would be a lot easier for us to do what most companies seem to be doing these days and throw a couple more sequels at you guys, these are so much cheaper to develop and tend to sell pretty good.
Things that have gone over well in other rpg's
Having played ToEE, and enjoying the combat design, I've since come to the conclusion that the pseudo-realtime combat is the better choice. This is the method where you can pause (or have set autopause) and issue commands to your party members at will. Then you can let it go. If you don't want to have slow combat, you can go at it in realtime as you please. ToEE's combat really slowed the game down to a crawl and I think moving away from full turn-based combat is perfect. Even with games like FO, it could have been easily done with a nice pseudo-realtime system to speed up gameplay.
That way, you can still get all the strategy, tactics, and magic aiming you need, while allowing the player to set it up the way they like. BG2 had it right for a party-based game.
There is a problem with that though
I aim a Fireball, and by the time i'm finished Casting the target has moved out of the spot i targeted, which never happens in PnP or turn based CRPGs
I should be able to aim Magick after casting, or pick a enemey to be the Target and not a piece of terrian
In NWN, when you aimed the fireball on a creature, you would cast it on the creatue, regardless of movement or not...
BioWarez, or level 4 Protection From Piracy spell
Hehe, the monthly copy protection discussion/rant. Copy protection is up to the publisher. This game doesn't have a publisher signed. End of story.
David Gaider, Designer
Seamless Area Transitions and Multiple Servers
Seamless area transitions could work. No-one's saying they couldn't. As Tarmack said, however, if one is going to use them it's a huge design decision that affects many things down the line. So many other game elements will need to accomodate that decision down the road.
Sacred and Dungeon Siege both use the seamless transitions as I understand, and I'm sure those games have their particular strengths as well as weaknesses... including some major differences from something like NWN, some of which are going to be necessitated solely because of those seamless transitions.
So we could have seamless area transitions, but it would change a lot of things about how DA would work compared to NWN. Some good and some bad, no doubt, but eventually we need to decide which effects are most important to us and go that one.
One effect that WILL NOT be taken into consideration when making this decision, however, is how seamless area transition would affect the development of PW's. While I truly find the idea truly baffling that developing a PW-maker for $50 is some veritable gold mine waiting to come into being, that's neither here nor there. Maybe I'm wrong and that's correct, maybe a PW-maker would be a smart way to go. DA can't be everything for everyone and we can't afford to spend our time including features that will work the best for making PW's AND making a single-player game AND making a multiplayer game AND making a good toolset to make single/multi-player modules. We've said where our focus lies and that we will support PW-making as far as that focus allows... and if someone else wants to come along and get rich making a system that primarily focuses on PW-making instead, then God bless 'em. But that ain't us. Period.
Spellcasting time- please not all the same like NWN
The reason all casting times were the same in NWN is because that's how the 3rd edition D&D rules dictated it to be. Casting always took a simple action, no more, no less... unless one used the Quicken Metamagic feat. There's no need to do the same in Dragon Age. What kind of casting times would you prefer to see? Or maybe there should be no actual "casting" at all?
Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer
Limits to number of PCs in party
My impression was that the number of PCs each player could control within the party was going to be what was limited. Would a BioWaran care to comment?
That's right, we don't want 64 parties of 4~6 people each playing in a module. We haven't set a limit on the number of people on a server, but we are thinking of allowing only one henchmen per player in a multiplayer game.
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Hall of Fame Interview with Chadmium at NWVault
Posted Monday, July 26, 2004 - 3:06 CET by chevalier
This time it's Chadmium, whose module Legacy of the Dracyn has hit 8000 downloads and made it to the Hall of Fame. They talk about a couple of personal things, as well as Chadmium's priorities in module making. Here's a snip:
4) Could you tell us what are the main features of your modules that have attracted so much attention from fans?
I put a huge amount of effort into the visual effects of my modules - I think visuals have a special way of enhancing immersion, and some of the combinations possible with the Aurora toolset are truly breathtaking to behold.
I also like to think that fans enjoy the density of my modules. They are both short in length and small in size, but packed as tight as I could make them. There are no huge, sprawling areas to wander - at no point does the player have to wonder what to do next, they adhere closely to the plot, and I tried to make conversations and battles few in number, but high in quality.
To give you an idea, I spend at least 60 hours of building time for each single hour of play (more when I was first learning to script).
Read the whole thing at NWVault.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Monday, July 26, 2004 - 2:57 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
David Gaider, Designer
Visit to BioWare
On second thought, being the perceived pain in the butt I expect Darth Woo and his apprentice David Gaider jump me and stuff me in the trash compactor.
I am not Woo's apprentice! He works in the QA pit for the love of God! ...ummmm, though there are plenty of nice people in the QA pit and all. (trash compactor? Try the woodchipper, dude.)
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
Visit to BioWare
How did we get from visiting BioWare to scantily clad people?
Are we talking about the games or BioWare? You know it is summer here now.
The Graphics NEED!!!
I can't speak for DA (honestly, I can't), but KotOR used normal maps.
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Dungeons & Dragons RTS Has a Name
Posted Sunday, July 25, 2004 - 20:31 CET by chevalier
The Dungeons & Dragons RTS has finally received a title, athough it's still subject to change. Here's a snip:
As some of you no doubt remember from our coverage at E3, Atari and Liquid Entertainment has teamed up to bring us yet another hot-looking RTS to the already-crowded strategy market -- but didn't give it an official name. After spending the weekend hanging out at the 2004 San Diego Comic-Con, however, your pals here at IGN have discovered the official title after all; which was proudly emblazoned on a playable kiosk that housed the same E3 build we covered a few months back.
In case the suspense has been killing you, the official title for the fantasy strat is Dragonshard Wars, and like its Forgotten Realms console brother, Demon Stone, seems to have lost its inspirational D&D branding to help popularize it with the mainstream crowd. Of course, the title is definitely subject to change and the Dungeons & Dragons influence is still very much in place -- this is just a matter of trying to reach as big an audience as possible.
Read the whole thing at IGN.
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BioWare and Dragon Age Impressions at Ladies of Neverwinter
Posted Sunday, July 25, 2004 - 1:29 CET by chevalier
Shayna Davidson of Ladies of Neverwinter has visited BioWare and has lots to share. Here's a bit of what she says:
I could tell already that it would be a sunny Spring morning in Edmonton. The sky brightened from lavender to pink and orange before finally brightening completely as the sun rose. A bank of fog rolled in
over the river below and slowly meandered by. Birds wheeled past, looking for breakfast. I sighed.
What was I thinking getting up at four in the morning anyway?
Still, I think my excitement was warranted. It wasn't everyday I got invited to get a tour of the BioWare offices. The journey to Canada was certainly an adventure, and did indeed make me late for dinner, but
that's a small price to pay for the dragon hoard of information I was to have access to.
Read the whole story at Ladies of Neverwinter.
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, July 25, 2004 - 1:06 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
What *DO* NWN's many acronyms stand for?!
http://nwn.bioware.com/developers/
Is there going to be a nwn 2?
Possible? Sure, why not. Is it a valid topic for the Hordes of the Underdark Forum? certainly not. There is already a thread about that in the offtopic forum, so I'm closing this one down.
Yet more dispel bugs
Not a bug. We decided that spells will never remove item properties as there is a good chance they would screw up custom plots and more. If you want a spell to affect item properties, you will need to change the spellscript.
New payment method?
We have no plan to make people pay for patches, that would be just wrong. We have plans for a "Digital Distribution" system that would allow people to purchase quality modules or module series specifically created for this project on line through our webpage. This is a project by our Live Team and you read more about it in the Witch's Wake forum.
NwN/SoU/HotU end of life?
"odd"? The list of changes has not been released and will not be released until we hit public beta. But this shows up when I search for posts by myself on the topic "1.63", and frankly, it look a lot like some kind of list to me Click Here Now given that someone with a BioWare tag is talking about stuff like this, it seems to be a reasonable conclusion that there is actually a patch 1.63 planned
Would this speed up multiplayer loading?
Since I'm guessing the game just compresses individual areas and sends them to you when you go to a section of a module, would having the actual module decrease loading time? I ask because I'm on a modem, and my ISP has connections throttled down to 30k, and despite having a very fast comp, going between areas quite a bit of time.
NWN's network stream is compressed and area information is fairly lightweight (one of the benefits a tilebased game offers). What's in the area (creatures, players, etc) and their actions makes the majority of information you get over the network, and as said, that's compressed already. Also keep in mind that it's up to the individiual module designer to make areas "nice", which means resisting the temptation of using 32x32 areas (a module that uses 32x32 areas is a badly designed module).
nw_s0_gate script broken?
You always want to avoid using Actions* inside spellscripts because spells are actions themselves.
Long dialog delays
If you are playing a custom module in multiplayer, keep in mind that if there may be a lot of text, it needs to be transfered down to you. Also the module designer might have gone a bit wild with the number of potential responses on a node, which could cause the server to run so many conditional scripts that it would choke.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Sunday, July 25, 2004 - 0:58 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager
Ratings
As we have mentioned before BioWare is trying to make a good game with its own IP. We are not so concerned about ratings at this time as we are still early in the life development. Previous BioWare games were rated Teen which meant a certain level of violence, suggestive content and harsh language was not acceptable. We also wanted to respect our publishing partner's desire on the presentation of their IP be it D&D or Star Wars. Since Dragon Age is a new IP we do not have any guidelines and so we are creating a game and then seeing where the ratings people place us on their scale.
Will DA be difficult and long enough ?
I can be pretty sure when I say the game will not be BG2 in length. 200 hours is a pretty crazy long game. In this day and age of high gloss graphics nearly taking over how a game is developed creating a game that long would be an unrealistic amount of time before you guys got it in your hands. I believe the big trend in replayability over extended playing time.
The Graphics NEED!!!
I think I may have heard of these "normal maps" you speak of. I am guessing they are different from the regular hard-to-fold-up kind I buy while driving to small town in Alberta Rest assured that the world-class graphics guys we have hired will let go of the 2D sprites they are currently attached to and branch out.
Tom Ohle, Public Relations
First person available or dont make it
While we definitely haven't locked down anything regarding viewpoint, it just might end up being a bit tough to have a first-person view in a party-based RPG... that said, once we have locked down our viewpoints, we'll let you all know.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
DA Toolset Suggestions
As an example, have you ever looked at Bioware convo node code for scripts in the OCs? Don't they all pretty much do the exact same thing, but with a different variable? GetLocalInt(GetPCSpeaker(), "nInsertQuestHere")
Jade has the ability to set an ID to each node accessible from scripting, so for plot reasons, you only need two scripts per plot now - one to set and one to check conditions. I'm sure something along those lines will end up in DA as well.
More:
This is incredibly handy! I can't say how many times I've had players pick from a list of items, requiring one script for every dialog choice.
In a sense this allows for dialogs to be programmatically created, looping through the same dialog branch repeatedly while just changing custom tokens. I suppose you could do it now, but this makes it much easier.
Yupp. Want to play a VFX? Create a play VFX script and use the number field to determine which. Want to give out an item, create a single "handout item" script and use the number to determine which ... you end up with *a lot* less scripts on the long run...
First person available or dont make it
Let's ask Dups to put an order form up where people can order RPGs customized to their vision for reasonable prices (something around a couple of millions).
Interesting article on game publication
Especially around Xmas the possibly largest part of sales happens from impulse buyers who spot your game on the shelf of a major retailer. Moving "digital" would make your game vanish from this market because people wouldn't just magically stop going to the stores or chains (i.e. Walmart) and shop on the internet. This might look different a couple of years into the future, especially with major games such as HL2 pushing digital distribution concepts into the spotlight, but as of today, digital distribution is nowhere near being a competition to the shelves.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations
<snip>
But on to the real issue. Yes, I think it would be great if the whole RPG genre could get a make-over. More specifically, if it could go back and time and restore the depth that existed in those old text-interface games. Now I'm not saying that the sweet graphics, voice acting, music, and action of today's games is bad.
</snip>
That's the sort of ironic thing about games and technology... as it improves, the players have to imagine less... so they expect more... etc.
Anyway, I fear I may have just further derailed my original post. To sum it all up: If the combat in Dragon Age is similar to NWN in style (i.e. point, click and watch) I would LOVE it if the developers would add some great new animations for each weapon type. If the action is "twitch" (i.e. Ninja Gaiden for Xbox) style, then BRAVO for taking a chance in the RPG market!
As we've mentioned before, DA will not have 'twitch' based combat elements. The results of an encounter will depend on your strategic choices, not how quickly you can do a combo... or hit the 'p' key.
As for animations, we are planning on including a fair number of different animations for combat. There should be a fairly large amount of variation if we can get everything done that we'd like. However, in all likelyhood there will not be a unique animation set for each and every weapon type.
Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance
Dragon Age title
That doesn't preclude you from naming sequals after the world once it becomes well known. Think of the naming of the Rambo movies.
Quote: Tam:
And the Indiana Jones movies.
Neither of which, I might add, had franchise names, originally.
The movie y'all know as "Rambo" is really "First Blood, Part II", and the first Indiana Jones movie was "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Then you have titles which intentionally start a potential franchise. I mean, how unwieldy are "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of hte Black Pearl" for the first movie of a franchise?
Even "The Rundown" was originally called "Helldorado" (the better name, in my opinion). But there are many factors to consider when choosing a name.
Think of your own role-playing experiences. Your character's name when playing single-player NWN is going to be way different than your name in a multiplayer NWN game with your friend. Then, in an NWN persistent world, you'll have a different kind of name. And those names will be different than your fantasy MMORPG character's name.
Why? Because of the audience, those people who will base their initial opinions of you solely on your name. When playing single-player, all that matters is your own opinion. In a group of friends, maybe you'll have nicknames and inside jokes in your name. In a PW, you want a number of people to respect your character and his abilities. In an MMORPG, you have potentially thousands of people you want to be unique from.
Now, compare this with a game that needs to reach millions of potential buyers and players. See the problem? It's more difficult than you'd think.
First person available or dont make it
Um... okay, we'll take your post under advisement, since you're the only one who has an opinion on how Dragon Age should be made.
Quick note: if you don't want to argue, don't talk like your opinion is the only one that matters. This entire forum is filled with people who have opinions on the "ideal" Dragon Age, and I'm sure most of them think their own ideas are pretty darn good.
Arnie, the 'Girlie-Man' comment and DA.
I'd like a mature game as well: one laden with ambiguity and choices with consequences. Maybe even inconvenient responsibilities!
I think this is the best response so far.
Are you actually going to test your game this time around Bio?
Ah, hotpants. I've missed your provocative posts and unique conversation style. Long time no see.
To answer your question: if you think that NWN was a bug-ridden mess, then no, the testing will not get better.
To everyone else:
Bugs are bad, but unfortunately, they seem to be a permanent fixture in this age of computer ubiquity and near-infinite combinations of hardware and software. There are many opinions about what a bug is and how to deal with it, and whether they're necessary.
Frustrated people will jump on every single bug as though it were glaringly obvious, saying that dozens of testers simply ignored it or should have found it. People like this have likely never completed a difficult project and sent it off to a large group (ie. tens, maybe hundreds) of people to critique. A million people will, of course, be able to find things that 1 person can't.
Those who think games should be (and can be) flawless will consider any bug to be a gamestopper and say that the testing department has failed. These kinds of people generally have never worked on any kind of collective software project before. Any software application is made up of thousands upon thousands of lines of code, written by more than one programmer. Incompatibilities or potential problems are, statistically, a certainty.
Those who think it's easy to make a game, or to test the kinds of games that are released these days, will state that a blind rat could have done a better job of testing, completely ignoring all the things that were done correctly in the game. Why do you think the best games these days come from a group of developers rather than a single guy?
These "accusations" and complaints are the kind of thing one should expect when one is a popular, successful, or prolific content developer. I'll bet everyone from Nicole Kidman to Avril Lavigne to Howard Stern to Dr. Laura to R.A. Salvatore gets the same kind of thing, from "you are a god" comments to "can't you do anything right?" type comments.
I can tell y'all from first-hand experience that the Quality Assurance department at BioWare is a talented, dedicated, passionate crew who, as much as anyone, wants every game that BioWare releases to be the best it can be. To that end, they work more than they should in order to give the end-user the best game experience they can.
In closing, I'll just say that I'm not going to convert anyone who's dead set on seeing the negatives of BioWare, game releases, or the entertainment software industry as a whole. My point with this post is that there are a lot of reasons for the final state of your favourite game, and everyone's got their own opinion on it. The BioWare forums are here for everyone to discuss one side or the other and/or everything in between.
We welcome intelligent discussions and all manner of opinions here, good or bad.
Thank you, and enjoy the Dragon Age forum.
More:
a record number of excuses in one post Stan, congratulations. Anyway i'll bow out of this thread and let the Bioware lovefest continue.
Just trying to back up my opinion with reasoned arguments, is all. Didn't mean to offend.
The Graphics NEED!!!
*puts away the box of Alberta road maps he's brought to the conversation*
I've seen the results of applying normal-maps, and I must say they do look impressive. It's a darn good thing I'm not scheduling the graphics department, because I would be normal-mapping everything. Also, they would kick me until I fell, then kick me some more.
I'm not a big fan of the ouch-hurting pain.
But I am a big fan of our graphics department. A group of very talented people. I have no doubt that, however we end up doing it, the graphics are going to look awesome-tacular!
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 20:48 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
JayWatamaniuk, Community Manager
21 Jul 2004 - NWN CEP Race Profile - The Wemic
I actually ran into the problem that when I change there skin, hair or tatoo colors the bottom half turns silver. If you go ahead and make the change it still works just fine. I never had a problem with changing the clothing however although I may have gotten the same silver thing happening but I ignored it and went about changing the armor and so on without a problem. The files were meant to make using the Wemic easier for players who are obvuiously not quite at the technical level you folks seem to be. We want people using the CEP because it darn cool and using the new Wemic race is a part of that.
Robin Mayne, Webmaster
21 Jul 2004 - NWN CEP Race Profile - The Wemic
The self installer the only files that work are the monk, bard, druid, and rogue. The rest are bunk. Zip file works fine though.
Hey Kalinaar, The initial self installer did indeed have a problem (the character file names were too long), a new one was uploaded shortly after your post correcting the problem. The original installer used character names using this pattern:
"wemic_female_xxxxxx.bic" or "wemic_male_xxxxxx.bic" which were renamed in the new installer to this pattern:
"wemic_f_xxxxxx.bic" or "wemic_m_xxxxxx.bic"These files are located in the "localvault" directory of your NWN install folder.
Portraits added to NWN... how ?
went to unforgotten realms and found some nice portraint a want to use in single player NWN.. site says to download - extract . got that part then add to NWN/Portraints ... i cant see any folder anyplace named portraints . so i extracked all to a file i called portraits . now how do i get then new portraint to work in NWN OC , XP-1,XP-2 ??
Importing your custom portrait is easy to do. Simply copy the portraits into your 'portraits' directory where you have installed Neverwinter Nights. (Default location is "C: \NeverwinterNights \NWN \portraits") . You can find additional custom portrait info here: Creating and Importing Custom Portraits
More:
when i do so only folder s are like .. Ambient , Data , Database .. only folder starting with P is Patch
That is odd... I would just suggest creating a new folder named "portraits", that should solve your problem.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Techincal Issues
Thanks, what you suggested was not quite what I needed, but it gave me the clue I needed to find the real solution and I am grateful. Basically, it looks like I can transfer quest files from one Temp0 folder to another and move the quests created by the Quest or Plot Wizard with them, then save and get them into the new module. To be safe I will likely import the conversations as well but may test a quest out just to see how it works first.
Hey, you should not copy all files over from temp0, as you would just copy over the corrupted as well. In any case, if you notice any 0 byte files, especially if they are .itp files, do NOT copy those over, as they tend to be the ones causing corrupted modules to crash. NWN is written in Microsoft Visual C++, the Toolset is Written in Borland C++ Builder.
More:
A couple of things to note, don't know if these have been mentioned yet. 1) I remember reading somewhere that having a module open in the Toolset and the Game at the same time is a very, very bad idea, as they will read and write to the same memory space without regard for one another --
Windows memory allocation doesn't work that way, again, you don't specify which blocks of memory you want to read or write, you allocate memory from the OS and it assigns free memoryblocks to each application space, so no, unless you manually open another apps memory space (i.e. when writing trainers and such), this does not happen and toolset and game certainly don't share memory space.
2) While the Toolset backup generally works well, do not rely on it alone. Even if you are careful, the Toolset may crash unexpectedly (for me, this happens when I am several 'levels' deep into the interface -- say, editing a script from within a conversation by opening it from a creature properties screen, or editing an item in a creature's inventory). I make backups every 10 to 30 minutes, and have a version scheme; I just delete all but the most recent 5 or so versions. I also backup my work on another machine, although much less frequently than I probably should.
You will never hear me argue about making additional backups, the more the better. More important to avoid corruption: When the toolset crashes it's safer to revert to a backup than trying to recover.
Crafting System Info
Patch 1.63 has the potential to make 2da caching into variables irrelevant, I did some tests a couple of minutes ago and it looks to me that the changes that were done on the resource management system have significantly sped up the scripting language access to .2da files - so you shouldn't invest too much time in doing that. (Note that this improvement may be dependent on the amount of RAM you have available on your machine )
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GameSpy Speaks on Dungeons and Dragons Online
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 20:30 CET by chevalier
GameSpy have posted an article about the MMORPG genre, covering Dungeons and Dragons Online among other games. Here's a snip:
D&D Online
Wow, it's really hard to not blow my load on this one. Here's the short of it: earlier this week, I went out to Turbine to check out this game for an upcoming feature we're doing, and I have to say, it's not what you're expecting. At all. It hasn't been in development for all that long, but already, the combat system much more fleshed out--not to mention straight-up fun--than pretty much any MMO I've ever seen. Big words, I know, but it's the truth. Maybe it's due to the fact that Turbine has been making these kinds of games for a minute, or maybe the combat designers just struck gold. Whatever the reason, fighting in D&D Online is the business, and sorry, but you're going to have to wait till August 5th before you get anything more out of me.
Read the whole thing at GameSpy.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 20:27 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer
Limits to number of PCs in party
At this point in time, we're thinking between 4~6 people in the party, with additional "tag-alongs" as needed for escort or follow missions. Summoned creatures may or may not be under the player's control, we haven't decided that yet. In multiplayer we expect the "party" that one player controls to be smaller. This is because it may be too difficult to control many people and not be able to pause the game.
What we "DO" know so far...
I'd actually be perfectly happy if the designers don't go into that much detail about this. That way people making modules in Dragon Age have more freedome to do what they think best. In fact, we may use the best user content to define the world over time.
Don Moar, Tools Programmer
DA Toolset Suggestions
Hey, You already have the ability to share packages of scripts across multiple modules - use a .hak pack. Using Torlack's external script compiler, you can make a change to a script, recompile them, package them back up in your .hak and see the effects across all your modules without having to open and / or modify any them. This is even easier now that NWN supports multiple .hak packs.
Reply from Georg : Hey Don,
Forgot about BioWare's external scriptcompiler, eh? (clicompile.exe in the utils folder)
More: Uh... Not at all, Georg. I'm just trying to recognize the amazing work that the people in our community have done (and will hopefully continue to do). Just like how we have our own Plot Wizard, the Script Ease utility and Lilac Soul's Script Generator are awesome, too! Yeah, that's it.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
More words from the Great One - 1st Level Assumptions
Fusion, GURPS, Circe, The Window, Prism.
Now, name one class-based system where it was possible for everybody to accurately represent their characters to the gameworld.
I think a valid question would be "Is that what we want to do?". How much freedom do we want to give the player?
On the first glance the answer is "as much as possible", but I believe this is not it, I believe the answer is "much, but only to the point where it stays predictable enough for writing and balancing". If we were to make a game with a design premise like Morrowind, the answer would be different, but BioWare games are traditionally more story centric and DA is the spiritual successor to some of our previous games, so it is safe to assume this has not changed.
I'm not a writer, I can only guess on how hard it is to come up with decent plots and stuff for everything when working under pressure and tight schedule, but my guess is that the less you can assume about the character, the more unknown variables there are, the less personal the story will get.
I am don't think skillbased systems can't work or that you can not create a AAA game using a skillbased system - I'm saying that it is, by my understanding (as technical designer, not writer), harder to create a balanced skillbased game than it is with the tool of classes at hand ... And I think, because our technical and commercial experience with previous games, it is the right choise to make DA class based (if you have a working recipe, I think you should only change so many ingredience from it at a time to avoid upsetting the gourmets or confusing the other cooks).
Still, keep in mind that DA classes might very well be very different from what you are used to in D&D.
More: I played UO for a couple of years when it came first out, and I vividly remember that it tooks more than two years before the most glaring balancing issues with the skill system had been resolved But yes, these are MMORPGs, they don't need to worry about story
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we thinks that geo mighta' overheard writers mention how difficult it were to write for an ill-defined protagonist and maybe he heard that da were gonna focus story development choices on handful of archetypes and he somehow got confused... extrapolated that class were somehow easier/better than skills for character development. HA! Good Fun!
Bull***. I think I explained quite extensivly why I believe doing a class based game easier earlier on and that I think writing for a skill based game would be somewhat harder than for a classbased game.
It's always easy to claim people with a different opinion are confused, just quit trying to explain how I don't know what I'm talking about and how confused I am- try instead to live with the fact that we are of different opinion on certain matters and there can be more than one opinion in this world, none of them needs to be right.
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i think the main issue is simply that the game designers dont want people creating medieval seamstresses and then complaining that they cant complete the game with their character. you give people the option and those people will expect that their choices mean something. people just dont seem to want to deal with the reality that not all choices are good ones.
If you exchange "game designers" for "georg", then you are in line with what I (and probably other people around here) think. The balance of the official campaign is a major technical design importance for our games and decisions in the core ruleset will be made to accomodate that (and other things). Depending on how open the game will be for modification, this might not be an issue for thirdparty module designers, as they *could theoretically* define as many classes as they wanted to, if the framework allowes for this. RPGs are no longer reserved for the hardcore gaming audience these days, if you want to be a commercial success, you need to appeal to the mainstream gamer as well, on a certain level. I think KotOR was a good indication how this can look like, but not necessarily comparable to DA, which is probably a bit more "hardcore".
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Where's Winski been lately? We need someone in here who knows what they are talking about.
I was on the black isle boards as a community member back then, I remember certain conversations quite vividly ... I think I have some threads archived at home, have to dig, might be good for a laugh these days.
Please note, I never said it's impossible to write a story for an undefined protagonist, I said I think it's harder to do because most work tends to become harder the more unknown variables get involved. As for John, he's a designer on Jade too these days.
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this is back to the argument of skill based vs class based. what is a skill based system except just another interface for making a character? isn't it a refinement of rules to eliminate arbitrary class distinctions?
Well, one could argue from the other side around and say that classes are a more refined way to presenting the skill based complex character creation to the user, so this isn't really leading anywhere
Builder Background Support
I very much like the "builders guide" idea and I guess that the DA team will start to release background information on the world later in the development process, we are already doing this for Jade from time to time.
DA Toolset Suggestions
(*)A script debugger featuring breakpoints, line-by-line tracing, and variable watch-points. Well, this one might be a little challenging to implement!
(/list)
There is a script debugger that features breakpoints, line by line tracing and variable inspection packaged with NWN... It's invoked by calling the SpawnScriptDebugger() function call in your scripts (same as a breakpoint), all you need to do is activate the generation of debug information in your module options
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I do this all the time. It helps to set the game window size really small. After a while it tends to make my computer very unhappy, but the time savings are definitely worth an occaisional reboot.
Don't do it. Not with NWN. It can cause crashes to the toolset that lead to module corruption.
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i really think those are damning words for the crpg. valid from a business perspective, but why bother calling it an rpg then. gauntlet wasn't an rpg, neither was diablo, neither is magic the gathering. call it a fantasy game and do everyone a favor.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the whole "appealing to mainstream" thing, it does not necessarily mean dumb down or deathknell for the whole genre, it can also mean "refine".
Lots of things that made RPGs hard to access in the past were interface issues, and I believe that you can come up with a good interface for nearly everything, so you can still have a deep and complex system, you still need to invest more time to present it the right way. Just think about it, it happens everywhere - Remember us 2nd edition freeks complaining about how they got rid ThAC0 in 3E - the symbol of geekness? Looking back, getting rid of it was smart as it made the game more accessible without dumping it down (unless you think certain complicated mathematical calculations are required for the spirit of the game, even if the same effect (do I hit?) can be achieved by a less mindboggling solution). Yea, I know, ThAC0 was a good filter to prevent "mentally not suited" people from playing the game, but that mentality is not good for business. I don't even say it's not possible for us to do a skillbased game in the future, if we want to do it, we'll do it and we would try to do it right. For DA however, the decision was made to create a classbased game, so it's kind of a pointless discussion here.
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Of course = the module corruption issues Georg mentioned are an important cautionary. I don't mess with jumping back and forth between the toolkit and a windowed game - I let it run in full screen mode to avoid those crashes.
I lost my job application 3 times in a row to this before I could send it off, that taught me!
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Hmm . . . only Georg would write a job application in the NWN Toolset. Most normal people use a word processor.
I can picture it now:
"Dear sir or madame, if you would like to see my past work history, slay the orc behind the stone door. I have imprisoned my previous supervisor in the Dungeon of Woe - free him and hear him sing my praises. If you succeed in your quests, you may hire me and be greatly rewarded with fabulous magic items!"
So close
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
DA Toolset Suggestions
Excellent point. It would probably help with documentation as well, detailing all the various tags and resrefs that have to be kept track of. I find myself frequently jumping back and forth between the script editor and looking up object tags and resrefs.
Next you will be wanting the toolset to not crash...
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Atari Confirms Baldur's Gate 3 and Neverwinter Nights 2 for HomeLAN Fed
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 20:09 CET by chevalier
HomeLAN Fed have talked to an Atari representative who has pretty much confirmed the PC Gamer news that we posted a couple of days ago. It's nothing we didn't already know, but the near-confirmation itself is worth mentioning. Here's what they say:
The new issue of PC Gamer magazine (the one with the review of Doom 3 on their cover) has a blurb that indicates that their next issue will have a look at several upcoming Dungeons and Dragons themed games, including the previously announced D&D Online and D&D RTS titles plus the previously unannounced games Neverwinter Nights 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. When contacted by HomeLAN to comment on this news bit an rep from Atari (the current holder of the console-PC D&D game licence) said, "There may be some truth to that statement..."
Read the news item at HomeLAN Fed.
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 1:46 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Can I turn off buff spell graphics?
actually the easiest way would be to blank out the annoying effects in visualeffects.2da However, both methods (modifying scripts / changing the .2da) have the potential to break your game, because some spells use visual effects to track their remaining duration...
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Are you saying that some spells actually use the graphic animation and not some integer so it knows when to go away? Could you please give an example spell please?
All spells that have a reoccuring spell effect over multiple rounds (i.e. melfs acid arrow, some bigby spells, firebrand, etc) and that are not area of effect spells use this as it is far less cpu intensive than the way those spells were implemented before HotU.
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So instead of removing the visual effect then replacing it with something harmless, like the tiny sparks protection from evil give, would be a safe bet? I am going to bug a server admin to get rid of the Epic Mage armor visual as soon as pick the spell.
The VFX_CESSEATE_* visual effects are usually good for such things because they don't show up until the spell duration expires. One more note: changing the .2da is client side which would allow people to disable the effects just on their low end machine. If you change the spellscripts instead, everyone on the server will be affected.
Crafting System Info
At a guess, it seems the x2_p_craftskills conversation has something to do with it. Any more info?
There are two conversations, one for modifying armor and one for crafting new items. The major functionality is in x2_inc_craft.nss (include file). Most of the stuff is 2da driven and comes from the des_crft_* 2da files. hope that helps
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What're these two conversations? I assume one of them is the x2_p_craftskills. I'll do my best to document the crafting system. Perhaps mod scripters can move away from ATS and CNR if needed functionality can be added to the Bioware crafting system.
x2_p_craftskills
x0_ something (not sure about the name, but there are not many x0 files in the global dialog resources)
Need a patch now.
The "high number addresses" you are talking about are probably taken from a "unable tor read/write from ..." error messge in the toolset.
These "addresses" are not set anywhere, are not programming mistakes or bug, it's an issue where the toolset trying to read memory outside it's memory space or at a non existant location, caused by a corrupted module. If your module gets corrupted, which can happen due to power failure during saves, hardware or software failure during save or write processes, it will most likely cause problems like this - nothing we can fix, it's something that can also happen to your word documents or files written by any other application when the write process is terminated prematurely due to a crash.
Bottomline: The problem has nothing to do with high numbers, because those "high" numbers are memory addresses and the problem is that some data in the corrupted module is making the toolset trying to access memory addresses outside the current application space or at invalid locations such as NULL (FFFFFFF). It's not a problem with NWN or the toolset, it's a problem with the module.
And no, 1.63 will not fix that, because we can't magically fix data not written correctly to disk due to an external failure - nobody can. To repair your module I would suggest exporting it area by area and reimporting it into a empty module, that will likely remove the corrupted files from it. There are no direct references to memory locations in your module (computers don't work that way), those errors occur when the toolset/game are trying to read damaged files/objects inside the module into memory. Whether or not data in a file is illegal can not be determined on the fly, unfortunately. Does your module use a hakpak or do you have files in your nwn\override directory?
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Thanks for the information and if you have any suggestions on how I can export the quest that I have in the corrupted mod please let me know.
while the mod is open in the toolset, all files inside it are in the modules\temp0 directory. Yyou can grab the journal (*.jrnl) file from there ( I assume you mean journal by quest) and copy it to a save location. Then you open the new mod and copy the file into the temp0 directory, change something in the module and save.
Well it finally happened
Hey. If you want to discuss the SecuRom copy protection which is required by our publisher Atari, I suggest you do this in Atari's very own community forums at http://www.ataricommunity.com and please contact Atari Support about your problem.
The reason for this is that if you do not contact Support, the numbers on which business decisions are made will not match the situation out there. "Everyone knows ..." doesn't work when it's "Support Says only X people complained about problem Y", so it is important that you contact Support and post it in their forum instead of here where it is not likely that it gets read by people involved making these decisions.
BioWare is aware that some people have issues with SecuRom on NWN, but we can't do anything about it at this point it - is not our call. I will leave this thread open so the original poster can get further suggestions on how his problem might be solved, but if it continues down the predictable road from "copy protection" to "downloadable solutions", etc, I will close it. Thank you for your understanding.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Friday, July 23, 2004 - 1:39 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
David Gaider, Designer
What we "DO" know so far....
The Helliconia trilogy. The books were Spring, Summer and Winter. I only got to read Helliconia: Winter, but I did rather enjoy it at the time (about 12 years ago now - man am I old..).
Do I get a cookie?
THAT'S the one!
You get a cookie.
Quote: Or I, Robot?
*shudder*
Oh, don't even get me started on that one. My projectile vomiting reflex is just about ready to kick in.
Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations
BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.
Yeah, but that's what he's saying, Georg. Because there will likely be a lot of combat that therefore it's the same as an action RPG, like there's no distinction because we obviously don't make "true" RPG's anyway, I suppose? I don't know, I felt the burn. Didn't you? I think I yelped.
properties and protecting them
Those kinds of plot can definitely work in a story... if the story allows for that sort of thing as we did in BG2. Not all plots are such that you can veer off in the middle of them and invest in some real estate. In fact, that sort of thing works better if it IS the plot, I think.
My latest unrealistic expectation: Emotes
I suspect there are going to be a lot more social animations (motion capture is god). I don't know how many will be tied in as "emotes" that the PC can use (as opposed to making them accessible to the dialogue editor, which is what they'd probably be meant for), but if we don't allow them all to be you'll all probably cry until we do so anyhow so it's likely not a bad idea.
There is very likely going to be trouble with having "interactive" animations, though, same as always. Part of the issue is getting the models to "sync up" (especially if the target is doing something else at the time and also consider the possibility of having different-sized models). It's not impossible by any means, but such interactive animations are always going to be more trouble. I suppose we'll see in the end, but the big bonus here is that they're all very useful.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
More words from the Great One - 1st Level Assumptions
More like BG II than NWN, I guess, because how can anyone write a meaningful subplot for a gnome paladin/sorceror/archer?
To get this off the "MMORPGs are slavery/torture" track (you can make a new thread in the offtopic forum to discuss that topic)....
That would mean that this kind of strange combination is something that exists in Dragon Age. We have not yet commented on the availability of multi classing or free/not free availability of all classes for all races.
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To put in a concrete example, in BIO's past D&D games you could choose the Ranger class... but there was next to no rangery stuff to do in any of those games. I'm hoping DA wouldn't go the same way (Yes, I know you personally aren't working on DA).
That's actually not true in regards of SoU and partially HotU. Especially SoU, and to some parts HotU had specific options and even quests for Rangers - as a result of the feedback that people would like see more of those class specific quests. Same for other classes.
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This is sounding too much like a cop-out that I had to respond.
What's the point of implementing "roleplaying" skills if they're not useful? This is supposed to be a roleplaying game afterall, so using "roleplaying" skills is what the whole game is supposed to be about, right?
To put in a concrete example, in BIO's past D&D games you could choose the Ranger class... but there was next to no rangery stuff to do in any of those games. I'm hoping DA wouldn't go the same way (Yes, I know you personally aren't working on DA).
By your post, it sounds like you're already assuming the "roleplaying" skills are marginal things only used now and then, and have to be balanced to the combat skills used 99% of the game. One would think trying to take the issue the other way, making the "roleplaying" skills more useful, would be alot better for a roleplaying game, right?
- All class vs. classless issues aside.
My definition of "rpg skill" here is "non combat skill".
CRPGs feature a high level of combat, usually more than PnP (because combat resolution in PnP takes hours, not seconds). Combat is a overall very important factor in CRPGs and the overwhelming majority of people who buy CRPGs thinks that way.
Any skill/ability/etc you add that has impact on combat immediately becomes very useful because it can applied in many, unscripted situations and affects your character in almost every single combat.
Social skills or utility skills however usually need to be scripted - i.e. different dialog options. So if you have a "persuade" or "talk to animal" ability in the game, you need to create dialog for every animal (such as we did in SoU/HotU) and you would need to script many many of those social skillchecks into conversations so they make a difference. Compared to adding a combat related ability/skill, that is *a lot* more work and thus the number of things you can do this way has a natural limit.
We do it because it is a very popular thing that adds a lot to the game, but as said, naturally the number of points where those skills work in the game is limited, and every skill of that type you add cuts it down further.
In addition, taking user created modules into account - a combat skill is useful in any module, immediately - a social skill will only be useful if the module creator scripted for it.
So, unless you scripted ungodly number of applications for those skills in order to get around combats, etc, it will be very hard to create a balanced campaign that a character who selected a focus on those social/utility abilities and completely neglected the combat ones will still have a good time to get through the game.
We had firsthand experience with this in Hordes of the Underdark, which is VERY hard for a pure rogue or bard to play through and very easy for many of the other classes. Partially this was because balancing in this case was not in our hands, we could not just add new things to the rogue class that are not in the rules (to compensate for abilities like "climb" that you would be able to use in PnP to bypass an encounter). Yes, there were a lot of specially scripted bypasses and options for rogues in HotU so they sneak around most encounters, etc, but at some point it still got down to combat, and rogues had a really bad time there.
In DA we will have much greater control (complete control) over the ruleset, so this kind of problem can be solved - but if the game would be "skill based" instead of "classbased", chances are that people would still end up in a situation where they build a character that is not able to complete the game and notice it only 15 hours into the campaign or so... With classes, we can group skills/abilities/whatever they are called in a way that this can not happen.
Note: This is not neccessarily the (only) reason why the team chose to use classes instead of a skillbased approach.
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Gromnir, I don't think he was calling skill systems shallow, but rather the tying in of specific abilities to skills.
For example, take a paladin's lay on hands: a classical class-ability if there ever was one. With classes, you can create abilities like that, yet, with skills you either have to create a skill for the specific ability (not broad enough), or tie the ability in as part of another skill.
He was calling that implementation 'shallow', not the skill system itself.
Much closer to the point than our pluralis-majestatis friend here. Grom is just reading things into my posts that I didn't say (again), but that might be caused by the language barrier we already discovered.
I didn't really say anything about a class based system being less "shallow" than a skill based one, I was more focused on balancing issues and why classes provide better options for creating a balanced campaign (which is a major concern for us) than a skillbased system, which in return will make it easier to write specially themed abilities and classes. I use "shallow" in this regard because:
If I have 6 classes and 60 days of writer times available, I can make 10 different subquests for each class, if I would need 1 day per quest (completely arbitrary numbers)
If I have 60 skills, and 60 days of writer time available, I can make 1 subquest per skill, and assuming a player would pick 10 skills, he would end up with 10 subquests - on the first glance that's the same.
However, those 10 class subquests can be chained to build on each other (partially) and can share a certain theme, reinforcing that one character, while some of those 10 skill subquests will most likely have some very shallow explaination for their existance and can not build on each other or reinforce/further the story or character development. That's why I use shallow.
In my opinion, and you are free to disagree, it's more interesting to play the evil fighter, start with my own background story and have a number of options that allow me to reinforce that image that build up and maybe ultimately lead to a class specific ending of the game than to play the fishing and blacksmithing bow specialist that has a couple of options to use his skills during the game ... because you can't see any skill specific start or end sequence (impossible with 60 skills).
Plus, I imagine writing would probably have a damn bad time coming up with equal interesting subquests for all skills in the game, more something for Dave to comment on.
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"Classes are an excellent tool organize abilities into sets that can be used for balancing of the campaign as well as the addition of "class specific options" and themes (instead of skill specific options which would hard to get right and somewhat shallow by nature)."
does geo even read his own posts? we has lifted this portion three times now.
maybe you not mean what you said... and that would be ok with us. just don't try and tell us that you never pointed out the shallowness of skill based system compared to class based in regards to increased opportunities for character focused themes and options.
HA! Good Fun!
My post above should provide you enough information to catch what I meant with "shallow", so stop trying to twist my words.
I have no trouble with you disagreeing with my opinion - thats the point of having a discussion, but a fruitful discussion can't work as long as the two sides speak different languages. So please stop that "I know much better what you meant when you wrote this" crap and get back to the table. Thank you.
I suggest you send me a PM next time you try a personal explaination so it doesn't move the thread out of topic.
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Let's back up a second. What's the evidence that skill- based systems cause balance problems? I think we can expect a certain level of rationality from players -- if the game system is clear enough that they can understand it.
For instance, I'm pretty sure most folks tagged Small Guns their first time through Fallout, even if they weren't really planning on playing a combat character.
First:
With games moving more mainstream in order to keep up with production costs and selling more copies, you can no longer expect insider knowledge from hardcore fans.
This calls for better explainations during character creation (I think the whole industry needs to work on this), but it also calls for preventing people from screwing themselves over within the rules system. If the rules system allows it, it should be a valid choise. I'm not talking about things like "it's easier to play with a fighter', I'm talking about things like "If I don't chose this skill, and this, and this", I'm not able to complete the game because I can't beat boss X- not a problem per se, as you can just make combat easier ... but then the "better" characters suddenly find everything too easy.
It's just easier to balance the difficulty of your campaign if you balance characters against each other first to a point, and that's easier to do with classes, at least in my opinion.
From my experience:
Morrowind - high balance differences between strong melee oriented character and the rest, up to a point where certain setups are unable to complete the game while other characters sliced through enemies without actually fighting at all.
Arcanum - highly skill dependend game, huge balance issues comparing a spellcaster to a fighter, up to a point where it was close to impossible to continue.
Fallout - some skills were useless so I chose to start over later in the game. Today, working and no longer spending nights playing games like in school, I probably would drop it.
Finally, as mentioned above, it's a math question. The number of permutations/unknown variables for possible characters and path for QA to run through is significantly higher for skills than with classes (through multiclassing can ruin that advantage).
Of course, for any of those the point can be made that it's the players fault that he did create the character this way, but with the number of casual, non hardcore players highly outweighting the hardcore fan, this is not really acceptable. Word is that people who get stuck several hours into a game because of such issues will put down your game and never play it again.
I'm sure that with enough time and dedication a skill based system can be made that resolves most of the issues tied to the approach, but right now it looks easier, more time efficient and safer to me to create a class based game based where we can apply our previous experience.
It's a matter of risk taking I suppose, you can chose to make a game that uses several traditional elements you know a lot about and extend and improve based on your previous experience, or you can make this radically different game with a potentional revolutionary new skill system, that would cost some more time to develop and has a risk of containing game mechanic problems you didn't know about.
in as much as building a character that is later discovered to be unable to complete the game... i think having classes results in this failure more than skills. classes cant be adjusted. professions (skills) can.
First - classes can't be adjusted is not true for DA. We create the rule system for DA, we can change and adjust our classes in every way we want.
Classes are easier to balance in this regard so the situation does not happen in the first place. If you have 6 classes, you can have QA run through the game with all those 6 classes in a variety of setups to make sure difficulty is right. If you have 60 skills, the number of possible 10 skill character combinations people can come up with is insane, especially if there are synergy effects between skills.
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as for balance, using arcanum and fallout as examples of why a skill based system has to be unbalanced is a bit like pointing to nwn and noting that class based systems must also be screwed.
I totally agree with you, class balance in NWN was bad, through (imo) not as bad as Arcanum or Morrowind. I just have trouble right now thinking of any reasonably well balanced skill based game that offers more than lets say 8 skills, through I'm sure they are some out there.
... but we suspect that 'cause he is a biowarian, he must know better.
Oh indeed, being infallable like the pope is required for every job here at BioWare, that's why I close every single of my posts with "and if you don't agree with me, you are wrong, because I work for BioWare", right?.
Also you are required to refer to every BioWare employee as "your infallible holyness", did you miss that part of the forum rules? Great, now that we have established some common ground, could we now just get back to the discussion?
More: One thing: I wouldn't necessarily compare 3E skills to the type of "skills" you need when creating a classless system. Most of skills in NWN didn't have major impact on the game, the real impact came from feats/class specific abilities.
About most people min/maxing, I don't think so. A large part of the people playing in skill based MMORPGs with competitive elements tend to max and strive for "the ultimate build", but the same is true for every competitive game, just check the Diablo2 boards. It's in the nature of the game.
Our major balance issue is balance for the official campaign (all classes can finish the campaign, no class finds it excessivly hard or extremely easy to do so), PvP issues are secondary.
Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations
For Jade we actually have custom, motion captured animations for every weapontype and style (= lots of them)
BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.
More:
BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.
Yeah, but that's what he's saying, Georg. Because there will likely be a lot of combat that therefore it's the same as an action RPG, like there's no distinction because we obviously don't make "true" RPG's anyway, I suppose?
Which is something I don't agree with - combat in jade has a more central place than in most other RPGs - after all you are playing a martial arts master . Playing a martial arts master is playing a role, but that role is a bit more restrictive than booting up NWN and saying "I want to play a ranger, or I want to play a fighter/sorceror". You can still play your martial arts master is a variety of different ways, good or evil or insane, coward or hero, trusted friend or vicious betrayer, physical powerhouse or spiritual leader - that's up to you, but your role is still more defined than in NWN or DA, just by the fact that you are a martial arts master. Just not having to program/design/visualize X different classes/races adds a lot of time that can be used for other stuff...
Games like DA or NWN offer things that are outside Jades' scope and you need some resources on those - which you can't spend on combat.
Example:
- Playing a thief, avoiding most combats with stealth is not an option in Jade, because it doesn't fit into the Martial Arts master theme. You might be able to steal at a couple of occassions, but engaging in combat is expected from a martial arts master, so there's no way to avoid that on the long run
- Being a wizard and having access to a huge number of spells - while you can cast spells in jade, they are tied into the martial arts system, and the focus is definitly more on hand to hand combat, which you won't be able to avoid completely.
Combat in Jade is action (some call it twitch) based (through there is pause and play) and there is an incredible level of detail attached to it as a result, more than in any previous BioWare game - but this is possible because the team did not need to spend so much time on certain things you have seen in NWN or BG.
However, you can also expect DA to have a more diverse animations, detail than any previous PC RPG we did, just because of technical progress and because we get better with each game ... and our motion capture library grows... .
As for the definition of "true RPG", I believe that the word RPG is permanently getting redefined. Some people call Diablo a RPG, others call Silent Storm a RPG so at the end of the day anything that has some elements from traditional RPGs (i.e. "stats") is called a RPG. So in the end the definiton is with us, and I say "play Jade then play NWN" and you can see why we call Jade an action RPG and NWN not.
POLL- The manual containing a complete spell list
Does the game assume that the players know the rule system? In previous BioWare games the game always seemed to.
That's right, and to a certain degree definitly intentional - after all it were licensed games and a good part of licensed property (D&D) actually was the rules system
One thing I remember about Ultima VI or VII was nearly complete absense of technical rulestalk in the manual - it had nearly complete spell lists, weapons lists, etc, but it didn't touch character stats on a technical level ... which I liked. Thought?
More: I think the nontechnical nature of the Ultima manuals has a big plus - it won't get out of date in the time between the manual going to production and the game shipping which usually contains the final period of crunch and a lot of detail changes.
Resting
As you can see from the SoU and HotU campaign we had a couple of problems with resting in the original NWN campaign as well and were investigating other solutions. I'm sure the DA team will put some thoughts into this issue.
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Latest Poll Results
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 21:51 CET by Sorcerer
What we asked:
Q: Do you buy paperback or hardcover books?
(246 votes total)
Depends on the book (120) 49%
Always paperback when available (67) 27%
Always hardcover when available (49) 20%
I don't buy any books (10) 4%
Almost half of the poll participants (49%) voted that their buying either a paperback or hardcover edition depends on the book itself.
27%, however, voted that they always buy paperbacks when available. On the other hand, another 20% voted that they always buy hardcover editions when available.
Lastly, 4% of those who voted claim that they don't buy any books at all.
Current Poll
Previous Polls
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BioWare Makes it to Deloitte's Fast 50
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 20:02 CET by chevalier
BioWare is amongst the ranks of finalists for Deloitte's Canadian Techonology Fast 50 list for a fourth year in a row. As BioWare says,
The annual program ranks the 50 fastest-growing Canadian tech companies. The actual rankings will be announced on September 29, 2004.
Read more at BioWare and Deloitte.
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BioWare to Deliver Keynote Speech at European Developers Forum
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 19:53 CET by chevalier
BioWare's Joint CEO has been chosen to deliver keynote speech to the Forum. Here's what BioWare says:
Our very own Ray Muzyka will be delivering a keynote speech to the European Developer's Forum in September. The forum takes place September 1-3, 2004 in London, England. For more information, visit the European Games Network site
Read more at BioWare or European Games Network.
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BioWare Wednesday
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 19:51 CET by Sorcerer
(Only news relevant to SP posted.)
Snag The Top NWN CEP Modules For Yourself
Wanna take your Neverwinter Nights Community Expansion Pack (CEP) goodies for a spin? You can now discover what the top-rated fan-created CEP enabled modules are, download 'em, and play 'em to your heart's content! The top modules are available for download at the NWVault, and you can catch the rankings and links on our modules page and in the Modules side panel of the Neverwinter Nights web site. Discuss.
NWN CEP Race Profile - The Wemic
Tired of tripping over your beard in every adventure as a dwarf? Looking to play something that can arm wrestle a half-orc, play footsie with an elf, and disembowel a zombie all at the same time? The CEP offers two new races for your playing enjoyment, and this week we profile the majestic wemic. Included in the profile are 22 customizable character files for download! Discuss.
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Gary Gygax Interview at GameBanshee
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 19:47 CET by chevalier
GameBanshee have interviewed Gary Gygax, the father of Dungeons and Dragons and the founder of TSR. Despite being very busy with his current work, he took time to answer a set of questions on the phone for GameBanshee. Here's a clip:
GB: Tell me a bit about your history and how you originally came up with the concept of the miniature ruleset called Chainmail, and, later, Dungeons & Dragons. Were these games originally just a hobby of your own, or did you intend to make it into a commercial game from the beginning?
Gary: This goes all the way back to Gen Con 1 with a fellow by the name of Jerry White from Portland, Oregon, as I recall. He brought a bunch of 40 millimeter Elastolin figurines done by Hauser. I started playing and got hooked. Jeff Perren happened to collect quite a few of those same scale miniatures and he had gone and set up rules for them. Henry Bodenstadt ran a gaming shop business out in New York, he had got his Siege of Bodenstadt game into Strategy & Tactics magazine at that time published by Chris Wagner. This was what really hyped the 40 mm figurines.
Read the whole thing at GameBanshee.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 5:21 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
David Gaider, Designer
What we "DO" know so far....
if it was my choice, I'd scrap those planets and go for rotating disks, solves all those stupid wraparound issues and finally explains why the ocean isn't raising all the time when it rains into it ... just falls off the edges
If it was my choice, I'd have the setting be a large moon of a particularly radiant gas giant. A close enough orbit could provide enough heat and light to sustain life, and think of the spectacular skyscape!
As for a binary/trinary star system, the other suns would have to be pretty far away (a bright star to the world's POV, as someone mentioned) else the "green zone" around the one sun is going to be disrupted by the second/third star's gravitational pull and radiation... the reason why in most such systems they suspect no "green zone" exists at all (if any planets are even able to form with such alternating gravitational pressures).
One weird planet might exist in a binary system with two strong suns with the "green zone" existing just exactly in the middle between them (what are the odds of that, anyway?) ...that would be a very interesting planet to calculate such oddness as seasons and day length and such, but we're talking sci-fi at that point and who knows if it would even sustain much life?
Mind you, I do recall one fantasy series that was quite excellent which took place on a world with an erratic orbit... the entire world would get plunged into an ice age for centuries at a time as the world hit its far orbit and then warmed up considerably as it came close. Wish I remembered what it was called.
A Better Sneak Attack
I think the stealthy/dextrous fighter is basically attempting to do two things with this sort of attack:
1) Bypass armor.
2) Hit a critical area.
So if fighting someone in plate, you're trying to plant the dagger in the unprotected armpit, or slip it between the plates or go for the eyes... and if performed successfully, any benefits that armor gives to the target should be ignored.
Doing the attack really well should give the additional benefit of doing a critical hit. The same as if someone else had deliberately aimed for the head or so forth... except that in the case of a stealthy/dextrous fighter, this is the sort of strike they excel in and rely on.
Not that this is what DA is doing, but these are my thoughts on this sort of attack. I don't really understand the implentations it has gone through to date in D&D. Like needing the target to be flanked... why? Surprise isn't the issue (though it should help). The problem with using a dagger is the need to get in close to the target, especially when they're using a weapon with greater reach than yours. That's the issue. Get past that and you should be able to use a stealth strike on anyone.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
More words from the Great One - 1st Level Assumptions
In the interests of actually distilling this down to something useful and general..... (I.e. - the underlying mechanic rather that how it is used).
There are to related mechanics which would be useful to us.
1) OnPCLevulUP: This exists in NWN already, but it doesn't fire until AFTER the player levels up. It should be changed to work the way OnPCRest does - so that an event fires when they START the levelup process (allowing us to detect it and interfere with it) as well as firing again when the rest concludes.
2) Variables to allow ALL classes to be taken which work exactly as do the variables in the PrC class 2da files, allowing access to specific classes to be turned on and off through scripts.
The addition of these two features would give us nearly all the control over leveling up that we might ever want.
Assumptions here again such as the free availablity of multi classing without limits. Just a reminder that you don't really know the system yet - not saying whether or not there will be multi classing in DA.
As for skills being easy and we should crap the class system .. that's highly deceptive, on a base level it's far harder to balance a skill based system where you do not only have to account for balancing the usefulness of skills against each other (which will usually screw over the roleplaying skills) but also have to deal with the usual "extreme builds" that are hard to catch through development and can ruin the game for either being too hard or too easy. Classes are an excellent tool organize abilities into sets that can be used for balancing of the campaign as well as the addition of "class specific options" and themes (instead of skill specific options which would hard to get right and somewhat shallow by nature).
Yes, it forces to make decisions and some people could feel that they are restricted if they had to make a choise between sword or sorcery - but then again, that's traditional RPG and if it's a party based game, I don't think thats a bad thing.
Again: Talking on a non DA specific level, I don't know what the plans are for DA in this regard.
More:
So the key to class advancement is twofold: skills and credentials. Skills come with exposure, aptitude, and practice. But the credentials can come only from other people or organizations. Will any of this be considered in DA's class system?
To answer your question I doubt this stuff will be affecting things on rules level, but on level of story and official campaign, credentials or past experience (i.e. selected character background story) usually plays some kind of role at points in the game.
Dungeon Siege, by the way, has a pretty simplistic rules system, at least compared to what you've seen in NWN or will see in DA.
POLL- The manual containing a complete spell list
Why is this even remotely controversial? Of course it should.
Oh, you can argue about that one. You see, I'm an exploration fan - I like to find stuff in the gameworld, things I didn't know about beforehand (as opposed to "I want to look forward to finding spell X).
I think that most of the basic content (spells, weapons), etc of the game should be in the manual for the "looking forward" and "planning" effect (through I somewhat despise the whole "build" business), but I feel there should be a part (maybe 33%?) of those things left out of the manual for exploration. ("There are rumours of even greater swords...").
I agree that things like "class abilities" should be completely in the manual so the player knows what he gets into.
In the end that heavily depends on how you like to play those games, if you are more the powergamer, you will probably want to know all the stuff right beforehand - through manuals usually aren't so detailed about these things since they need to go into print well before the final balancing passes are made over a game.
More:
But I think you should not just give a shortened spell list in the manual and then leave it at that, forcing the designers to extract the information they need manually.
If it's for designers (which are, granted, not the primary people who buy a game), I'd put the full spellist into the toolset... (especially since the toolset is able to read game data)
More:
Why? A complete manual is a standard of the genre, and I'm not willing to accept a reduction of the quality of the product without raising a hue and cry. That product includes a complete manual.
Actually, the recent price drop of AAA games must come from somewhere. In March, several top titles, including Splinter Cell 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 were available, during launch week, for 39 CDN (30US?, 27EUR?) and these had all one in common - a non existant or .pdf manual. Publishers seem to be dropping manuals and fancy packaging for competetive pricing, and full manuals seem to move more and more into the "special edition" realm. The most popular web store feature special sales events about every week selling AAA titles that have been out for only a couple of weeks for insanely low prices.
[Note: I know, from personal experience, that the above is not necessarily valid in some european countries where you still pay the same price as you did 2 years ago in the US and only get a DVD box without a manual anyway, but that seems to be connected to the local market].
I am not saying that his is a good or bad development, but right now it looks like that's the way publishers go (and they ultimately decide on this issue) and it seems like a good part of the customers are fine with this (trade 10$ for a pdf manual) - the rest gets to pay for the manual as special edition, which has about the same price a full price game had 2 years ago. Personally I don't think that's a bad deal, through I can see people who love a fancy manual being opposed to this.
However, it's way to far out to even think about this stuff for Dragon Age specifically, no publisher has been signed yet, and we understand that a lot of people want a nice manual with a BioWare game, so I wouldn't start worrying about it at the moment, there's nothing you or we can do about it at this point. I doubt the manual is more than a obscure figure in some of the later schedules for us at the moment, the difference in time investment to make a 60 or 200 page manual is insignificant to all the other numbers on schedule, which are more in the man-year range.
More:
I am not saying that his is a good or bad development, but right now it looks like that's the way publishers go...
And I, as a consumer, have every right to object.
A hand-held, coil-bound manual is far more useful than a PDF unless the PDF is formatted such that I can print and bind it in a similar style - full letter or A4 sheets are too large.
I'd rather have a text file than a PDF that's formatted for a full page.
You indeed have and you should if you don't like it, probably best by writing to some of the major publishers. In the end it will come down to market acceptance (10$ down of full price vs. pdf or "full" price and bound manual) and without feedback (except from sales numbers), publishers are likely to assume that most people are fine with that tradeoff - what I personally think is the case.
As for "full ruleset in the .pdf", it's again a publisher thing. They might insist on getting the final manual for editing at a certain point and from there on, it is out of your hands as the developer, you can't do anything about it anymore. But I agree, the optimal thing would the manual to be complete (through, I can say from personal experience, that it sometimes happens that you send in a final manual and what gets printed for foreign versions miraculously is a version of the manual that's 1 month older than the final one...)
What we "DO" know so far....
Why woudl the moons necessarily have to be very small? You could have two medium sized moons orbiting a planet of similar size to Earth.
if it was my choice, I'd scrap those planets and go for rotating disks, solves all those stupid wraparound issues and finally explains why the ocean isn't raising all the time when it rains into it ... just falls off the edges
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 5:16 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Could we have a 1.63 status update please?
Yea, locking this for getting offtopic with "will 1.63 include" and "They should put XXX in 1.63" posts 1.63 is in internal beta and is basically feature frozen, which means it's unlikely that we add new stuff from this point on. Once one or two internal beta tests have been performed, we will have a public open beta. stay tuned.
Help Scribing Timestop Scroll
Certain spells need components to be present in the characters inventory to be scribed.
This is actually a feature I added to aid the PW people so they wouldn't have to cope with Hordes of people running around with certain very powerful spellscrolls that would cause server problems (such as perma timestopping the whole server). Also some spells in PnP cause aging or have other negative effects on the player that can not be simulated in NWN, which causes balancing issues with them freely available on scrolls. It's all .2da controlled (des_matcomp.2da), so you can easily remove the need for those components if you don't like them or add your own components to the spell list.
Need a patch now.
Hello
- BioWare does not offer official technical support - this is done through Atari. Check the link to the official support resources on the lefthand menu for more information. You can seek help from people in the community by posting in the Self Help Forum on our webpage.
- BioWare does not release patches "now" or on demand, but when they have been sufficiently tested and approved by all parties involved. Releasing patches before they are done would cause more harm than good. Patch 1.63 is in testing and will be released when it is done and approved, not earlier, not later.
- The issue you are experiencing is likely tied to a problem on your local system, such as a driver issue, copy protection issue or hardware conflict. In any case, please contact Atari support about it, we can not help you with those problems.
Thanks for your understanding
More :
Basically programming is not a matter of perfection but of reaching the attainable and if 1.63 is not attainable in its present form Bioware should admit it and find something that is.
I'm sure our programmers will be delighted and thankful for your great suggestions.
NWN is a 2 year old game and obviously there is no longer a 100 man development team working on it, so greater feature additions or larger changes take more time and take longer to test with fewer people. We do not see any pressing issues why we should rush out the current patch without sufficently testing it (which is happening currently) - we do not want "rushed workshedules", right?.
Chances are that the issue you are experiencing will not be fixed by 1.63, because it does sound a lot like a problem with your local machine. I can understand that this is not what you like to hear, but unfortunately I can not offer you any more help or hope, you need to contact Atari Support with this, they are the people who are more likely to be able to help you with this.
Make your own shields
quick answer: yes
long answer: it depends on what you understand under "own shields". You can create your own magical shields in the toolset with a variety of different properties available. If you are skilled with modelling/art, you can create your own shield models and import them into the game using a hakpak as well.
I think iron and wood makes shields if I remember correctly. I you manage to find a bar of mithral, you can make some pretty decent shields out of it.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
DLLs?
I doubt we will ever open the game engine up to DLLs.
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Haze Persistent World Spotlight and NWVault
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004 - 5:13 CET by chevalier
NWVault have posted a spotlight of a Persistent World named Haze. Here's an excerpt from what the world's homepage:
So what does a week in Haze get you? DM's who will lavish attention on you, polish your nails, wash your dishes, brush your teeth, just sit back and relax on the island of Haze. A technical experience that may well melt your eyes, systems completely unique to Haze, too many to list....too many...to...list. Roleplay! yes you heard it here first folks, real honest to goodness roleplay crafted from players dream and nightmares. A community larger than just NWN, check out a group of gamer dedicated to all things Fantasy. So come on over and check it out folks, what have you got to lose?
Read more at Haze homepage.
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SP Happenings #59
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - 19:14 CET by Sorcerer
Although it took a bit longer than I expected, the new site design is now finally complete and fully operational (as you have undoubtedly noticed). You can read a short introduction in my editorial, and browse the site for the rest. The thread to comment on the new design can be found here. Thanks again to all who have helped make the new face of Sorcerer's Place a reality - especially Catbert, who invested countless hours into coding the whole thing to make it exactly as I wanted it to be.
Of course, the implementation of this new design is only the beginning. Now I will have to make sure to bring all its extra features to life, not to mention clear a mile of backlog that piled up, since content updates have been sparse around here lately to ease the transition to the new site layout. Expect some additional nice surprises in the near future as well.
In other news, I've upgraded our message boards a couple of days ago. Although I've been going on about the switch to a PHP-based board for a while now, I've put it off again. The reason? vB, the board software I am planning on switching to eventually, has seriously limited polling capabilities. In fact, they are so basic, that the majority of our polls could not be imported, if we decided to switch now. I'm prepared to make some compromises when switching to a different board software, but this one is just too big for me to swallow. I guess I'll be looking into what can be done about this issue for a while longer.
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Codepoetz Interview at NWVault
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - 18:02 CET by chevalier
Neverwinter Vault have posted an interview with Codepoetz, the author of the Kiss of Fate module that has made it to NWVault's Hall of Fame. Here's a snip:
1) Could you tell the readers something yourself? Where do you come from, what do you do, what are your hobbies
etc.
I'm in my early thirties, and have a lovely wife and two wonderful young sons (Kalen is two years old and Malcolm is two weeks old). In real life, I design computer software for a large telecommunications company -- the complex software that switches voice and data over world-wide fiber optic networks. I love my job because it gives me a chance to touch the lives of so many people around the world; it's very likely that everyone reading this interview uses some bit of software that I wrote every day (while talking on a cell phone, making a long distance call, or surfing the Internet). Although my career has taken me all over North America and Europe, I decided to raise my family here in Eastern Canada. When time permits, I love reading classic literature, particularly 18th century French and Russian novels.
2) What is your experience with regard to computer games, and RPGs in particular? What are your favourite games?
I only own a few video games, most of which I've never played, and I don't know very much about RPGs. I only purchased NWN to goof around with the toolset. I'm a compulsive programmer and I can seldom resist the opportunity to experiment with new programming languages.
Read the whole thing at NWVault.
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - 17:53 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
Rob Bartel, Senior Designer
Witch's Wake Cameo in SoU?
Yup. The benefit of being a writer is that you get to find all manner of creative outlets for your daily frustrations. It's just a fun little moment that I enjoyed slipping into Undrentide's Crypt Tower when nobody was looking.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
HotU Crafting in NWN?
No, you need HotU to access the crafting system. Besides, using HotU resources without using it would be a violation of the EULA and copyright laws.
NWN 2 and BG 3 Coming out!!!
This is the NWN: HotU Forum, not the -rumor forum. BioWare's next PC Project is called Dragon Age. Therefore this thread is "offtopic" in the NWN:HotU Forum and gets locked.
is this a silly question?
Those load hints are stored in the string database (dialog.tlk). You could download a tool to view this database, i.e. from the Vault. The string refs can be found loadhints.2da.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - 17:48 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
David Gaider, Designer
Dragon Age title
I still figure they should've named the game after whatever they called their world. That way you're not stuck in an age and you're not cornered for sequel titles. Dragon Age would make a better chapter title over a series name.
We were tempted to name the game after the world. The only trouble there is that you can end up with a name that doesn't mean anything to anyone. Eventually it would, but not at first.
"Scallywagland? What the heck is that?"
"That's the name of the world."
"Oh."
(No, it's not called Scallywagland.)
"Dragon Age" at least has some meaning to it. Or so we decided when we ended up going with it.
Quote: THink of this: the name has to be marketable. In DA's case it has to be vague enough to build a series around. It has to relate in some way to the world. It has to be clearly indicative of what kind of game it is. It has to be catchy enough that people remember it. Etc.
And the copyright has to be clear, as well. You'd be surprised how many titles are taken up somewhere by something.
The hardest part about a name is that it's completely subjective as to what people prefer... so therefore everyone on the team has an opinion on it. The process to come up with one is so painful... never ever ever shall I reveal the details of how we went about it. Sheer trauma.
What we "DO" know so far....
What 'PvP rumour'? I suspect that special balance for PvP is getting little to no special consideration so
You're right, it isn't. We're doing what works on the computer. If and when we ever decide to make a PnP version... well, I guess we'll cross that bridge when it's time to blow it up and not before.