August 2001

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2001 - 16:51 CET by Steelgem

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Selectable Breast Sizes?: To answer the question, you will not be able to select size of specific body parts. All you can select is an overall body type.

Marc Taro Holmes, Art Director:

Custom Models & Particle Effects: flaming players - we just don't know yet how much control we can give you of the particle system. This is certainly one of the more tricky part of making game art, and we need to see how much access to this we can reasonably offer.

You will have to be making these kind of art changes in max, you have to keep in mind, the toolset is a D&D game maker, not a magic all-in-one graphics program. Working with our proprietary art tools software is not as simple as using commercial stuff - there are other factors, not the least of which is distribution of our in house scripts - which we are still discussing internaly.

So in short, some things I can't answer yet, you will know how to do these tricks eventualy, but we have to take time to plan.

3DS MAX Scales & GMAX:
3DS MAX) Tile size - one cm = 1 max unit and they are 10m square. Building stories are 3 m high.

GMAX) Now hold on, don't get me fired. You guys need me, remember....
I did mention we are taking a look at new max stuff, including gmax - but I didn't make any promises!!! I am the last guy in line to help with these decisions....it's an intruiging possiblity, but nothing more officialy....I hope it works out, as it would certainly be handy for everyone.

Concerning texture variations: Say you have a red skeleton, and you want to make a blue skeleton (silly example). You load up the red skeleton in max and the red skeleton texture in photoshop. Do the 2D art in photshop to change the red tex. to a blue tex. and save that under a new name, then go back to max and associate the blue texture with the skeleton model, then save your new blue skeleton under a new name like c_skeleton_blu.

You export your new skeleton from max and you have two MDL files - the original red one, and the new blue one. You need these two MDL's and the two texture TGA's to get both kinds of skeletons in game.

That's the basics. But we can't tell you exactly how to get those creatures into your game right now. Or how to go about gettingthe export scritps.

We want to wait till we have a final plan for user content - and frankly getting the game done first is more important - you don't want us giving out instructions that are not final - in games things change very rapidly, and you don't want out of date techniques circulating around the web.

Please bear with us, and we'll help you get your art from max to the game....we want you guys to have the best work flow we can design...it's in everyone's interest if the community grows!

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer:

To Pause or not to Pause Poll: If you are going to have a poll like this, a minor request please. The question is a little vague as written. Instead, could you try:

i.e., Do you want Pause 'n' Play for the Single Player game?

As everyone should know, you can already pause the single player game (to take bathroom breaks and stuff).

Module Documentation Feature: Every object that can be placed can have comments written about it.

I.e., I put a waypoint down and write in its comment field, 'This is where Bad Guy X moves to after Plot Z is complete'.

Pool of Radiance Review by Eurogamer
Posted Friday, August 24, 2001 - 11:18 CET by Nazgul

This is the first negative view that I have seen of the game.

Back in the distant mists of time, before the age of Diablo, Everquest and Baldur's Gate, SSI's Gold Box series was the king of the role-playing genre. Now Stormfront Studios and French publisher UbiSoft are hoping to capture the magic of the original with a new sequel based on the latest 3rd Edition AD&D rule set. We delved into a beta version of the game to find out more...

The B-Team
As in the original, the action centers around the Pool of Radiance, a magical McGuffin which creates a wave of energy that turns anyone it touches into a shambling undead creature of the night. Needless to say, when the old Pool under the city of New Phlan re-activates this is considered to be a Bad Thing™.

Immediately a group of the country's finest heroes is assembled by the mage Elminster and sent off to the ruined elven city of Myth Drannor to discover what has caused the Pool to come back to life. Unfortunately they vanish, and in a fit of desperation Elminster rounds up you and your mates from the local pub and sends you through a magical portal to find out what happened to the real heroes. As you may have guessed, the first party are all dead or missing by the time you arrive, and so it falls to you to uncover what is going on under Myth Drannor and put a stop to it before Phlan becomes uninhabitable.

All of this is somewhat academic though, because the game essentially boils down to a good old fashioned dungeon crawl. What plot there is seems to be rather thin on the ground, certainly in the early stages of the game, and because the city you are exploring is ruined there aren't many people that you will want to stop to talk to. Those of you hoping for a character-led epic along the lines of Baldur's Gate should probably look elsewhere.

Read the rest of the article here.

DB-Forge Feature with Dave Gaider
Posted Thursday, August 23, 2001 - 21:43 CET by Darien

Once again, Dave Gaider has answered some questions over at DB-Forge. This fourth installment of the ongoing feature covers his favorites, from characters to foods, and also has this bit about the BG saga:

7. Did u have the entire game planned from the word go. Like, even when BG1 was being made, did u all know what was going to happen in later games and ToB, or did u guys pretty much just make it us as you went ?
Submitted by Lord Allah

By the time we reached the middle of a project, we had a very clear idea of what the next game would be mapped out for ourselves. Sometimes things would change a little by the time we got there... but overall things remained pretty much as we suspected. A lot of the details we didn't know, though. At the end of BG2, for instance, we knew that the PC would be facing the Bhaalspawn in the next installment... and that the most powerful of the Bhaalspawn would gather together to confront the PC. Hence the film you see at the end of BG2. We did not, however, know the exact form that those Bhaalspawn would take... which is why you see human male wizards in the film rather than the various races that those Bhaalspawn ended up being. But beyond the details, yes... we knew what we were going to do.

Read the rest of the Q&A.

Neverwinter Nights Preview
Posted Thursday, August 23, 2001 - 0:43 CET by Vile

A nice little preview of NWN was posted at PC Gameplay. It basically is an overview of what the game will be about, its options, multiplayer/single player gameplay, and all the freedoms you will have. There are also quite a few screen shots just in case you're wondering. Check out this little section of the post:

Is it possible for people to have too much freedom? And what would happen if there were no rules? It's like Lenin said: "Where there is freedom, there will be no state”. Yet a revolutionary software team operating out of the fashionable Whyte Avenue area of downtown Edmonton, Canada, doesn't believe there's such a thing as too much freedom. The party calls itself Bioware, Neverwinter Nights is its manifesto, and the only rules it goes by come in a manual marked 'Dungeon and Dragons: Third Edition’.

But what if Lenin's right, and people can't be trusted with total freedom? For instance, it'll be possible to create a single room that automatically awards the player 5,000,000 experience points purely for entering it, thus levelling up the character instantly. Rest assured, Bioware is well aware of the possibilities for cheating, and with this in mind has created the official Neverwinter Character Vault as an optional facility for players who wish to play on a "fair playground."

The vault works by storing your character on a central server, taking a record of it and filtering it through a series of tests on return. If you take a Level 5 character out for two hours and return it at Level 17, the vault will disallow this as unfair advancement over the time period and adjust your ranking accordingly. Zeschuk admits this may not be the perfect system, but at least it gives players who wish to exist in a cheat-free utopia an island in the sun and a bucket and spade to get them started.

The full article is posted here.

Boo at MegaTokyo
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 23:49 CET by Darien

Once again, everyone's favorite hamster, Boo, has made another appearance at MegaTokyo. Check out the latest comic strip here.

Pool of Radiance Screenshots
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 23:38 CET by Darien

Want another look? LoadedInc has posted four screenshots from PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Pool of Radiance Release Date
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 23:32 CET by Darien

Gone Gold has posted this short press release for PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor:

On September 25th 2001, the wait is over...... A new Pool of Radiance has been discovered... An Ancient Evil has been re-awakened.....

A time of darkness is almost upon us, a time when only the pure of soul and swift of blade stand between the innocent and an eternity of torment.

The time approaches for a valiant few who must journey into the Forgotten Realms and search out The Ruins of Myth Drannor.....

2000 and Growing!
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 19:42 CET by Sorcerer

I'm happy to announce that Boards O' Magick, our message board has seen its 2000th member earlier today.
I'll just say that considering all the ups & downs we've had, we're still running the best darn community you can be a part of.

For as long as the boards have existed people have always agreed with me on this matter practically 100%, and have praised our boards as the most informative, clean, and no-nonsense out there. But hey, don't think I'm making this up, this stuff is all coming from what people have posted at our boards over the period of a bit more than 13 months.

A big thanks to all the moderators who have spent numerous hours executing our forum rules and keeping people in check so that things didn't get out of hand, and to all our loyal members for their posts and words of support. Keep it up, guys and gals!

In case you haven't yet, check out our forums yourself.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2001 - 16:29 CET by Steelgem

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer:

Radial Interface:
You can do both action->target and target-> action.

The radial menu works with target->action. Select the creature and then select what you want to do to them.

The customizable quickbar works action-> target. Select fireball...click on goblin...ka-BOOM!

Trent Oster, Producer:

Resolution & Radial Interface:
Resolution doesn't affect how far you can see. Higher res just has more pixels on the screen.

As for the radial menu, the right mouse brings it up and the escape key dispells it. You can also backtrack through the radial by right clicking in the center of the menu. As Brent stated above, you can go target-action by starting the radial on the creature, or action-target by starting on yourself or using a quickbar slot. You will have 12 quickbar slots and the quickbar essentially creates a "link" to the action, so if you have ten fireball spells you can keep casting until you run out of fireballs by using the quickbar hotkey or clicking on the quickbar button. The user interface is one of the most important aspects of NWN and we are going to tune it up until it meets our expectations.

Poly Counts:
I'm old school, started in 3D Studio rev. 2, used Lightwave for a bit (ver. 4.0-5.5). We use 3D Studio Max for our player character models. The models are fairly complex in terms of technical limitations so the part based armour system and the animations work. The easiest way to make your own characters would be to model over a template model. We don't have any plans to release a template model before ship, so I can't help much here. As for monsters, there are two types, simple weapon and simple. Simple weapon monsters can use any weapon and are pulling animation from the human animations. Simple creatures have the weapons in the model and have unique animations. The easiest models to build will be the simple creatures, you just need the correct naming scheme and animation names and they should work. Again, all of this is contingent upon hack pack support for user created content. We are still seriously looking at hack packs, but they most likely will not make our ship date.

Back to the original topic, our character models usually come in around 700-800 polys when assembled and weapons are supposed to be around 100 polys per hand i.e. a two handed weapon is around 200 polys (I modeled(sp?) the weapons and I was a little higher here and there) . Tiles are supposed to be under 500 polys per tile display mesh. This helps us keep the frame rate up and enables us to do real-time shadows and heavy particle effects.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Campaign Discussion Continued:
First, here is the WotC Forgotten Realms page. In the sense of PnP D&D, the FR is a persistent world. A pre-defined world created by WotC that many of us at BioWare are very familiar with. The problem is that when you say "persistent world" in a NWN setting, it usually refers to a server that runs 24/7, not a campaign environment.

To play any module as a player in NWN, you don't need to know a thing about the Forgotten Realms.

Aidan Scanlan, Writing & Design:

Party vs Faction Functions:
When a party is created, a new faction is created at the same time. You don't need 'Party' functions because they would serve the same purpose as the 'Faction' functions.

So when two characters join together as a party, they join a unique faction. Any other character that joins their party also joins this faction. If two other characters form a second party, they would also be given a unique faction.

Commoner Scripting: Response to a question of scripting the movement of a number of commoners around a city.

You could lay down a series of waypoints that all commoners share. You could then give them a script that randomly picks which points to walk to. This method is a little more complicated than simply using the random walk function, but it will give you a lot more control. After all you don't want a deer wandering into your dungeon...

Preston Watamaniuk, Writing & Design:

Magic Items and their use:
The item properties system will allow you to set one of two types of usage on an activated property. The first is the number of charges activating the property uses up, or the item will have a certain number of uses between rest periods. This way you can create items that are permanent or temporary.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2001 - 18:42 CET by Steelgem

Trent Oster, Producer:

Gargoyle animations: Last I recall we had two gargoyle models, a stone version and the animated version. The plan was to use the stone version and have it replaced when the gargoyle activates.

Spell Knockdown Effects: The falling down was an experiment we did in spell and combat effects. A random determination was made as to if you were knocked down or not. We don't plan on including this in the final game.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Meaning of the word "Campaign" in relation to NwN:
These are the questions & responses to the post by onomastikon.

(onomastikon)
I was (mistakenly?) under the impression that when referring to a "campaign", one refers to a longer-going adventure. When speaking in NWN contexts, perhaps this means a "persistent world". Correct, or wrong?

(Derek)
Campaign is a term that we at BioWare are using to refer to the adventure that is shipping with Neverwinter Nights. It can also refer to anyone else's module. Usually, the term is used to refer to any adventure, be it PnP or computer, that isn't a short adventure.

(onomastikon)
Now I was reading the posts on license agreements, d20, 3e, D&D, NWN and FR. I am confused. According to these discussions, "campaign" (more precisely = "campaign setting" ??) refers to a specific world-type setting within D&D, in this case, Forgotten Realms. Correct, or wrong?

(Derek)
Yes, the phrase "campaign setting" usually refers to the "world" that a campaign takes place in. In the case of Neverwinter Nights, it is the Forgotten Realms.

(onomastikon)
I ask because I have played AD&D for a while up until I was about 25 (I am 35), but never used purchased modules, only the "core books", and so have no clue as to what FR actually is. Apparently, other rules apply here. Correct, or wrong?

(Derek)
The FR sourcebook mainly makes some additions to the basic 3e rules, as well as setting up the specific campaign setting. In the case of Neverwinter, we are mainly sticking to the Player's Handbook for rules.

(onomastikon)
If correct ... are these other rules made by WotC, and if so or not, are they made to be compatible with 3e? And where can one find these rules? Do they cost extra (licensing-wise and player-spending-stuff-on-books-wise)? Lastly: will NWN be using these at all?

(Derek)
Yes, these 3e rule books are made by WotC. Yes, you have to pay for them like any other book in the bookstore. As per above, NWN will be using the FR setting, but using the PHB for rules.

PoR Screenshots and Movie
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 22:28 CET by Darien

Eleven new screenshots of PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor have been posted at PCArena, along with a movie and a list of the game updates.

Megawinter Nights Wallpaper
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 22:13 CET by Darien

In case you didn't notice Megatokyo's talent for spoofs on popular games, now's a good chance to check it out. This wallpaper version of Pirogoeth is a follow-up the original remake of Neverwinter Nights' Aribeth.

Neverwinter Vault Planned Event
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 22:13 CET by Steelgem

Neverwinter Vault posted today that they will be hosting a chat session with NwN Art Director, Marc Holmes. The topic of the chat is art work related so don't expect detailed answers to scripting questions.

Time: Thursday, August 23rd 2001
5:00 pm PST (Pacific)
6:00 pm MST (Mountain)
8:00 pm EST (Eastern)

Locations:
(URL) Web Browser Client

(IRC) Connect to chat1.ign.com in channel #neverwinter

Black Isle Interview
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 22:02 CET by Darien

Khabal Gaming has posted and interview with Black Isle Programmer Danien Chee. He talks about the usual personal history, and work experience, but also about the differences between US gamers and those in his home island of Singapore. Here's a bit on that topic:

The gaming community in the US is older, much larger, and more vocal. Contrary to popular belief, gamers aren't all pimple-faced teenaged boys sitting in dark rooms with the eerie glow of the computer screen lighting up their evil grins as they bash the next goblin into pulp. According to demographics, most hardcore gamers are between 18-36 years of age. Many are married and hold full-time jobs. The ratio of hardcore gamers to casual gamers is also much larger than in Singapore...

In Singapore, the community is still pretty young and there aren't many established communities except for a few like Khabal.com. However, the Singaporean gamers do seem to be just as vocal when it comes to games that they are interested in, and it sometimes seems strangely familiar reading posts on message boards from fans. The perennial questions about game release dates, suggestions on how to do this and that, are all pretty much the same from fans all over the world.

Read the entire interview.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 21:30 CET by Steelgem

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Single Player modules: I just had to chime in with some good news - If you want to create single-player content with the Neverwinter Toolset, you're more than welcome to do so. There's a lot of misconception out there that NWN is multiplayer only, that it requires a DM to play, and so forth, but don't believe a word of it. Not only is the official campaign playable in single-player but there are also a large number of talented individuals within the fan community who will be creating single-player campaigns and modules to keep lone adventurers busy well into the future. We get a lot of press for our multiplayer capabilities because they're new and they're different and they sell magazines... But don't worry, the single-player experience is far from forgotten by those of us on the actual dev team.

Alex Scott, SFX Artist:
Fairies Real Creatures: Fairy's are now a real creature. They can do all the things creatures can do(cast spells, have conversations, do nasty things to one another when no one is watching).

They are about as big as your forearm (12" or so) they have full bodies ie. head arms legs feet....(just really small). There wings are particles so they shine in the dark, and they leave a little trail of pixie dust when they move around.

That's all I'm going to say about them. If I told you everything now, what would you have to look forward too??

Aidan Scanlan, Writing & Design:

Scripts moving through a party: The scripting language does have the functionality to allow you to cycle through members of a given party. From there you can filter race, class, alignment, etc.

Trent's Top Ten
Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 2:56 CET by Vile

Trent Oster has made a diary that is currently posted at VoodooExtreme. Here it is just in case you need a laugh:

Trent "Gnome-basher" Oster, lead designer of BioWare's Neverwinter Nights has checked in with a brand-new top 10 list; this time tackling the top ten things to do when rolling up a Gnome Illusionist character (oh boy, you know its over when you have one of these guys). Included in the top 10 list are 3 new NWN screen shots as well!

Trent Oster, Producer:

10) Start over with a real race/class combo...

9) Name your character "mincemeat"...

8) Beg the gods for some special ability to make you useful...

7) Make a large number of fighter type friends. Someone is going to have to save your ass all the time and if they like you they will probably save you at least a few times before they realize how useless you are...

6) Put all your ability scores into dexterity. If nothing else you can keep an enemy occupied for the rest of the party. With a high dexterity you might even survive long enough for a real character to save you...

5) Buy a sling. You may as well give yourself some kind of token combat ability...

4) Agree with the party you won’t ask for any share in the treasure. This will keep the rest of the party from killing you the first time they have to split the loot with your useless butt...

3) Buy a suit of Gnome plate mail. You won’t be able to do anything, (no real difference there) but you will be harder to kill...

2) Put all your ability scores into charisma, if creatures think you are cute they probably won’t kill you outright...

1) Bribe the DM. It’s the only way you are going to survive!

Site News - New Additions
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 20:41 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Books

I've altered the text on the main Fantasy Books page and added a couple details about the ordering process. Aside from that, there's a new sample chapter you can download from the first page of the Forgotten Realms books subsection. It's from Elminster in Hell, the newly released novel from Ed Greenwood describing the adventures of Faerun's most powerful and well known mage.

Subsection Updates -> Games

I've fixed some broken links to the games listed on the main Games page, and added the titles that are available for other platforms than PC. All related Macintosh and PlayStation 2 games can now be purchased from that section as well. Amazon dropped prices on some of the older titles again, so if any of them are missing from your collection, this is the perfect time to go on a shopping spree.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

Let's start at the beginning, in the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection. Here I've posted the final version of my Throne of Bhaal features list, which is now correct on all counts since it has been updated with a ton of information straight from the manual.

In the same subsection there's an online version of Interplay's Throne of Bhaal walkthrough available. It's pretty good, though lacking the entire Watcher's Keep part of the expansion.

Another new walkthrough for Throne of Bhaal comes from GameSpot, but this one is complete in all regards. There are two versions of it available, an online one and a downloadable pdf document.

The new addition to the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection comes from Extremist, our local hex wizard. This time he extracted the information about Totemic Druid's spirit animals and made it into a handy little guide for all of you who were wondering which & how powerful animals this type of druid can summon.

Another new addition appears on the first page of the Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection. A fan has sent in a very convincing Darth Vader sound set I'm sure many of you will enjoy. On the second page of the same subsection however, there a new, full version of the Throne of Bhaal Concurrent Romances hack, something I know many of you have been waiting for impatiently.

The most powerful of Bhaalspawn might also find of interest the Improved Tougher Yaga Shura, a new unofficial patch which makes this Throne of Bhaal battle much more challenging, but also resource-demanding, so make sure your computer can handle it before installing!

Finally, BioWare has released the official Throne of Bhaal English patch (the international one listed is still beta), so all of you who own a copy of the game that is in English can now get a magic wand to fix a small legion of more or less serious problems encountered without it. As always, get it from the Miscellanea subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Pool of Radiance: RoMD

Only one new addition here; namely a guide dealing with how the 3rd edition D&D rules will be implemented in the game. You can read all about it in the Miscellanea subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Neverwinter Nights

Again in the Miscellanea subsection, check out my updated list of monsters and a list of skills from the GenCon demo, posted by Wasek.

Subsection Updates -> Community

A new link has been added to the Related Links subsection. Check out Kitiara's Palace of Portraits for portraits for Baldur's Gate series of games.

Shadows of Amn is Gold
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 17:02 CET by Darien

Old news you say? Not so! It's great news for Mac users. Inside Mac Games reports that Mac OS Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn has gone gold, and is due for release in September. Here's more:

MacPlay is pleased to announce that Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn has gone gold and that the award-winning game will be available from major retailers in early September. MacPlay is committed to bringing the best possible experience to the Apple gaming community, and Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn has been developed to utilize the most powerful features of OSX.

For those wishing to preview the game, an engaging trailer is now available on Apple’s Game website at www.apple.com/games. Product information is available on MacPlay’s website at www.macplay.com, and an aggressive preorder campaign remains in effect through the end of the month. Customers should expect to find the game at all the major Macintosh software retailers within the next few weeks.

Anyone who wants to preorder the Mac version of the game can help support Sorcerer's Place and buy from Amazon.com. You can find this and other games here in our Games Section.

Freaky Place
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 16:49 CET by Darien

There's a new site in town called Freaky Place that's definitely worth checking out. It's based on roleplaying games, mainly D&D, Neverwinter Nights and other Bioware games. The site is basically a short comic strip, and there's also a forum where you can get to know the host, Never Freak. So go take a look! :)

Neverwinter Nights Interview
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 3:26 CET by Vile

Aidan Scanlan was recently interviewed during GenCon 2001. He answers many questions about NWN and it's toolset. This is just a small excerpt of the conversation posted at NWVault:

RBB: What about detect magic, detect evil, and so on?

Aidan: Detect magic, detect... Yeah, those are in the works.

RBB: They'll be included?

Aidan: Yeah. And as for illusions, illusions will generally be more like summoning creatures; it'll just be a different kind of illusionary creature with different statistics, different ways of dealing with them, as opposed to a more general illusion, where—in pen and paper—the door's open.

RBB: But can you make an illusion of a placeable object?

Aidan: Not with the current illusion spells that are being implemented. If, as a DM, though, you wanted to do that—you have the ability to do it real time—and wanted to have a more open, imaginative play style, where you're my DM, and I reserved my spell slot for this illusion spell that's custom on your server. I want to cast it to make this illusion. The DM can spawn in the placeable object, or the creature, or whatnot.

Read the rest here.

NWN Adventure Creation Guide
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 0:44 CET by Darien

Part IV of Gamespy's Neverwinter Nights feature looks at some reasons for creating multiple paths and methods of acheiving that goal. There are also several new screenshots, so be sure to head over and check this one out!

Something we recently hinted at is the creation of multiple paths - both through an individual map and through the larger-scale story. Today, we're going to analyze this, as well as determine how and why we should make use of multiple paths...

If the players know from past experience that the only way to resolve a situation is through combat, then they won't bother with thought. The players will simply fashion their personae into fighting machines, and charge their muscle-bound warriors headlong into every battle. Unfortunately for the creator of that story, however, the players will eventually grow weary of such repetitive tales and soon lose their taste for adventure.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Friday, August 17, 2001 - 22:09 CET by Steelgem

Trent Oster, Producer:

Will there be Dragons:
We're already doing dungeons, so maybe we could fit in dragons too.

Pausing the game:
This is a continuation of an older thread, click here to read through the posts on the topic.

Pausing is a complex issue.
We've defined the two type of pause:
"Pause-in-play" which allows you to manipulate the game while it is paused
"Pause" which holds everything static until you release it. (no gui interaction)

You will be able to Pause NWN as a single player. You will not be able to Pause a multiplayer game unless you are the server operator.

As for Pause-in-play, this is a much more complex issue. When we developed BG we didn't plan for Pause-in-play and after playing the game we realized it was very difficult to control six characters in real time. We implemented Pause-in-play and the game had to be completely reworked and rebalanced to compensate. With NWN we believe the game will be much easier to control in real time, as you are only controlling one character at a time. It is also my belief that the non-pausing nature of the game will more realistically simulate the confusion of battle. In one pen and paper group we had a DM who only allowed us 20 seconds to describe our move for the combat round and make the necessary rolls. The tension during combat sessions was nearly unbelievable. Everyone was on the edge of our seats during play and left the session quite exhausted. I think NWN can capture this magical mix and the game will be an excellent blend of strategy and action. A game with the flexibility offered by the D&D rules with the elevated feeling of threat brought by real time play. Currently we are developing the game without pause-in-play in mind and we will be balancing the game as such. If during playtesting the game sucks we may re-evaluate this decision. Bottom line the game has to be fun or we won't ship it.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Single-player campaign 60+ hours of gameplay: That number is basically accurate, looking at the plans we have at this time (13:46, Thursday August 16th, 2001).

As with all things, playtesting, funtesting, timelines, etc. can come crashing down on that number and make it longer. Or shorter. It really all comes down to testing. As per the above time stamp, 60 hours is a good value at this time.

I just wanted to add that the phrase "single player campaign" really doesn't exist. There is no line drawn between single and multiplayer. The "Official Campaign" will work whether you have 1 player or more. NWN is not like Half-Life, etc., where Single Player is the part of the game that has a story and Multi Player is where you just kill each other. The Official Campaign can be enjoyed on your own or with others participating.

Marc Taro Holmes, Art Director:

Desert or/and Artic tile sets: Sorry, no desert or winter set in the first release. You could experiment with doing a texture replacement on the rural set, and you might be surprised how wintery you could make it. But that is kind of a hack.

All I can say is I hope we get the go ahead to make 600 expansion packs for all the stuff I'd like to see in the game.

Will there be Dragons:
Like Trent Oster, Marc had a similar reaction to this question, and responded to it by supporting the statements of Staran Pioux in previous posts.

Staran Pioux)
Dungeons and Dragons game
Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons....and...Dragons
Dungeon ... Dragon

We, I think, have seen our share of Dungeons in NWN demos. Therefore that is HALF of the requirements for a Dungeon and Dragons type game.

I give you my word that it will be the last monster they implement, as well as the very last thing they will ever tell us about the game.

Marc_taro)
Staran is a very wise man.

Characters Hair/Head/feature attachable geometry: Your head and/or helmet in NWN is one piece. You choose your entire head, hairstyle, hat, facial features as on item at character generation.

We had to go this way because of technical limits on the number of parts to a character. A Hair, Hat, Beard, Jewelry system was tried, but it adds a lot of parts when you multiply that by the number of characters on the screen.

Perhaps as min-spec's rise in the future, we can expand the system in this area.

Portrait sizes: Hello everyone. I see some clarification on portrait art is in order.

We do our portraits quite large, just because we like having nice high rez paintings we can use for all kinds of things, like promo art and web graphics. You can do your original art any size you like, so long as it IN PROPORTION to the BG format.

BG large pics were 110x170 pixels at 72 dpi.

NWN actually supports the following sizes

256x400(on 512) - player bio
128x200(on 256) - char sheet
64X100(on 128) - your in game pic
32X50(on 64) - party members and radial
16X25(on 32) - chat thumbnail

We create them all from the largest 256x400 size. Due to the tech behind 3D games, the portraits have to be pasted onto a texture that is a "non-square power of 2", so the image is created with some blank space on the bottom to fill in the difference from 110x170 proportions to the power of 2 sizes. . Those are the numbers in brackets. (Don't ask me to explain why, just trust me, paste your 128x200 pic onto a 128x256 image and it will work).

In order for your image to work in game, you only need to provide the 128x200(256) size. You don't have to have the smaller sizes below 128, the game can create those automatically.

If you use a BG image straight across it will work just fine, but will be 'blown up' by the game engine to fit the larger texture - this will cause a small loss of quality that many people will not notice. You have to remember you see your portrait full size, but everyone else sees the smaller size in the party bar or the conversation window.

Marc also posted this question & it's response about character portraits.

I got the following question by email - that I'm posting here for everyone -

Q - Is the large "player bio" picture going to be available to other players (and thus transmitted during multiplayer games), or is that picture mainly for the player's eyes only (and thus, not transmitted like the main image?

The very largest size 256x400 will not go out on the net. You don't want big honking bitmaps like that uploading every time someone logs in and out of the server. Other players will only be able to see your 128 size pic, and even then only on demand - when they actually inspect your avatar. Otherwise you will see the 64 size in the party bar and when doing a radial menu action on a player.

NWN vs Morrowind: I don't think it is a situation of either of us copying the other. They are making a world building game for single player, and we are making a multiplayer dungeons and dragons game. It's really apples and oranges, except that we both use the very popular 'fantasy' setting (which is a very wide playing field).

Personally I’m looking forward to their game - I'm always curious about other editors....I'm eagerly waiting for Arcanum as well...their module building tool looks very polished.

Requesting The Marilith: Hello all. A merry band of marilith supporters here today....

First off...no we are not doing a marilith for the first release. We will certainly consider doing one for a future release, provided we are given the opportunity to do an expansion pack or some kind of sequel. (As you all know, we don't decide these things ourselves, there are many stakeholders at the suit and tie level.)

What can I say - you have to make some kind of list, and for NWN we mad a list of around 200 creatures. We think that’s quite a few critters for our first kick at the cat.

There are a tad more than 200 in D&D, so we had to pick and choose. Many of my personal favorites are not included, and sadly we did not have the chance to make any unique creatures - which is always a bit disappointing for an artist. But, what we have done is looking great, offers a lot of gameplay, and should keep you guys rolling for a few months!

Due to technological constraints we have to draw the line at creatures that use too many parts, have too much single mesh involved, or those that cannot be used for a lot of different variations. The marilith is actually the worst offender in all cases. It just doesn't pay of for you guys - why make one six armed creature, when I could make a creature that we can convert into ten other critters?

I know you guys will understand, and support us so we can keep going with NWN and get round to doing her in the future...

but thanks for your input, and keep the messages coming, we do listen.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Scripting & Performance: To be honest, performance issues will depend lot more on the script than the scripting language itself. There are such things as efficient and inefficient scripts, just like there is such a thing as efficient and inefficient code. A good scripter will be able to do three things:

1) Make it work;
2) Make it work well; and
3) Make it work fast.

I know that's kind of a vague answer but it's all we can really give you at this point in time.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

25-Point attribute discussion: I love low scores, too, for role-play reasons, but having an 8 is free. If you lower your score from 8, you should gain no points in return.

Personally, I would have gone with a system that starts all of your abilities at 4, kept the current system for point buy (just shifted the numbers up to account for the lower starting point (i.e. 8 - 14 costs 6 points would become 4 to 10 costs 6 points)), and given you 24 points to buy your stats with, but you'd gain a point at every second level-up (2, 4, 6, etc.). You'd start off a lot weaker, but you'd show a constant sign of improvement, and it'd give you more points to shape your character with as you go along.

Of course, everyone probably has an idea for how they would tweak the system, but really, it's pretty well-balanced as it is. I don't need to see any changes to it.

Pool of Radiance Board Update
Posted Friday, August 17, 2001 - 13:57 CET by Darien

Garrett Graham had a bit to say about the use of 3e rules in PoR, and a reminder for those who think the developers aren't paying attention to "customer feedback." Here are his recent comments on the Official Pool of Radiance message boards.

Switching to 3rd Edition: PoR was a 2nd Ed. game when it was first designed and during the early programming stages. When 3rd Ed. was announced, the management at the time made the decision to change over. And to be fair, I think most of the people on this board would have made the same decision. But there were some problems involved, mostly revolving around changing the enging in mid-development and with the rules set changing every week (we were sent constant updates as things were added and taken out of the new rules). Things that are not in the game, were never in the game, due either to changing rules or to design decisions made early on. So as an issue of semantics, nothing has been cut from PoR.

A last note: the people responsible for making these decisions have long since departed our company (we've been bought and sold four times during PoR's dev time). However, I'll patiently read everything that's written in this Forum so that I can learn and do better in the future. And I also want to mention that Ubi Soft is the first game company that's owned us and they are listening to what we say and better yet, are acting on it.

Character Customization/Feats: I got the impression that they put the rules in for balancing purposes, and then tried to rationalize them. I like the fact that 3E rules have cleaned up a lot of this.

Following the Message Boards: I read everything that goes up here and I answer questions that people have about the game. But I try not to get involved in flame wars or cases where people who have a difference of opinion treat it like a right vs. wrong arguement.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2001 - 19:53 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: We need you to help us out by picking a name you think would be the most appropriate for our new chatroom dedicated mostly to online role-playing. The winning entry gets to stay permanently as the official name, so choose wisely!
(502 votes total)

Minstrel's Medallion (151) 30%
Loaded Die (118) 24%
Roleplay Arena (115) 23%
Rumble Room (44) 9%
Dice Room (37) 7%
Hidden Room (37) 7%

Well I can't really comment much on this poll (well, I could try, but I doubt anyone'd bother to read it), so let's just say that Minstrel's Medallion won with a majority of votes, so from now on this will be the official title of our role-playing chatroom. Thanks to everyone for participating in this selection!

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2001 - 18:49 CET by Steelgem

Here are some new posts found on the Black Isle Message Boards...

Trent Oster, Producer:

Implementation of a fireball: This topic was sparked by an older quote from Trent...

Fireball functions through a line of sight check with the people in the area of effect. So no, fireball will not expand to fill a long thin hallway. Given the choice between a slightly less dangerous fireball and a massive drop in framerate while the server calculated the volume of the spell dynamically we decided a slightly less dangerous fireball was preferable.

Q. Please Trent, or someone at BW more clarification on what you mean about line of sight in relation to the fireball spell ... If a Halfling Rogue jumps behind a Half-Ogre warrior who is behind the Human Paladin that is the target of the Fireball, isn't line of sight to the Halfling blocked?

A. By Line-of-sight I am referring to walls and other static geometry. If there is a wall between a character and the spell target, the character is not harmed. If the character is in the radius of the spell and there is no wall between the character and the spell target the character is hit. Other characters are not taken into account as this would add extra complexity to the spell script and slow the game. So, in short, no you can't hide behind other characters to avoid the effects of a fireball.

Hex and Binary math functions in NWScript: Right now we have no plans for bit operation support via scripting. You could build your own "layer" on top and perform your operations on an Int if you really needed such functionality.

NWN and D&D (Pen and Paper):
This post by Trent is in response to comments voicing disappointment in the divergence from a perfect pen & paper port of D&D 3rd Edition to the computer.

I understand all the concerns voiced in this thread and I do agree with a number of them. Any closed system modeled on a computer cannot match the freedom and creativity possible in pen and paper. Given the limits of a computer I feel amazingly good about what we have accomplished to date. I also feel the future will be truly amazing. I want NWN to be a game people are still playing in five or ten years. The key to this is going to be attention to community on our part. We have to listen to the community and add in requested features whenever possible. When NWN ships it will be the best game our team could create in the time we had available. It will not have every feature we ever wanted, and there will be aspects we want to improve, but after we ship the game is when even more innovation can start. Given a stable framework and a solid understanding of the system our people can extend and enhance the game further than many of us can foresee. Additionally, by opening almost every aspect of the game to the end users, we can pull innovation from the community. In short, NWN will not be everything that pen and paper D&D is when we ship it. But in the future, with expansions and fan created content it can be something truly amazing which will stand on its own.

Click here to read the posts that lead to Trent's response.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Keyword recognition in the conversation editor:
(Rhodan) No keyword recognition in the conversation editor?

(Derek) That is correct, the CE does not have any keyword recognition in it. That only comes into play if you use scripting for conversations.

(Rhodan) I had thought that tree conversations were limited to text output only. I may not have to go to pure keyword scripting after all!

(Derek) On each line of conversation you can do the following:
- Run a script before the conversation line is displayed to determine if the line should be displayed or if the next branch should be executed. This is for deciding between showing lines like "Get me a Quest_Item_001." or "I see you have Quest_Item_001."
- After/during a text line is displayed you can play an animation on the NPC, play a sound file on the NPC, or even run a script to do pretty much anything. This can be used to show a specific animation while playing your VO line for the NPC while setting a variable to record that the player has talked to this NPC.
I think that the CE is pretty damned powerful myself.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

Previewing your modules: While there won't be any integrated debugger in the NWToolset where you can, for example, set breakpoints in your scripts, we are planning on providing a means to launch the game from there.

Keep in mind that while the NWToolset is using the graphics engine to give the module designers a real feel for how their areas will look at game time, it isn't using the rules engine. This means that while you can write and compile your scripts from within the NWToolset, running those scripts or watching combat isn't possible.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Local Character Vault Interface & Filters: We consider server vaults to be quite important to the NWN multiplayer experience. While we haven't decided on a specific interface for it yet, we are hoping to provide you with a reasonable amount of control over the nature and scope of your vault filters. Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure it won't be scripting-based.

What is a feature: With regards to tilesets, when we refer to a 'Feature,' we mean a special chunk of 10x10 meter terrain - basically something you would want to place specifically, rather than having it appear randomly throughout your painting process. A small cottage might be considered a feature, for instance, as might an ornate fountain. A patch of slightly worn cobblestone, on the other hand, would probably be considered too generic to warrant being a Feature.

Similar to Features are 'Groups.' They are also special chunks of non-generic terrain but they consist of multiple tiles. A large manor house would be a Group, as is that large electrical pit we placed in the dungeon near all the spiders.

It's important to keep in mind that Features and Groups are not things that get placed on top of tiles. They actually are tiles or tile clusters themselves.

Neverwinter Nights' Aribeth at MegaTokyo
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2001 - 22:10 CET by Vile

Check out the latest BioWare related feature at MegaTokyo. This time it's Aribeth, an illustration inspired by the CG magazine's cover from a while ago.

A little surprise for y'all. 'Pirogoeth' is the culmination of about four weeks of hard work by the very talented Merekat. She was able to take my original design and color sketch of Pirogoeth, a spoof on this official artwork from NeverWinter Nights. Spectacular, isn't it? I present proof to how much i suck!! ha-haa! ^^;;; Seriously tho, Merekat and I had a lot of fun collaborating on this image - it is a great collaboration of our particular talents. We've been exploring other pieces and styles we can do that will help expand the artistic vision of the Megatokyo world, so this is just the first of many pieces we'll be working on. Yes, we are going to print posters. Yes, you will be able to buy them. I'll post more info on that as soon as we have it.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2001 - 21:27 CET by Vile

Here's some more info from the Black Isle message boards. This one has a lot of info on strongholds in NWN.

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

Strongholds:
OK, peoples...time for you to get a bit more direct involvement in the creative process, here. Your suggestions in the other NWN threads have so far been very enlightening, thank you very much. Now it's time to get a bit more specific.

You guys who played BG2 know what they are. It was tough to get ideas on them before BG2 came out because few people knew really what to expect...a lot of people had notions of controlling a castle's armies a la a RTS game or similar types of misunderstandings. Since you know how the strongholds worked in BG2, it is now much more feasible to get direct input.

OK, so...first thing: these are not BG2 Strongholds.

The idea is not going to be that you 'own' a particular place and start operating it in complete ignorance of the overall story that's going on. ("What? Oh, yes, that important quest. Well, I'll get to it someday once my inn starts making a profit...") The idea we're looking at right now (and keep in mind this is not guaranteed...this is something we're considering implementing) is to implement five types of organizations that you can get involved with to a degree. You help them out, perform services for them, you get benefits in return...maybe it involves actually joining the order and rising in their ranks, that hasn't been decided yet. But the quests involved should be short enough that the player can do a considerable number, should they wish...and that these quests exist as a result of and are therefore part of the 'overall story obstacle' (whether it be the plague that was mentioned as part of one of the modules, some uber-boss who's having a dire impact on the area or whatever).

The organizations will be of the following types:

1) smuggler/rogue
2) nature-based
3) mercenary
4) magical (arcane)
5) religious

So? You want to contribute some ideas? Here's some questions you can pick from, or put your thoughts in on them all:
Think of a short quest idea that would be applicable to one of the above organizations. You don't have to fit it into the overall story (as you won't know that, of course), but if you can come up with some interesting plots that aren't too complex that would be very keen.

What sorts of things would you want to be able to do in that organization/stronghold? Now...keep this reasonable, as a single one of these cannot be extremely huge. The strongholds in BG2 could have been improved by making them more useful and more accessible (you didn't have to go out of your way to return to them all the time), and while we've got the accessible part covered, I bet you guys can think of a lot more uses than us.

If you have an idea for a specific organization. Maybe there's a specific type of stronghold you'd like to see. Keep in mind that the quests involved have to be fun (not tedious) and they have to be something that can be made readily relevant to an epic plot.

Or, of course, if you have any other thoughts you'd like to offer, we'd be happy to hear them.

(Just another reminder that this is not an announcement of a feature...this may or may not be going into the game, right now we're trying to judge how fun it would be and how much it'd be wanted, and we're asking you to help us out with your educated opinions).

I saw your last couple of posts. I especially liked the cleric quest regarding the angry spooks in the graveyard. We had a running joke when we were discussing that, wondering if we could get Manny from Grim Fandango to be the ghosts' negotiating representative with the PC. Probably not, but it was a fun idea at the time.

The class-specific quests are already starting to solidify a bit, which is a good thing. According to our working theory, more attention needs to be given to some classes than others. Why? Well, here's sorta how it goes:

Fighter classes get to feel like fighters all the time. They go around whacking things throughout the module. "Look ma, I'm a fighter!" Fighters don't need much else, although given them class-specific stuff is easy.

Magic-users also don't need too much. They cast spells all the time. However...players with magic-users like to feel special and want a place to work on magic stuff. Easily done. Throw in some quests that can specifically only be done by magic-users and there you go.

Clerics, paladins and monks are a bit trickier. The classes can all fight, but their alignments differ (clerics and monks can also be evil) and coming up with a generic stronghold isn't easy. I think we've done it, but the quests that would be involved here are a bit iffy. Best thing to do is give them multiple paths in how they can be completed...so Mr. Lawful Good Paladin can feel just as vindicated as Ms. Chaotic Evil Cleric.

The most work, in my mind, has to go to the rogue stuff and the nature stuff. Why? Thieves never get to feel very thiefly in most adventure games. Wandering around dungeons and disarming the occasional trap is OK, but the thief feels most at home in the big city strutting his stuff in the guild. And druids and rangers rarely get to feel very druidic/rangery. It's important that their class makes them feel distinctive.

The druid stuff is probably the hardest. We're looking at the possibility of letting druids and rangers talk to any animals in the game (which no other class could do) and get extra hints & quests that way. We may also be putting a small grove right in the city...might seem a bit odd, but what better place to bring nature to than a city? Seems pretty visionary to me. So far the quests for druids are a bit thin...there's been a couple of interesting ideas earlier, but nothing we've been able to fit in.

Still...when I sit back and look at the level of detail on all fronts, it's looking pretty good.

Alex Scott, SFX Artist:

Faeries:
Its all and more then you ever could have wanted. At first I just did it as a particle effect that could be used like you had first planed.

But I added a poly body to the effect, and now it looks WAY KOOL! It will be a real Creature that you can pick and place at will in the module. Scripting encounters will be the same as with NPC's or other creature types.

They could be woodland helpers and all kinds of things now! Evil even! Wooohahaha. It will take a while for me to add all the anims, as I have to do it on my own time.

Mark Brockington, Lead Research Scientist:

Command Parameter:
"Command" isn't really a variable. In the current implementation, a command parameter takes the state of the running script and saves it for execution by another object (in the case of AssignCommand) or at a later time (in the case of DelayCommand).

However, it is on my list of things I am considering adding to the language (time permitting, and if it can be done without breaking the scripts that the designers have already done!)

One of my concerns would be when the parameters are evaluated. Does OBJECT_SELF always refer to the object that created the command, or should it refer to the object that is eventually running the command? And if you assign a command to someone, should it check their locals, or your locals. What about variables that fall out-of-scope between the evaluation and their execution?

Neverwinter Designer Diary Feature
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2001 - 2:21 CET by Steelgem

Neverwinter Vault has posted a feature written by Marc Taro Holmes, NWN Art Director detailing the current status on the content development. From his remarks it looks like things are coming along very nicely, but don’t take my word for it ...

I have a kind of superstitious fear of saying stuff like this out loud. You think you're done, but until it's in the game engine and you're actually playing it (over and over and over), you can never be sure. BUT, I think we are over the bulk of the art creation. The game is getting done! I might actually have a life outside the office sometime soon!

A virtual view of NWN art content right now would resemble that scene from The Matrix with those infinite racks of guns that come zooming in from nowhere. An army of characters and creatures standing in formation, rows of landscape tiles stretching as far as the eye can see, seemingly infinite racks of weapons, items and armor, a vast library of magical scrolls, a veritable gallery of portraits.

Seriously though, in few weeks we'll be first pass complete on 200 creatures. We are just doing the last few variations this month

I'm hearing rumors we will be ready to start in on tutorials for user-created models soon.

We're also nearing completion of the first nine tile sets. The latest news there is a new feature where the second floor fades away when it comes between you and the camera.

To read the post in it's entirety click here.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 21:22 CET by Darien

PC Gameplay has posted a short review of Throne of Bhaal, scoring the expansion at 9 out of 10.

Baldur's Gate 2: Throne Of Bhaal is the concluding episode of what has been one of the most magnificent ongoing role-playing titles ever. The question is: is it worth shelling out the cash for this final instalment? Of course, if you've already played your way through Baldur's Gate, the Sword Coast expansion and Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows Of Amn, you'll already know the answer to that question.

As expansion packs go, this is an excellent example of how it should be done properly.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 20:57 CET by Steelgem

There are a few good postings from Trent Oster in this update, and one from Don Moar that I missed the other day regarding NWScript. All of this content was found in the Black Isle Message Boards.

Trent Oster, Producer:

Flametongue's in NWN?: Flaming visual effects on weapons are going in. I did a quick version for the Greatswords and as soon as Alex (NWN SFX artist) has time he can go through and make it look significantly less like ass.

Fan's request for non-fuzzy video of GenCon NWN demo: We are working on getting some form of higher quality video out there. As soon as we get something together I'll be sure to tell everyone when and where.

One character for single and multiplayer: One of my major points with NWN has been single player and multiplayer are the same. Each character has stats, equipment, skills and feats, etc.. So why not have one character who can play both. Picture this: You start your single player game and after a few successful quests a friend e-mails you and asks you to join in a game. All you do is pick your character and locate the game and whammo, you are playing multiplayer. After the session you can take that character and resume your single player game or you could load the older version of the character who was save with your single player game. In short, you can play NWN like BG, with characters locked to save games, or you can play like Diablo, with characters who are always progressing.

Thrown weapons & Ammo:

Summary of Suggestions:
Arrows would be wasted after use. Throwing weapons such as axes would be recoverable. Opposition to unlimited ammo of any type. Managing resources is an important part of adventuring.

Response:
I agree this would be a preferable way of dealing with throwing weapons. But there are a few issues with this system. The pile of throwing axes on the ground would quickly start eating up the graphics card's fill rate, slowing the entire game. Additionally the amount of items laying on the ground would be increased, adding to the scene overhead. Throwing weapons are in, but the mechanics for dealing with them are still under design.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

NWScript Debugging Capabilities: Hi,

I believe that VB6 is compiling on the fly, we won't be doing that. Also, it will not be possible to run the scripts in 'debug' mode from within the NWToolset. The only way to test a script is to play a module that runs the script using the game.

The NWToolset's script editor will include syntax highlighting, function completion and provide function argument lists. As programmers, we cannot provide a script editor that we wouldn't want to use. ;^)

The compiler will stop on the first error it encounters, so you won't see reports with long lists of bugs (there may be lots of errors, but you'll only see one per compile attempt).

We're also doing our best to ensure that an errant script cannot crash the game engine. I'll let Mark Brockington's comments in other threads describe how this is being done.

Aidan Scanlan, Writing and Design:

Today's Project: I'm using NWScript to design an encounter of a displaced family of Halflings who are trying save their remaining possessions from an encroaching enemy. More I can not say. I'm listening to Dire Straits.

J.E. Sawyer, Black Isle Moderator:

J.E. Sawyer speaks about his position on the NWN project: Are you looking at my Black Isle tag thinking, "Hey, is what he's saying the word of God almighty, or is he just expressing his opinion?" If you thought the former, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. You'd be so wrong that even if you thought you were wrong a second after thinking the former, your rightness still would not make up for your prior wrong. I work for Black Isle Studios, not BioWare. I am not involved in the development of Neverwinter Nights, and am simply expressing my opinion as a gamer.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 7:20 CET by Steelgem

Like Vile, this is my first posting, I will be lending a hand in keeping the Neverwinter News up to date. Look forward to meeting some new people :) The following information was found while parsing through the Black Isle Message Boards.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Bridge Sizes & Tile Anchoring: On a technical level, the only limit to the size of your bridge would be the area size itself (32 tiles -- or significantly longer of you make it twisty). Aesthetically, I think long bridges look fine. Each of the variations have some form of support mechanism to justify why they're able to stay suspended.

As an aside, I had been tossing around the idea of using the forest tileset to make a dungeon level: build it all out of bridges, cliff-faces, and bottomless chasm. Remove the directional lighting, add a few appropriate sounds, and you've got a very convincing subterranean rift, I figure.

Don't look down!

Destroyable Items: The current plan is to provide a 'bash' option in the radial menu for any placeable object, chests included (unless the module designer declares otherwise, of course). We're planning on having animations for the destruction of each type of object but that will ultimately depend on whether or not the animators have the time to do so.

Crash, bang, boom

Specialist Wizards & NWN: Yup. They'll be implemented according to the 3rd Edition rules where Heroic Feats such as Spell Focus allow you to specialize your Specialist Mage even further.

Ph.D. in Necromancy.

GenCon Demo: Tile placement & painting: I'll try to help Derek out here.

In a way, tiles are a bit of a fuzzy concept within the toolset (which is a good thing, as it makes for more natural-looking environments and provides a greater degree of flexibility to the painter). When you place a Feature, you're actually placing down an individual tile. When you paint a Group, however, you're actually placing something that spans multiple tiles. In many cases, though, you're actually painting on the intersections of tiles and that's what you're seeing in the GenCon demos.

For instance, if I click once with a height transition brush, I'm actually modifying 4 different tiles to do so (each of the four tiles is still primarily at ground level but one corner of each has been raised). The actual raised portion is still more or less 10 meters x 10 meters in size but it's really an intersection rather than a tile in and of itself.

There's another tile type called a crosser and it's used for things like roads, bridges, streams, and so forth. Crossers get painted on the intersection between two tiles. If I click once with a bridge brush, I'll actually be creating two dead end tiles that join together in the center.

It sounds complicated when you try to describe it in words but it's pretty intuitive when you actually have the mouse in hand and are creating your areas. Hopefully this has helped explain it a little, though.

Muddifying the fuzzifications.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Converstation Editor & NWScripts: Sorry to break it to you guys, but the NWN Conversation Editor does NOT generate NWScript. You may have NWScript on individual dialogue lines, but the CE in no way is a Wizard nor does it generate NWScript.

Q1: Can you call/activate a tree dialog via script?
A1: Yes, you can set an NPC's next action to "start conversation" with someone.

Q2: Can you activate a script from the Dialog editor based on the converstation flow?
A2: Yes, each decision line of the CE can have scripts attached and can call other scripts to run. What you describe is completely doable.

Q3: If a CE is attached to a character, and that character is removed from the module will the CE be removed as well?
A3: Conversations are attached to the character but are available as a conversation resource throughout the module. What you are talking about is exporting and importing. We are planning to allow exporting and importing of everything in a module.

Q4: Does the CE generate an external file?
A4: No part of the toolset automatically generates any external files. It is all held together in a single module file. Again, this comes down to exporting and importing, which we plan to fully support from within the toolset.

# of CD's to run both a Client & Server: If the server you are running is a dedicated server, then no, you do not need another copy to run the game client.

GenCon Demo: Tile placement & painting: What you were seeing is a difference between painting types of tiles in a tileset. I have rewritten this paragraph about 10 times and had someone read it and noone can understand what I am talking about. Its really hard to explain without a screenshot, but it is just a tile painting method as opposed to overlapping tiles. Its one of those things where once you see it in action, you will understand what you are seeing.

Hopefully it'll be apparent where the tiles are laid out -- it might be a little frustrating to "cycle thru" a bunch of specific tiles to get the one you want in an area, only to have the height-transition brush, or road-brush, etc. come along and adjust it.

If we place a specific tile from the tileset, maybe it can be "locked" in place?

Whoooo, thanks Rob! This is why I should get a writer/designer to do this stuff in the first place

When you cycle through an available tile, you are only cycling through a subset. You will never have a different type of tile pop in from a different subset. eg. if you have a flat plain tile, you won't suddenly get a road, stream, or height transition.

All tiles are basically locked until you go in and modify a single tile.

NWN Preview at IMG
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 23:50 CET by Darien

There's a great preview over at Inside Mac Games that takes a comprehensive look at Neverwinter Nights. In addition to the article, there's a 14MB movie that walks you through some gameplay and a small gallery of screenshots.

At the end of the day, BioWare's motive for including the Aurora Toolset is to allow players to tell their own stories. This has always been the most important aspect of traditional pencil-and-paper role-playing games, and ultimately, the traditional RPG is BioWare's blueprint for Neverwinter Nights. It is in this spirit that BioWare is developing a Dungeon Master Client for the game. In traditional RPGs, the Dungeon Master (DM) tells an interactive story that unfolds one step at a time, and is affected by the choices of the players. While scripted stories have always worked reasonably well in computer RPGs, nothing can compare to the human touch of a skilled DM.

Read more.

Pool of Radiance Preview
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 4:00 CET by Darien

Another Pool of Radiance preview has popped up, this time at GamesDomain. The article covers the game in depth with a breakdown of the "Stats" of both story and gameplay, and also includes a good selection of screenshots.

Constitution: how long will it hold out?

PoR's creators reckon it will provide 100+ hours of gameplay, and early impressions would seem to support that. There's no shortage of quests, plenty of monsters to slay and unfeasibly large areas to explore. Characters can reach 16th level in a single class, and a total of 32 levels in all their classes, which should keep experience-harvesters happy.

When the single-player game is completed, there's always the multi-player option. While PoR won't let you play through the single-player campaign with your friends, it will generate endless random dungeons for you and populate them with monsters tailored to your experience level. Up to six people will be able to partake of hack-and-slash action, but without the accompanying storyline and quests you may rather just play Diablo 2.

Neverwinter Nights Screenshots
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 3:48 CET by Darien

Need another look at Neverwinter Nights? Check out the new screenshots at Computer and Video Games.

Neverwinter Nights Interview
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 3:35 CET by Darien

Neverwinter Vault has posted an interview with Teresa Stevenson, Communications Coordinator for BioWare and Neverwinter Nights. Here's a short excerpt.

RBB: Can you tell us anything about how the release of information is going to be staged between now and the release of Neverwinter Nights?

Teresa: Right. Well, we do have multiple conduits to release our information. We have things like press releases, media outlets like yourself and magazines, that kind of thing, and one of our strongest is our fan community. We have a really strong support on our message boards, and a lot of times the fans have a chance to ask questions, and our team gets on there and answers these questions. So we have a really strong fan community—we get a lot of our messages out that way as well.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 3:29 CET by Darien

In case anyone needs another BGII: Throne of Bhaal review, here's one at Gamer's Pulse.

There are several additions made to the BG2 game experience via ToB. Bioware chose to maintain a modified 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule set rather than switch over to 3rd Edition fully; such a choice would likely have greatly increased the development time, and taken away from their upcoming Neverwinter Nights project. The experience cap for characters has been increased to 8 million, meaning that several classes can now achieve the godly heights of 40th level. In light of that, several high level spells have been added, especially for mages of all types, and high level class abilities have been implemented for the first time in an AD&D CRPG. Fighter types now gain access to such abilities as “War Cry” and “Whirlwind” attacks, while mages and clerics get 10th and quest level spells respectively, enhancing their already formidable powers. Thieves in particular get some nice abilities, my favorite being the ability to use any magical item, including those usually reserved for specific classes.

Read more here.

Neverwinter Nights Preview
Posted Monday, August 13, 2001 - 3:07 CET by Darien

TechTV has posted a short preview of Neverwinter Nights, including a few screenshots, based on the game's presentation at GenCon.

NWN isn't just about going up levels and fighting monsters; it's about story. It's about the same things people play tabletop RPGs for: camaraderie, truly portraying a role, and... er, going up levels and killing monsters. The twist is that it is quest- or "module"-based, like the classic tabletop game. One player can even take on the role of Dungeon Master (DM), effectively creating the dungeon, portraying the nonplayer characters, adding and controlling the monsters, and even rescuing a party member from danger. The game promises to grant the DM the same sort of control they would wield behind a paper DM screen and while rolling dice. So, instead of a persistent world filled with people doing the same things over and over again, each game will be its own adventure.

Sorcerer's Place is Hiring
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2001 - 6:30 CET by Darien

Ok, here's the scoop. Sorcerer's Place is looking for a full time news poster to do the Neverwinter Nights news coverage.
We need some RELIABLE people who wish to:

a) scour the web for interviews, screenshots, previews and similiar and post them here at the front page of Sorcerer's Place
b) scour the official message boards for any relevant news regarding Neverwinter Nights

If you think you have what it takes to fill this role, you can reach Taluntain on ICQ 1508832 and he'll get you started. (You could e-mail him too, but ICQ is much preferred for news posters.) If you have any questions, you can also contact me (Darien) on ICQ 111225416. I'll fill you in on the details.
As always, Sorcerer's Place is a non-profit fansite, so we can't really pay you anything, since we don't get paid either. But at least when you post something here, you can be sure your work will be noticed by thousands visiting us daily, and there are perks for news editors who take their job seriously.

P.S.
Please do not apply if you aren't willing to commit some time to this task. We've had way too many posters here who posted two or three articles and then disappeared.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 16:01 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: If you could live in a D&D fantasy world, which would it be?
(766 votes total)

Forgotten Realms (432) 56%
Planescape (123) 16%
Dragonlance (120) 16%
Greyhawk (37) 5%
Ravenloft (28) 4%
Other (26) 3%

As I expected, the Forgotten Realms won the poll outright with 56% of people pronouncing it the D&D fantasy world they would like to live in the most. Most likely because a wide majority of our visitors are not as familiar with the other worlds they could choose...

Planescape is in second place with 16% of votes, closely followed by Dragonlance, also with 16% of votes.
Many people who voted for Planescape were probably inspired by the excellent game Planescape: Torment from Black Isle Studios which familiarized them with a world now more or less abandoned by WOTC, but still fondly remembered by everyone who is not turned off by fantasy a bit different than most people are used to.

Dragonlance's popularity however cannot be attributed to any of the games since there haven't been any good ones set there in at least a decade, if ever. So I suppose that most people who voted for it must have read the Dragonlance books and got to know the world from there.

Greyhawk is in fourth place with 5% of votes, and it seems that since WOTC made it their official setting for the manuals, it didn't get any more popular than it used to be.

The last major D&D fantasy world people would want to live in is Ravenloft with 4% of votes.

Other D&D worlds got about 3% of votes. In the poll comments people mentioned Dark Sun, Al-Quadim and SpellJammer as fantasy worlds they would like to live in, and also a couple non-D&D worlds like Discworld and Middle-Earth, but they don't count since this poll was only about D&D worlds.

There were numerous comments about how the Forgotten Realms rule (obviously, judging by the number of votes the settings received), but also a few about the other worlds so I'll list these here:

- How could someone not be in Planescape? Sure, Forgotten Realms is a big area. But Planescape is EVERYTHING. Wouldn't you love learning life's secrets from a mimir rather than courting a lowly tavern maid? Feh, I thought not!

- Those people who would live in Ravenloft are NUTS!

- Planescape, of course. Technically, with the help of a helpful portal, you could visit just about any other world as well! Plus, who wouldn't want to catch a glimpse of the Lady of Pain? Well... unless you were in her shadow, of course...

- Why settle for any city less grand than Sigil?

- I can't think of raising a family in Planescape or Ravenloft. However, if I get to ride a dragon, it's all good!

NWN at GenCon Review
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 15:55 CET by Darien

Neverwinter Vault has posted a review of the Neverwinter Nights presentation at GenCon. The author also took several pictures of the game, (some of which are better than others) that you can see here.

The Toolset used to create modules was shown more extensively. Seeing the beautiful and potentially exotic armor was a sight to behold. Some very attractive and gaudy combinations are possible. There are many different textures available for each type of material, i.e. cloth, metal and leather. The tattoo designs were very cool, and the combinations of tattoos, and clothing means that is is very unlikely you will meet any two characters who look the same. The paint command was very powerful looking, and they demonstrated how once can change which tile was painted down by repeatedly click on the tile to be changed until the tile you seek has appeared. The lava in the evil dungeon tileset was shown to actually "flow" in the Toolset itself. The created areas were rotated in the toolset to get a more of a player's point of view. The lightning generator effect in one of the rooms was chosen from a list and plopped right down into the room, not complicated at all. The game did seen to load faster than in the movies I had seen before, and the sounds were excellent. The lightning bolts were extremely impressive, those with a good PC sound system will be very happy.

Icewind Dale 2?
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 15:44 CET by Darien

Desslock has some thoughts on the recent funding woes of several gaming companies, but more importantly some news about a sequel to Icewind Dale.

While it hasn't been officially announced yet, Interplay is working on Icewind Dale 2, another BioWare Infinity engine game. While I've hinted in past ramblings that we may not have seen the end of the Infinity engine, and that Interplay was considering other Dungeons & Dragons products (in addition to Neverwinter Nights), I can now confirm that Icewind Dale 2 is in the works (and it's not necessarily the only new D&D game that is being contemplated).

Details on what you can expect from Icewind Dale 2 will have to wait until the game is officially announced, but the game will use the same engine used by the original game and its expansion pack, with possible minor improvements, and likely won't be as ambitious a game as BG2, given Interplay's aggressive target release date (rumoured to be the end of this year...).

Find out more.

Another ToB Review
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 15:19 CET by Darien

The Wargamer has posted its review of BGII: Throne of Bhaal. Here's the final verdict:

What more can I say? All those who feared that Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal was another lame expansion like Tales of the Sword Coast can take heart, this game is beautiful... With 50 powerful new spells, 40 never before seen monsters, and 100 mysterious new items to discover this thing could have been its own game. The only real caveat is that this baby will soak up at least (very likely more) thirty hours of one’s life, and that’s a whole day in front of the computer you’ll never be able to get back. People for whom that’s not a problem, however, will probably want to pop this CD in their computer, strap on some boots, pick up a sword, and head into the lands of Tethyr to fight for the Throne of Bhaal.

PoR: Tales from the Mythal
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2001 - 15:08 CET by Darien

The Scrying Room has posted another of its Tales from the Mythal, this time taking a closer look at one of the creatures in PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor: the Ormyrr. Don't forget to check out the concept art and the screenshot of this monster in action.

Some sages believe these seldom-glimpsed creatures are natives of another plane or world who have somehow found their way to Faerun. An ormyrr is pale mushroom white to dun in color, with a purplish underbelly. It looks like a giant upright worm with two pairs of arms projecting from a powerful torso, topped by a fang-mouthed, frog-like head. Ormyrr give an overall impression of great strength, and can wield weapons with all four arms without getting tangled up in their own attacks. They are always eager to seize weapons when they can, and if found bearing magical items, it is 80% likely that these will be weapons that the ormyrr will use handily in any fight.

Read the rest.

Candles are burning in the tower again...
Posted Friday, August 10, 2001 - 20:40 CET by Sorcerer

Hello all. I'm back. (No kidding.)

I had a blast in the UK (no pun intended, though a bomb did go off on one of the stations of the Underground during the time I was there), but it's good to be back.
A small mountain of snail and e-mail piled up for me to check during my absence, but I'm battling my way through it... Checking everything that happened on our message boards is another matter though. That will take a while longer.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that if you sent me mail a response is on the way, and that if you held anything off till I return, you need wait no more.

I'll leave the poll to run for two full weeks (till this Monday) and change it then. But since I have plenty of screenshots to spare, I sneaked another one in for you to check before it is officially changed on Sunday.

P.S.
I'm still getting the damn mail worm we warned about on a daily basis. Come on people, get a virus scanner and get this thing off your system already!

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Friday, August 10, 2001 - 2:20 CET by Darien

Another Throne of Bhaal review has been posted, this time at Prophecy, where the BGII expansion scores a 7.4. And in case you're curious, they also have several screenshots from the upcoming console game BG: Dark Alliance.

In the expansion set to the award-winning Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn continue your quest and conclude the epic saga when you have completed Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn return and discover the mysteries of a dangerous new dungeon - Watcher’s Keep. In addition, an exhilarating adventure unfolds when you explore new lands, battle fierce monsters and villains, and gain high-level abilities that bestow awesome powers.

This is still a very good expansion pack for players who found themselves too godlike at the end of the original and poses a challenge to newbies and salted players alike. Absolutely brilliant if you would have preferred more combat in BG:SOA but for me as a RPGer who likes his conversations and questng and freedom of movement this was a average title. This game is still a must for all BG Fans!!

Go for the eyes BOO!

Trials of the Luremaster Review
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 14:24 CET by Darien

Another review of HoW: Trials of the Luremaster is available at GamesDomain. The free downloadable expansion recieves 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Riddles and puzzles are the primary element here. Much of your time in and around Castle Maluradek is spent trying to fathom the riddles presented by the spectral Luremaster. Advancement is only possible if you can solve his conundrums. This isn't outrageously difficult, though it does involve more than simply cutting a bloody path to the finish line courtesy of brute strength. Unlike the earlier releases in this series -- and even unlike the recent Baldur's Gate II expansion Throne of Bhaal -- you need to explore your surroundings. The story is very important. Carefully listening to conversations and researching the history of the castle through books found in its vicinity is a necessity.

Pool of Radiance Preview
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 14:02 CET by Darien

LoadedInc has posted a preview of PoR: Ruins of Myth Drannor.

Graphically Pool of Radiance is one stunning game. All the backgrounds are rendered in 2D with the characters being fully 3D. The backgrounds are vibrant really pulling you into the game with their sense of scale and realism. The character animations are smooth and fluid with each character being easily identifiable, this really helps in the combat situations when the turn-based mode kicks in. Characters will also perform different actions depending on the weapons they are carrying adding realism to the combat, and all the different weapons will be visible on the characters. The spell effects are top–notch and with around 100 spells, either completely new or taken from the 3rd edition AD&D rules, there will be plenty of opportunity to experiment.

Neverwinter Nights Interview
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 13:56 CET by Darien

NWNOnline has posted an interview with Derek French and Aidan Scanlan from GenCon. Here are a couple of interesting comments.

Aidan[Bioware]: (Repeats question). Well, yes AND no. Items don't have scripts attached directly to them at all. We did it that way because characters will be travelling from one server to another, and we couldn't place user-specific scripts to them because then the item would not function on another server. It also provides a degree of protection because then the guy with the +5 sword of instant death couldn't walk into your server and cause havoc.

Yes, you could script it using a global variable. You would have a script monitoring the item and when the character picks up the item, it checks the global variable and then can execute a script.

Anthony[NWNO]: We have heard about the potential for an open beta that some of us may be able to enjoy. Is it true that you are still planning on including major contributors from the internet-fan arena in the beta?

Aidan[Bioware]: Open beta? Yes, we are still going to have an open beta. We realize that there are a lot of people out there that has generated a lot of support for the game, and we hope to be able to include some of them in the beta effort when that time comes.

Neverwinter Nights Screenshots
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 13:48 CET by Darien

Need another look at Neverwinter Nights? Go to RPGPlanet and check out the new screenshots and wallpapers.

Pool of Radiance Forum Update
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2001 - 11:22 CET by Nazgul

Here are a few comments from Producer Garrett Graham, on the official PoR message boards.

NPCs: NPCs have a set level they start with. They also have higher level states that they can be found in, depending on when you come back to them. NPCs you find early in the game will start at low levels, but have three other (higher) levels you can find them at. NPCs you find near the end of the game might only have one other higher level you could find them at. So NPC Johnny X could be 4th level when I first find him or 8th, 12th or 16th level if I come back later with a higher level party. This is just a made up example - its different for each character.

The Demo: We want the demo to be a good representation of the game and we don't want it to be buggy. If you release it before the game is done, it might not be an accurate representation and it takes a *lot* of work to debug it. By waiting until the game is done, we (and therefore you) get a better demo.

Intraparty dialog: Some people really like that feature, others were very unhappy to have the game force them to give up a character they had grown attached to and spent time developing. Early on, the guys making the decisions went with no intra-party dialog. You make the decisions on your character's personalities and whether or not they stay in the party.

Male/female Relationships: One male NPC (who can join your party) was treated quite poorly by his former girlfriend. Once he's in the party, you can decide how he deals with this betrayal.

There was a couple (they are both dead now) who left notes for each other which the PC's find.

That's it. PoR is not about relationships; straight, gay or otherwise. No one in the game is assigned a sexuality, so its left up to your imagination.

No one in the game is identified married. This does not mean we discriminate against, or hate married people. No one in the game is identified as a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Wiccan. This does not mean we discriminate against, or hate, any of these groups of people.

When this game was made, it was made as a fantasy RPG/Adventure game. That was all it was made to be. We don't promote or discriminate, for or against, any group, because that is not what the game is about.

I understand your frustration - I've seen a lot of hatred, not only on the Forum, but in life as well - but PoR is just going to be a Dungeons and Dragons game.

A 3rd Edition Look at PoR
Posted Monday, August 6, 2001 - 16:18 CET by Darien

PCIGN has put posted an article that gives a good overview of the 3rd edition features that have been implemented in Pool of Radiance, including classes, skills, comabat features and more.

The game originally started out using the 2nd Edition rules for D&D. Once the 3rd Edition rules were announced, the developers contacted Wizards of the Coast and obtained a copy of the new rules. Changing the game around a bit to suit the new rules was a bit of a challenge but in the end nearly all of the new rules were incorporated into the PC game. The new rules make D&D more streamlined and exciting to play.

PoR at GenCon
Posted Sunday, August 5, 2001 - 17:20 CET by Darien

This short GenCon update from GameSpot takes a look at Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Here's an excerpt.

We stopped by Ubi Soft's booth at the Gen Con game convention in Milwaukee today and got a look at a new build of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. We've been informed that the game is in fact feature-complete--including the game's cinematic cutscenes, its large array of items and weapons, and all its magic spells--and that it's now in rigorous QA testing to iron out any imbalances or bugs. Pool of Radiance's colorful 3D character models have apparently been updated slightly from the build we received some months ago, and they look so good in motion that it's difficult to see that the game's animation is actually hand-drawn, not motion-captured. All the game's spell effects, which use lighting and transparencies liberally, have also been implemented into the new build.

NWN GenCon Report
Posted Sunday, August 5, 2001 - 17:14 CET by Darien

NWVault has posted the first part of their coverage of Neverwinter Nights at GenCon. It's a quick read, full of glowing praise for both the game and the folks at Bioware. :)

Here are some quick impressions that go beyond what I've seen in the E3 demo:

-The BioWare folks are just as eager as we are, proud as new parents, and still having fun.

-Considerable progress has been made since E3 (this was the old demo on a new build of the code, or at least a newly populated toolset).

-The wizards and additional script functions we've been expecting are being added continuously.

-The toolset is more powerful in actual use than I thought. Sure lots more wizards need to be added, and some of the details need to be fleshed out (like renaming scripts and other minutiae), but as my friend Jeremy commented during the first toolset demo on day one, "it's so nice to see when someone actually gets it right."

Read more.

NWN at GenCon
Posted Sunday, August 5, 2001 - 17:04 CET by Darien

Gamespot has posted a short update on Neverwinter Nights' appearance at GenCon.

According to BioWare designer Aidan Scanlan, most of the game's actual content (weapons, monsters, items, dungeon-creation utilities, and so on) has already been implemented into the game, and BioWare is now working to test each aspect of the game thoroughly to make sure that the final game is as polished as possible. Neverwinter Nights is currently scheduled to be released at the end of the year, but Scanlan assured us that the quality of the game is the company's first priority, so if the game isn't quite up to the designers' standards this holiday season, its release may slip to next year.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Sunday, August 5, 2001 - 16:56 CET by Darien

Another BGII: Throne of Bhaal review is available over at TechTV, where the expansion scores 4 out of 5 stars.

Overall, "Throne of Bhaal" is a very in-depth add-on sure to give any gamer numerous hours of exploring and adventuring. Any "Baldur's Gate" fan should not go without this expansion. Even after you play through the whole expansion don't forget the new areas that have been added to "BG II" or the Wild Mage. Whether you play through "BG II" with the new areas and character or not is up to you -- I know I will. Damn you, BioWare! I thought I'd gotten my life back. Obviously not.

NWN Forum Update
Posted Sunday, August 5, 2001 - 16:47 CET by Darien

Comments from the Neverwinter Nights forum on the BIS message boards.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Script Triggers: Yes, scripting your module to use a physical ritual as a trigger for some action should be perfectly feasible. I'd use one of the placeable objects as the altar, give it the container property, then script it to check for the gem. I'd either give the altar a 'Use' property that would check for the candle in the players inventory or I'd give the candle the 'Use' property and put the check on the module. Standing in the circle would just be a trigger on the floor (you'd presumably place a tile that has some circular geometry in it). Chanting the rite could involve either a keyword parsing or the use of a special scroll.

As for darkening the room, we're still working out some details with the lighting model. Hopefully it will be possible. If not, you can certainly script some fancy spell visuals to fire off and let you know that something special has happened.

As a related example, there's a secret handshake in one of the early modules that you can observe others perform and then replicate step by step. Mike Geist, the scripter working on that module, has been tossing around the idea of randomly seeding it so that the handshake is different every time you play.

Porting to Mac: Just to clarify some of my earlier posts, I should make it clear that I'm not privy to any specific details of our plans for a Mac toolset port. I know only that we had been in contact with a third party at one point and that whatever deal we had been working towards never came to fruition. Anything beyond that has been mere speculation on my part. So, for the record, I don't know who the third party was nor do I know which other companies were approached. The particulars of the deal and the reasons it failed to come together are also well beyond my grasp.

Remember, this kind of stuff takes place at the legal and corporate level, not on the development floor. Due to Non-Disclosure Agreements, those who do know the details generally aren't allowed to discuss them anyway, even internally.

Random Dungeon Generator: The random dungeons I was referring to are actually well underway as one of the non-campaign modules we may be shipping with the game (if nothing else, it will end up in a 'goodies' folder somewhere). The randomization will take place in the game itself, not as part of the toolset. Here's how it works:

You start the module in a small village with some basic shops, etc, for you to access. There's a big, evil-looking dungeon entrance somewhere on the outskirts and, outside of, is a guy named Jimmy the Villager. He's not that bright and he's definitely no adventurer but he looks up to you and respects your many years of experience as a dungeon-delver.

"Gosh! How deep do you think it goes?"

"Deep, Jimmy. *Real* deep."

"I bet there's plenty of treasure!"

"Not too much, Jimmy. But that's alright, I'm not here for the money."

"Who do you think is behind it all?"

"Well, Jimmy, this looks like the work of Vlabruk Gafsnell, the Mad Mage of Arsereth."

"Golly, how many minions would someone like that have?"

"You'd be surprised, Jimmy. I'm sure the place is crawling with them."

"But who would work for such an evil man?"

"Mostly undead, Jimmy. They have no choice."

"Are you going to be all alone down there?"

"Don't worry about me, Jimmy. I know plenty of folks down there that I can rely on."

"Wow, the village sure is lucky to have a hero like you around. G-good luck down there..."

The parameters for the entire dungeon are then seeded based on the responses you gave to Jimmy. As soon as you enter the dungeon, you're off on a grand and thoroughly customized adventure.

As for how the maps behave, it's important to realize that we're still not randomizing the actual placement of tiles. Instead, we have a big library of small areas, each one an individual room. Some are dead ends, many have two area transitions, some are three- or four-way intersections, and so forth. A generic script on all of the area transitions determines where each one should lead.

Scripts on the areas determine which encounters, creatures, and treasure lists get spawned, and so forth. It's a neat little system and we've got the basic prototype working (no combat or treasure yet, just a bunch of placeholder areas that are linking together appropriately). Hopefully that explains a bit more of what we're currently working towards.

Object Manipulation: Yes, the placement of placeable objects can be manipulated through scripting. An example of one of the ways to do it can be found in the 'Game of Life' script that Mark Brockington released a little while back. The coins used for it were items, not placeable objects, but the principle is the same.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

BioWare at GenCon: We are presenting 3 times a day, every day, at GenCon. Come one, come all.

Linux User Survey Questions: I have some questions for people out there planning to run NWN using the Linux dedicated server (LDS), AND for those that have had experience running

Linux dedicated servers from other games. Just use the numbers to answer the questions.

1. How do you expect the LDS install to work? Shell script? .tar.gz. file? Other?

2. How many instances of the server do you plan to run on one machine?

3. How many separate computers do you plan to run the LDS on?

4. What distribution(s) of Linux will you be running the LDS on?

Some quick rules:
- posts not on this topic will be deleted without warning
- I will lock this thread when I have enough samples of information for my needs
- if you want to bump this thread, don't post in here, just use the "bump" button at the bottom of the screen

Game Performance: The game engine has not been optimized yet, but will be as the project nears its end. We do test on various systems from the range of installed machines at the office to min spec and below min spec systems. Just to head off any questions, we cannot make any comments on performance, nor on any other hardware questions until the end of development and after compatibility testing has occurred.

BioWare does not test on laptops as the cost of proper testing with a diverse range makes it prohibitive.

Windows XP: Just to clarify, it is BioWare that is developing NWN. Black Isle is our publisher. We will be testing NWN under WinXP, but we will not be deciding on supported operating systems until near the end of development. This is neither a yea or nay for WinXP, just a "we haven't decided yet". Personally, I see no reason why NWN wouldn't run just fine under WinXP. We will know more later.

Marc Taro Holmes, Art Director:

Artisitic License: I think some guys have summed it up pretty much - the armor in our paintings of Aribeth is not as realistic as some might like, but it is a nice design...I'd think she wouldn't dress like that if she was entering a pitched battle - she's wearing a skirt for goodness sake - this is more 'town gear'.

She has a similar outfit in game but with armored legs. You have to keep in mind, this is a fantasy world, not a medieval European military simulation. She has access to kinds of protective spells after all. I don't think you would really wear 60 pounds of plate around all the time if you had the option of protections or magic circles, plus if you have a high dex you want to preserve your AC bonus...Overall I AM glad everyone's looking at the paintings in any case.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Problem with saving/reloading: I completely agree that the save/re-load formula ruins the suspension of disbelief. I'm not sure how many times I've gotten engrossed in a game, made an

unfortunate choice, and was faced with the re-load screen. It's even more frustrating when you realize that you have not saved for several hours, and now you have to go back and re-do everything.

This is not to say that there should not be repercussions for death; that would be silly. But to be so completely removed from the gaming experience?

For Neverwinter, it's been decided that we'll be using a re-spawn feature (much like Planescape: Torment, except that you will probably get hit with an experience point loss), and we'll also be modifying the difficulty level of the game to some extent (away from the Throne of Bhaal level of difficulty).

Now, this doesn't mean that death is going to be down-played, or encounters so simple that even average players will walk through them unaffected. We want death to be a bad thing, and to have negative effects on you. We also want our encounters to be fun and challenging. But considering that people could be playing in multiplayer with un-coordinated groups, or in single player by themselves or with henchmen, it should be just as fun, even with a less grueling encounter.

It's certainly a fine line, though, especially when you're dealing with a market that has a wide range of playing skill. It most certainly will be a challenge for us, but hopefully that effort will translate into a game that provides players with a sense of adventure not too much unlike pen-and-paper, as opposed to the current styling of CRPGs. And, of course, if you don't like the way that we did it, you will have all of the modules at your disposal to alter at your will.

More on Problem with saving/reloading: Still, too many encounters in the BG series were designed to kill you on your first few tries. But they were catering to a different audience, and had different tools (save & re-load) at their disposal.

Did I play through the whole series? Yes. Did I absolutely adore the entire series? Yes. Do I frequently play it over again? Yes. If a DM tried to run a campaign that mirrored Baldur's Gate in pen-and-paper, would my character survive through the first few adventures? No.

In pen & paper, you just wouldn't attack the Shadow Dragon 400 times at level 8 until you finally got the fluke kill - you'd just say "nice dragon" and scurry away. And probably never come back.

Like BG, we want to help players out with hints and D&D-oriented information (like you said, Mind Flayers on the horizon? Start memorizing Chaotic Commands!) that will let them succeed. But we don't want to make it a situation where you need that (hints, and knowing D&D inside out), skill (being the suitable level) and luck (hoping to roll all 20s while your opponents miss or have their spells disrupted), and even then, you might not succeed.

PS I think it's spelled Svirfneblin (deep gnomes)... I pronounce it "svurf neb lin" (if that makes sense), though I'm not sure if that's proper or not. It wasn't until RA Salvatore wrote that encounter where Drizzt comments that it's not Driz-zit, but Drizst, that I figured that one out, so I'm probably wrong.

List of Feats: We've posted in the past (the far, distant past, I'm sure it must feel like to some of you) that we are saving such lists for future promotional use.

What can I say? We're still holding them for future promotional use. We've written up some promotional packages that are pretty snazzy, but in the end, I'm thinking that the decision is that it's probably still too early to go into super-hype mode, especially when Neverwinter has had so much good press already.

But I'm not a marketer, so take these thoughts with a grain of salt. What have we said for release window? We're looking at Winter, right? Well, we're still in Summer, so the only thing I can say is be patient, even though I know that must seem like the thousandth time we've asked for patience.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Ranger Weakness?: Why Monte Cook did crate an new tinplate for the raingar, he mensioned that he didn't feal that it would become official WotC erratum. As a result, we (Never Winter Nites) can only go which what is lis-ted in the Player's Handbook.

Champagne of Poetic Lisence 4 Evrie-one.

I will now use my Jedi mind trix: no one get offended by this post!

More on Rangers: Yeah, the official answer is that we're going by the PHB, as I sort of already said. And since WotC hasn't officially endorsed the new version, there's no reason for us to consider it, or other changes to the ranger, for NwN.

So now it's up for everyone else to debate the ranger (or post links to old ranger debates) and let ranger fans, like Roadkill, know that rangers can be good, even at higher levels. I haven't played a ranger yet, so I can't say anything on the topic.

How many times did I say "ranger" in this post?

PS: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Apologizes: Creative spellers are an endangered species. Like I said, we shouldn't all worry about spelling so long as the ideas come across, right? I should have summoned an amulet of +5 joke-telling before trying that one out.

More on Spelling and Rangers: Tee hee!
This is silly, and to think, he just had a simple question to ask about the balancing of rangers. *sigh* I cannot apologize enough to him and to everyone else, yes, I was making fun of you. I just didn't want to seem like anything less than the company spokesman, but whatever. The truth is out there; deal with it!

And even though I am a creative spelling activist, I am a spelling lawyer at heart. When I write something, and post it and catch a typo, it irks my soul. My very soul! Isn't that sad? I find myself correcting people when they say "towards" instead of "toward".

I despise that part of me, and seek only to liberate others who wonder if they should be using spell-checkers, when in reality, they should be leading us anal masses into the 21st century, espousing content over presentation.

Since it's been brought up, and as far as I learned in linguistics, English was actually a Germanic language that the French (beautiful as their women are) "messed up" with their silky smooth pronunciations. But hey, like I said, that was my teacher's prejudiced point of view. I don't know better. If he said it, it's got to be true

And oh, I might as well pretend that this is on topic:
I liked the revised version of the ranger myself. I mean, it certainly *looks* more appealing. They get a list of feats to choose from as they level up; diversity is good. And to be honest, I never understood the point of all of those racial enemies, anyway. Are they that much of a reward that it's all you really need as you go? But like I said way back when, when this topic was only *mostly* off-topic, I haven't played a ranger in 3rd edition yet, so I can't really say for sure if they were unbalanced before, and if they are balanced after the tweaks. Maybe I'll waste some time tomorrow looking it up instead of writing for Neverwinter. And no, you can't get a beta copy of NwN Not yet, anyway.

and on spelling…
Atma, that "freespeling" page is what I'm talking about! I took a linguistics class and the teacher would go off on these joke tirades about how much he hated the french for ruining the English language.

But seriously, the English language is one that has continued, and will continue, to evolve. There's no way to preserve it. I admit to being anal about my own spelling and grammar, even though I know I'm not perfect at it (I got excited when Harbrace released a new version of their college handbook), but I truly believe that it's all irrelevant.

"freespeling" is the future, and I find it kind of neat.

Dealing with Alignments: I keep seeing the opinion that alignment is a good guideline for a DM to ensure that the player is behaving in a consistent fashion, but wouldn't the character's background be a more useful solution? Wouldn't knowing how that player has acted in the past help the DM to determine how he might well handle future situations? And wouldn't behaving in a manner that is different from that past be more interesting as a measure of character growth, rather than an example of a player acting outside his "label"? Of course, BioWare is making a video game, not a pen-and-paper game - which makes my plea a failed one.

NwN cannot assume that there will always be a DM present, or even other players. In this situation, and based upon the knowledge that various classes require strict adherence to a moral philosophy, alignment becomes necessary.

Of course, making alignment necessary means you have to create situations where that alignment can be influenced. As such, and revealed in that quote by Trent, we are using triggers that will reward or penalize a player based upon their actions.

Is this going to be a flawless system? No, I don't think so. It can only be as good as the module designer allows for differing occurrences. It's easy to see problems, but in the rules, a paladin has to be lawful, and he has to be good, so there has to be something there to account for it.

Anyway, changing the topic a little, there are a few posts here of characters that typify an alignment. I'll offer one myself. One of my favorite movies is Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch). In the film, the main character, whom I view as Lawful Neutral, is a hitman employed by the mafia. He's a tranquil, independent sort who must, at the same time, ignore good and evil and obey his retainer. In the end, I think this film does a nice job of demonstrating an interesting character with a rigid moral code.

More on Alignments: But alignment is needed in the game. D&D requires the different classes to fall into varying categories. As long as alignment has a use, it's difficult to remove it from the game. Like I said, as a DM, I would rather a player tell me his character's background than tell me that his character is "Neutral Good", because alignment tags are subjective to some degree.

Part of the reason I listed the "Ghost Dog" reference is because it illustrates just that thought. I believe the snap-shot taken of the main character (the 2-hour window of the film) represents LN, but that is just my interpretation.

Regardless, it still comes down to the fact that BioWare is releasing a great tool to encourage players to play within the structure of 3rd edition rules - but the tool can only be as good as the module designer who uses it. The designer can utilize it for simplistic scenarios, and that may well result in boring gameplay. He might remove it entirely (not create any alignment-shifting scenarios), and therefore allow classes to play counter to their designations - which also is undesirable (as per the rules).

Of course, there are better results for those who want to take the time to craft a better story, and then take the time to actively DM the adventure. But there has to be something in place for those who are playing outside of that set-up.

Yet More Dealing with Alignments: Hmm? By "tool" I mean only that encounters have alignment shifters that the DM may determine. For example, Gromnir wrote up the encounter where the paladin must determine whether or not to laughter the prisoners. Perhaps slaughtering them is a lawful and evil action. How would the game automatically determine such a thing? There has to be some way for the DM to provide for this, right? I'm not sure why you would think this is a bad thing.

Don Moar, Lead Programmer, Tools:

Spell Checking: We are planning on providing some sort of spell check capability in the NWToolset. The specific details haven't been worked out yet, however.

Copy Tiles: Hi, To be perfectly honest, I hadn't thought of trying to copy a particular arrangement of tiles, such as the layout of a boundary edge, between two (or more) areas. It's a good idea. I can't promise anything at this point, but I'll add it to our list of items to consider when we review the entire NWToolset interface.

Radial Menu for Objects: There are certain properties you can set or apply to some types of objects in the NWToolset that will determine what options the players see in the radial menu when they select an instance of that object during the game. For example, if you place a piano (not sure if there even _are_ pianos in the game, but you get the idea) in a room, the radial menu may say something like 'Use' but if you give it some inventory (in a 'secret' compartment?), the radial menu may say something like 'Open'.

Unfortunately, you cannot customize the radial menu to say something like 'Play'.

Trent Oster, Producer:

More on Game Performance: We recently ran the game on a low end system (Pentium 3 266mhz with a TNT1 video card) and had performance ranging from 5 to 15 frames per second with the graphic engine detail turned down. This is with the engine unoptimized, so it will most likely improve. We test on bottom end systems and mid to high end systems all the time, so we can ensure a good experience for a larger group of people.

JE Sawyer, Black Isle Administrator:

Touch Spells: An "armed" touch spell is considered to be a threat; attacking with it does not provoke an AoO.

Preston Watamaniuk, Writing and Design:

Game Documentation: Rest assured that we are currently working out all of the documentation issues. The documentation concerns on this project are massive given that we are shipping a game, toolset and dm client. We want to make as many people happy as possible but package size, translation issues and printing costs are all factors impacting what shape the documentation for this project is going to take. I just wanted to post and tell everyone that this thread has been read and the concerns of those above are noted.

Bioware Interview
Posted Friday, August 3, 2001 - 20:04 CET by Darien

An interview with BioWare's Joint CEOs Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk has turned up over at PCZone.

DID YOU USE ANY PARTICULAR GAME AS A BENCHMARK FOR BG WHEN YOU WERE MAKING IT?
Ray: Yes, actually. We've played a lot of RPGs here at BioWare, both PC and console, and we tried to include a lot of the elements of our favourites from the past in BG. The chapter-based methodology in BG came from the way the chapters worked in Betrayal At Krondor, the icon system (spells, weapons etc) came out of the spell icons in Dark Sun, the pause and play came from an analysis of Darklands, and we also included elements from a lot of other great RPGs such as the Ultima/Ultima Underworld series, System Shock, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Final Fantasy, Fallout and its spiritual successor Wasteland, the gold box series (such as Pool Of Radiance and Curse Of The Azure Bonds), and many others.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Friday, August 3, 2001 - 19:55 CET by Darien

GIN has posted a review of BGII: Throne of Bhaal, once again receiving a perfect score.

The game has no major flaws. The soundtrack is great, the graphics are awesome and the plot is top notch. The only thing I will say that is disappointing is that once you finish, the adventure is over. Years of play have finally come to an end.

Actually, Interplay promises that you can import your main character from Baldur’s Gate II into the upcoming massively multiplayer game Neverwinter Nights. So I may not be rid of my alter ego, Stark Silvercoin, just yet.

If you have played any of the Baldur’s Gate series, you owe it to yourself to see how it all turns out. The final chapter of this classic game ends the series with a bang, and you won’t be disappointed. It earns a perfect 5 GiN Gem score for its treasure chest, and a fond place in my hall of fame as well.

NWN Update
Posted Friday, August 3, 2001 - 19:48 CET by Darien

Trent Oster has updated the official Neverwinter Nights page with his latest progress report.

NWN Update for May, June, and July 2001

Following our excellent showing at E3 we returned to the halls of Bioware and quickly got to work. In the last three months, a number of new features have been added to the game and a large volume of art has been created. Without further ado, let's get to it:

ART:
We are moving ahead quickly on the creature variant models and textures and are well on our way to completing over 170 visually distinct creatures. The 2D artwork we'll be displaying during our module narrations are moving along well as are the planning and modeling for the cinematics. Spell effects are also beginning to show up in the game, with a large library of effects stacking up. In short, the volume of new art looks great and it continues to grow on a daily basis.

PROGRAMMING:
On the programming front we have been reworking a number of systems and adding in some key elements. Some of this has involved optimizing the memory and bandwidth requirements for the game - The less memory the game requires, the more the module can use :-). Preliminary door and placeable object functionality are now available in both the game and toolset. June was also a month of major advances with NWScript. It seemed for a while every day brought some new and amazing script that demonstrated the power and versatility of the language.

The encounter and factions systems have also been implemented, now, and the designers are hard at work on some of the standard scripts that will accompany them. We're finding that Neverwinter's faction-based approach is much more powerful and useful than the reputation system we developed for the Infinity Engine games. The faction system is composed of two parts: a global faction table for all NPCs and a local faction table for each player character. This system allows us to have a town where half the town is populated by Humans and the other half by Gnomes. If the Humans and Gnomes don't get along we could set up the factions so killing a Gnome commoner angers the Gnomish people and the Gnomish guards, but the human guard don't care or they could even respond more favorably to the player for his or her deeds. In short the faction system allows the modules to have very complex group interactions.

The encounter system is a dynamic method for spawning different types of creatures into the game. Instead of placing a mob of specific creatures, you can now simply place a single encounter. Each encounter has a creature heirarchy that it selects from and a difficulty setting for that encounter. When the players come across it in the game world, it checks the number of players nearby and spawns in an appropriate group of creatures from the hierarchy. The entire system is designed around the D&D 3rd Edition "Challenge Rating" system. A CR of 1 means this encounter would be a good fight for four first level characters. For example, an Orc has a challenge rating of ½, meaning two orcs would be a good challenge for a first-level party of four players. As a Troll has a CR of 5, it would be a good fight for four fifth-level characters. Through the system you can create an exciting and scalable adventure quickly and easily.

DESIGN:
As mentioned above, the designers are working on a lot of the supporting system scripts right now, making the gameworld behave as you would expect it to. Data entry is moving along at a good pace, with a wide range of tables and lists being constructed and entered into the game on a daily basis. The behavior of spells and special abilities is also being defined and showing up in the game world. Meanwhile, critical path conversation for the bulk of the modules has been written and a number of those have also been scripted. Once the critical path is complete, we'll be making another pass through the modules to include stores, taverns, ambient encounters, non-vital combat encounters, and so forth.

SUMMARY:
NWN is moving towards functional completion at a very fast pace. Every day a new widget appears in the toolset or a new feature shows up in the game. The game is taking on the feel of a partly completed puzzle: looking at it, you can see actually the big picture and how amazing it's going to be, but equally obvious are all of the empty spaces which still need to be filled. The team is doing a great job and I count myself lucky to be involved with such talented and dedicated people.

Trent Oster
Producer - NWN
Bioware Corp.

Economics of NWN
Posted Thursday, August 2, 2001 - 13:09 CET by Darien

Mandos, Admin of ALFA, has written an essay on the economy of Neverwinter Nights. He looks at some of the common problems of online gaming worlds and suggests several possible solutions.

Of particular worry to me are magic weapons. The first time on a server someone wins a +1 sword, it will be an epochal event. Finally, a player character (PC) can attack creatures with damage reduction. No amount of money could persuade a fighter to part with it; it would take a kings ransom to buy it from a wizard. Because of its rarity it will be incredibly valuable. The next time someone finds a sword +1 though the value drops dramatically. If the wizard who wants to sell a sword demands an "unreasonable" sum, then the buyer can go to the cleric that has the other and perhaps get a better price…competition leading to lower prices. Fast forward to when there is as many +1 swords out there as there are PCs. Now they are a dime a dozen, and all they are used for is quick cash at a vendor. The emotional impact of winning a +1 sword is totally gone.

Pool of Radiance Forum Update
Posted Thursday, August 2, 2001 - 9:26 CET by Nazgul

Here are some more comments from Garrett Graham, Producer of Pool of Radiance on the Official PoR message boards.

How long will Pool of Radiance take to finish?
It took me well over 100 hours to complete the game, but I'm the kind of guy who has to uncover every inch of the map, complete every quest and open every chest. (In BG1 I carried a dead cat around with me for most of the game on the off chance that it would be useful). Chuck finished PoR in a little under 100 hours. He also did as much as possible, but he was much more familiar with the story and quests.

Any estimate on when you'll know if you can proceed with more D&D games? Or is this something Infogames wants to wait on to see how well PoR2 sells?
If they do allow you to make more D&D games, will you continue to use SF for the development or will you go with a different company or do internal development (i.e. by SSI)?
Its up to lawyers and suits to get the license and it will take as long as it takes (cruddy answer, I know, but *you* try getting a straight answer out of lawyers ). We would love to do a sequel and/or a new game. If we did another D&D game, it would be 3E, have all the races/classes, allow the player to select feats, and offer up prestige classes. I have no intention of spending another year reading posts titled "You freaking morons! How could you leave out (insert left out feature here)?!?!?!?"
If we can't get the D&D license, we'll try to license another system. As a last resort, Chuck and I would design something.
Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't you use the D20 system and not need a license for it (I thought it was pretty much 'freeware' so to speak).

Now I don't know much about D20 but isn't it pretty much 80% of the PHB?
We asked about that. If you're doing a P&P game, no problem, but Infogrammes has all the interactive rights to any D20 system - probably because it *would* be so close to D&D. We'll keep trying, though.

DuelField: Online Strategy Game
Posted Wednesday, August 1, 2001 - 15:27 CET by Darien

I know this isn't our usual fare, but here's a game some of you may be interested in checking out nonetheless. Sismoplay is developing a new online strategy game called DuelField. For more information, you can explore the website. Here's a brief description:

DuelField is a turn based strategy game, in which gamers embody a Deity that controls creatures. The game's goal is to fight against an enemy Deity's creatures, use their various powers and abilities and eventually defeat your opponent by destroying his squad.

We're putting major emphasis on building a strong gaming community. We have set up forums where future players and all those curious about DuelField can post comments and questions.

Pool of Radiance Developer Profile
Posted Wednesday, August 1, 2001 - 15:01 CET by Darien

The Scrying Room has posted its latest developer profile this one on Garrett Graham, Producer.

Us: How do you feel when you see the constant criticism throughout the various sites and message boards on the Internet concerning all the omissions from PoR2?

GG: Its brutal. As a gamer I can see why people are upset. But the sad truth is, we don’t have a money tree. We have a finite amount of time and money to spend on a game and we have already gone WAY over the original budget on both. Everyone thinks they can do a better job on the design or programming side, but they never consider how they’d do running the business aspects. With 5 years and $20,000,000 I could make the perfect D&D game with every single feature, cutting edge graphics and a story to rival Lord of the Rings. But first I’d have to come up with that money and then I’d have to live with a best case scenario of only getting half of that money back. I need to win the lottery.

Pool of Radiance 3?
Posted Wednesday, August 1, 2001 - 14:15 CET by Nazgul

From Garrett Grahm, Producer, Pool of Radiance

What are the current odds for PoR3?

In order to do another D&D game, we have to get approval from Infogrammes. We are in the process of trying to get that approval, but there are a variety of hurdles to overcome. Everyone here at SSI really wants to continue to do D&D games and are doing everything we can to make it happen. Trust me, you're not the only one getting an ulcer while waiting to find out what happens.