September 2001

Problems with PoR
Posted Saturday, September 29, 2001 - 12:11 CET by Darien

Well, everything is not going smoothly with the release of PoR2: The Ruins of Myth Drannor. This short update at GameSpot highlights some of the issues players have been having. Here's an excerpt:

GameSpot spoke to a Ubi Soft company representative today about reports of problems with Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, the company's latest Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The game shipped to stores this week, and there have been reports of a variety of problems ranging from installation issues and system lockups to full system wipes. Some users have also reported getting two of the same CD in one box.

According to a company spokesperson, Ubi Soft is paying attention to the issues that have been reported and is gathering information. "Pool of Radiance is very important to us and we will stand by the product and do whatever we need to do to make it right," the company stated. Ubi Soft plans to provide patches and do whatever is necessary to meet customers' expectations, although no official date has been set for the release of a patch.

PoR Short Take
Posted Saturday, September 29, 2001 - 4:28 CET by Darien

Here's a preliminary preview from Gone Gold, with a quick run through the manual and a short intro to the game.

The game is one that draws you in immediately. There is an excellent tutorial to give you the basics of game mechanics and combat. Then you're off to create your own characters of up to four party members. The races included are: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc and Halfling. The classes consist of Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer. Looks kind of limited, but with only four characters, it's a little hard to decide what to go with.

I'm used to the six member party that makes it much easier to have a nice balance within your group. Taking the two away adds to the strategy of creating your first party and I'm sure many of us will be restarting the game with new parties until we get it right. The anal amongst us anyway, like myself.

The graphics are the real gem of this game with the animation being stunning. The characters are large, as is the play area with an almost invisible interface as well. If you're an RPG gamer, you most likely already have it, but for those who have wanted to "dabble" in RPG and have yet to take the plunge, this looks like one to cut your teeth on. Adventure well, warriors.

Bioware Interview
Posted Saturday, September 29, 2001 - 3:56 CET by Darien

RPGVault has posted the first in a 3 part series of interviews with Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, joint CEOs of Bioware.

Jonric: In your minds, what qualifies a game as an RPG? Do you have a static or fairly static definition, or is it more fluid and subjective? How important or unimportant is this genre label to you, and how do you feel about genre labels in general? Are they useful to you personally?

Ray Muzyka: Very difficult question. If one needs to define such things, I think that an RPG can include any number of from a list of "RPG-like" features. When it includes enough of these features, then people start referring to it as a "roleplaying game". At its simplest, an RPG includes a character with whom you identify, whose abilities progress and develop during the course of the game based on your efforts; of course RPGs also include a deep and immersive storyline. But there are many different ways to build a roleplaying game - I'd argue that games like Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, Diablo, Baldur's Gate, EverQuest, Neverwinter Nights, and Silent Hill are all RPGs, but different types of RPGs.

Greg Zeschuk: I don't really have an answer to this question - in my opinion games don't really need definitions. I don't like to get involved in the endless newsgroup discussions about whether or not a game is an RPG. There's no right answer and, more importantly, it doesn't really matter. What matters to me is if a game is fun. If it is, then I care about it.

Read the interview.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Friday, September 28, 2001 - 13:52 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

Multi-Classing: You start as a single class character in NWN and add classes at level up. This allows you to create a character from scratch in less than an hour and enhance the character as you progress. We did this because it fits with the rules and it allows for simpler character generation and level up programming. (simpler programming == game done sooner)

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Wizards and Bards Useless?: You're talking 3rd Edition, right? Not Neverwinter Nights? Well, in a campaign run by Preston W., we have a bard (me) and a Wizard. The wizard is too new, though, to compare him to Rob B.'s character from Aidan's game, a sorcerer/rogue, so I'll make some quick comments about bards.

I'm finding my bard to be incredibly interesting to play, and as time progresses, I'm becoming more useful to the group. I can heal, I can boost the others with spells and songs, and I can fight (if I wanted to ). As well, all of that bardic knowledge really comes in handy - Preston doesn't just hand out all of the information you need. Without a bard, I'm not sure how far we would have gotten so far. They really do contribute in so many ways.

Overall, I think they're a fun class, and I'm getting more and more into it. It's kind of hard to tell how useful a class is until you've taken several levels in one (at least 5 or 6). So give a few more levels to bard if you're curious as to how good they are.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

NWN FAQ: The FAQ is basically done and there are about 5 people who have to sign off on it. I am sure its just bunged up in there. I will check up on it tomorrow and see what the hold up is.

Pool of Radiance Interview
Posted Friday, September 28, 2001 - 0:39 CET by Darien

MGON has posted a lengthy interview with PoR's Chuck Yeager, covering some general questions about the genre and a lot of specifics about the game itself. Here's a short excerpt:

Steve: Monks will be included in the game, how will you include some of the more bizarre abilities the monk is supposed to have (eg quivering palm)?

Chuck Yeager: Quivering Palm is in the game, although we strip away the ability for players to choose what day they want the target to die if they are successful…you simply kill the creature right then if it works. Other abilities like Still Mind, Deflect Arrows, Kid Strike, Diamond Body, Stunning Fist, and Wholeness of Body are included as well.

Steve: Similarly you have included charisma-based abilities for Paladins in combat, how will this work?

Chuck Yeager: Paladins can use a special class ability known as Smite Evil that basically allows them to target a single evil creature and damage them with holy energy. The Paladin’s Charisma modifier is added to their chance to hit. Also, turning undead is also affected by the cleric’s/paladin’s Charisma score.

Steve: You also have 0 level spells (or cantrips in the game). This is great, but for those who aren’t familiar with the genre what are they and how will they be used to impact on the gameplay?

Chuck Yeager: Cantrips or Orisons (for clerics) are low level spells that are not powerful but useful in day-to-day adventuring. For example, the light spell is a cantrip, and can brighten a dark room. The Disrupt Undead spell is also a cantrip that can do minor damage to low level undead (useful at the start of the game). Then there is Cure Minor Wounds…a spell that only heals 1 hit point, but stops a character from bleeding to death; very useful at any point in the game when you are in situations where a few members of your party are down and dying.

Read the interview.

Pool of Radiance Ships!
Posted Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 23:24 CET by Darien

Pool of Radiance: The Ruins of Myth Drannor has been shipped to stores and should be available by the weekend. Here's an excerpt from the press release.

POOL OF RADIANCE*: RUINS OF MYTH DRANNOR DEBUTS AT RETAIL

SSI's Highly Anticipated Role-Playing Game Launches Today

San Francisco, CA - September 27, 2001 - Ubi Soft Entertainment today announced that it will begin immediate retail shipment of SSI's Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Customers can expect to purchase the title as soon as this weekend in many locations in the United States. "Ubi Soft is proud to re-establish this strong franchise in the marketplace," commented Laurent Detoc, President, Ubi Soft Entertainment. "Pool of Radiance is poised to be the best-selling PC role-playing title at retail this holiday season."

Set in the popular Forgotten Realms* world of Dungeons & Dragons*, Pool of Radiance features D&D*'s New 3rd Edition Rules, plus dazzling 3D animated characters and monsters, some taking up one third of the screen with intricate attention to detail. In this epic role-playing adventure, players choose from a variety of character classes to build a party of heroes and defeat a mysterious and horrific evil emanating from the newly awakened Pool of Radiance. Players can also join friends online in a multi-player format that offers additional game content as well as random dungeons. Please visit www.poolofradiance.com for more information on product features and gameplay online.

Special Limited Run Collectors Edition

In addition to the standard Pool of Radiance boxed product, gamers can also choose to purchase the Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Collector's Edition. Built in a one-time only production run, each individually numbered copy includes the standard boxed product, plus the Pool of Radiance D&D* Tabletop RPG Module, the Pool of Radiance novel by fantasy fiction writer Carrie Bebris, role-playing dice in a custom Pool of Radiance dice bag, and the original game soundtrack on CD. The suggested retail price for the Collector's Edition is $59.99.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 21:41 CET by Darien

Here's a review from The Guardian, a UK newspaper, which scores the expansion to BGII at 3 out of 5 stars.

Still, it does more than your average add-on: as well as raising the experience limit of your adventuring character, Throne of Bhaal offers a new plotline, more spells, a new character concept in high-level abilities (thieves can gain the ability to make potions, for example), new areas to explore, new enemies, new spells, new companions, and a new character class (the wild mage). There's some new atmospheric music, some amusing new dialogue, and even new developments in the romance between you and your party members.

All of which adds up to several dozen hours of add-itional gameplay, and gives you another excuse to play all the way through the BG series again. As if you needed one.

New Lord of the Rings Trailer
Posted Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 13:56 CET by Nazgul

The newest Lord of the Rings Trailer was released yesterday, It is the best trailer so far for this movie. You can find it at the following link.

See the trailer here.

NWN Adventure Creation Guide
Posted Thursday, September 27, 2001 - 2:14 CET by Darien

Another chapter in the guide by Abbot Fenthick Moss is up at GameSpy. Part 5 of this series deals with the concept of rewards and challenges.

A wise approach to your storytelling can actually be to disguise the best possible or most obvious path, while holding out the more difficult or unpopular one in plain sight. By so doing, you encourage your heroes to dig a little deeper into your tale and invest themselves in it more fully. I recently caught another storyteller using this trick to wondrous effect, as follows.

In his story, the heroes were to infiltrate an enemy camp. However, if any of them approached too closely to the main entrance of the camp, two eagle-eyed scouts fled through the camp, alerting their brethren to the disturbance. Once alerted, the camp became a flurry of movements, creating a more difficult environment in which the heroes would have to operate, though things would quickly calm down again once the scouts noticed no further activity.

Realizing the set-up, the heroes thought it might be helpful to circle around the camp, looking for any clues or hints to help them out. What they ended up finding was an alternative path into the camp. It forced them to fight through a series of small encounters but allowed them to eliminate the scouts without a chance of the camp being alerted. So what initially looked to be an impossible challenge ended up becoming quite enjoyable, and the heroes ended the day feeling well-rewarded for their thoughtful actions.

Read more.

Interface Guide to PoR
Posted Wednesday, September 26, 2001 - 15:11 CET by Darien

The Scrying Room has posted an article which takes an in-depth look at the interface of PoR: The Ruins of Myth Drannor. As the author points out, the information is based on the beta version but it's still a good read, with lots of specific information.

As you can probably tell, a lot of time has obviously been spent on the interface design of this game. Before I played it, I had always thought the Infinity Engine games had a well-designed interface. But after playing PoR2, I find the Baldur’s Gate interface rather clunky. If you are familiar with Windows and the Infinity Engine games you should have little trouble adjusting to the PoR2 interface. You’ll probably hear from many people about the lack of portraits, but in reality the portraits were only cosmetic and didn’t add to the Infinity Engine games. Health bars are just as useful and take up less space. I’d rather not lose a whole side of the screen so I can look at portraits that don’t look anything like the models ;) But back on track: basically the interface provides the most access to game features using the least amount of screen space. Though there are a few tradeoffs to accomplish this, in general it’s worth it. There are a few quibbles about how some things were placed and done, but once you get used to them (it takes like 5 minutes), you’ll never be bothered by them again.

Read the article.

Pool of Radiance Chat
Posted Tuesday, September 25, 2001 - 23:46 CET by Darien

GameSpy Arcade will be hosting a chat with the developers of Pool of Radiance. You can download Arcade here.

WHAT: Pool of Radiance Developer Chat
WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 27th at 7pm EST
WHERE: GameSpy Arcade

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, September 25, 2001 - 19:26 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

Torches: Torches will extinguish when they hit the ground. Currently the torches stay lit and it is causing a real slowdown and some bad artifacting with the shadow system. We have to change the torches to keep performance reasonable and to avoid serious graphical problems.

Persuade Skill: In our story a number of encounters have non-combat options for plot resolution. You can make a skill check on your perform skill as a bard to bluff, or use your persuade skill (persuade is one of our skills, similar to bluff, but different enough to warrant a new skill). If your character is skilled enough, the encounter could go in a completely different manner than the typical combat encounter. However, even the most charming individual has to fight once in a while.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Creating an Adventure: Pop by GameSpy.com and have a look at some of the Adventure Creation Guides that our own Bob McCabe's been writing. There are a number of them already there and more have been written, each one getting a little more specific than the last. Give them a read and let us know what you think.

Marc Taro Holmes, Art Director:

Dragons: All I'm going to say for now is they're big, and their spells are awesome... your puny character will be quaking in their boots the first time you run across one.

The dragon is essentially the largest creature we can actually do in the engine.... giants are up there for size, but naturally we're putting a bit of extra work into the titular creature... it is Dungeons and DRAGONS right...

Women’s Clothing: I think we can see from this thread that:

A- women’s clothing is an unhealthy obsession for most gamers and,

B - this is a irreconcilable difference or 'tastes great, less filling' as we say around the office.

Since there are two opposed camps here, we have given you the option to do BOTH (that's because we're BioWare). You can be half naked, fully armored, dressed in satin, or in practical cotton. Whatever you prefer, (and whatever your character can afford...)

Camera Angle: The default view you have seen in shots so far is what we are testing for 'lowest angle'. This is open to change during playtest like everything, but it's our current best choice.

Lighting: There five dungeon tilesets in the initial release, so you do have quite a bit of variety to choose from, ranging from caves to evil looking temple. Lighting levels are fully adjustable from total brightness to total black (torches required) and lots of colors in between, so also no worries there. You can even change the colors on and individual tile basis if you want to get micro-managy.

If you happen to dislike any particular tile that gets painted down (say you don't want any water to show in a particular cave due to drought in your story or whatever) then you simply go back and paint them out manually.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Sunday, September 23, 2001 - 18:17 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which of the BioWare/BIS games & expansions do you feel was the most buggy?
(332 votes total)

Baldur's Gate (71) 21%
Baldur's Gate II (66) 20%
Icewind Dale (56) 17%
Planescape: Torment (53) 16%
Throne of Bhaal (43) 13%
Tales of the Sword Coast (24) 7%
Heart of Winter (19) 6%

Interesting results, that's for sure. Even though it's been three years since the original Baldur's Gate was released, people still remember it as the most buggy game of them all. 21% of all who voted agree on this.

Second place with only one percent less goes to Baldur's Gate II, the much-anticipated sequel.

In third place with 17% of votes is Icewind Dale, the second Black Isle Studios game to have used the Infinity Engine licensed from BioWare.

Least buggy of the full games is Planescape: Torment which nevertheless still received 16% of votes as the most buggy one. Quite strange since PS: T actually had only one serious bug which was fixed completely in the patch.

As far as expansions are concerned, Throne of Bhaal is in the absolute lead with 13% of people voting for its bugginess.

Second among the expansions bug-wise is Tales of the Sword Coast with 7% of votes.

And finally, least buggy of the expansions is Heart of Winter with 6% of people voting for it, but I expect this is due to the fact that it sold less than the other two expansions so fewer people have it.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Saturday, September 22, 2001 - 16:29 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

Movement: Movement rates are a serious issue and we are going to finalize them quite late in development. We are dedicated to making a fun game experience and we will choose the option which is the best for gameplay, single player and multiplayer. Creature speeds range from immobile to Very fast, with fast and very fast creatures able to catch PCs and normal speed to immobile creatures are slower than PCs. We want this to be a relative standard, otherwise the Halfings and Gnomes would always fall behind and force the party to stop and aid them. Damn little munchkins anyway :)

Fudging Rolls: Combat fudging is an integral part of Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Mastering. The DM client has a difficulty slider on the main GUI which allows you to real-time toggle the rolls without advising the players. To the right, next hit kills, to the left, no players can die. In between allows you to tailor the gameplay as you desire. After all, what fun is a session where everyone dies every three minutes.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Height transitions: There are no height transitions in the forest tile set - otherwise you'd be able to see over the non-existent tree tops :)

There is no falling into bottomless pits, but the script/area transition/imagination work-around is perfectly and easily workable.

I don't believe there is a bottomless chasm in the rural tileset, but things are changing almost daily. In addition, since you do have height transitions, you could probably fudge something pretty easily, especially with fog :)

Building Spaces: It sort of works like that. This is kind of difficult to explain, but you can select a building tile and it works like water. You click on one spot, and you have one pond or one house. You hold the button down and go one tile to the right, and you now have a river or a set of two connected buildings. You can turn the river into a lake, and just the same, turn two buildings into one large square of 4 connected buildings.

And... since the buildings overlap the actual tiles, you can create awesome alley-ways by dropping down a building, and then dropping down a second building next to it. It's like painting an inverted road, if that isn't too confusing to conjure (i.e. paint the grass left of the road, then paint the grass right of the road) :)

Maybe that is what it should be called (Smart Draw)? Who knows? I'll have to ask Don M :) This is (smart draw?), by the way, how most of the terrain (i.e. not groups, not features) choices work (i.e. water, wall, building, road, etc.).

Pool of Radiance Preview
Posted Saturday, September 22, 2001 - 16:12 CET by Darien

GameSpot has posted their updated impressions of PoR2, and they promise a full review once the game is released. Here's an excerpt:

Ruins of Myth Drannor looks much like the last build of the game we saw at this year's GenCon. The game lets you build an adventuring party of up to four characters, though it also lets you add up to two additional non-player characters to your party for a sum total of six. Ruins of Myth Drannor comes with several pregenerated characters, but you can create your own custom characters using the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, including barbarians, monks, and characters of the powerful half-orc race.

Ruins of Myth Drannor uses a handful of hotkeys and a nested system of menus, presumably in the interest of keeping the screen as uncluttered as possible. As a result, many of the game options are split between menus and hotkeys scattered across the keyboard. However, for many options, like choosing which physical attacks or which spell you'd like to use next in combat, you have to rely on your mouse to scroll through each menu. We poked around the game's manual and help documents and learned that you can at least make custom hotkeys by pressing Ctrl+F2-F12 to assign shortcuts to a character's last action, which helps somewhat.

Read the rest here.

Bioware Sues Interplay
Posted Saturday, September 22, 2001 - 16:03 CET by Darien

A recent press release from Bioware states that Bioware, along with Parallax, have filed suit against Interplay for unpaid royalties.

A lawsuit has been filed against Interplay Entertainment Corp. by Canadian software developer BioWare Corp. BioWare alleges in its complaint that Interplay has breached two contracts with BioWare by sublicensing distribution of BioWare games to third parties without the knowledge or consent of BioWare.

A lawsuit has been filed against Interplay Entertainment Corp., British distributor Virgin Interactive and French company Titus Interactive S.A., by BioWare Corp., a Canadian software developer, and Parallax Software Corporation, a software developer based in Champaign, Illinois. The complaint alleges that there are additional royalties due to both BioWare and Parallax.

BioWare is the developer of a number of highly popular and successful award-winning computer games, including Shattered Steel, MDK2 (for the PC, Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 2 platforms), Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn and the recently-released Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.

Here is a short follow-up statement from Bioware posted at RPGVault:
Regarding our recent announcement of action against Interplay, we can't really comment, as it is before the courts. Please be assured that development at BioWare is continuing. Neverwinter Nights is shaping up nicely and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is also progressing according to plan.

Pool of Radiance: Recap on Release Info
Posted Friday, September 21, 2001 - 14:25 CET by Nazgul

Garrett Graham, Producer:

There have been a lot of questions about the release dates for various parts of the world, so here is a recap of what I know.
US - I have not been informed of any shipping delays, so I believe we are still on target for Sept. 25th.

Australia - Uses the US stock, so the game *should* be available on Sept. 25th. However, there are still a lot of delays with international shipping in and out of the US, so there *might* be some small delays. Or there might not - its hard to predict.

UK, Germany, France - These versions should all be hitting the shelves in mid to late November (no exact date yet). I know that no one is happy that it is coming out later, but there is a *staggering* amount of dialog in an RPG and it takes a while to make sure we got all of it right. I think that because Ubi Soft is a European company, that the translations will be pretty good. This is also the date that the UK English version will be available for Europe.

Other language versions may follow.

Pool of Radiance Board Update
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2001 - 6:18 CET by Darien

Garrett Graham, Producer:

Crossbows: As painful as this is for me to say, we do not have crossbows in the game. And as much as I sound like a broken record, I don't know *why* that decision was made, as the people who made it are no longer working here.

Missing Feats: The problem with feats arose because of our switch from 2nd Ed. to 3rd Ed. Feats were not locked down at the time that we had to make programing decisions and were added in later after the engine had been solidified. Since we have no way in the current engine to make feats selectable, then we run into problems with feats that require you to make a choice. In the case of Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization, you have to chose the weapon that they enhance. We briefly tried using these feats by allowing them to affect all weapons, but it made fighter types too powerful, so we pulled them.

Character generation: We use a Standard 25 and toss in the ability to lower scores to get more points.

Maps: There's blackout on the map until you explore that area. There is no blackout in the game, but we limit the distance you can scroll the screen away from your party (about one screen length, I think).

Copy Protection: The powers that be at our corporate offices have mandated that we use Safe Disc.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2001 - 6:09 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

Familiars: The largest advantage to a hawk familiar is the movement speed of the hawk. While scouting, a hawk familiar could move much faster than another type of creature.

In answer to the first question, yes, you can stuff your familiar into your backpack, almost like a figurine of wondrous power. Keeps the little guys from getting smoked all the time.

Custom Spells: As features continue to be added the code becomes "brittle". The more features, the easier it becomes to crash the game or get an unexpected behavior.

With the idea for the custom spell, we spoke about that quite early on in development and stepped away from the idea due to the inconsistent nature of it. i.e. I cast the custom spell on one server and it kills everyone in the area, pretty good 1st level spell. Next module I wait and pick the 9th level custom spell and it casts light. The next server could hold even different possibilities.

Right Handed: Due to the complexity of the combat system, we don't have the time to implement left handed dominant characters. Every character in NWN is assumed to be right handed.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Placeable Objects: Just to clarify on the placeable objects, you can place them with the same degree of freedom as you can a creature or an item. That means that you can place them in an arbitrary location (no need to have it 'snap' to a predefined grid), you can rotate the direction in which they're facing, and so forth.

That said, for pathfinding reasons, I think that we'll be limiting people to somewhere around 3 placeables per tile.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Crunch Time: What can I say... hmm... :)

Every project has milestones, and sometimes, in order to maintain the schedule, you have to work a little harder for short periods of time. Then there's other times where you just get really obsessed with the work and you temporarily overdose on it :) Then, of course, there are times when the company crunches the last few weeks in order to finish off the project.

So, by this definition, we're not yet crunching - but we are working hard to get you your Neverwinter goodness :)

Possible Job Prospects: I'm not saying that we ARE going to hire someone based upon good module design, but should we have openings, and should we know of people who have consistently put forth excellent modules - the opportunity is certainly there. Search through the news archives at a site like Planet Neverwinter or the Neverwinter Vault - Rob Bartel had posted a tidbit on this topic not too long ago.

Reason for the Silence: I'm just popping in to confirm that our silence is a direct result of our extra hours put in at the office (I've been doing about 65 hours a week for the last few; of course, people like Trent and the various leads, for example, routinely put in those amount of hours or more).

But don't worry, we're going to continue to maintain a board presence (the community discussions are invaluable, even when we're not posting), and, of course, there will be chats and updates in the future - but they might be coming a little bit slower for now.

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer:

Cleric Domains and Gods: You will choose the domains for your cleric at character creation but the choice of god is not relevant. To keep the system as flexible as possible the player does not need to choose a god. We will have a list of gods to choose from (the choice is only superficial however) or you can add any god name you want.

NWN Interview
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2001 - 2:18 CET by Vile

GamesReview has posted an interview of BioWare CEO's Raymond Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, and Trent Oster about Neverwinter Nights. They've also included quite a number of screenshots just in case you wanted to check those out.

Trent: The implementation of the 3rd Edition Dungeon and Dragons rules has been a great benefit to the game and also a great amount of work. The new rules are much more open and flexible than the previous 2nd Edition rules and as such offer many more user options in terms of class, race, equipment, skills and feats. Implementing all this flexibility requires a lot of extra time and requires a lot of careful design work. So, in summary, the 3rd Edition rules make NWN much broader in character advancement and much more open in terms of play styles.

GR: With the great deal of freedom you assign to the server hosts, have you implemented any features to protect players from cheaters?

Trent: The ultimate security feature will be a live DM. A live DM can boot any player at will and add that player to an ignore list, effectively banning the player from that game server. Other security features include the basic game architecture, which is Client-Server based. The entire game happens on the server, with the client merely displaying the visuals and collecting user input. If a player hacks the client, they have no effect on the game as it is run on the server. Additionally we have server-based characters, which are created and stored only on the server. You never have direct access to these characters and so you never have any opportunity to cheat them.

Check out the rest of the interview and the screenshots here.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Tuesday, September 18, 2001 - 20:55 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates -> Games

I have removed the 2nd/3rd Edition Conversion Manual from the main games page since frankly, it had no place there. It has been repacked and moved to the Forgotten Realms (Misc) subsection of the Fantasy Worlds section.

Subsection Updates -> Community

There's a new link in the Related Links subsection. Among the Miscellaneous Sites you'll find Mature Gamer, a site you should definitely check out if you are one.
If you click on the Sorcerer's Place Banners on the same page, you'll be able to see the new banner I made for SP. The image used is from Neverwinter Nights, just in case you're wondering.

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Worlds

If you've been around for a while and have browsed all the sections of SP, then you'll know that the Other Worlds subsection never really took off and was more or less defunct. Hoping to remedy that I've removed it altogether and created a new subsection in its place.
The new subsection is called Fantasy Fiction and I'm sure you've already guessed what kind of things you'll be able to find there.

Right now there are two stories in it that have been moved from the old Other Worlds subsection and 17 stories that have been posted on our message boards. There's no fear that people will stop producing good stories on the boards (and we'll add more to the existing list regularly), but I would also like to get some submissions from people who write stories in such a form that can be presented on pages of SP, not just linked to like we do for the board stories.
So, if you have any fantasy stories you would like to share with the rest of us, please send them over and we will put them online and give you full credit.

As for the Forgotten Realms subsection, there has been a slight change there as well. I've moved all the miscellaneous stuff into one table so it's a bit easier to find now. A new addition there is EBoN - Everchanging Book of Names. It's an excellent piece of software which makes creation of fantasy names a breeze. Definitely a must download.

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Books

A number of new sample chapters from various books can be found on Page 1 & Page 2 of the Forgotten Realms Books subsections and on Page 2 of the Dragonlance Books subsection. In the 3rd Edition D&D books subsection I've replaced some old covers of certain manuals with the actual covers they were/will be released with.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

If you open the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection you will see that the NPCs guide there has been renamed to include Throne of Bhaal, so yes, I've added the information about Sarevok to the list. You can access the same NPCs guide through our Baldur's Gate II Online Solution.

In the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection the Troubleshooting FAQ has been updated; it now includes Throne of Bhaal. I've moved it up the list a bit since many people find it very helpful.

On the same page you can find a new guide dubbed Priest Spells List & Analysis which is exactly that. Worth the read.

Moving on to Page 1 of the ever popular Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection... Here you can find an excellent new addition in the form of 6 "templates" which are similar to kits, but not quite. (Load the page for more info.) Very interesting stuff and big thanks to Lavir for sending them in!

Lower on the same page is a zip with the portrait of Sarevok from Throne of Bhaal, which might come in handy to folks without the expansion. But wait, there's more! It seemed like a waste leaving all those small portraits you see in the game unused, so I extracted them from BG2 & ToB and packed them together. You can download the whole collection just beneath the row where Sarevok's portrait is.

On Page 2 of the Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection you can download the latest version of the Bhaalpowers Addition which now includes a description of them all. Thanks for this go to Baldurdash. Also check out the updated Improved Tougher Abazigal.

The last updated file today is uScript, which now has even more features.

PoR: Tales from the Mythal
Posted Tuesday, September 18, 2001 - 18:04 CET by Darien

The latest Tales from the Mythal has been posted at The Scrying Room. This time the focus is on Jarial, a Human Male Sorcerer who can be found early in the game. Be sure to head over and check out the artwork and screenshots of this NPC.

Jarial remained trapped here as the years slid by, his body preserved by Ozama’s spell, but his mind ranging. After raking his throat hoarse yelling for help, Jarial spent weeks saying aloud every word he could think of that might answer the riddle. Now weeks of babbling alternate with weeks of silence.

Despite their squabble, Jarial loved Ozama and has been driven close to madness not so much by his isolation and frustration, as by his fear for her safety. It’s been years now, and even though he knows she must surely be dead (Jarial still believes she intended to return) he will never be sure until he sees some trace of her again.

Older than he appears (thanks to Ozama’s immobilizing but protective spell) Jarial has gained some wisdom in his long imprisonment. He has discarded his folly for basic truths and his temper for patience. If the party will free him, he will lend his powers to their cause and fight evil, great or small wherever he may find it.

Pool of Radiance Board Update
Posted Monday, September 17, 2001 - 1:35 CET by Darien

Garrett Graham, Producer:

Game Popularity: I would like to point out that we showed PoR at Gen Con - the largest gathering of hard core D&D fans in the US. We heard some complaints about the bards, gnomes, etc., but everyone stayed to watch and/or play.

In fact, every morning when the doors to the floor were opened, people would *sprint* to our area so they could get on the game first. We had to kick people off so that others could play and there was always a pile of gawkers hanging around. If the guys and gals at Gen Con love the game this much, then I have to believe that we accomplished what we set out to do - make a damn fine D&D game.

The Game Manual: Our manual has a Table of Contents and Appendices.

I apologize for my belligerent bout of brevity and hope that the following verbose response will alleviate your copious concerns
Our excellent manual contains, in detail, all character classes, races, skills, feats and spells as they are used in the game. This voluminous cornucopia of useful information is packed into a modest 140+ page manual (sorry for not having an exact page count, but I am extrapolating this number based on its size in electronic format). If you have more questions about the manual, I will be happy to answer them for you

All joking aside, I really am very busy - now that PoR has coded, a lot of people here are going on vactation - leaving me to deal with the last parts of localization and a huge amount of marketing stuff. Additionally, my other game is only a week or two from Gold Master.

And lastly (and, IMO, unbelievably), some people on our other forums have decided to start flame wars with each other about the world trade center bombings, which means that I have to spend a lot of time at those sites deleting and banning (which I *hate*). Speaking of which, I'd like to thank everyone here for their kind words regarding this week's tragedy and for being respectful of each other on this volatile subject.

Arrows: In PoR you get unlimited normal arrows. Magical arrows come in limited numbers. The arrows do not take up inventory space.

Multiclassing: A character who finishes the single player game will be between 16th and 20th level, depending on how much you did and how many characters were in the party. If you are concerened with "tainting" your ranger with another class, then multi your ranger with fighter or barbarian levels.

Pool of Radiance Screenshots
Posted Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 20:44 CET by Darien

Eurogamer has posted another eight screenshots from PoR2: The Ruins of Myth Drannor. If you missed the last update, you can follow the links there to check out the earlier shots.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 19:50 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which of the Infinity Engine games (including their expansions) do you think has the best story?
(606 votes total)

Planescape: Torment (245) 41%
Baldur's Gate 2 (242) 40%
Baldur's Gate (86) 14%
Icewind Dale (33) 5%

Although it seemed in the first three days of the poll being online that Planescape: Torment would win the poll outright, Baldur's Gate 2 started gaining many more votes in the second half of the week and was brought extremely close to Planescape: Torment in the end. The final results are:

Planescape: Torment was voted the game with the best story by the majority of people, 41% of them to be precise. Considering that PS: T was played by considerably less people than BG2, this makes its victory in the poll even more convincing.

Baldur's Gate 2 (and Throne of Bhaal) came in close second with only three votes less and was voted the game with the best story by 40% of people. In this case it's just the opposite; many more people played this game but not PS: T.

The original Baldur's Gate (and Tales of the Sword Coast) is in third place with 14% of votes, some of it probably due to the age of the game and the fact that quite a number of people haven't played it.

Last place goes to Icewind Dale (and Heart of Winter) which was voted the game with the best story by only 5% of people. Most likely by those who haven't played any of the other games listed above.

PoR European Release News
Posted Saturday, September 15, 2001 - 16:08 CET by Darien

This short announcement was recently made on the official Pool of Radiance page.

Pool of Radiance will be released in Europe in mid November 2001!! The fans will be able to buy the game fully translated in German and French. The original version will also be available with Spanish and Italian subtitles. More news on the European release coming soon.

Also, on the Official Forum, Garrett Graham had this to say about the U.S. shipping date:

I'm not sure what effect the bombing will have on US shipping (if any). I'm trying to find out from our Sales dept. if anything has changed. *If* PoR is delayed, it will only be due to the difficulty of shipping right now with such restricted air travel. We have no plans to deliberately delay the game. I don't think the game will be delayed by air problems - I just can't say for sure that it won't.

Pool of Radiance Article at WotC
Posted Friday, September 14, 2001 - 22:44 CET by Darien

Associate Producer Chuck Yager has written another article on the PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor. "The End in Sight" takes a look at the long road behind the development of the game and, (finally), to the end of that road: Myth Drannor!

When we finally had it up a running to the point of commentary, we elicited everyone's feedback and got a lot of criticism right off the bat. Taking these thoughts to heart, Jon and I went back to Stormfront and started cleaning up the game further. Areas needed better descriptions, more quests needed to be added, animations required touching up, and more monster types were born. Around this time, and after many hours of hard work and realizing we would not meet our original release date (not to mention the company being bought and sold a number of times), Jon left the company to pursue other interests and I was left to carry the torch with the help of Garrett Graham (another producer). Together we finished the reviews of the game, got it polished up, and solicited feedback from a wide array of individuals inside the company (and a few outside).

All of that paid off. Today, Pool looks and feel like a great game to me. As I sit here and write this, I just now realize how far we've come and how much was accomplished against daunting odds. Now when we show the game, we get a ton of great feedback . . . from the stunning visuals of the 3D characters, to the beauty of the rendered backgrounds, to the engaging quests and nonlinear feel of the aboveground exploration. The game boasts anywhere from 70-100 hours of play, maybe even a bit longer if you try to explore everything. Having played through the game from start to finish, I can attest to the size and scope of the missions and plot; while not quite as big as some of our competitors' products, Pool is definitely a decent size with tons of hours of fun gameplay waiting to be had.

Read the article.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Friday, September 14, 2001 - 22:31 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

Rapiers: Rapiers are in, as are two weapon fighting and double weapons. We had to limit the double weapons a bit more than I wanted, but they are supported and they are quite cool. As for a two bladed energy weapon, You'll just have to kill Darth Maul and take his. You could create a double sword and attach an energy effect to it. You would still be able to see the blades, but the energy effect would mostly obscure them, giving something very close to what you are after.

With regards to weapon lists, we'll post more as we get closer.

Weather and Day/Night Cycles: We have weather support in. You set the chance of rain when you create the area. We have a rural area in a test module right now and it seems to be quite rainy. As to the larger issue of day/night cycles, the hit of recalculating the shadows is quite severe, so we aren't moving the sun. You can change the color and intensity of the sun as dusk approaches, shifting to warm, red hues and then make the change to night, with a blue key light for the moon.

Creating "NEW" Creatures: You are correct, you cannot create "new" creatures on the fly. You can use any monster which has been created for use in the module, effectively making up your "toolbelt" of creatures. You will also have access to the standard pre-built creatures we have set up ahead of time, so this should be a very mild limitation. If you really want a creature that isn't in the module, just pop up the toolset, load the module, create the creature and start the module back up.

Modeling/Texture Q&A:
1-Is there a limit to the number of textures allowed for a model?

We use one texture per model. This is not a limitation, but a desire on our part to minimize texture binds. You can use multiple textures, but there is some overhead and the limit is one texture per object (no sub object textures)

2- What's the max resolution supported?

The largest textures we use are 512x512. Anything larger and you burn up a ton of memory.

3- Which texture channels will be supported? Diffuse... (duh) , bump... opacity... reflection... ...? Any other ones?
Alpha?

We support only the diffuse texture. To get an alpha, make a 32 bit texture with an 8 bit alpha channel. To get environment mapping you use the alpha channel in the texture and have to make a change in a 2DA (NWN data file)

4- Models will be seen from above at a fixed camera perspective, with zoom and rotation enabled. Alright, does that mean I don't have to have polygons under my models...
Bipeds need polies on the soles because they run... and there fore their soles will most likely be seen. But how about the Beholder, spherical monster... do I need the polies under the sphere ? I'm assuming not... but thought It would be a good idea to confirm
Also.. polygons on top of the mouth, for example. (I can cut down quite some if I don't need those)

You could, but we've found that during death animations, etc you see more of the creature, so we try to stay as solid as possible.

5- Any specific ways the texture maps should be arranged?

Keep your maps as powers of 2. We use the UVW unwrap to paint the characters how we want them, selecting the polys we want in sub oject mode and then applying a UVW unwrap.

6- Any specific skinning sys in max? I know you guys are using your own bone sys, but does it make a difference whether I use the regular bones in MAx? CS?

We use boxes and use the skin modifier. I think bones could work though

7- Is there support for mesh morph? Or is vertex deformation based on bones alone?

Bones alone.

8- Support for animated textures ? Can textures be morphed into one another? Say, if I wanted to make some sort of Chameleon monster, would he be able to change appearance, as far as textures are concerned, during specified events?

Animated textures work, but they are a little ugly to work with. I'd really recommend staying away from them unless you are ready for a good fight.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Items and Dead NPCs: I won't get into the "proper" way to design what happens when a creature dies but I will say that we're giving you the easy option to do it however you want, and you won't even have to rely upon YCSI (you can script it).

When you put an item into a creature's inventory, you have two flags. One is "dropable", and one is "pickpocketable".

By simply checking or unchecking these two flags, you can do whatever you want with your creature's inventory. Of course, if you prefer YCSI, there is the OnDeath event - feel free to use it however you wish.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Max Multiclass Levels: Yes, we are limiting multiclass to 3 classes in NWN mainly due to GUI restrictions. There is a certain point in multiclassing where with too many classes at a certain level you would incur a 100% experience penalty and therefore would not be able to advance your character.

No, sorry, the 3 class limit won't likely change at any time. I also found out that the multiclass also has a minor code impact as well as the GUI impact (character creation/record sheet/level up).

Prestige classes are still something that we are going to consider and investigate for an expansion. No decisions yet.

Custom Sounds: The music file format is still being played around with. We are considering mp3, Ogg Vorbis, and some others.

For now, you can start with .wav and once the format is finalized, encode from there.

NWN and IPMasq: Consider this an unofficial answer. There should be no problems with NWN and IPMasq. Since I run this type of setup at home, if I find any issues, I will be pretty grumpy and push hard for them to be addressed. Our network programming guy is really top notch, so I doubt there will any issues of this kind.

System Specs: It was most likely running at 640x480. What you have to understand is that the engine has not been optimized at all. At this stage of development optimization is not needed yet since various things have not been finalized yet. Messing with various rendering paths while you are still adding features, functionality, and data would make basic bug tracking much harder. Also, that test system was using a TNT1 video card. That is below our current targetted min spec system, so this, again, doesn't reflect how the released game will perform.

Don't panic as we once we do our optimization pass things will get much better.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Item Trading: You can enter into a barter mode with other players. The way this works is three panels are popped up, similar to Fallout and also including the "confirm trade" button. The GUI itself is see-through, like most of our GUIs, so you don't have to worry about stuff going on around you while you're trading.

Okay, I went back and checked the GUI. There are actually THREE buttons. One is "offer", and one is "accept" and one is "cancel"; should be good for all.

Pool of Radiance Board Update
Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 19:49 CET by Darien

Here's some news from Garrett Graham, on the Official PoR message boards.

New Nick Gar Dog?: Yep. I didn't make an announcement because I was supposed to get back my old handle. Unfortuantely, they had to wipe my computer to give me net access and I can't get my old password because my old email no longer works (t was some wacky random numbers and letters password). Plus they shut down our offices yesterday. So if any posts got deleted over the last few days - it wasn't me.

NPCs: You don't need to take the NPCs to play the game. Its a trade off: if you take them, you have extra characters and abilities, but you are now dividing up the XP between more people, if you don't take them, you have a smaller party, but they advance faster.

Character Death: If you die, there are places you can go to get resurrected, or, if you have high level clerics, you can do it yourself. You can often save your characters, as they lose conciousness at 0hp and stick around for ten turns, giving your cleric or paladin a chance to stablize them.

GameZone Interviews Trent Oster
Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 19:21 CET by Darien

Seems like Trent has been busy lately. Here's another interview, this time from GameZone.

Q: With such a rich tradition of role-playing fantasy games, each of which seems to get better graphically and plot-wise than the one before it, what advances will Neverwinter Nights bring to the fore to separate it or make it unique from other BioWare titles?

Trent: “The largest advance Neverwinter Nights brings to the table is the toolset. With the NW Toolset, players can easily create high-quality content, and then, if they wish, later share that content with other players. No feature in Neverwinter Nights will have the same impact as the toolset, which is even more powerful than the system that we used to create Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II.

“NWN (Neverwinter Nights) will push the genre as a single player game, with the player controlling a single character through an amazing story, and it will push the genre as a multiplayer game, as the first truly story-based multiplayer role playing game. As well, NWN will push the genre in graphics and environmental immersion. The powerful, 3D Aurora engine gives us atmosphere and emotion in environments, which we could only dream about in the past. As you walk through an environment, your torch lights the immediate area, shadows sweep across the walls, and creatures run at the edge of your vision. In short, we are pushing every aspect of computer role-playing games as far as current technology allows.”

Read more here.

Interview with Trent Oster
Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 19:13 CET by Darien

Neverwinter Stratics has posted an interview with Trent Oster, who talks about things like pausing the game, chat features, and portals.

NWN Stratics: Are you planning additional land tilesets for NWN in future expansions? If so, what areas are you considering?

Trent Oster: Yes, we are planning additional tilesets for future expansions. As to what those might be, we have considered many of the obvious choices and a few oddball ones as well. Once we have more solid plans for where we want to take the expansion, we'll start making some decisions regarding the new tilesets.

NWN Stratics: Is there anything you can reveal about non-weapons proficiencies and what can be done or made with them?

Trent Oster: The feats included in our initial release will be primarily combat-focused, with the non-weapon proficiencies being handled primarily through skills. For the time being, we've decided not to implement any of the Craft skills but item creation, like many other things, will still be scriptable for those who want to include it in their own modules.

Throne of Bhaal Review
Posted Wednesday, September 12, 2001 - 19:02 CET by Darien

Another Throne of Bhaal review has shown up, this time at Gamespot AU. They score the expansion at 8 of 10, with generally high marks all around.

Throne of Bhaal is of course based on the same foundations as the entire Baldur's Gate series - the Dungeons and Dragons world and system converted to a visually spectacular computerised version and a quality story line given life by talented artists. The pyrotechnics of high-level battle brings out the best in the Infinity Engine. Players and enemies alike have so many options combat is always varied and challenging. Strategically you may need to kill a certain foe in the first round of combat or duck for cover until your mages can breach magical defences. The most invaluable combat tactic I found was to save the game before you get into it.

The result of all this is an enjoyable and powerful conclusion to the Baldur's Gate series. The challenges are difficult and new and the quests, especially with the addition of the Watcher's Keep dungeon, will keep you busier for longer than most expansion packs do. With only a few exceptions the game is of the same quality evident in the entire series.

Saddest News Ever
Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - 20:57 CET by Sorcerer

I won't go into details about today's horrible events in New York & Pittsburgh, as I'm sure you heard all about it many times already from the TV, radio or read about it online. I can hardly find the words to express my feelings about this whole situation, so I'll just say that I hope all of you who are reading this are safe and were unaffected directly by this tragedy. To all of you who either lost someone you knew or loved (or even worse, are still unsure), I would like to present my condolences on behalf of the whole crew of SP. I cannot imagine how you must feel right now but I beg you not to despair.

I can only hope that the cowards responsible for the thousands of deaths today will be brought to justice and all terrorists across the world condemned. Something like this must not happen again.

Author Profile: Drew Karpyshyn
Posted Monday, September 10, 2001 - 22:11 CET by Darien

WotC has posted a profile of author Drew Karpyshyn, author of the Forgotten Realms book, Temple Hill and BioWare's Throne of Bhaal. He talks about some of his influences, his favorite authors, and about the challenge of creating a novel from a CRPG.

Novelizations of a computer game are always tough, especially the BioWare games. They're HUGE! There are 17 possible NPCs in the game who can join your party, but in a novel you really only have room for three or four characters, so somebody has to get left out. Players don't like it when you leave out their favorite character. Similarly, sub-plots and side quests from the game also have to go, which can make even more people angry. And of course, the game is constantly being changed and tweaked right up until the release date. I had the final draft of the Throne of Bhaal novel done by March, but we kept making revisions to the actual game right through May. Obviously, some of these later changes never made it into the novel. Again, there's that potential to anger devoted fans of the game.

I think it's dangerous for an author to try (and unrealistic for a reader to expect) to replicate the experience of playing a computer game in a novel. Both game and book can both be very rewarding experiences, but they're very different experiences. Watching a movie about baseball isn't going to be the same as playing baseball -- or watching a baseball game on TV. I'm not saying one is better than the other...just that they're all different.

I tried to put some things into the ThrOB novel that didn't make it into the game. There's some back story and history for a lot of the characters that never made it into the game, and I think Baldur's Gate fans will find the novel an interesting read. I wanted to give the readers something they hadn't seen before, but not tinker too much with the true spirit of the game.

Read the interview.

Pool of Radiance Screenshots
Posted Sunday, September 9, 2001 - 17:38 CET by Darien

Another look at some screenshots from PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor can be found over at Eurogamer. Check these out!

Interview with Dr. Ray Muzyka
Posted Sunday, September 9, 2001 - 17:27 CET by Darien

An interview at Player of Games with Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare, has just caught my attention. He talks about some of his favorite games, his time at Bioware, and gives us a glimpse at the man behind our favorite titles.

Occy: Of all the titles you guys have completed, which one is your sentimental favorite? Do you have a favorite character?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: I could think of two answers here: on the one hand, I think that every game that we complete in the future will be better still than the games we have released in the past, so in some ways I hope that the sentimental favorite has still not yet been released. On the other hand, based on games that we have actually released, the sentimental favorite has to be Shattered Steel. It was our first game after all! Each game has a special place; actually, largely because of the great people we get to work with here at BioWare on a daily basis. My favorite character would likely be Minsc from Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II. You've gotta like Boo, his hamster.

Occy: You are stranded on a desert island that, amazingly enough, has an electrical outlet for your computer. What one computer game would you want to have and why?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Deus Ex, because I want to see how the bloody thing ends. World Domination has to figure into it at some stage, though I'm anxious to avoid dreadlocked protesters.(Laughter)

Read the interview.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Sunday, September 9, 2001 - 17:08 CET by Darien

Trent Oster, Producer:

The Story of NWN: The story in NWN has just undergone a series of revisions. Our Director of Design at Bioware, James Ohlen (lead designer BG, Co-lead BGII) has assisted us with our recent revisions and they story is shaping up very strong. In a number of ways the NWN storyline will be even more compelling than the BGII storyline. We can't take a step back in quality in any aspect of NWN. We shipped BGII with a great story and our fans responded, so NWN will feature the same attention to story and adventure, with the added benefit of the lessons learned from BG and BGII. In short, The NWN story is going to be the best story we can create, single player or multiplayer. It's your choice.

Aribeth: Ah yes, Aribeth the Tyrist Paladin. In the picture Marc painted up she is praying to Tyr, thus the reason for her pose and her expression. In the story Aribeth is a respected member of the Neverwinter leadership and interacts often with the players. Sadly, Aribeth is too busy with the affairs of the city to join your party and adventure by your side. IT appears the small matter of a plague seems to have the city in a little bit of a panic. There will be interesting henchpersons in the game who will adventure with you. Henchmen will respond to a few commands, but you do not have direct control over them.

Time Stop: If a mage gets Time Stop off the combat is over. Bloody nasty spell. We are looking at the protection / breaching balancing in the spells and we may have to get a little creative here and there. In the end we will make the game the best balanced D&D game we can.

Weapon Size: Bastard swords will be one handed for medium sized creatures (humans, half orcs, etc...) and two handed for small creatures (halflings, etc...) The added complexity of one handed and two handed wielding as a play choice is hard to justify in terms of development time when it only applies to one weapon.
Quarterstaffs are two handed pole class weapons and require both hands to wield.

Non-Bipedal Animation: We have some support for arbitrary (non-bipedal) bone animation in NWN. As this was a very recent addition, most of our initial ship creatures will not be using this technology. We use a custom set of plug-ins in Max 3.1 for our bone stuff.

The Beholder looks pretty good. As for Poly count, around 1000 is a little on the high side, but it is reasonable.

Server Requirements: Actually, the server is fairly CPU heavy. In terms of CPU time, the client is very light. Since the server runs all the game AI (including pathfinding) it is currently fairly demanding. We still have a lot of optimization to do, but the server will always be quite CPU hungry. You are quite correct about the memory though. More ram=good. The fast disk will cut loading times and is more important for the client as graphics are much heavier in file size than game data.

We don't have a clear picture of the overhead right now and the optimizations stage is still a way off. We will make the server as fast and efficient as possible including script execution.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Official FAQ Update: The FAQ, coincidently, is being reviewed today and a newer version with many changes should be uploaded to neverwinternights.com and bioware.com within a few weeks.

Gone Gold Says Spring 2002?: Sorry guys, but this is just old news popping up again. Interplay has posted this kind of information about NWN several times, but it doesn't change anything.

Neverwinter Nights has never had an official release date. That being said, we are still on track for releasing the game this winter.

T E R M I N A T E D

Multi-Platform: Sorry, but this one started off just fine, but has degenerated into insults. I could devote a great number of pages to this, but I will try to summarize why developing on multiple platforms was the right thing to do for us.

- Bugs were found on the other platforms that did not show up in Windows, but were there, waiting to blow up on us nonetheless. Being on multiple platforms found us more bugs and will lead to a better, more stable game for all. Other developers have discovered this, too.

- The concept of "dropping" OpenGL and "switching" to Direct3D would add somewhere from 3 to 6 months of development time. We are not going to do this. This would be a bad decision.

- Ignoring the Linux dedicated server would be a Bad Thing. Over half of the game servers for Half-Life and Quake 3 run on Linux. Providing a Linux dedicated server expands the number of game servers out there that our customers can run.

- No investment of time and energy that produces positive results is a waste of time.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, September 8, 2001 - 19:23 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: When the first Lord of the Rings movie is released, will you go see it?
(546 votes total)

Yes, definitely (508) 93%
Maybe, depends on reviews (28) 5%
No, never (10) 2%

Erm... Yes, well, it was a poll with a very predictable result. ;)
The majority of our visitors are true fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's works and seeing a movie based on his most famous book will be a must for most of them (us even).

93% of people who voted will go see the movie no matter what. Hopefully we will not be disappointed.

5% of all voters are not sure yet whether they will see it or not and will wait for reviews to point them in the right direction.

Finally, 2% of people declared that they will not go see the movie no matter what.

PoR Article at WotC
Posted Friday, September 7, 2001 - 16:51 CET by Darien

Chuck Yager, Associate Producer of PoR2: The Ruins of Myth Drannor, has written an amusing article over at WotC. He talks about some of the more interesting bugs they happened across during the creation of the game. For example:

One of the stranger bugs that arose in the early days was something we like to call the "da Vinci pose." Whenever character experienced errors executing their animation for attacks or spellcasting, they would put their arms out to the side, stretch their legs apart, and bounce across the screen. The spectacle was quite comedic to watch and reminded many testers of the famous da Vinci drawings done on the anatomy of mankind—hence, the name. Another amusing oddity dealt with some ormyrr (big sluglike creatures with four arms and a foul disposition at times) that the players could meet on the upper Halls of Light in the dwarven dungeons. At one point, instead of the ormyrr getting spawned in, other random creatures appeared instead. The booming low voices of the ormyrr, however, always remained. I can’t tell you how perplexed and amazed I was to see skeletons speaking like ormyrr, only to reload the game and then see orogs, dark nagas, and specters following suit. Needless to say, that got fixed rather quickly!

Read more.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Thursday, September 6, 2001 - 20:19 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates -> Fantasy Books

During the last two weeks I've updated all pages of the Fantasy Books section, added a couple more sample chapters and set up links to Amazon.de on all titles. Please note that all Amazon.de links are to titles in English.

Subsection Updates -> Community

A new link has been added to the Related Links subsection. Look up dudleyville.com on the Fansites list.

Last week I removed the ever-growing role-play posts from the Neverwinter Nights forum and moved them to a brand new forum called Role-play Corner. The main forum listing has been updated accordingly, as well as this forums index available on SP.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale

There was an error in the Cleric, Mage & Mage/Thief character AI scripts submitted to me a while ago. The creator of the scripts has sent me the fixed version which you can download from the Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Planescape: Torment

Thanks to Extremist, our regular contributor, we now have online a full list of mage all spells in the game, complete with information where you can either find or buy them. Browse through the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection to find it.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

In the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection you can find a link to the latest Throne of Bhaal walkthrough that has popped up on the net. In the same subsection you can check out the renewed Baldur's Gate 2 NPCs Guide. I have cut out a big chunk of irrelevant info so it's a lot easier to navigate through now.

There are two new additions in the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection. Extremist has put together a patch which makes all Totemic Druids' spirit animals' attacks magical, as we suspect they should be. You can download it at the bottom of his Totemic Druid's Spirit Animals list.
Also look for a new list of Throne of Bhaal items in the same subsection.

There is only one, but important new item in the Miscellanea subsection. Here you can now download the official international Throne of Bhaal patch. If you don't have it yet, make sure to download & install it at once as it fixes a great deal of more or less annoying bugs in the game.

On the first page of the Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection you can download a ToB character + portrait submitted by Firestorm. On the second page of the Editors, Hacks & Custom Characters subsection you will find a bunch of new Throne of Bhaal enhancements from BioWare's David Gaider. There is a new patch which makes the starting battle with Illasera much harder, one which makes Gromnir Il-Khan and his goons more powerful and another which makes the Abazigal battle MUCH more challenging and fun.
Of the existing patches the Yaga Shura and Balthazar ones were fixed/updated so make sure you download them again to get the latest version.

Another submission on the same page is the AI uScript which is a very interesting chunk of scripting indeed. It works for BG2 & ToB for any type of character and has a small sea of cool features.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Neverwinter Nights

Although a bit late (better late than never, huh?) I present you with an edited chat log of the Neverwinter Vault chat with Marc Holmes, the NWN Art Director. It's an interesting read so check it out. Thanks go to Blackthorne for logging the chat for me. Oops, almost forgot... You can find it in the Miscellanea subsection. ;)

PoR Press Release: Gold
Posted Wednesday, September 5, 2001 - 23:16 CET by Darien

PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor has finally gone gold. No really, this time it's true! Gone Gold has posted a press release from Ubi Soft Entertainment and SSI. Pre-order your copy here.

SSI's Role-playing Legend Available in Stores by October 1

San Francisco, CA - September 5, 2001 - Ubi Soft Entertainment and SSI today announced that Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor has gone into production and will begin shipping to retail on September 25, 2001. Available for the PC, this long-awaited title is priced at $49.95.

Set in the popular Forgotten Realms* world of Dungeons & Dragons*, Pool of Radiance features D&D*'s New 3rd Edition Rules, plus dazzling 3D animated characters and monsters, some taking up almost two thirds of the screen. In this epic role-playing adventure players choose from a variety of character classes to build a party of heroes and defeat the horrific evil emanating from the newly awakened Pool of Radiance. Players can also join friends online in a multi-player format that offers additional game content as well as random dungeons.

Pool of Radiance Developer Profile
Posted Wednesday, September 5, 2001 - 18:41 CET by Darien

Another Developer Profile is up at The Scrying Room, this one on Mark Buchignani, Lead Designer of Pool of Radiance.

Us: Are you satisfied with the way the game turned out? If not, what would you have liked to see done differently?

Mark Buchignani: Am I happy with PoR2? I still enjoy playing it, even after having spent all these hours parked in front of it, so I’d have to answer, “yes.” Would I do things differently if I could go back in time? Sure, who wouldn’t, on any product? The game turned out to be much bigger than we initially anticipated, so one of the things that could have been better is allowing a lot more time up front for design and planning, so we could learn a good deal more about where we were going, before we got there. And then there are a number of little things that could have been improved, if we had more time, but then we might never finish. Anyway, on the whole, PoR2 is a good game. I think people will have fun playing it.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, September 4, 2001 - 18:59 CET by Steelgem

Trent Oster, Producer:

DMs and party management: Unfortunately we have found it is not possible to have multiple cameras active at one time in the same window. So the DM client will have only the main view to interface with the party. The DM client will also have a mini map for the area he/she is in. By clicking on the minimap the DM will be able to quickly jump around the area. We also hope to offer a hotkey which you can attach to any character, simply pressing the key will bring you to that player. If there are multiple parties in multiple areas, you will have to load the area you wish to look into. We are optimizing the loading time, but it will still be noticeable.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Module Licensing: All of these topics that you are talking about will be addressed in the EULA (End User License Agreement). At this time, the EULA is still being worked on. We won't be able to give you any details on it until much closer to release.

Linux Servers: My linux server at home runs on a 1/2 meg Trident ISA card =]

You will not need any special video card to run a linux dedicated server.

Yes, you can log in from another machine with a player or DM client and access the servers.

Parsed Text & Dialog Trees:
This was Derek's response to a post by dbsousa.

Original Post:

BW has said that we may use parsed dialogue OR dialogue trees on our NPC's. Can we use both on the same PC? for instance can Jimmy the Pawn Shop Guy:

1.)Parse the word "BUY" and launch a buy dialogue.
2.)Parse the word "SELL" and launch a sell dialogue.
3.)Parse the phrase "The Crow flies at midnight" and launch a buy/sell stolen goods dialogue.

Derek's Response:

Yes, you would be able to have an NPC listen for a keyword and then start a dialogue with you.

Playing Neverwinter Solo: Absolutely possible. The Official Campaign will support 1 to many (unknown top end at this time) players. User made modules may or may not be designed this way.

Developing for Multiple Platforms: I could devote a great number of pages to this, but I will try to summarize why developing on multiple platforms was the right thing to do for us.

Pool of Radiance Update
Posted Saturday, September 1, 2001 - 20:59 CET by Darien

The Adrenaline Vault has posted a short update on the progress of Pool of Radiance. Sounds like it won't be much longer to wait!

Pool of Radiance II: The Ruins of Myth Dranor is said to be on the verge of completion and on schedule for a late September release. Two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Adrenaline Vault that the sequel to Strategic Simulations' classic AD&D role-playing game should be mastered this weekend or by Monday at the latest. This does not mean the game has gone gold or is about to go gold, as publisher Ubi Soft has not made an announcement. Representatives at developer Stormfront Studios and publisher Ubi Soft had not commented before the publication of this news brief.

Pool of Radiance Previews
Posted Saturday, September 1, 2001 - 20:56 CET by Darien

A couple of PoR2: Ruins of Myth Drannor previews have been posted, however they're both in German. ;) If you can't read those, you can make do with the translated versions.

The first preview is from GamesZone, with a translation here.

Graphically the title offers some outstanding features, which produce much atmosphere, whereby above all the charms are to be lifted out, those with beautiful colours, sharp lights and outstanding effects the display illuminate. If the first fire ball illuminated the courses Dungeon, do not want to missen you the magic assistance any longer. Rampantly growing spider web, uebersinnliche projectiles and responding welfare effects let the application of magics become the genuine Augenschmauss.

The next preview is at GamesWeb with another translation here.

After a short Intro video your troop lands then in Myth Drannor, where also equal Orks, hordes/hurdles of Untoten and a first view of environment and INTERFACE for you wait. One plays in again and again the ISO-METRIC perspective popular with games of roles. Immediately the beautifully arranged environments are noticeable, which shine with many details. Unfortunately that is not constant the case, because particularly one of the first areas, an expanded underground Dungeon works in the long run something trist and monotonously.

Black Isle Interview
Posted Saturday, September 1, 2001 - 20:32 CET by Darien

Part One of an interview with Black Isle Studios President, Feargus Urquhart has been posted at RPGVault. He talks about the the beginnings of the RPG division at Interplay and answeres questions about several of the games, including the ones below.

Jonric: When Baldur's Gate was released in late 1998, it became a breakout title for the entire genre. When did you first realize it would be a monster hit, and what would you list as the main factors that led to it becoming one?

Feargus Urquhart: Well, the day we went to duplication on CD 1 was the day of Interplay's annual Christmas party. Pretty much all Chris Parker (the producer on Baldur's Gate) and I were thinking about was getting really drunk. :) And even through the first couple weeks of January, we had no idea that it was doing so well. We knew that we had sold in around 125K units in the US - and we just hoped that we could sell through all of those. We knew the game was good, but that is never enough to make a game a hit. As it turned out, all of those units pretty much sold through in the first six weeks, and it was doing even better in Europe.

As for why it did so well - there are probably about three hundred reasons. However, the key ones were that it was the first exceptional D&D game in a long time, BioWare did an outstanding job in making the game and talking about it online, it had a multi-player component, and the player could pause and issue orders while the game was paused. In other words, BioWare and Interplay were able to excite everybody about the game because of the license, and then the game delivered on all of those promises.

Jonric: Black Isle followed up about a year later with Planescape: Torment, which won tremendous critical acclaim but sold a relatively modest number of copies. To what do you attribute this?

Feargus Urquhart: I felt that the modest sales of Torment were a reflection on the way the game was marketed, the decision to make it single-player only, and the very poor preview version that we released to the gaming press. Of those, I think that the single-player nature of the game could have been easily overcome if we could have done a better job of representing the product to the public and to the press.

A big part of that was the preview that we released. The biggest thing that the gaming press said about the final version was that they were totally surprised by the game that it had become - a GIGANTIC mistake on our part. It meant that the preview version of the game was a very different experience for them, and they were surprised by the final version. I think that while being called "This Year's Surprise Hit!" or "The Sleeper Hit of the Summer" can be turned to your favor when it is said about a movie - I think that in games something like this is a real sign that things weren't done right.

Read more.