Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Sunday, July 21, 2002 - 16:04 CET by Z-Layrex

David Gaider, Designer

x-Packs: Robes and cloaks might certainly be possible in an expansion. I would venture, however, that the amount of work required to implement horse-riding and all it entails is not something you would see short of a sequel. The amount of work vs. the return in the game just wouldn't make it worthwhile for anything less.

NWN Modules In A Sequal/X-Pack: This isn't really the kind of thing we can say for certain until we get to that bridge... it will depend largely on the specific kinds of changes that will be made in any future versions of the engine. If we implement a full z-axis in the game, for instance (skies, flying, climbing, etc.) I suspect that all tilesets would have to be changed and old tilesets would be incompatible. Just a guess on my part but not too unreasonable to assume. When it comes to other parts of the game, however, such as creature models, NWScript, dialogues... maintaining backwards compatibility might be less of a challenge. The question that also arises, however, is the ease of transferring an 'old version' module into a newer version one... especially if you have some things that are compatible and some not.

So again, basically, there's no real answer until we're aware of the specifics. We have talked about backwards compatibility, however, and it will definitely be on our minds. The less compatibility there is, the easier it is to move forward unimpeded... but I truly doubt we would ever enter a situation where all the work of individuals and the community would be disregarded as a whole come a sequel. That would be silly. To assume that everything you create will be useable forever would be equally foolish, though, don't you think?

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Heartbeats: Heartbeats are not time based. They are AI based. The more AI you have running, the longer it will take for each individual heartbeat to get called... generally it's around 6 seconds per HB, but this is the main reason that it's not a good idea to do expensive operations in the heartbeat script... you can rely on the fact that it will run again at some point... just not on the fact that it will run exactly every set time interval. I should also point out that a combat round is 6 seconds long... it has nothing at all to do with heartbeats...

More:

Quote: As long as heartbeats have nothing to do with the duration of spells and combat rounds, then this is fine. However, if a spell is listed as having a duration of 10 rounds, and it lasts for 80 seconds instead of 1 minute, that can have a huge affect on any combat that might last that long.

Nothing. 10 rounds is 60 seconds... not 10 heartbeats. The heartbeat event is related to nothing but the heartbeat event. Every event has only one hook into the game which is usually the condition which calls said event. They are not related to anything else.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Event Spawned Creatures Walking Waypoints: I think you outsmarted yourself. If you create a new encounter using a standard skeleton, and create appropriately tagged waypoints, when the skeletons spawn in, they should patrol automatically. This is because the default spawn in script should already be calling the walk waypoints function. However, since skeletons are hostile to PCs, they will stop walking waypoints and attack as soon as they perceive them. As an experiment try using a non-hostile standard creature to make sure that works. I'd also recommend that you check out the tutorial in the "For Builders" section for an example of how to set this up, but it looks like you know what to do. Still, it might help you streamline your process.