Icewind Dale II Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, November 19, 2002 - 2:47 CEST by Veldrin

Damien Foletto, Junior Designer

Cut Scenes Forcing Characters To Do Things: My thinking with this cut scene was to emulate your party "stumbling" in on the conflict between the cleric and the lich. Since it was important that the player pick up on the holy water/purification thing, the cut scene seemed the way to go. Scripted cut scenes are kinda tough to do in the IE engine game without leadding the player by the hand, and impossible to script having your summons go ahead of you in the force walk (no way to predict how many summons you have, etc.). I thought the scene was scripted so your party was not that close to the lich when the cut scene ended; is that not the case (I remember it was the case when I played it, I hope it did not change)?

The Sherincal and Guthma cut scene was in a small, confined place. The lich and cleric cut scene was out in the open. I admit it probably was not the best place to put a forced cut scene like that, though. It would have worked better in a small, pocket area with a narrow entrance and not reveal your presence. That way it could be more like the Sherincal and Guthma sequence. Well, live and learn. Sorry if it messed up the fun factor.

J.E Sawyer, Lead Designer

Changing Deity Domains: I don't think the domains are really defined as such; clerics of any given deity simply get two special powers and two domain spells per spell level they can cast. The spells are easy to modify; they are defined in the same list as the rest of the spells. As for the powers, I'm not sure. Perhaps Danien knows.

Editing Feats: Feats are essentially stored similarly to how proficiencies were stored in other IE games (including having multiple ranks). Adding support for new feats is more difficult.

Danien Chee, Designer

Changing Deity Domains: I don't think it can be done as some of the stuff is hard coded (for validation checks, etc). As Josh mentioned, you can switch spells or even give more spells for each domain but you can't really add another domain or change their abilities.

The same goes for paladins, monks, and specialist wizards.

Simulating A Domain Via Scripting: You could but the "effects & abilities" of the domain would only be applied when the script is running. There are certain timing issues in the IE (which make is so difficult to work with) where certain effects are wiped off the character and reapplied at different times. This could make the abilities "disappear" for small periods of time.