Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, August 15, 2003 - 18:06 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

SoU Modules: Actually people without SoU CAN play on SoU servers as long as the module itself is not using SoU content like tileset and placeables. Adding features to tilesets and not releasing them via Live would make those tilesets "expansion only".

Subraces: Let me try to explain it, even if I know many of you will disagree. We can not implement subraces with the given manpower and schedule in a way we would feel comfortable with without taking manpower and time from other features that have been found more important, more bang-for-the-bug, etc. The importance of certain features varies greatly in the community and everyone wants his most beloved feature implemented. Subraces, while often requested, had obviously less priority than i.e. epic levels. I can not tell you the exact reasons for that decision because I don't know them, and, discussing any design decision made in a game in the community is not an option. At some point you have to trust that Bioware is doing the right thing, but keep in mind that the "right thing" is heavily dependent on your perspective"

Adding subraces at this point of the developmentcycle is just not possible anymore, that is the reason for the "aprupt" no. Also, when it is stated that a feature will not be in the game, the reason is most likely not "because it can not be done", but "because it can not be done in a fashion we feel comfortable with at the given time and with the current available manpower". If people here think a feature that previously was not feasible suddenly becomes an option because a certain new engine feature,etc, was added, things get re-evaluated. Keep in mind that the community has nearly "unlimited" time and manpower, needs not to worry about creating a extremely impressive Singleplayer campaign and does not need to do various tasks like fixing bugs, data entry and whatever. (I already started questioning my sanity after estimating how many hours, err, weeks, I spent creating scripts and modules for NWN last year, when I was still a member of the community)

They also do not have to worry about rigid limits for polygons on models as they do not need their content to run on a minimum spec machine. . People like CODI, DLA, Martin E., Lisa, John, etc... have created very cool and professional additions to NWN, and if you add up the time they spent doing this, you can see what I am trying to say: Its expensive in time and manpower. Bottomline: Given the nature of fully playable subraces however, it is pretty safe to say that there is absolutely no chance (read 99.9%) of seeing this feature in Hordes of the Underdark. I am sure we will see some pretty advanced subrace systems by the community after the release of hordes, because the scripting language is constantly evolving and things that could not be done a while ago may be possible in the future....