Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, March 15, 2004 - 14:01 CET by chevalier

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.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Server bots: I don't know if any exist but I definitely know that they can be created. Download BioWare's blackjack module for an example of how some of that could be handled.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

New PC project: It's far to early to discuss the next projects for many reasons. Disapointing the community is one. Apparently during the development of NWN, some features were discussed on the forums but they were axed from the final release, and we were torn apart on the boards for it. Mainly we're not going to talk about anything until we at least get a publisher, and deals are signed. Until that happens nothing is finalized about the project. We could change any part of it at any time for any reason.

Voiceover outtakes: I highly doubt we could release the Deekin outtake. It would have to be approved by Hasbro, and WoTC, and when the actor went off, he was not thinking about either of those companies. Maybe the other one's could be released though.

David Gaider, Designer

New PC project:

Quote: For a start we know the category = RPG. you could keep stringing the fans along for months on this basis, with one word descriptions, maybe 1 per month. so march you'll say 'fantasy' or 'SF' or 'horror', in april maybe say 'blasters' or 'victorian' or 'monkeys', etc, and just refuse to answer any questions, until the next month.

Hmmm. I think that would be more indicative of cat-like cruelty than saying nothing at all. And besides, it's counter-productive to release that little information. Let's say I was to supply a one-sentence blurb about the game and swear to say no more... the plain fact is that many fans would just start filling in the blanks themselves and start making all sorts of assumptions. "Oh, that sounds just like X and I hated that..." or similar. We'd like to be free to provide lots of info at once so everyone gets a clear picture of what we're working on and can be properly appreciative... when it's ready to talk about. No more cooks needed in this kitchen, thanks.

Further:

Quote: Right for who? I love statements like this. it's somehow meant to be reassuring that Bio will tell us 'when the time is right' but all that really means is that they'll tell us when they tell us and not a moment sooner. it's a statement that's both 100% accurate and completely lacking in worthwhile information. Not only do we not know what the untitled undisclosed PC project is (other than that it's an RPG using Bio's own IP), we also don't know when we will know.

Oh, come on. What exactly are we supposed to talk about? We don't discuss projects at an early stage because there's not much to talk about. Hard to keep any kind of talk going about it when 90% of our responses to curious questions would be "Ummm... we don't know about that just yet". Whenever we announce a project there's automatically a million and a half questions and we'd like to be at a point where PR can start actually putting out solid info like screenshots and design docs rather than "well, we've got this sketch of a, ummm, creature... it might be in the game, we dunno, we haven't finished that part just yet. But it looks cool, eh?" So while we appreciate the fact that just knowing we're working on something might cause fans a bit of kvetching and anxiety, but we keep our cards close to our chests to spare you some grief rather than out of some sense of cat-like sadism. Well, maybe that's a little bit of it. But not much.