May 2001

Heart of Winter Review at Women Gamers
Posted Sunday, May 27, 2001 - 18:50 CET by Darien

Here's a review of Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter from Women Gamers. With a final score of 8.5, the game got higher marks than by some other reviewers. Read the final verdict:

Overall Impression:

The thing is, after having played BGII, which came out after IWD, the feeling that HoW is not worth the USD30 Interplay is asking for is somewhat magnified. Many fans will feel this way, I suspect. Does the "heart of fury" mode balance up the scales a little more? Maybe so, but only for those who want to take a break from their BGII marathon.

Still, I feel that this doesn't mean that Interplay did a haphazard job. As EPs go, HoW is one that encompasses all the right factors to make IWD a more complete game. In that aspect, I think it's worth my 30 bucks.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

Well, the antagonist and a large portion of the premise is surprisingly relevant to our gender, not to mention the fact that your chief aide in the game is also a woman. I can't say more without giving away the story. Does the fact that they just did a beautiful portrait of a female halfling count?

Neverwinter Nights: Best RPG at E3
Posted Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 21:28 CET by Darien

Quite a few reports from E3 voted Neverwinter Nights the best RPG. Be sure to follow the links to read the reviews.

Well Rounded Entertainment: With a simple editor where your most bizarre or nightmarish dungeons can come to life, and a beautiful engine to realize those visions, Neverwinter Nights looks set to take the rich and wholesome elements of an RPG to the online realm in classic fashion. Meanwhile, new spells, monsters and a strong story develop the offline element just as strongly. Neverwinter Nights may just be poised to take the role-playing world to new heights.

Stratosgroup: Rather than pumping up what the game will include, they showed us what the game already includes; in about 5 minutes, they made a dungeon from scratch, complete with enemies, NPCs, and a magical sword to come upon. They then linked the dungeon to another area that they had already created. We were walked around said areas, and shown the game's impressive 3D engine. I'll save the details for our preview of the game, but let's just say all of us left the room with our jaws hanging precariously close to the crowded floor.

Voodoo Extreme: Neverwinter Nights is shaping up to be one of the finest role playing games of the year, boasting a powerful 3D game engine as well as a rich game world set in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons universe. As with most of BioWare’s games, Neverwinter Nights is rich with content, and should really shape up to be one of the coolest Dungeons and Dragons licensed RPG’s to date.

Pool of Radiance Board Update
Posted Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 21:06 CET by Darien

Here's a rare update from the official Pool of Radiance message boards, with comments by Associate Producer Chuck Yager.

The release date: It takes about 3-4 weeks to manufacture and we are still in the closing stage of getting the last bugs out for the areas I mentioned (read about 4 weeks more), not to mention add in marketing and localization and you have about mid to late August as a result. That's the quickest miracle I can work...no BS.

Comparison to Neverwinter Nights: Let's also not forget that we are talking about two very different games here. NWN is a module based game that is mostly about you creating your own adventures for people to enjoy (an awesome concept I might add and one I am eagerly awaiting). However, it is not a traditional party based RPG like POR and it does not revolve around the same story, setting, or even gaming concepts, except that both are RPGs using the 3E rules. I for one would buy both and am not too worried about being overshadowed in the marketplace.

On save slots and dropping party members: There are many save slots. I've hit 52 and still climbing! As for your party's dead, they are assummed to be carried buy the living unless you remove them from the party, but they do not count against the encumbrance limit of any individual in the group.

You can drop anyone from the group (NPC or created PC) at any time. Although if you drop a created PC from the party, they get reaped after you travel a certain distance away whereas NPCs, since they are hard coded into the game and we have advancement schemes set up for them, will return to a stated location and await you there. Make your decisions on who to keep and who to let go with caution then.

The combat system: You can definitely scale the game to be either strict turn based or else have a timer added to each characters round that can scale to anywhere from 45 seconds a round to 6 seconds (exactly as described in 3E rule books)! 6 seconds is a pretty short amount of time too, so you do get a very real time feel from that if that is what you are looking for.

As for me, I'll stick to turn based combat since I'm an old timer and can't learn new tricks!

Various comments: [best party] I've used a bunch of different parties but I keep coming back to a Half-orc Barbarian/Cleric, Dwarven Cleric/Fighter, Elven Ranger/Sorcerer, and either a Human Fighter/Rogue or a Halfling Barbarian/Rogue. As far as fine tuning goes, that's my job, but I'm very happy with how everything has turned out.

[spending ability points] On my sorcerer or ranger, I almost always get the 18 in Dexterity because it helps out a lot. Often, my scores are 12-14 in most abilities with maybe a 16 or 18 here and there and sometimes an 8.

[preferred combat style] Turn based all the way.

[in game help] No in game help per se, but the right click interface of explaning all the feats, skills, spells, and special abilties never left me wondering how things worked.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 20:52 CET by Darien

It's been a while since my last update, so there's a lot to read today. Here's the latest batch of comments from the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Interplay's Demo Video: Just so you know, this was the footage that was playing on the big screen in the South Lobby of the Convention Center at E3. There was other footage playing at the BioWare booth and then there's the half-hour demo itself that the Nexus guys had a capture of (We had someone from ALFA in filming as well - I don't know if that's the same stuff or something separate). Also, Aqua came in and interviewed me in the Interplay booth so that's probably what she'll be releasing at Interplay.com over the next little while. In short, there's plenty of footage out there and, little by little, it should start filtering out to everyone soon.

A Baldur's Gate Toolset: Unfortunately, the BG Tools were never intended for public release. They're needlessly complex, inadequately documented, broken into a thousand little individual *.exe's, and full of nasty bugs that need to be understood and worked around. There may come a time when they get released to the public, "as is," but don't hold your breath.

That said, we've got some amazingly talented hackers in the BG community and a wide variety of user-created viewers, tools, and editors available from TeamBG and other fansites (even an unofficial expansion or two). If you're interested in editing the Infinity Engine games, your best bet would be to hook up with them.

Depth of Global Settings: Hard to tell at this point. That's the stuff we'll be cramming more and more of into the tools towards the end of the cycle. That said, some of those things (such as text bubbles vs. chat windows) make more sense as client-side settings than server settings, if that's any help.

Building interiors in one area: Yes, placing the different floors of an inn within a single area is more than possible. In fact, it's a good way to reduce the number of load screens experienced by your players.

Trent's comments on Pick Pocketing: Trent: There is an animation of Pick Pocketing currently. It will be a small motion of the player bending down and stealing. If you are stealing from another player character and you fail the dice roll, the player will get a message letting them know. If the player notices the animation, they can also catch the thief.

Bob: Don't worry, we don't have our hearts set on this feature yet. Once it's in the game, we'll have a closer look at it. If it sucks, we have no qualms about getting rid of it at that point. That goes for plenty of other things as well.

Guessing Monsters: Just to verify the guesswork, those two monsters are the flesh golem and the red slaad. That said, if they look like Banedead and Gray Renders to you, by all means use them as such (and feel free to change their stats, abilities, and scripts accordingly).

Inventory, Cost, Weight, and Stacking Adjustments: We don't have cost, weight, and stacking adjustment in the toolset interface yet so I can't make hard promises. That said, in Baldur's Gate, a stack of 20 arrows usually cost 1 gp. In other words, while the currency itself didn't go into decimals, the value of an individual item could be thought of as fractional - 1/20th of a gp. Presumably a similar system will emerge for NWN. If it costs 1 gp to buy a stack of 100 runestones, then each runestone is worth 1/100th of a gp and a merchant would presumably consider 1 arrow to be a fair trade for 5 runestones.

Clarification on Inventory: Just to clarify, in the example I gave, you're not creating a single item and naming it "100 copper pieces." You're actually creating a single item that, when you have 100 of them stacked together, is worth a gold piece. Therefore, where a kobold in BG might drop 3 arrows instead of 20, a goblin in NWN might drop 27 of these stacking items, rather than a full 100.

As I said, the interface hasn't been fully defined yet but that was how things worked in BG at any rate.

Coinage: Sorry, folks, I'm still a little bit confused about the issue here, so I'll ask you to bear with me. Questions of coinage weight aside, why are people wanting pennies and dimes implemented?

What would make a lot more sense to me would be units of currency representing $1, $100, and $10,000. That way, when you got a $10,000 coin, you'd be amazed at how cool and rare it is and how you're a 10th level adventurer and this is the first one that you or any of your friends have ever seen.

With gold pieces being so common in the D&D universe, even at low levels, pennies and dimes ultimately strike me as being boring and mundane.

More on Coinage: Okay, so if gems can act as upper-value coinage, why can't other non-coin items act as lower-value coinage? Ultimately, currency is an abstract concept and any item will do (as illustrated by the humorous chicken example already given or by various anthropological examples of currencies based on seashells, carved bones, or -strangest of all- fragile scraps of multicolored paper).

In short, our choices for the official campaign don't limit you. If you want to create a currency system of trade notes or gems or runestones or chickens or huckleberry twigs or little generic bags of whatever you want, by all means do so. You have the power to define their store price, their weight, how many of them can stack together, and so forth.

Now, as for the example given of a torch-based 'qet-rich-quick' scheme, it probably won't be a problem. A wise merchant is as unlikely to buy back such a valueless item as they are to buy back a single arrow when they sold you the quiver full for a gold piece.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Dropped Torches: Dropped torches currently remain lit while on the ground... makes for cool shadows and dramatic battles. :)

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, May 26, 2001 - 20:00 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: If you could have a romance with any of the NPCs that can join you in Baldur's Gate 2, which one would you pick?
(827 votes total)

Viconia (205) 25%
Imoen (202) 24%
Aerie (130) 16%
Jaheira (85) 10%
Nalia (81) 10%
Mazzy (35) 4%

Haer'Dalis (21) 3%
Valygar (14) 2%
Minsc (11) 1%
Yoshimo (9) 1%
Edwin (8) 1%
Jan (7) 1%
Keldorn (6) 1%
Cernd (6) 1%
Anomen (4) 0%
Korgan (3) 0%

I had this feeling that some people would start an uproar over this poll, but I never imagined it would last for so long...
The problem is, some people who voted don't really know enough about the game so as soon as they saw Imoen on the list they started calling everyone who voted for her sick and so on. Well, they show their ignorance as soon as they call Imoen sister, when she is in fact only your half-sister.
Anyway, a couple of days after this poll was set up, a topic about it was opened on our message boards, so go check that out if you want to hear all the pros and cons regarding it.

The fact remains that most people would love to be able to have a romance with Imoen, which is perfectly understandable, what with all you've been through together. Remember, we don't actually learn about Imoen's heritage till Spellhold...

While Viconia is the winner of the poll, only a few minutes before I changed polls, Imoen was still in the lead, so I'll call it a tie.

The third most popular female was Aerie, with a little over 15% of people voting for her. Jaheira fares only marginally better than Nalia (both gained 10% of votes), which is quite surprising. It looks like in the end, Jaheira doesn't come out any better than she did in the original Baldur's Gate.

As I suspected, the halfling paladin-wannabe Mazzy got the least votes, only 4%.

As far as men are concerned, it is quite obvious that a overwhelming majority of women absolutely hated Anomen, who is the only romance option for women in the game. Only Korgan fared worse, and only by one vote. Obviously Bioware should have hired a woman to pick a more suitable romance partner.

The absolute winner among men is Haer'Dalis, as I suspected. Follower-ups are Valygar, Minsc, Yoshimo, Edwin, Jan, Keldorn and Cernd.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 22:23 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates - Guestbook -> Guestbook Archives

I have replaced the older guestbook records with the ones posted more recently. You can find these newer entries in the same place as before (Guestbook Archives), while the page that previously displayed there can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom of Guestbook Archives.

Subsection Updates -> Screenshot Taking Guide

The (probably) final version of Slappy's screenshot taking guide has been posted in the regular spot below the Screenshot of the Week. Quite a number of things have been changed and simplified, so if you read a previous version of it, please re-read it now. And send me some screenshots! (Currently IWD/HoW ones are in demand.)

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale

The information released by Black Isle Studios regarding the free downloadable Heart of Winter expansion (due soon) has been compiled and is accessible from the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection.

A few days ago a bunch of official HoW patches for languages other than English have been released, so I have added them all to the Miscellanea subsection. Some of the previously posted patch links have been changed as well.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

Let us start at the beginning, shall we?
My Throne of Bhaal Features List, probably the biggest and most detailed listing of all Throne of Bhaal will have to offer, has been updated extensively. Too much new info has been added to explain it all here, just surf along to the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection where it can be found.
The Baldur's Gate II Class FAQ which can be found in the same subsection has also been updated with a new version.

There are 3 new additions in the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection. The first is the Spells FAQ/Listing, the second a guide to sorcerers and the third a list of creature codes. All three are downloadable.

In the Miscellanea subsection, a very cool trailer showing off Throne of Bhaal has been added. It comes in two sizes, but don't feel bad if you download the smaller one. The big one's content is identical, only the picture is a bit bigger.

As I've suspected for some time, the Editors, Hacks & Cap Removers subsection needed to be split in two parts due to huge amount of content. On the first page you can now find Custom Characters, Portraits, Voice packs and similar, while the second page is dedicated to Editors, Hacks, XP Cap Removers and similar tools.
Links from the first page to the second (and vice versa) have been placed at the bottom of both pages.

But wait, there's more! (No Ginsu knives though, sorry.)

Tyresian sent me a bunch of BG2 voice packs made from StarCraft character voices. They are of excellent quality and definitely worth the download. Currently Templar, Tassadar and Zeratul packs can be downloaded.
If you paid attention to the text above, you would know that you can find them on page 1 of Editors, Hacks & Cap Removers subsection.

Throne of Bhaal Developer Profile
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 20:37 CET by Darien

Another developer profile is up at RPGVault, this time an interview with Scott Langevin, Lead QA.

Jonric: Do you have an interesting story, something funny or maybe even a little secret about yourself that you're willing to share?

Scott Langevin: Yeah, I do actually. You know that dream that everyone gets every now and again about going into work with out pants on? We'll one day last year, just before the release of Baldur's Gate II, I actually started walking out of my house in my boxers. I managed to catch myself before I hit the street, but that's gotta be worth a laugh. (Gimme a break, I had slept for maybe 24 hours total for the entire week previous) Don't tell anyone, kay?

Throne of Bhaal Preview at GamesFirst
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 20:31 CET by Darien

Another short Throne of Bhaal preview is up, this time at Games First.

Just what every D&D junkie needs—yet another 50,000 or so hours playing through the Forgotten Realms. If the Baldur's Gate games weren’t so good, I’d say something bad about Interplay riding this horse until it drops. Throne of Bhaal is an add-on to the huge and hugely successful BGII: Shadows of Amn, and while it doesn’t promise any revolutionary changes in gameplay (which is probably a good thing) it does offer several new locations, like The Dungeon of Watcher’s Keep, the City of Saradush, and the Monastery of Amkethran.

Infinity Scripters Moved
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 20:23 CET by Darien

The scripting site, Bgscripts, will be closing soon and they have formed a new scripting site. If you're interested, check it out here.

The purpose of this group is to make, use, improve and test AI Scripts for the games Baldur's Gate, Tales of the Sword Coast, IceWind Dale, Heart of Winter, Baldur's Gate II, Throne of Baal, NeverWinter Nights, DarkSide of the Sword Coast and Planscape Torment.

Neverwinter Nights Preview
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 16:32 CET by Darien

Game Revolution has posted a preview of Neverwinter Nights, which of course includes the obligatory screenshots.

Want to build a kick-ass dungeon romp? Then just drag and drop different sized rooms into the handy little window. Want to populate it with monsters? Click away. Even want to drop some treasure in certain spots to reward your buddies for beating a particularly ornery Troglodyte? Go nuts.

Actually, you really can go nuts when you consider the depth. You can actually build magical weapons and armor using a huge variety of skins. You can design a magical bastard sword (+3 vs. zombies), give it a name (Braineater), choose a blade and hilt (including graphical spell effects like frost or flame), then drop it in your map where it can be discovered by the player characters. Just make sure you throw in some zombies so they will actually use the damn thing.

About the Pool of Radiance Release
Posted Friday, May 25, 2001 - 11:46 CET by Nazgul

Chuck Yager, Associate Producer, Ubi Soft / SSI

After getting back from E3, I was sure this issue would arise. Unfortunately, this is the first chance I've had to check the boards since Monday! At any rate, we are tracking to a late August (perhaps 1st week of September) release date at this point. The game is done, with all levels in, balanced, and all assets finalized. What we are doing now is simply optimizing the game's running performance a bit and fixing the occasional pathing bug. In fact, if you were sitting where I am right now you could play from beginning to end of the single player game without hindrance, as well as dive in a fully functional multiplayer.

Just five to six weeks more and we should be good enough to code (perhaps sooner, but let's keep the above dates as benchmarks for a realistic view).

I can assure you (although you may choose not to believe me) that we will deinfitely be out long before Christmas. However, given the delays we have experienced in the past, I can understand and even empathize with the cynicism this might be met with. I can only hope to pleasantly suprise you in this regard.

Neverwinter Nights Interview
Posted Thursday, May 24, 2001 - 5:17 CET by Darien

An interview with Trent Oster, Producer of Neverwinter Nights, has been posted at E3Realm. It covers topics from the toolset to portraits to servers, and has a good selection of screenshots.

You are working with gamespy to do your net matching service, how will that work?

TO: We are hoping to allow people to see the servers listed by type, i.e.: Action or Role-play or PvP. We really want people who want to play in a certain style to be able to do it in an environment with other people of the same mindset.

How much time will people get out of the first story?

TO: 60 - 100 hours. There are 4 chapters to it so people can move around in it a bit. Each part of the story is module based, which means that you can play the different modules multiplayer or single. So the single player game can be a shared experience if you choose.

Site News - New Additions & Changes
Posted Wednesday, May 23, 2001 - 21:42 CET by Sorcerer

I have to apologize for the lack of (visible and documented) news content coming from me lately, but these last three weeks have been really demanding on me so I haven't had the time yet to put together a list of all updates I have had sitting here on my hard drive for some time. And as I started to look at the amount of new content that piled up, I've decided that there is way too much there to post in one update, so I'll split it in parts and post updates here more often for a while.

Sorcerer's Place Forums - Boards O' Magick Rule Changes

As most of our regular members have noticed, there have been quite a number of changes to our message board rules. Newly registered members have been warned of these in the updated registration page, and there have also been numerous posts about it appearing all over the boards.
But in case you still managed to miss it somehow, you can read all about it by clicking on the "faq" link which appears on top of most forum pages. As has been discussed in the related topic in the Whatnots forum, these changes are nothing really new, the sort of behaviour they forbid has always been frowned upon. The only difference is that now it is all sorted, documented and displayed. Which means, as you might have guessed, that excuses such as "I didn't know that I can't do that or that" or "I'm new here, give me a break" will not be tolerated any more.

We take great pride in our forums and strict moderation that keeps them clean, enjoyable and most importantly, informative. With the amount of new members who aren't used to participating in forums in an orderly way (or come from messed up forums where everything was allowed and moderation an unknown word), making this list of rules has unfortunately become necessary. Still, I feel our community will only benefit from this. Actually, it wouldn't hurt any of our members to read it in detail. ;)

Subsection Updates - Community -> Chatrooms

I have added a few more words to the short guide on how to join us in chat, and changed some of the wording so that the whole page is more coherent now. Not to mention bloody obvious enough even for an ettin to understand. :p

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

Our Baldur's Gate 2 Online Solution has been updated yet again. In this addition, the walkthrough for Sahuagin City has been added. I have also updated the Foul Beasts part of the solution with a few more tips for easier disposal of tougher monsters.

Well, this is it for today. More coming up soon.

Neverwinter Nights Preview at Gamers Pulse
Posted Wednesday, May 23, 2001 - 15:40 CET by Darien

Gamers Pulse has posted a preview of Neverwinter Nights based on one reviewer's impressions of the game at E3. There are also some more screenshots worth checking out. Here's a bit on the ease of creating a new dungeon.

First of all, I got to watch as a dungeon was created using the tools that will be released with the game (coincidentally the same tools that are being used to create the campaign that will ship with the title). A decent, compact dungeon was created nearly effortlessly. Dungeon corridors were simply dragged out, decorated automatically (though these aesthetics were customizable).

E3 Pictures from Gamespy
Posted Tuesday, May 22, 2001 - 21:21 CET by Darien

Couldn't get to E3 this year? Well Gamespy has posted a bunch of pictures from the show, including some of the Bioware booth.

Gamespy Previews Throne of Bhaal
Posted Tuesday, May 22, 2001 - 21:08 CET by Darien

A short preview over at Gamespy looks has a couple of screenshots from ToB, as well as some news about the release date.

Fans of the popular Baldur's Gate series of games can start their rejoicing now. BioWare is set to release Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal as gold next week while Interplay is aiming to have in stores around June 25th.

Throne of Bhaal - Preview at Gamesmania
Posted Tuesday, May 22, 2001 - 21:01 CET by Darien

Gamesmania has posted a preview of Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal based on impressions from the display at E3.

The two quests conclude with two wicked boss fights. I am not allowed to give away what you'll be fighting, but if you're a long-time D&D gamer, you will be fighting two things you'll recognize, and you'll probably have to wash out your mouth with soap when you see them. You probably sat and read the handbooks describing these things and thought "I hope I never meet that" or "I'm going to drop that into my next campaign and watch my players wet themselves."

Throne of Bhaal's Demogorgon
Posted Monday, May 21, 2001 - 22:57 CET by Darien

In a Throne of Bhaal preview by Firing Squad I posted earlier this week, there was mention of a new monster for the Baldur's Gate II expansion: Demogorgon. Well, if that wasn't enough of a tease, Interplay has posted a great pic of the new beastie, with a wallpaper and a couple of concept shots. Check it out!

Demogorgon is another of the tanar'ri lords who, like Juiblex and Yeenoghu and others, has managed to extend his influence beyond the Abyss. Awesome in his power, this gigantic tanar'ri is 18 feet tall and reptilian. Demogorgon has two heads which bear the visages of twisted and evil baboons. His skin is plated with snake-like scales. His body and legs are those of a giant lizard. Rather than arms, Demogorgon has massive tentacles. This Prince of Demons is the essence of malevolent power and all that he beholds is destroyed.

Baldur's Gate 3-D?
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 19:14 CET by Darien

Well, this is an interesting piece of gossip from Well Rounded concerning Interplay's plans for the series.

Interplay was keeping eyes trained on the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate II at this year's E3, but preliminary plans are already underway for Baldur's Gate III. An Interplay rep mentioned to us that Throne of Bhaal will be the last of the games to use the current engine. The next installment in the series, he said, would be in 3-D.

Gamespot Previews Throne of Bhaal
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 19:06 CET by Darien

Here's a preview from Gamespot of Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Check out these new skills available to Edwin and Sarevok:

Once your characters attain these extremely high experience levels, they'll have access to all-new innate skills known as "high-level abilities." For instance, the evil conjurer Edwin will eventually attain an ability called dragon's breath, which rains down a scorching gout of flame on an area and deals up to 200 points of damage to any enemies unfortunate enough to be within range. The mighty Sarevok can complement his already exceptional physical strength with a high-level ability called smite, which briefly causes all his attacks to count as damaging critical hits and also lets him hurl his enemies backward with the force of each blow.

Throne of Bhaal Preview at Firing Squad
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:59 CET by Darien

Firing Squad has also posted a short preview of Throne of Bhaal, with a look at the experience cap and a new powerful enemy.

Major spoiler!:Among the many new enemies you will face is Demogorgon - Prince of Demons. He's a perennial favorite supervillain since 1st Edition and is the most powerful of the demon princes. To give everyone an idea how powerful he is, BioWare threw up an encounter between him and a 30th level party. It lasted one, maybe two rounds. The party wasn't completely prepared for combat, but they were extensively equipped and would be hardly pressed to take on regular demons, even Balors.

Throne of Bhaal Screenshots
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:52 CET by Darien

Voodoo Extreme has posted their latest batch of nine Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal screenshots from E3.

Pool of Radiance Preview and Screenshots
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:46 CET by Darien

Two more Pool of Radiance pieces have been posted at IGN and EuroGamer.

IGN has posted a preview of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor which includes a few screenshots. And guess what! It's almost FINISHED!

And the best part about Pool of Radiance is that its essentially finished! Hardcore fans who have been drooling over this gem for quite some time now will be able to get their hands on it just in time to spend the last days of summer locked in the computer dungeon (August 2001 of those of you unable to put two and two together).

More screenshots have been posted at EuroGamer from publisher UbiSoft's E3 press disc. Enjoy!

Neverwinter Nights Screenshots
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:33 CET by Darien

Haven't had enough screenshots yet? Voodoo Extreme has posted nine new shots from Neverwinter Nights for your enjoyment.

NWN Preview at Firing Squad
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:30 CET by Darien

This short preview at Firing squad looks at some of the games features and offers a handful of new screenshots as well.

NeverWinter will of course be 3rd Edition D&D and have 7 standard races with 11 classes. Character creation is quite simple and looks a lot easier than it is in the pen and paper game. As in 3rd Ed., characters do not roll for stats but instead start with basic stats, and then use points to buy attributes. After that, you select a 'package' of skills and feats to customize your character's abilities. It is possible to make a battle mage who can wear plate armor, or a warrior with excellent stealth with such packages, making character creation much more interesting than it has been in the past.

Neverwinter Nights Update at IGN
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2001 - 18:21 CET by Darien

IGN has posted an update of Neverwinter Nights straight from the show floor at E3, along with most of the screenshots that were posted earlier at Gamespot.

First off, the graphics are sharp and it's going to be hard to go back to flat sprites after seeing this. You can play from a pulled back perspective like that of Baldur's Gate with most of your party in view, or you can get in real close to your character with the more traditional, over-the-shoulder third person point of view. The only you can't do is control your character in the first person point of view, the reason being -- I was told -- that they wanted players to be more aware of their party around them. Otherwise all the little graphic flourishes are there -- flame effects on demon wings, translucent spell energy, rippling water, the works. It's been in development for a while and the graphics aren't the best of show by any means, but they'll more than do.

Read the rest here.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, May 19, 2001 - 10:13 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: How do you feel about Sarevok being the new NPC in Throne of Bhaal?
(704 votes total)

He might prove to be an interesting addition (269) 38%
He should've stayed dead (240) 34%
I can't wait to see him again (114) 16%
I've no room for a new party member (81) 12%

Thanks to whoever inspired me to ask this poll question in our Friendly Arm Inn. As I suspected, it was received quite well.

The majority of people who voted (almost 40%) agree with the statement that Sarevok, your rather unfriendly half-brother whom you killed once before in the Undercity of Baldur's Gate, and yet again in Hell, (though some debate arose on our message boards whether the Sarevok there was the real McCoy or just a figment or your imagination) might prove to be an interesting addition to Throne of Bhaal, the official Baldur's Gate 2 expansion.

But on the contrary... almost 35% of people who voted thoroughly disagree with the posed question and think he should stay dead already. How many times do we have to kill that bastard anyway? Call me unforgiving, but I sincerely doubt that Bioware can come up with a good enough reason I would want to have him in my party. If nothing else, the trek down to Undercity below Baldur's Gate was a serious pain in the ass and he deserves infernal torment for making me go through that damn maze twice! (Strictly speaking, this is Bioware's fault, but I'll just blame it on the bad guy.)

A rather small percentage of people (16%) can't wait to see him again. Whether they can't wait to rush at him and stick him on their weapon of choice or can't wait to add him to their party is open for debate. Sorry, it wasn't meant to be a trick question, I just made it look that way. ;)

12%, the smallest group of voters, doesn't care much about Sarevok or any new party member for that matter, and simply state the cold fact that they do not have any room for a new party member. I suspect this would be the case with a much higher percentage of people, but these 12% simply won't budge to give their poor half-brother a chance at proving himself worthy of their presence.

Baldur's Gate 2 Online Solution Update
Posted Saturday, May 19, 2001 - 0:13 CET by Sorcerer

After a REALLY long break between updates to our Baldur's Gate 2 Online solution, Sylvus has surprised me by informing me that he will continue to work on the solution until it is completed.
To prove that he sticks to his word, he sent me the whole Spellhold Area Walkthrough to proof-read. Well, I got down to it at once and an hour and a half later, the corrected version of it is already available online by following the link above.
Good job Syl, and I hope we will see the other areas shortly as well!

Neverwinter Nights Screenshots
Posted Friday, May 18, 2001 - 23:15 CET by Darien

GameSpot has posted a whopping NINE pages of Neverwinter Nights screenshots and art. Need a fix? This should do you for a while...

Pool of Radiance II: All About Maps
Posted Friday, May 18, 2001 - 23:06 CET by Darien

A new feature interview at WotC looks at the maps in Pool of Radiance II: Ruins of Myth Drannor, and includes a few screenshots as well. Here's an excerpt.

The game features a three-quarters isometric view of the Forgotten Realms city of Myth Drannor. Quests take players to diverse environments, from the overgrown gardens in the northern portion of the city, to the swamp-infested eastern reaches, to the crumbling steps near the Hall of Wizards. Players soon realize the importance of the in-game map, which allows them to see where they have already traveled and where they still need to go. Each level of the game has its own map, which includes interiors (like the Hall of Wizards and the dwarven stronghold known as the House of Gems), underground complexes (such as the elven catacombs, lizardfolk tunnels, and subterranean reaches under Castle Cormanthor), and, of course, the aboveground map of Myth Drannor. Players can freely change between the overland map and specific maps for areas they are presently in.

Here's the rest.

Throne of Bhaal Progress Report
Posted Friday, May 18, 2001 - 16:36 CET by Darien

The Adrenaline Vault has posted an update they recieved on the progress of Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. Here's an excerpt:

We have just finished putting in all of our final audio. Audio was the last thing we were waiting for so now we are content complete and can hammer away at the bug list. Since we have all of the new content in the game we are just about finished. We also have most of the European text back from the translators so our foreign versions are coming along great as well. At E3 we will be showing some of the new areas--which will include a tour of Watchers Keep. We will also be showing off some of our new spell effects and high level abilities. The continuation of the story will be our primary focal point. We will not give away the ending but will be showing off the city of Saradush. The Pocket Plane--a sanctuary for the player that is located in the Abyss--will also be on display.

Read the rest here.

Throne of Bhaal Developer Profile
Posted Friday, May 18, 2001 - 16:30 CET by Darien

This time, the developer profile at RPG Vault focuses on Tony de Waal, the Lead Animator.

Jonric: What would you rate as the best and worst parts of your job? And what are the biggest challenges?

Tony de Waal: The best parts of my job are being able to have the freedom to give characters their own personality. When we are assigned a character to animate we are given basic ideas to what our designers want to see, like a character description or an example from a movie. From there we are allowed to add our own style to the character.

I guess the worst part of the job is just trying to do the best job you can in as little time as possible. With three games in production; Throne of Bhaal, Neverwinter, and Star Wars, our animation department team of eight animators and one technical animator has the task of doing all character animation and cut scenes, which is a rather large amount of work.

More Throne of Bhaal Screenshots
Posted Friday, May 18, 2001 - 16:22 CET by Darien

Game Banshee has posted two pages of screenshots from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. GameSpot has also put up 11 pieces of concept art that you can check out on two more pages.

Pool of Radiance II: Tales from the Mythal
Posted Thursday, May 17, 2001 - 14:18 CET by Darien

A new feature at The Scrying Room called Tales from the Mythal will be exloring the game from monsters to magic and some of the area in between. The first installment takes a look at the Hall of Wizards/Speculum, and includes concept art and images from the game.

The Hall of Wizards, also known as the Speculum during the height of Myth Drannor's power, was a place where wizards demonstrated new spells, took on apprentices, came seeking apprenticeship, and purchased exotic spell components. At the height of its power, many of the city’s magics (such as its system of magic gates) were generated and controlled from here.

Throne of Bhaal Screenshots at RPG Vault
Posted Thursday, May 17, 2001 - 13:39 CET by Darien

RPG Vault has posted a number of screenshots from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. The 16 shots show some action from early in the expansion, and include a description of the wild mage class from the character generation screen.

Heart of Winter Review
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001 - 23:47 CET by Darien

Here's another review of Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, this time from Gamer's Pulse. This time the expansion averages a 90 out of 100, with the highest score for sound (100) and the lowest score for gameplay (72).

Icewind Dale is a hack and slash linear dungeon crawl. The expansion is no different and gives you more of the same, which is a good thing. However, it also fixes a few problems in the original, adds a higher experience cap, and a higher difficulty setting. All these things change the original game enough to make a fan want to experience the whole thing again and I think this alone is exceptional. The idea that the expansion area is available to anyone with characters over a certain level and the expansion-ready characters come with the game gives many choices to the player. It should also be noted that pure RPG expansion sets are relatively infrequent and are quite different in focus from other genre expansions.

ToB Screenie Party
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001 - 14:37 CET by Mollusken

The german site 4Players has posted nothing less than 40 new screenies from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. By clicking here you will be brought to them.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001 - 14:10 CET by Darien

Here are a few words from the game developers on the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer

Between servers: Faction standings won't carry over between servers - as one person already commented, just because the Villager faction on server one thinks you're a hero doesn't mean that the Villager faction on server two thinks the same (especially if one's a village of halflings and the second is a village of duergar).

What does carry over, however, is the character's alignment. Unlike in Baldur's Gate, your character's alignment is dynamic and will change according to the choices you make in the official campaign (and presumably in user-created modules as well).

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

Helping out: To be honest, the best way that you can contribute to Neverwinter's successes is by posting on these message boards (well, that, and buying the game, and telling all your friends about it ;). The discussions that y'all go through here help us to make our decisions, because it helps us to understand what is really wanted. So, dive on in, and welcome to Neverwinter! :)

Don Moar, Lead Programmer

Secret doors: Of course, NWN will include secret doors. As everyone has already mentioned, what kind of dungeon, castle or cave doesn't have hidden areas for the occupants to hide in or use as escape routes?

Screenshots from Heart of Winter Expansion
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001 - 13:50 CET by Darien

Four new screenshots from the HoW free downloadable expansion have been posted at RPG Vault. Check them out below.

Several weeks ago, it was made known that several members of the Icewind Dale development team at Black Isle Studios are working on a free downloadable dungeon pack that will plug into the Heart of Winter expansion pack released earlier this year. It will involve a mysterious halfling who introduces himself in the Whistling Gallows Inn in Lonelywood, seeking a party of heroes for a quest to a place with unimaginable treasures. When the party accepts, it will be transported to a new game location far from the frozen Dalelands, and within the walls of a ruined castle in an unfamiliar land, a new adventure will begin. We thought you might like to take a look at some of what lies ahead for the party, and Black Isle was kind enough to oblige with these cool new screenshots:

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4

Behind the Closed Doors at Bioware
Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - 5:05 CET by Darien

A huge interview with Bioware has been posted at Gamespot. Listen to Trent Oster, check out the editor and some game footage, both old and new. There are several options available for download, so be sure to check them out!

Black Isle Studios Board Update
Posted Sunday, May 13, 2001 - 4:28 CET by Darien

Here's another batch of comments from the Black Isle Studios message boards.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Charles Deenen, Director of Audio:

Audio update for Throne of Bhaal: Good news! All audio got completed early this week for this title, including all of it's movies. I hope you'll have fun playing it once it hits the stores ! Please shoot me an email if you feel we could have done something better (or worse), and if you like what we did.

Thank you for all your interest in this exciting title!

Kevin Martens, Lead Designer:

Wizard slayers: We've made 2 minor tweaks to Wizard Slayers that make a huge game play difference.

1) Magic resistance is significantly increased. At 40th level, a Wizard Slayer will had 84% MR. Yikes!
2) They can now use healing potions. Simple change, major difference.

Nope, Monks are capped lower to avoid ludicrous power levels. 120% MR? That's just too much. Wizard slayers have the best MR in the game.

Starting a new character: You can start a brand new character in TOB and gain access to all of the SOA characters almost immediately. All of the characters have new interactions.

If you want to try some different party setups without playing all the way through SOA again, I would suggest starting a new TOB game. Perhaps, after you've finished the game with your SOA party, try a completely different party makeup at the beginning of TOB.

Magical hammer: We have a very cool new, artifact level hammer. It starts off strong and can be upgraded with a missing piece to make it even stronger. Nuff said.

All in good time. I'll let a few teasers now and then. The hammer is called Runehammer. Let's cover all of the bases in one post. All weapon types have something new.

The Dradeel story: The whole sordid Dradeel story:

Relevant Parties:
1) Dradeel - Elven Mage, first met on the Werewolf Isle in TOSC
2) Golodon the Unmanned - mortal enemy of Dradeel and a former employer of Jan Jansen's
3) The Gibbering Twelve - mysterious brotherhood of mages, not affiliated with the Purple Brotherhood (Socerous Amin and Sorcerous Amon - they're brothers)
4) Buffy - Golodon's pet mastiff
5) Golodon's Wife - never named, excellent resistance to mandrake poison.

The tale - Dradeel and Golodon, as young mages, made a raid on the HQ of the Gibbering Twelve. They stole numerous powerful and valuable magic items. They got away with it but were hunted for years by the Gibbering Twelve and their agents. Eventually, Golodon betrayed Dradeel, black-jacked him, took the stuff, and left him in the then town of Baldur's Gate to get picked up by the agents of the Gibbering Twelve.

Dradeel, on the run, managed to convince the great hero, Balduran, to allow him on his ship which was about to set sale on a grand adventure in the western seas.

The ship never returned. When you reach the Werewolf Isle, you find Dradeel, the only crew member of Balduran's ill-fated ship to not get infected with Lycanthropy. He's gone mad out of paranoia over teh werewolves, wolfweres and the Gibbering Twelve. You help him escape, after hundreds of years of being trapped on the isle.

In the meantime, Golodon used the artifacts and became a very powerful mage. He got married and eventually had a falling out with his wife, a powerful mage in her own right.

A few centuries later, a young Jan Jansen was hired as a house gnome for Golodon. It was his job to clean up after Buffy and to take care of the daily attempts at poisoning Golodon's ex-wife. The wife also had Jan on her staff. He was to attempt to poison Golodon every morning as well. This was where Jan began to learn magic.

Later, long after Jan had departed, Dradeel returned to the mainland after being freed by the player. Quite mad, he immediately killed Golodon and was captured by the local authorities. He was then sentenced to a life of imprisonment in the Asylum, where the player finds him in SOA.

High level abilities for Thieves: We're releasing High Level Ability info pretty slowly but I'll give you something special here.

Evasion. A rogue's natural sense of preservation becomes heightened with the use of the Evasion ability. Evasion gives a bonus of 4 to AC and 2 to all saving throws. The effect lasts for 3 rounds.

This is one of the High Level Abilities in the Rogue Pool. Many of the High Level Abilities have more powerful versions, as well. Evasion is one of the base Abilities and has a more powerful form called Greater Evasion.

I think this is the most info that anyone has ever gotten out of me about a High Level Ability at one time.

Monk's cap for magic resistance: It slows down in Throne of Bhaal and caps in the 70s. As always, it can be altered by items.

Possible scenario: With a natural MR of 84%, you can sell all of those items and buy that super sword you've had your eye on. Or, you could give the items to other party members so that everyone has some sort of MR.

Yes, nothing will happen to existing characters. Monks slow down starting at the first level in TOB. It will not retroactively change any monks that have already leveled up.

Monks are still frickin' powerful.

Tracking ability for Rangers: It must be revelation day. Tracking is in.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Saturday, May 12, 2001 - 21:10 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Will you be playing the upcoming free downloadable Heart of Winter expansion pack?
(253 votes total)

Of course! (180) 71%
Hmm, maybe... (53) 21%
No way! (20) 8%

Although not many people voted in this poll, the majority of those that did seem to be eagerly anticipating Black Isle Studios' free downloadable dungeon which will be approximately 75-100 MB in size. Since most people who have played Heart of Winter complained that it was too short, this bonus feature might improve their opinions a bit.

21% of people aren't certain yet whether they will play it or not; there have also been a few complaints in our poll comments about not being able to download such huge files over dial-up. I recommend GetRight or Go!Zilla which are two nice programs that allow you to resume downloading files if you get disconnected in the middle or aren't able to get them in one session.
But since BIS will provide one big file for all those folks lucky enough to have connections fast enough to download it one shot and a split package for all of us on dial-up, that shouldn't be that much of a problem.

Finally, 8% of people said that they will not play the extra dungeon no matter what.

CyberCon 1 Online Convention (June 22-24, 2001)
Posted Saturday, May 12, 2001 - 12:34 CET by Sorcerer

RPGHost have sent us some details regarding a new online-only event dubbed CyberCon. Surprise, surprise, Gygax will be one of the guests there as well. Seems to me like all the RPG sites smelled gold (or unique page views, if you prefer the net translation) the mention of that name brings... He has appeared in the news over the last two weeks more often than previously for 10 years. Heh.
Anyway, here's the scoop:

CyberCon is the first ever totally on-line convention for role-playing gamers. That's right, there are no travel costs, no booking headaches, no long drives, and no lines to wait in!

We have spent a lot of time gathering the best games and game masters
the Web has to offer. We have screened every GM to make sure they know
their stuff. Every game has to be pre-approved to meet our high standards!
We have famous guest speakers whom will talk live with you. We host comprehensive seminars to help you better understand your gaming and
industry. World premiers! Art Show! Auction! Even a costume contest!
On top of all that you get to meet new players that share your interests.
Did I forget to mention the contests & raffle and prizes for most games?

Very early in the recruitment phase, but we already have commitment from:

GUESTS:
Gary Gygax, Sandy Antunes, Aaron Williams, S. John Ross

COMPANIES:
White-wolf, I-Kore, Storn C, Nbos, Flying Buffalo, Cheap Ass games, deep7, nodwick.com, Dominion Games, Atlas Games, Talsorian, Apophis Consortium, Aetherco, Green Goblin Games, Design-A-Dungeon.com, Nexon USA, Skotos.net, Jolly Roger Games, Fast Forward Entertainment, Cumberland Games, Basement Games Unlimited, Eternal Tempest Productions, Ultra-PRO, Valent Games, Working Stiff Productions

ARTISTS:
Clyde Caldwell, Steve Ferris, Stephanie Law, Todd Lockwood, Matt Hughes, Kari & Cambria Christensen

If you are interested, you can pre-register here (flash) or use this link for the non-flash version.

Bioware's E3 Plans
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001 - 19:42 CET by Darien

RPG Vault had a chance to talk to several of the Bioware people about their plans at the annual trade show, including Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk, Bob McCabe and more.

In the minds of many CRPG fans around the world, Canada's BioWare is the leading developer working within the genre. At this year's show, the attention of gamers and the media will very definitely be focused on the company since three of its current projects, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Neverwinter Nights and the as yet un-named Star Wars RPGs all rank as must-see titles. Several of the BioWare team were kind enough to share their show plans and to reveal what they're looking to see.

Read more.

Throne of Bhaal Item of the Week
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001 - 19:35 CET by Darien

The latest Item of the Week is available to view at IGN. This time we get to look at the Darksteel Shield.

Desperate as he was to avenge his sons, Argeld could not send more of his people down into the depths of the mountain to face such horrors. Glimred himself, however, could not be dissuaded. To aid Glimred in his quest for vengeance, the dwarven smiths set about constructing the Darksteel Shield, a heavily enchanted shield that provides more protection than most suits of armor.

STATISTICS:

Abilities: +10% resistance to fire, cold, acid and poison

Armor Class Bonus: 5
Weight: 8
Requires: 15 Strength
Not Usable By:
Bard
Druid
Mage
Thief

Heart of Winter Add-On Screenshots
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001 - 19:30 CET by Darien

The Adrenaline Vault has posted some new screenshots from the upcoming free downloadable expansion for Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. They also had some details about the size and release date.

Black Isle Studios sent the Adrenaline Vault these screenshots from its upcoming free downloadable add-on for customers of their Icewind Dale expansion. The download will be close to 75MB in size and will plug into the retail expansion. This expansion will add several new monsters to Icewind Dale, up to 40 new magic items, and a brand new adventure in a castle and dungeon setting. It is planned to be available no later than the first part of June 2001 and will target gamers with level 11-18 characters. Once the add-on is installed, a new character will appear within the game who is searching for a group of heroes to go on a new quest. Should the user accept, he or she will be transported to a distant place filled with new puzzles and traps. The add-on will also upgrade Icewind Dale to version 1.42 with additional program fixes.

Throne of Bhaal Developer Profile at RPGVault
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001 - 5:42 CET by Darien

Another developer profile profile has surfaced over at RPG Vault, this time of Dean Andersen, Lead Artist on Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.

Jonric: Based on your time at BioWare, would you say your experience making games has lived up to your expectations?

Dean Anderson: They have exceeded my expectations; every day is a great joy knowing that I can go to work and create something that will entertain the world. When I look back at my childhood and remember the great joy games have brought me, the chance to instill those same emotions in another is overwhelming.

Dungeons & Dragons on the PC
Posted Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 18:55 CET by Darien

Today's D&D article at Computer Games Online looks at the blending of the personal computer with the popular roleplaying genre, from the original Pool of Radiance and Neverwinter Nights games to the immensely popular Baldur's Gate series and more.

1988
Pool of Radiance

The one that started it all—the first of the "Gold Box" games. SSI's Pool of Radiance was the first full-fledged AD&D game for the personal computer. Originally available for 8-bit machines such as the Commodore 64, the PC version ran under DOS 3 and required 384 KB of RAM. You controlled a party of six characters created using the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, and adventuring was a mix of first-person stepped 3D movement on grid-based maps, and top-down third-person 2D tactical combat reminiscent of a miniatures wargame. A genuine classic.

Black Isle Studios Board Update
Posted Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 4:07 CET by Darien

Here are a few more bits of news from the Black Isle Studios message boards.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Kevin Martens, Lead Designer:

Add-On and Add-In sections: To start - here's a brief explanation...

The Add-In section is a massive dungeon complex called The Watcher's Keep. When you install Throne of Bhaal (TOB), the area is added to your existing Shadows of Amn (SOA) map. You can play it whenever you have access to it (Chapter 2,3,6) although you should have an average party level of at least 10 to venture in. The Watcher's Keep makes up approximately half of the expansion and can be accessed from both Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal. The area is on both maps.

The Add-On section continues the main story after the final confrontation in SOA. An Ill-wind sweeps across the Sword Coast and the party drives southward in an attempt to learn more about the Prophecy of Alaundo and to find his or her place (as a Child of Bhaal) in that prophecy. We give you an entire new WorldMap with tons of stuff to do. This new map is made up of Southern Tethyr and Northern Calimshan. Just like the transition from BG1 to BG2, everything is new.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

J.E. Sawyer, Designer

Spell disruption: Some creatures "force cast," meaning they can't be disrupted. Reason: none of the spellcasters in the game would ever get spells off if this was not the case. Magic Missiles would pretty much ruin any caster's chance of doing anything. The only alternative would be to have every caster use Shield or Minor Globe of Invulnerability before battle. Even then, people just wipe the floor with them. It's the same reason why the Lower Dorn's Deep thieves auto-backstab you and cannot be revealed by Detect Invisibility. After the first time you fall for it, the entire point of the encounter is lost. Thankfully, those two problems (spell disruption and backstabbing criteria) are "better" in 3E. In 3E, it can be downright difficult to prevent casters from getting spells off. Also, rogues can sneak attack any time their opponent is denied their dex bonus (or they flank them).

A possible side-quest left out for Edion? No, it wasn't left out. Edion wasn't interested in prolonging his life. He just wanted to be left alone, more or less, in his final days. I did talk to Steve at one point about the possibility of including Edion in the Host Tower Battle Royal. Basically, when Alpheus and the others show up, Edion pops in to help Kieran, saying something like, "Why can't you just leave us alone?! All we wanted to do was live in peace. You can't even let us do that, can you?" BLAMMO!

David Hendee, Designer

Expansion pack distribution: Don't know yet but we'll try to get it spread around to make it as painless as possible when the flood gates open.

The current "plan" is to have one big version for the people with high speed connections that can download the whole thing in one shot. Then we'll have another version that'll be around 7 to 10 segments that can be downloaded individually.

If you don't have a high speed connection I'd strongly recommend getting one of those download managing software programs that allow you to pick up your download where you left off should you lose connection.

Kevin Osburn, Line Producer

Playing the free expansion after finishing Heart of Winter: Since you already beat the Expansion, one thing you might want to consider is to start an "Expansion Only" game. You can import your high level characters then go immediately to the Whistling Gallows to access the downloadable dungeon pack when it is released.

Interview with D&D's Jonathan Tweet
Posted Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 3:47 CET by Darien

Today's scheduled article from Computer Games Online is with Jonathan Tweet, the lead designer of the 3rd Edition rules. Tweet talks about "tinkering with a classic" and a bit about Neverwinter Nights.

Were you nervous about tinkering with success or angering long-time fans?

Peter surprised a lot of us by saying that he wanted the new version of the game to be significantly better than what had come before, even if that meant changing the game drastically. I'd gone into the project thinking that we didn't dare tamper too much with the game that so many people loved. The irony is that, while we were ready to turn away lots of our current players if that's what it took to improve the game, the current players have been overwhelmingly in favor of the new game.

How about Neverwinter Nights?

Neverwinter Nights is the computer game that we paper role-playing game designers have talked about as a concept—and as something of a boogeyman—for years. We've long told ourselves that, while we don't have animation, sound effects, or digital record keeping, we have something better—a live Dungeon Master. And we knew that someday there'd be a computer game with a live DM. Neverwinter Nights is really going to be something new and different.

Read the rest here.

Interview with Bioware's Founders
Posted Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 3:33 CET by Darien

This interview in Computer Games Online weeklong series is with Founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka. They offer some great information on Neverwinter Nights, as well as some new screenshots.

What sort of plans do you have for add-ons?

Muzyka: We'd love to be able to support the community, post-release. That's very important to the continuity of the game—making sure that people can enjoy it long-term.

Zeschuk: I think our perspective is that it will be an evolving beast. Neverwinter two years from now... who knows what it will be? I think our goal is to look at how we can continue to improve it. It's not a case of just sitting static; we really want to support it.

Muzyka: We're kind of evolving the model and asking, well, how does the community for a game like this get supported? Part of it is that they actually have all the tools that we have, to be able to make things. We want to develop more content and improve the tools themselves—that's something we're interested in.

Zeschuk: The other issue with the tools as well, which is really important, is that we've made them to be inclusive, not exclusive. In a sense that, sitting down with the Quake editor—it's a fairly significant experience. You have to do a lot of stuff and know a lot of things to be able to accomplish anything. In Neverwinter we've really scaled it, so that basic user, the first time out, can build some areas and drop some monsters in and play in them. At the same time we don't take any power away from the power users—you just have this very scalable experience. The extreme, of course, is that you can go in and start changing scripts. That's available. So that's our goal—to have it scale to the user's desires.

Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 3:19 CET by Darien

Here are a few bits of information from the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Rob Bartel,Co-Lead Designer:

Interview with Greg and Ray: Hi folks, Just an overview and verification of Greg & Ray's interview from the front lines. =o)

It was a great interview with plenty of new content for newcomers and old-timers alike. I recommend giving it (and all of the recent D&D articles on the site) a read.

As for the current status of the project, some early art testing has begun, as well as some focus testing on the conversation editor. That said, we're using an iterative testing model. This means that the testing process will extend over a long duration, with testing occurring first on the individual game components and later on the actual game, itself. It's a very thorough process and it will mean a more bug-free product at the end. However, while testing has begun, don't get your hopes up yet. A lot of development and implementation still needs to occur.

Regarding their discussion of open file formats and the potential support of custom NWN art content (new skins, models, tiles, etc.), the standardized 'Hack Pack' framework they outline is the one that we've decided to work towards. It's fairly graceful in that, by handling each Pack as a discrete and mutually exclusive unit, it should prevent a lot of the corruption and instability that could result from end-user customization. That said, while we're confident in the system as outlined, it still has yet to be implemented. Should significant complications arise, we may be forced to alter or back away from this sort of approach. Hopefully all goes well. For the time being, at least, NWN Hack Packs are slated for inclusion.

About Noober: Hehe, it's funny - when I wrote Noober, I had no idea how notorious he would become. It was just the end of a long day of work and my brain was fried from too many bloody Fed-Ex quests (I have an aversion to this very day). I showed Noober's conversation to James Ohlen, BG's Lead Designer, and he insisted that the programmers implement a new function just so we could get it into the game. The function ended up seeing some more benevolent use as well, thank goodness, but that Noober encounter seems to be the one that's stuck with people. Every time I see a post about him, I shake my head and chuckle.

Are you going to throw rocks at me?

Single player game quality: I can't speak for end-user content, of course (except to say that I think there's a lot of talent out there and a lot of interest in creating single-player content), but we're definitely making sure that the official campaign is fun to play in single-player mode. Despite all of the goodies and features we're adding to the multiplayer framework, the simple fact of the matter is that most cRPG players still prefer playing single-player. For some, it's a matter of taste, for others a matter of necessity. Whatever the case, the single-player market is important to us (after all, that's where we've built up a lot of loyalty with the BG series). In short, when you buy a copy of Neverwinter, we want you to feel that you've gotten your money's worth, even if you never played online, used the toolset, or had a DM guide you through your adventures.

Using a Neverwinter Nights logo: Not a problem, as long as you do 2 things:

1) Give credit where credit is due (BioWare as the game's developer, Black isle Studios as the game's publisher, and Wizards of the Coast as owners of the D&D license).

2) Provide links back to the official site (www.neverwinternights.com). The best way to do this is to have the actual image be the link. Links to BioWare, Black Isle, and WotC never hurt either. =)

We love to see all of the fansites that are emerging out of the community, especially ones dedicated to creating new Neverwinter Nights content. Post a URL when you have the page ready!

Cord Grimwinder-8d:

On monster AI and boundaries: the orcs will cross the area boundary too and keep right on chasing the party ;-). Unless of course the DM has set them up to remain in their own little area, in which case they can be made to wait where they lost the trail, or after a set time wander back home, or any of ten zillion other possibilities depending on what the module maker designed ;-).

Flying, swimming, climbing, etc: The present NWN engine is fully capable of supporting all of those things (flying, swimming, climbing, riding, etc). The reasons those features aren't going to be included initially are primarily; the extra animation work that would be involved (any of those mentioned *could* easily double that work which would add months to the dev cycle) and pathfinding (both the mentioned increase in the complexity which would impact performance and the fact that it would make it more difficult for the average DM to control access to areas in their modules).

Vault characters: Quote(Trent Oster, NWN Producer): When you set up a NWN server with the server character option, the player has to create a character on your server. In essence you have a miniature character vault on your server (for sake of clarity let's call it a character chest)(I know it is cheezy, but hey, what else could you call it?). Each player has a password for your character chest which he/she must enter to access his/her character. When you set up the Character chest you can specify the number of characters allowed per CD key. :End Quote

1st person perspective: Covered before? ;-) 6,492 times and counting (j/k). Here's an old post from BioWare on the subject, it covers the decision making process pretty well on this matter-

Quote(Rob Bartel, NWN Co-Lead Designer): A first-person perspective alters a lot of things on the technical side. For starters, we don't have any sky, so there would just be big pall of darkness hanging above you. Secondly, by anchoring the pitch of the camera, we have better control over the number of polys onscreen at any given time (looking off at a horizon can range anywhere between 1 poly and oodles). This allows us to have higher-poly terrain, buildings, and creatures, and also allows us to pack more creatures into a given scene. It is also part of what makes our Solstice toolset possible - anyone who's made a Quake or Unreal map knows that you have to spend a lot of time tweaking sightlines and things like that to minimize the danger of poly-lag (I've never made a Quake or Unreal map but I know that anyways, somehow...). Lastly, by limiting the zoom function to within certain parameters, we can guarantee that our textures always look sharp and clear, rather than the blurring and pixelation that is inherent in any first-person perspective. Then there's the whole question of perspective-based interface changes, as well, which is another ball of wax entirely...

So, no, you probably won't be seeing a first-person perspective in NWN, though the editor might include a map viewer that allows you to swoop the camera around however you wish. That's probably the closest you'll get. :End Quote

In addition they felt the 3/4 down view was better suited (in their opinion mind you) for multi player CRPG play than the 1st person view.

Heart of Winter Interview at PlanetBG
Posted Wednesday, May 9, 2001 - 7:31 CET by Darien

Planet Baldur's Gate has interviewed Steve Bokkes, Designer for Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter, about the downloadable expansion for the game.

How long do you estimate will it take to complete the expansion?

Well, let's see. Most of the art for the new areas has been completed. We've only have one or two more levels to do, plus some 2D touchup. The story and individual level designs have been pretty much nailed down. Right now, we're cranking away at full steam, populating areas and implementing items, spells, and scripts. If all goes well, I'd say we should be ready to release the expansion sometime in early June.

How many full screen areas and dungeon levels comprise the expansion? How dastardly are their design?

There are a total of nineteen new areas in the expansion. Most of them are above ground locations. However, four of the levels are huge, subterranean dungeon environments that are each about 36 screens in size. John Deiley and I are working to ensure that each level is chock full of nastiness. One of the levels, which I've dubbed "the Crypts of Eternity," is perhaps my most dastardly design yet. I don't want to give away too much, but I will say that parties that enter this crypt expecting a straightforward dungeon sweep are in for a big surprise.

Read the interview.

Throne of Bhaal Trailer
Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2001 - 22:07 CET by Darien

A trailer for Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal has been released by Interplay. It comes in two sizes, either the 8MB or the 17MB.

Dungeon Master Tools at Wizards.com
Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2001 - 19:32 CET by Darien

Two new offerings have been posted at Wizards.com for all you DMs out there. The first tool is a custom creature sorter that lets you create customized lists of monsters sortable by any of several criteria. The second tool is an exclusive web enhancement for Defenders of the Faith: A Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins which includes quest ideas and spell planning worksheets.

D&D Interview with Dave Arneson
Posted Tuesday, May 8, 2001 - 15:06 CET by Darien

Computer Games Online has posted its second installment of this week's series of "All Things Dungeons and Dragons." Today's interview is with Dave Arneson, the co - creator of D&D, along with Gary Gygax.

Dave Arneson is too often forgotten in the annals of role-playing history, despite the crucial role that he played in the creation of the first role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. While E. Gary Gygax wrote up the actual rules, much of the raw material for the game came directly from Arneson's "dungeon crawl" wargame campaign set in the fantasy realm of Blackmoor.

So what was the first fantasy role-playing campaign like? Find out from the man who created it...

Pool of Radiance Trivia Test
Posted Monday, May 7, 2001 - 20:07 CET by Darien

RPG Planet offers you the chance to test your knowledge of the original Pool of Radiance PC game. Here is an introduction and a sample question.

This roleplaying gaming test takes us back to one of the first computer games set in the Forgotten Realms. Pool of Radiance is considered one of the best adaptations of the AD&D rules system and was one of SSI's best selling games, going on to spawn multiple sequels. Will you take up the challenge of the heroes of Phlan and answer this quiz?

7. In Valhingen Graveyard, how are the undead hordes increasing in number?

- The Boss (not Bruce Springsteen) is importing them in from Zhentil Keep.
- The Vampires replenish the hordes themselves.
- Spectres are "building" new undead.
- They aren't increasing.

Take the test.

Black Isle Studios Forum Updates
Posted Monday, May 7, 2001 - 19:55 CET by Darien

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

J.E. Sawyer, Designer:

Difficulty levels: Difficulty levels are extremely subjective. Unfortunately, at least in IWD and HoW, we were not able to find a blend that satisfied people. BG2 seemed to be reasonably well balanced.

Why not an IWD with Drizzt?: Out of respect to Mr. Salvatore, we try not to tread on his work too much. I spoke with him briefly around Christmas and told him the same thing. There is a certain feeling and style that goes with an author's work, and "overlapping" that story with your own can cause bad impressions among fans.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Dave Gaider, Senior Designer:

Multi-classing: I think the ability to go up in more than one class at the same time is pretty special, regardless of whether it's a normal ability of demi-human characters or not. I wasn't being flippant. My answer was short, but I thought I was still giving an appropriate answer. Since you perhaps misinterpreted my intent, let me take the time to give you the long answer.

Multi-class characters do get plenty of advantages as it is. You will also still get access to at least a couple of the high-level abilities, as well...but the splitting of your XP between your classes is part of being multi-classed. You knew that when you became multi-classed, and personally I don't see much use in saying that it's unfair now that you're at higher levels when it probably benefited you plenty at the lower levels.

But, again, while you won't get access to all the high-level abilities like a single-class character would, you will get access to a few. A multi-class character reaches levels they never could have, before, and with a couple of high-level abilities is certainly not being 'excluded' from some of the new features in the expansion.

As for dual-class characters, I agree that they can be very prone to min-maxing by power gamers. But this is the way dual-classing is set up in the D rules. How would you propose we limit them?

A dual-classed character can't ever go back and get some more levels should they want to later. Imoen and Nalia can't ever go back and get more levels in Thief...even though some of the traps and locks are tougher at this point. When facing the toughest opponents, are the abilities given to say a Magic User by also being a 9th level fighter all that useful?

Maybe, depending on the play-style, I guess. One should probably keep in mind that they had to go through the entire leveling-up process in their new class without the benefit of their old class's abilities, as well...not the easiest task in most cases.

Triple classing: Unfortunately, it really can't (be done). The reasoning is the same that various other combinations of classes for MC or DC aren't included...each class combination requires its own entries on every item and spell for whether or not that item can be used by that class-combination.

I'm not sure of the specifics, programming-wise, but waaaay back when this subject came up on the original boards I talked briefly to Mark Darrah about it and the problem seemed to be that the files were simply not formatted in a way to allow us to expand the 'usable by' selections indefinitely. Regardless, each new combo added would require us to go back through all the items and spells all the way back to BG1 to mark them properly.

I remember that an easier solution was to find those class combos that mimic already-existing combos' item and spell usages exactly and have them use the same flag. But there aren't many that do that...certainly not enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Besides all that, could it still be done? Probably...with a significant amount of effort. While I wouldn't mind seeing the dual-classing rules allowing for more progression (although the capacity for most characters to have ridiculous stats makes the supposed limitations to dual- and triple-classing fairly moot...there are many who argue that the DC class situation can be incredibly abused), I think that's probably something that's beyond the scope of a simple expansion.

Non-offensive weapon attributes limited to primary hand: The program isn't set up, currently, to do this sort of thing, no...weapons either have their bonuses or they don't. Mind you, I can't imagine it would be very difficult to hard-code certain restrictions on a weapon when it is placed in the off-hand slot...but only Mark would know for sure.

As to whether or not it would be a good idea, that's a completely different question.

Bringing Yoshimo back?: As I said before in another post, we COULD bring Yoshimo back. I can think of any of a number of valid and/or interesting storylines where Yoshimo could be brought back to life. Thing is, not everyone had Yoshimo in their party. And for those who did, I don't want to invalidate the impact of Yoshimo's story.

We could still do it, I suppose, but I think it's best to let Yoshimo rest. We chose to pursue the Sarevok storyline...and for those of you who choose to jump to conclusions about THAT...well, you haven't even read the story, yet, have you?

The Edwin Problem and Anomen's annoying comments: We weren't able to script changes to the NPC voices until later in development, and at that time we were only able to do it with Edwin (who uses an entirely new voice in his female form) as opposed to Anomen and some of the others who change...their VO was already recorded. That said, Anomen does have new VO, now, for when he's CN. No need to spaz.

As for Edwin, no he won't be changed. Those are the bonuses a wizard of Thay gets (and regardless if he's not a member anymore, he still has their training).

Interview With The D&D Creator
Posted Monday, May 7, 2001 - 12:25 CET by Mollusken

Computer Games Online has done an interview with the Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. He talks about, among other things, Satanists and why vampires are the ones to get all the girls. He also answers an interesting question like how the CRPGs have affected the good old pen & paper role-playing. Read it all here.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Sunday, May 6, 2001 - 9:34 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Should we start posting screenshots of the day (submitted by you, the users) for the games we cover?
(247 votes total)

Yes, definitely (128) 52%
No, don't bother (66) 27%
I don't care (53) 21%

It is more or less pointless to post the results of this poll since the Screenshot of the Week has been up on the front page since Monday, but here are the results for anyone who might have missed the poll.

As we can see, the majority of people who voted in the poll agreed that we should start collecting screenshots, and so we did. People have already sent me a couple of good ones I can post, but I'm always looking for more.
So, if you have any screenshots you think are worth posting here, please send them over. Screenshots can be from any of the games we cover here at Sorcerer's Place.

Heart of Winter Review at PC Strategy Games
Posted Saturday, May 5, 2001 - 17:24 CET by Darien

One more positive review of Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter has been posted, this time at PC Strategy Games. Check out the verdict link near the title to read the final scores of the reviewers.

A whole host of new spells, skills and items have also been incorporated. New spells like soul eater are quite ingenious; when cast it 3D8 damage to all (living) creatures within the spells area of effect. Any killed by the initial onslaught will then be raised as a 3 hit die skeleton under the command of the caster. Nice. The Thief can now pull off some of the more devastating and arcane maneuvers in the new 3rd Edition ruleset like Crippling Strike and Sneak Attack, until now missing from the Black Isle games. Rangers can track, Druids can shape-change into both animals and elementals and, much like BG II, the cruelly under-strength Bard has been given a whole host of new songs and special items that considerably enhance his usefulness.

Trent Oster of Neverwinter Nights
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 16:12 CET by Darien

Voodoo Extreme had a couple of questions for Trent Oster, Producer of Neverwinter Nights, the first one regarding the release schedule for the game, and a "rumor that they were around 60% done with NWN."

Trent: While it is true NWN is a good while away from shipping, 60% is a little harsh. The big issue with NWN is going to be testing and polish time. We don't want to ship this game until it is the best thing we can create. When the game is awesome. we will ship it, but not before.

Our current completion target is winter 2001.

The next question is about game visuals, wrapping up a series of comments from several game developers.

Billy) Ok, the "next" holy grail in visuals, what do we need to see the hardware manufacturers do? They seemed to have really done a lot with the GeForce 3, but, of course, more needs to be done. What are some of the key areas that need to be focused on / added / etc. for, what I would assume be the GeForce 4, to really bring us to the "next level"?

Trent Oster) I believe the next level in computer gaming visuals will depend on a few features. First and foremost is more rendering horsepower for fill rates. We can drive large polygon counts at medium resolutions, but for higher resolutions the fill rate becomes a serious bottleneck. I'd love to see NWN running at 2048x1536 at a solid 60 fps. The second desire I have is for more internal precision in the pixel pipelines. No matter what game you are playing you can still see visible banding artifacts where multiple passes are rendered. The third major improvement is an understanding of what is possible with pixel shaders and where they can go. Right now everyone is just starting to play with pixel shaders and no one has even implemented the intended features, let alone really pushed the hardware. Think about the original Sony Playstation. It took a number of years before the games started to really push the hardware and every year some group managed to wring extra performance or features out of the hardware, many of which were never intended by the designers of the system. In short, I see a learning period by developers and hardware vendors. As the developers start to push the hardware, the hardware companies can see where the developers are going and push that area in the hardware.

Neverwinter Nights Board Update
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 15:58 CET by Darien

Here is the latest collection of comments from the official Neverwinter Nights message board.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Cleric Domains and Feats: We haven't substituted the special abilities with heroic feats. The feats I referred to in my post are part of the normal feat system and don't have anything to do with domains - it was just an example of one of the 'either/or' decisions we have to make in adapting the rules to the computer. All of the cleric domains in the PHB will be supported and each one will have a list of 9 thematically related spells that the cleric can draw from as outlined in the 3rd Edition rules.

Tiles of large castles and monasteries: Yes, the NWN tile system is perfect for situating giant castles and monasteries atop large mesas. =)

Magic items: These 'strength points' you're referring to will actually be the item's 'base value.' That base value will be programmatically determined and displayed within the toolset.

From there, the DM can add a bonus or penalty to the base value (to compensate for a custom-scripted ability that the item has within the module, for instance). Additionally, some stores might be higher priced than others, selling their goods for more than what they're really worth. So the actual in-game cost of the item may differ from the base value but that value will still be there to provide a common benchmark.

As for using that base value to filter unwanted items out of your campaign, absolutely! If you're running a low-level adventure, for instance, you obviously want to keep out items more appropriate for a 20th-level sojourn through the Abyss.

Another use of such a filter would be for gladiatorial contests where you limit the value of the items that players can bring into the ring.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

Day/Night cycles: Our official campaign is actually operating outside of time ;)

A module might start in the early morning, and stay that way. Or, it might transition to high noon when a player reaches a certain location. Most of our modules make use of the mood created by nice lightning, or the lack thereof. So, we are not using a more "persistent world" type set-up.

It's probably because we all have God-complexes, and we need absolute
control ;)

Rest: I'm guessing (I'm a writer, not a programmer), but I think this would likely be hard-coded. However, our "rest system," though well designed, is not yet implemented. So, obviously, things could change between now-and-then. I'm getting so good at non-answers! :p

Tile crossovers: Not really posting so much as confirming accurate educated guesses... I can't go into any great detail just yet ;)

Like Matthew said, most of the tiles have cross-over groups or features. For example, temples aren't found exclusively in the city tileset - they can be found in other tilesets, as well. So, the idea of making villages, not cities, is definitely in. And like the other work-around suggested by JD, if you really wanted to use the city tileset, for example, but have it exist underground, you'd just tinker a little with the lighting and such, and then carefully select the features and groups... it would be very believable :)

Aidan Scanlan, Writing & Design

On servers and ships: You will easily be able to change the target point of any area transition based on conditions that you set. (e.g. going through the door takes you to the curio shop, however if your carrying the holy stone, the door takes you to a magical realm). However, with your example of respawning monsters, you may also set conditions on when they spawn. You would be able to set a delay (or other conditions) on any spawning once a party has cleaned it out. This would save time on making two identical areas.

As for ships, I will not comment on any specific game content, but Neverwinter IS a port city.

Throne of Bhaal Developer Profile
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 14:51 CET by Darien

The latest developer profile from RPGvault features Matthew Goldman, an Artist of Shadows of Amn and now Art Director of Throne of Bhaal.

Jonric: Now that you're a game developer, do you still have the opportunity play a lot of games? Have you played any recently that you've really enjoyed? Which games are you currently looking forward to playing?

Matt Goldman: Games are the next highest form of entertainment after movies, for me at least. I haven't had cable for many years. I hope that eventually we'll be able to create an interactive, entertainment experience that has the intensity of a great film, but with the interactivity only gaming can provide. As for games I really like, I can say, without an ounce of irony, that Baldur's Gate II and MDK2 are two of the most fun and best turned out games I've ever played. Aside from future BioWare games, I think that Black Isle's Torment, Relic's Homeworld and Shiny's Sacrifice are games that represent the finest blend of story, game play and great art that have yet made it onto the PC.

Throne of Bhaal Item of the Week
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 14:45 CET by Darien

The latest Item of the week from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal has been posted at IGN. This week it's a mace called Storm Star.

Storm Star’s already formidable abilities have been further enhanced by the addition of the otherworldly Starfall Ore. This strange material comes from the core of a meteorite, which fell from the heavens. The malleable ore is surprisingly strong, and radiates an inner heat. Any item forged from the alien matter would undoubtedly possess mysterious and unearthly properties.

Despite its massive size, Storm Star is surprisingly light, making it particularly easy to wield in combat. It crackles with spectacular, though harmless, arcs of lightning when wielded – a visible manifestation of the powerful electrical enchantments infused within the weapon’s head.

STATISTICS:

Equipped Abilities: +20% to electrical resistance

Combat Abilities: 5% chance of casting chain lightning on target with each successful attack

THACO: +5 bonus
Damage: 1D6 + 6, +1D6 electrical damage
Damage type: crushing
Weight: 4
Speed Factor: 2
Proficiency Type: Mace
Type: 1-handed
Requires: 10 Strength
Not Usable By:
Druid
Mage
Thief

Heart of Winter Concept Art
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 14:38 CET by Darien

DB-Forge has posted high resolution copy of Jason Manley's concept art for the Dragon Lair Interior and Sahaugin Area from Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter.

GameSpot Preview of Pool of Radiance
Posted Friday, May 4, 2001 - 10:55 CET by Nazgul

Gamespot has posted a great preview or Pool of Radiance. The article covers quests, classes, the mechanics of combat, and more. It also includes some eyecatching screenshots scattered throughout the pages.

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor promises to not only resurrect the gold box series of Dungeons & Dragons games but also to be the first D&D game based on the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. Baldur's Gate II is already the high standard for all D&D role-playing games, as well as RPGs in general. Can Pool of Radiance II follow up BioWare's effort and deliver as successful a D&D role-playing experience? Developer Stormfront Studios and publisher Redstorm (formerly SSI and a division of Ubi Soft) definitely think so.

GameSpot has brought you several Pool of Radiance II previews in the past year, but recently we visited the offices of publisher Ubi Soft to check on the status of Pool II and see how the game has progressed so far. At this point, the team is fairly confident of a June 2001 release date. In fact, much of the game is finished, and we saw the final battle and endgame cutscene. All the movies are finished, all the quests have been completed, and at this point, what remain to be done are game balance and optimization. We won't spoil the story, but the game definitely has an epic ending.

Read the full article here.

Throne of Bhaal Developer Diary
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2001 - 14:55 CET by Darien

Another developer diary has been posted at GameSpy, this one by Tony de Waal, artist on the Baldur's Gate II expansion. It's a quick read, with a few screenshots of some spell effects thrown in as well.

Having done the previous two Baldur's Gate games, we have developed a very efficient, stable way of quickly animating characters and implementing them into the game. This was also true with the ambient animations. It allowed us to add even more ambient animations into each area we created. We've also added a number of very cool looking spell effects to the new high level spells that will come with BG2:ToB.

Black Isle Studios Board Update
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2001 - 14:45 CET by Darien

The Black Isle Studios message boards are back up, although the problem with blank pages doesn't seem to have been resolved. Anyway, here are a few comments from the game developers.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Kevin Martens, Lead Designer:

Jan Jansen's story line: People of all alignments fall in love. Even a chaotic evil person could easily do everything in his power to save the woman he loved and her daughter. Love transcends alignment. Of course, once he was with her, that doesn't necessarily mean that a CE person would make a better husband than the person he saved her from.

In Jan's case, Lissa is his lifelong love and definitely the biggest regret of his life. Though this isn't necessarily made clear in the game, she is the reason that he left home and began his adventures in the first place. Also, though I think I made it too subtle, Jaella could be his daughter. He was with Lissa before Vaelag took her away and the girl could be his.

To make a long story short, I would consider a youth in a game like this to be unformed as far as alignment goes and it is the experiences that he/she goes through in early life that forms their alignment. Lissa leaving him is one of the reasons that Jan is CN, if not the main reason. If she had stayed with him, I suspect he would have been neutral or neutral good. The Jansen family pull might have kept the good part out of the equation however.

BTW: regarding this plot, originally, the plot was going to take you to the Library of Athkatla, where Jan would stumble upon a book that opened a portal into the realm of the Hidden. The Hidden's realm was going to be full of intellectual puzzles and riddles and one would have to prove one's intellect in order to gain audience with the Hidden.

As far as the Hidden goes, he has ties with the illithids and with an Illumnati-style organization that recruits in secret throughout Amn. The Hidden himself is being tracked by githyanki bounty hunters, although I never clarified exactly why this was for the player.

(It was cut) simply because it was far too complicated and big for a quest that only people who took Jan would have access to. Plus, I kept using all of puzzle ideas in other dungeons. I liked the fact that the current implementation of the Hidden made so many people wonder what's going on. It just makes the world seem richer with an undercurrent of intrigue.

Jonathan Epp, Quality Assurance:

Weapons changing hands (animations): This is done for a reason. The animations for characters are only rendered for the left facings, and are mirrored for the right facings (or is it the other way around? - ah, whatever). There are already something like 300,000 frames of animations for your characters. If we rendered for both ways, that number would double, which would take a lot more cd space, and a lot more RAM when running the game.

I'm not an animator, I don't really know any more details on it than that - so don't ask me!

Baldur's Gate II: Anatomy of a Sequel
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2001 - 2:05 CET by Darien

There's a feature article up at Gamasutra by Dr. Ray Muzyka that explores the making of Baldur's Gate II. Here's a brief summary of the article:

At BioWare we have learned to do thorough post-project reviews to analyze both the strong and weak development areas of our projects. The best way to start a sequel is to review and improve upon the processes used in the original. In the case of the original Baldur's Gate, we felt we didn't have adequate time to reach our design goals; we were simultaneously developing the BioWare Infinity Engine while creating the content in Baldur's Gate. This lead to extreme pressure to have simple areas and game design. With Baldur's Gate II, we resolved to allow the designers adequate time to allow the game to reach its full potential. We had learned to review our previous projects, learn from our mistakes, and apply these solutions to all new and ongoing projects.

Summary: What worked Well:

- Stable engine technology
- Team dedication to the project
- Veterans returning to improve on a system they created, ensuring familiarity with the development pipeline and engine
- Good project discipline
- Quality Assurance (QA) in the endgame

Summary: What could have been better:

- Fragmentation of team communication
- Content bloat (Game too big)
- Lack of early Quality Assurance
- Late asset delivery - audio and sound
- Poor coordination of localization (translation)
- Multi-player - non pausing dialog, non-protagonist characters

Read the rest here.

Game Testing at Interplay
Posted Wednesday, May 2, 2001 - 21:05 CET by Darien

Have you ever wished you could make a living by playing games all day? It sounds like fun, right? Well, Interplaygames has posted an article on the real work behind the play of a Quality Assurance tester.

What is like to test? Again, testing is more than sitting around playing the game. You've got to be watchful of missing graphics, bad sound, jumps in the story, not just the crashes and system lockups. You really do not get to sit back and enjoy the game; you are being paid to be on the look out for the wrong things. When those wrong things happen, and they do, you've got to stop, write down what happened and how you got there, in detail. You can't just record, "the game locked up when I killed an orc". The programmers need to know details. The more details you can give, the easier time they will have in tracking down the problem and getting it fixed. It takes time and practice to learn how to write good bugs. It takes even more time to know where certain bugs might crop up. Testing isn't a matter of just popping in the CD and booting up the game. Good testers aren't' spun from ethereal cloth, they are forged like a fine steel weapon.

Neverwinter Nights Board Update
Posted Wednesday, May 2, 2001 - 16:29 CET by Darien

Once again the latest comments from the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design

Portals: Setting up a portal would be pretty easy for a DM to do, when creating his world. He'd just have to lay down the two transition points, and then add in a doorway or permanent spell animation to make it look usable. With this method, a player could easily go from-and-to any map within the module, even if that happens to be from city-to-city.

Likewise, the DM can create an item (I'm pretty sure about this, but I could be wrong) that would act as the first transition point. The player would simply use that item (a scroll, for example, as in Diablo) to instantly beam to a point pre-defined by the DM. And, one step further, the DM could create the teleport runes you guys mentioned, so that the player could place one item in one location, and use a matching item to instantly bring him to the placed item. Just hope that no one else grabs hold of that first rune! ;)

And the crazy thing is that non-programmers like me could pull that stuff off with about 5 minutes of free time.

Clarifies prestige classes: from the DMG: "Prestige classes allow DMs to create campaign-specific, exclusive roles and positions as classes. These special roles offer abilities and powers otherwise inaccessible to PCs and focus them in specific, interesting directions. A character with a prestige class will be more specialized yet perhaps slightly better than one without."

Some examples are the anti-paladin and the assassin. For the assassin, for example, you create a rogue, and when you meet certain requirements (in this case: evil alignment, 8 ranks of move silently, 8 ranks of hide, 4 ranks of disguise, and then murder someone to join the assassins), you may opt to become an assassin.

Trent Oster, Producer

Enchanted weapons: NWN has really gone overboard in this area. You can attach so many criteria and abilities to a weapon it blows my mind.

I just created a Bastard sword with the following abilities:
Weapon : Bastard Sword
Ability Bonus: Constitution +2
Damage Immunity: Bludgeoning
Improved Saving throws: Reflex
On Monster Hit: Ability Drain Strength by 3
Use Limitation: Chaotic
Use Limitation: Evil
Damage Bonus vs Racial Type: Gnome 1d6 acid damage

I now have a Bastard sword which gives me:
+2 to my constitution
Immunity to bludgeoning damage
A +2 bonus to my reflex saves
A weapon which drains 3 points of strength / hit
A weapon only useable by Chaotic Evil characters
A weapon which does an extra 1D6 of acid damage to Gnomes

In short, a complete BG type weapon effects system. We'll show a little of this at E3, but the possibilities are amazing and too vast to go into in detail in a demo.

Quicken spell: By applying Quicken to a spell, the casting time is reduced to zero. Another option for rapid casting is contingency. Not counting those two manners of casting, right now you can queue up as many spells as you wish and your character will continue casting until he/she runs out of queued actions. The spells still take the normal casting time though. We're going to have to look over this for playability a little later on and figure out a good way to show queued actions.

Cord Grimwinder-8d,Interplaygames.com Moderator

On removing the XP cap: But the main Consideration is still that there simply aren't any rules covering play beyond 20th level and until there are (and they can be added to NWN in the future) there simply isn't any point in doing away with the "cap".

Release of the scripting reference: They do plan on releasing a good deal of the scripting info prior to shipping, but are waiting until the language stabilizes.

On servers: Keep in mind that the 64 figure may change, but something else wont- that being that you can link together as many servers with Portals as you wish. So, while 64 (give or take a few) may be all *one* server can handle comfortably at once, the number your *chain* of connected servers can handle is only limited by how many server operators you can talk into being a part of your larger world ;-). So, with a little work and creativity, the possibilities are a large as the internet.....

Heart of Winter Announcement
Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 22:09 CET by Darien

Interplay made an official announcement about the free web expansion for Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter.

ICEWIND DALE: HEART OF WINTER WEB EXPANSION

The Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter Web Expansion is a free downloadable expansion pack for Black Isle Studios' Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter role playing game.

In response to some players wanting more game experience from Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter, Black Isle Studios has begun development on a free, downloadable dungeon pack add-on for customers of Heart of Winter. The pack is tentatively sized at 75MB, and will plug directly into the game, provided Heart of Winter is installed. This web expansion set will include several new monsters to Icewind Dale, as well as a brand new adventure in a castle/dungeon setting. It is tentatively planned to be available for free at the end of May/very early June 2001 on Interplay's official web site.

Brief Story Introduction

After the web expansion is installed, a mysterious halfling introduces himself in the Whistling Gallows Inn in Lonelywood. He seeks a party of stalwart heroes for a quest to a place of great wonder, with treasures beyond the imagination. Should the party accept, they will be transported to a new place, far from the icy terrain of the Dalelands, finding themselves within the walls of a ruined castle in an unfamiliar land...

The story is currently being held under wraps because the adventure is meant to surprise the character, and its story is conveyed throughout the various puzzles/combats.

Expansion Details

The web expansion will require an installed copy of both Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter. It is currently planned as a 75MB (100MB maximum) download from Interplay's official web site.

New Stuff - The web expansion will tentatively offer the following to our Heart of Winter customers:

2 main new areas to explore with a variety of sub levels

20-40 new magic items, 5-10 of which will be taken from our customer's submissions via our web boards at http://www.blackislestudios.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi

1 original new monster, and 4 creatures animations from Baldur's Gate/Baldur's Gate II.

Playable from Lonelywood in the Whistling Gallows Inn.

The new areas feature a separate story, independent from the Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter storylines.

Targeted for players from 11th - 18th level, and will also be adjusted for higher level parties via Heart of Winter's "Heart of Fury" mode.

Many new puzzles, traps, and more.

Introduces version 1.42, with some additional program fixes.

Game Banshee's Throne of Bhaal Interview
Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 14:30 CET by Darien

James Ohlen, Director of Writing and Design for Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, has been interviewed by Game Banshee. This piece focuses a bit on character abilities, and throws in a few screenshots as well.

GameBanshee: Reading your press release on the upcoming Throne of Bhaal, many people have wondered if this is going to be the end to the Baldur's Gate games. On the other hand, we’ve also read that Baldur’s Gate was intended to be a trilogy. Will there be a Baldur’s Gate 3? If so, will it continue to follow the “Child of Bhaal” storyline, or something completely different?

James: The Child of Bhaal storyline comes to an end in BG: TOB. By the end of TOB, the player is far too high level to make a sequel even remotely interesting. If there is a BG 3 it will most likely be a brand new storyline starting at 1st level; however, we’ll probably try to have a few tie ins, perhaps with characters returning from the previous games.

Read the rest here.

Throne of Bhaal Interview at Gaming Unlimited
Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 14:12 CET by Darien

Gaming Unlimited has posted a short interview with not Lisa Bucek but Doug Avery, the game's Associate Producer, on a few of the highlights from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal.

5. GU: How many new spells and items can we expect?

Now that your characters are becoming high-level ones, they will have access to some new high-level abilities. This will be for all classes, so over the course of the game fighters will get awesome new combat abilities, Thieves will be able to set some very powerful traps as well as create magical potions, and so on. So it won’t be just mages and clerics that will be getting new spells - these high-level abilities are practically spells themselves and there are almost 50 of them!

Pool of Radiance Developer Profile
Posted Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 1:41 CET by Darien

The Scrying room has posted its latest Developer Profile featuring Chuck Yager, Associate Producer of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Here's a short except:

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

Chuck Yager: I don’t think any game developer or publishing house could ever say with a clear conscience that they didn’t wish that one of those things that got cut from the drawing table early on was still in the game. You have to made concessions in this business no matter how attached you might become to certain facets of the game in early development. However, I am thrilled with how the game turned out. I think Pool is going to be a real treat for RPGers like myself who enjoy a good story and some dazzling graphics.