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Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Apr. 10, 06)

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Apr 13, 2006.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

    Brian D. Lawson, Programmer

    NWN2 2560 x 1600 max. settings
    I dont expect NWN2 to take SIGNIFICANTLY more horsepower than this.
    Why not?

    We're doing some things that you probably haven't seen yet in many other games out there. For one, 100% fully dynamic lighting AND shadows. I see a lot of games tout that, but have yet to really see it done at the full 100% level with a few exceptions (Doom 3 and the Crysis engine come to mind). That means everything is 100% dynamically lit on a per-pixel basis (no light maps or pre-baked lighting of anykind) as well as everything casts AND receives proper shadows. Of course there will be optional settings for the shadows.

    However, when set to the max, shadow determination and shadow rendering easly take longer than rendering the final lit scene without shadows.

    All of that together requires a lot of pixel pushing horsepower. There will be very few, if any current gen cards that could run at the asked about resolution with max settings turned on. SLI/Crossfire will help to a degree. A next-gen card would help even more. ;)

    One way to get decent to good to even great performance out of any of these types of (per-pixel lit) games is to run at a lower resolution. Something like 800x600 with a mild anti-aliasing setting enabled I find to be quite pleasing.

    However, compare the number of pixels that have to be processed at 800x600 = 480,000 versus something like 1900x1620 = 3,078,000. That's 6.4 times as many pixels that require processing!! And remember that today's games are doing the same amount of work on a PER-PIXEL basis that yesterday's games used to do on a per-vertex basis. :eek:

    Just food for thought. ;)

    More:
    Brian, will NWN2 "have" HDR? I'm not really sure what it is beyond a vague idea, but comparing screenshots things do tend to look better with it than without.
    That's still up in the air at the moment. I haven't implemented it yet, it's been on my list of things to do for quite a while. HDR is definitely "cool" but let's also admit that it is indeed one of the handful of latest "buzz" words flying around lately.

    With that being said, it's most definitely debatable just how much HDR brings to the table when considering the performance cost of it. I've heard that when turning the HDR off in Oblivion, the frame rate improves noticeably. While I haven't tested it myself, I'd say that if that is indeed the case, then that's a pretty heft price to pay. However, on the flip side that same argument could be made for just about any heavy hitting feature, so it's a toss up really.

    One way to look at it, is that maybe we traded a fully real-time shadowed world for HDR.

    Although realistically, even if we don't ship with HDR, I'd say there's decent probability that it may get patched in. ;)

    More: No problem.

    I will say that in general it's amazing what any of these heavy hitting features can bring to a game. Whether it be HDR, precomputed radiance transfer, fully dynamic shadows etc.

    To me personally, lack of shadows jumps out a lot more quickly to my eye than lack of HDR in terms of realness. Obviously that's subjective and I'm sure everyone has an opinion on it.

    Either way, they're both cool features and I'll be doing what I can to provide on all fronts.

    More:
    Well, it looks like the graphics engine will remain 'state of the art' for some time to come *stashes away more goldpieces for a crossfire configuration*
    Well, to a degree that's the plan. For a game that has a life expectancy of what? 4 to 5+ years, the best we can do is provide an engine that will scale relatively well across what's available today and across what tomorrow brings in terms of graphics hardware and horsepower.

    Anthony Davis, Programmer

    Bye, bye radial menu! [Episode III]
    I can understand that this is an issue that many people feel strongly about - on both sides of the line.

    Treating other posters who disagree with you harshly on this forum is also a sure fireway to cause more problems than you are attempting to solve. Treat people with the same respect and courtesy you expect to be treated with.

    Some of you guys have this idea in your head on how you think the GUI operates when I am willing to wager that not one of you has actually played the game. :shake:

    Most game developers don't make design decisions 'blindly'. Some of you are going from Zero to Overreact in about .5 seconds and you are going to give yourself an ulcer! Take it easy! :D

    For the NWN2 UI/GUI we looked at where the game 'WAS', where modern games 'ARE' (such as WoW, EQ2, DDO, and may more) and then, based on the schedule, the issues as we perceive them, and the resources available, we made decisions.

    I will do my best to explain and bring a little peace and clam to this issue though.

    Things that have changed:

    You can now explicitly target an individual in NWN2 (unlike NWN1 where targets were implicity selected). This is very similar to WoW. You can then perform actions on this target very rapidly. For example, I have a hostile goblin selected, I cast Magic Missle (through one of the several methods we have available for casting spells) and the goblin will be on the receiving end of the Magic Missle without needing to target him again, again very similar to WoW. If I still have that same goblin targeted while I select Cure Light Wounds, my mouse cursor will turn into the Spell Target Cursor and I can then choose an approriate target for that spell since I cannot (and would not) cast CLW on a hostile goblin.

    To cast spells, you can use either the hotbar system (some call it a quickbar) OR you can use the new Quick Cast System. The Quick Cast System is a mini menu system that pops up with a key press (currently defined as 'F' on my machine because I use the WASD keys to drive). Once the Quick Cast System pops open, I can quickly select an available spell. After selecting the spell, the Quick Cast System automatically closes to prevent obscuring the screen. Yes, this also works with Bards, Sorcerers, and MetaMagic feats and No, I am not going into more detail right now.

    The old radial menu system as you know it going away. It is being replaced by the Context Sensitive Menu that Josh has covered extensively. I personally feel that with the new system, things have gotten MUCH easier to use. This menu system works very similar (some would say identical) to the way the context system works in most modern operating systems and in Fallout.

    In addition to all of this, we are including something we call the 'Mode' bar. The Mode bar is where you will AUTOMATICALLY find all the various modes your character can go into (such as sneak and power attack). This small bar is collapsable and also draggable.

    Finally, the hotbar system has completely changed. Your hotbar system will allow for a great deal of customization through the XML system. you can create sidebars (ala WoW) and you can add more or less to the screen as you see fit. We intend to allow some degree of flexibilty to the key binding customization as well. Our hotbar system is MOST similar to the one WoW has.

    More on the hotbar, it is NOT one set of hotbar buttons for your entire party. EACH character in the party under your control has thier OWN set of hotbar buttons. That's 144 buttons per character. If I had 3 people in my party, each character would have their OWN set of 144 buttons (though this might drop to 10x12 for 120). If that is too many buttons for you, don't use them all. However I think that when you see some of the other cool unannounced functionality for the hotbar that people will find all sorts of cool uses for the extra buttons and bars.

    The default hotbar key bindings work almost IDENTICAL to WoW. Pressing 1 thorugh = will activate the corresponding BUTTON for the currently active HOTBAR. To rapidly switch to another hotbar, you currently use shift + a corresponding key (shift+2 will switch to the 2nd hotbar). Alternatively, you can use the little up and down arrow buttons on the hotbar. Again, this is not a new or foreign concept for hotbars. Many other successful games use the same or a very similar sytem.

    I will answer as many specific questions as I can (without releasing information that is still top secret) as long as the discourse is polite.

    More:
    Quick cast menu: Does the drop down menu look similar to what happens when I mouse over a program in my start menu in windows? In otherwords, will a list drop down and then I can use the mouse or up/down arrows to navigate that list and select my spells? Or does this work differently?
    I am not sure how much of this I am allowed to answer.

    How does it LOOK? uh...like...some buttons and stuff that pop up when you press the quick cast key. I don't know man. If I was a master of the writing craft I would be a famous novelist trying to decide how to deal with fame and money.

    The drop down is not caused by mousing over anything, instead it is caused by a key press.

    Currently the quick cast screen does NOT have keybindings. That is something that might change.

    J.E. Sawyer, NWN2 Lead Designer

    Bye, bye radial menu! [Episode III]
    As I said before, unless this quickcast bar is an amazing thing, even for a fully decked out lvl 20 wizard, the quickbars are going to be very limiting and frustrating for players.
    The quick cast menu at 800x600 resolution can display all spells levels 0-9 for a level 20 specialist wizard with a 40 Int and rings of wizardry I and II.

    More: Keep in mind that this is not a beautiful thing at such high levels, but it certainly will work. The high level caster can have a huge number of spells, so the quick cast menu can take up a pretty large chunk of screen real estate in those cases. For low- or mid-level casters, it takes up a very reasonable amount of screen space. It's small enough that in a lot of cases it could be left open.

    More:
    What about metamagic? :)
    Available metamagic feats for a character are displayed at the top of the quick cast menu. Clicking a metamagic feat button automatically adjusts the level/placement of all spells shown on the quick cast menu.

    More:
    The possibly expected follow-up question: can we apply multiple metamegic feats to a spell this time around ?
    Nope, sorry bud.

    Does this worry anyone else, or is it just me
    I was happy to see some info on crafting. But the whole idea of having to cater to the "twitch" crowd, who wants instant gratification in the game worries me a little.
    If you're worried that crafting caters to the "twitch" crowd, worry no more. For better or worse, crafting is a very complex element of NWN2 that requires the organzation of myriad items and following set procedures for each type of item.

    Though crafting is a complicated procedure, it is also entirely scripted. Endusers should be able to go nuts creating new recipes for their own projects.

    More:
    The time for crafting will be represented by actually going out and seeking your crafting components. I don't see the reason to add more tedium than there already is. And if you want an item to be hard to come by... give it expensive, hard-to-acquire components.
    You also must undertake crafting at specific workbench locations, so there's the very real time required to go there.

    light sensitivity
    A while back, I set my signature to a "hilarious" quote about day blindness that I had exchanged with Brock Heinz. Just so everyone is aware, dark elves and gray dwarves (drow/duergar) will suffer light sensitivity penalties (-1 to most rolls for drow, -2 for duergar) when in an outdoor map during certain hours of the day (I believe it's 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.). The exception to this is if the map is marked as AlwaysNight.

    We currently have no plans to support the sort of "flash" blindness from bright sources of light that is in the roolz (and IWD2 :cool: ).

    http://diogenes-lamp.info/images/dayblindness.jpg

    More:
    I guess I wanna ask, will there be spells these folks can use to make their eyes act like surface folks eyes? Maybe "Surface Eyeball" for lack of a better name?

    potato
    No, but I personally think the tradeoff of not having to deal with flash blindness (from immediate exposure to bright light sources) balances it out. Imagine having to make a save to avoid being blinded every time a bright spell went off near you. Good times.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    chevalier, Apr 13, 2006
    #1
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