Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Apr. 13, 06)

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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

NWN 2: Hardware Requirements
They haven't been officially announced yet. However, to get some "ideas" please read the FAQ and the PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING stickied thread at the top of this forum. Thanks!

Visual Effects Editor - Discussion
I doubly guarantee!

J.E. Sawyer, NWN2 Lead Designer

light sensitivity

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Secondly, the light needs to be particularly bright for this to happen. IIRC the sourcebook listed sunlight and the daylight spell as possible sources. So it seems that torchlight and the light spell aren’t strong enough to create the effect. The way I see it is if a human might need to squint for a second or two to adjust their eyes then a drow would be blinded.

And thirdly, as far as I’m aware there isn’t any save related to avoid this… you are blinded for one round (what are they going to do to avoid being blinded… close their eyes?)

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Because there wasn't a definitive list, IWD2 allowed a reflex save but included a lot spells that could possibly be considered "pretty bright". So, for example, a fireball spell could cause temporary blindness. And yes, the idea was that they looked away when the flash hit.

But since we're only doing the basic "out in sunlight" penalty, it doesn't really matter.

Will NWN2 use Gamespy? (please say no)

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I am betting the answer is yes.

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Correct.

some random stuff about companions and you
Yesterday I went on an information-wrangling mission to understand the entire process by which XP is divided up and doled out between PCs and companions. Since I thought these things would be of importance to modders, here's the edited version:

* All companions, when first added, should be reset through script (through the Reset function, that is). Always. Almost no blueprint information set on a companion is used, and attempting to use a non-Reset companion will result in bizarre behavior when leveling up. Reset allows the scripter to take the character down to 1st level and advance them according to their level-up packages.

* The Reset function can do the following: 1) pass an XP value that could be defined anywhere else. It could be average PC experience, highest PC experience, or a flat integer 2) pass a flag that determines whether or not to modify that value based on the companion blueprint’s post XP division scalar (defined later).

E.g.: Flimzel Flam joins the party. His XP is calculated through a script that includes the Reset function and a function for calculating the XP passed to Reset. The script (in this example) averages the party experience and sets the passed XP value to that unless it is lower than 50,000 (ensuring a minimum XP amount for him). The scripter checks the scalar flag to true, so that value is then multiplied by 1.2 (the value specified in Flimzel's blueprint). If the average party XP is 100,000, Flimzel gets 120,000. If the average party XP is 10,000, Flimzel gets 60,000 (because the minimum of 50,000 was still multiplied by 1.2).

The following stuff will allow us to modify how companions gain XP in the game after being added.

Campaign Setting – Companion XP Weight: This value determines how much a companion counts when dividing XP throughout the entire campaign. 1 = PC value. If this value were .3, three companions would count as .9 of a PC when dividing the XP pool. Two PCs and two companions would count as 2.6 PCs in total. As always, regardless of the companion XP weight, all party members are awarded the same portion of XP post-division.

Blueprint Setting – Post XP Division Scalar: Basically, this value is applied as a factor to the XP awarded after it is divided up. If a companion is given 1,000xp and has a .75 scalar, the companion actually gets 750 xp. If we wanted our companions to be slightly lower in XP than the PCs, we could set it to .8 (for example).

Campaign Setting – Auto XP Awarding: This flag determines whether or not XP is "stored" for companions in the roster when they aren’t in the party.

In a campaign where you wanted companions to count as a half character for dividing XP, be a little less powerful than the PCs, and automatically gain XP even when they aren't in the party, you would do the following:

Companion XP Weight = .5
Post Division XP Scalar = .75
Auto XP Awarding = True

In a campaign where you wanted companions to count as full characters for dividing XP, gain the same XP as the PCs, and not gain XP when not in the party, you would do the following:

Companion XP Weight = 1
Post Division XP Scalar = 1
Auto XP Awarding = False


More:

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but is it putting restrictions on that starting level of the companion when things are reset? (As in if I want a short term companion that is of a substantially higher level than the player, is that possible?)

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You can do this very easily.

When adding the character, you use the Reset function and could pass to it a value from a different function. That function could take the average party XP or 10,000, whichever is higher (for example). Whatever XP is passed to the companion could then be multiplied by the scalar set on the companion's blueprint. If you want to make sure this character is pretty beefy compared to the PC, you could set that scalar to 1.5.

So here's two examples of what would happen when two different characters get this NPC (let's call him Flimzel Flam again).

A character with 6,292 XP gets Flimzel Flam to join the party. The character's XP is well below 10,000, so 10,000 is passed to the Reset function. The Reset function tells the XP to be multiplied by the 1.5 scalar on the PC, so Flimzel Flam joins the party with 15,000 XP and immediately levels up according to his level-up package.

A character with 52,887 XP and a character with 42,928 XP get Flimzel Flam in their party. The average, 47,907, is passed to Reset. This is multiplied by 1.5, resulting in Flimzel Flam joining the party with 71,861 XP.


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is this reset part of the law? What if the companion is supposed to be 5th level no matter how mighty you are?

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Just pass whatever value to Reset is required for the character to be 5th level (10,000 assuming no ECL penalties).

crafting question - changing enchantments
Once an enchantment is on an item, it cannot be removed. Sorry.

EDIT: However, you can add enchantments to an item that already has one.

More:

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You mean for the OC and with the default crafting, right?

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Correct.

Ghostwise Halfling?
Here is a small version of a portrait Vance Kovacs did for a ghostwise halfling in IWD2.

Click Here

I like ghostwise halflings.

Nathaniel Chapman, NWN2 Q&A

Foliage, Grass, and Water Systems
Actually, we don't use SpeedTree for grass. SpeedTree is used for stuff like bushes and, well, trees.

While it'd be cool to do grass as something other than a billboard, it'd also be prohibitively expensive. You'll notice very few games (I actually can't think of any) that do grass as anything other than billboards for this very reason.

I will also say that you guys haven't really seen any screenshots that incorporate our most recent grass textures.

More:

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I'm not sure why you suggested nurbs. Nurbs is dead far as I know. The engine and video card reads triangles. The math from nurbs would cause extra cpu power. If grass was very important I suppose normal mapping with parallax technique would be ideal. Imo, I rather not have laggy grass. The way things are going now it's good to put extra detail in with the gpu. Even using parallax is going overboard at this time, imo. I'm not sure how this engine works, but the ones I have worked with are a bit laggy with tons of mesh objects(grass, trees, and ect) =/ .

Edit: @Nathaniel Chapman, I have not seen any grass in games that isn't "billboard" as well. I'm kinda wonder how a normal map will look on them though /lol . Have to test that out someday. I have seen animated foliage which looks really nice if the engine can afford it. Is the foliage in NWN2 animated?

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I don't believe the texture itself is animated, but it does have a slight programmatic sway. Makes it look more real.

Totalvideogames article - on water

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Moving on from lighting to water, Obsidian once again recognised that modders had to be able to, well, modify the water to suit their own visions, and to that end the team developed a multiplayer water system. Such a system means that gamers can actually anything from flowing water through to molten lava (if the lighting and the colours were changed appropriately.) As with the lighting system, the water system so far seems to be very versatile, and something that many within the Neverwinter Nights community are sure to go a little crazy over. Together with the three layers, water in the game also features reflection and refraction techniques that further bring the effect to life. The tool set includes an 'eye-dropper' that enables gamers to designate the water level, together with the ability to change the flow of the water itself.

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This raised a couple questions for me. First, is the water level like a second height map? For example, can you have ponds and streams and rivers on a slope, or just a single water height for the entire area?

Secondly, is the water flow a per-area setting, or do different parts of the water flow in different ways? (so you can create a winding river)

Sounds like we'll get some fun toys to play with, either way.

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Water height (as well as all water settings) are set on a per-terrain tile basis, and are not dependent on the heightmap. You can have a water poly floating way above the ground if you wanted to, but it would look pretty silly.

In addition, there are enough water settings for you guys to go totally nuts with making cool looking watery areas. Among those are: Color, Ripple direction (X and Y values), Smooth vs. Rough, Refractive vs. Reflective, and more.