Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Mar. 13, 05)

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Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 forum highlights, collected by NWVault from Obsidian Forums. 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.

Adam Brennecke, Programmer

Questions to the Developers

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Quote: 4. It's highly unlikely we will do something like this. The scripting system is our interface to the game engine that we are providing to the public.

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The scripting system is on the inside of the game engine, while the world is on the outside, there is a short discussion on this on the NWNX forums as to peoples desires in the matter: http://www.nwnx.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=163

A quick summarary would be to say Papillon (the author of NWNX) would just like a set of functions similar to SetLocalWhatever() GetLocalWhatever() which do nothing more than call a function in the game engine with a unique function signature.

Others like me have dreamed of TCP sockets to pass data in/out, but a common one is a way to inject tempoaral data, eg a interrupt from the outside world to trigger a user event for example, going along papillon's thinking that would just be a function with an easilly identifiable signature which would set a flag so the next time the event system comes around it triggers a module event.

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Don't get your hopes up. Believe it or not, the scripting system works much like this. If the scripting system isn't powerful enough for you, I would recommend going to the scripting request sticky post on this forum to post your ideas on how to improve scripting functionality.

Erik Novales, Programmer

Modal Toolset Windows

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2 Questions... 1. Erik...you said they are "pretty much" gone. The implication is "not entirely". Which windows will still be the same as the current Toolset implementation?

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I said "not entirely" because there are still modal dialogs within the toolset like open, save, when you add a new conversation line (similar to NWN1), etc. All of the actual editors, though, are modeless.

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2. I wonder if anyone has commented on CID's idea of being able to playtest your changes within the toolset somehow? That would be absolutely amazing!

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It is not possible to run the game within the toolset.

Tony Evans, Designer

Obsidian Wednesdays?
Unfortunately, there is not a lot that we can talk about at this stage of development that isn't already in the FAQ. If we gave you a weekly update right now it would look something like this:

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Neverwinter Nights 2 Update
Week of March 7th, 2005
Designers
- Worked on areas designs that we can't talk about publicly.
- Wrote dialogue for interesting characters that we can't disclose.
- Talked about miscellaneous story and design issues that we are not at liberty to discuss outside of Obsidian.

Artists
- Drew cool concept art for areas that we can't mention.
- Modeled some awesome things that we can't release screenshots of for the next several months at least.

Programmers
- Partially implemented a fantastic new system for something we can't talk about.
- Wrote some snazzy scripts that few people outside of the development team will care about.
- Made a plethora of Toolset tweaks.

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See? Not terribly interesting or informative... And the update for the next week would be identical, and the next week after that, and the next - I think you get the point.

So hold your horses for now, because we are just as eager, if not more so, to brag about the cool game we're working on as you guys are to hear about it. When we have more information that we can reveal, you guys (and gals, and hermaphrodites, etc.) will be the first to know.

Forced Choices
We are not going to force players to make a certain choice in NWN2, except in places where that choice must be made to progress in the story (ie. accepting a critical path quest). However, players will always have a lot of freedom in how they react/respond to things. Examples of response options include, but are not limited to: good (refusing a reward), evil (threatening to kill someone), chaotic (breaking laws, such as stealing) and lawful (doing the "right" thing).

The player's alignment will change based upon their acts and responses. Even a paladin player will have the option to act like a jerk, but if he remains true to his character, he will often choose to do the good, lawful thing.

Why don't writers get any love?
Writing for games is not like writing traditional stories or books. It is closer to writing screenplays, but is usually much more complex. How much more complex depends upon the depth of story in the game and how non-linear and flexible it needs to be.

Having worked with traditional writers who endeavored to write for games and having written story and dialogue for games myself, I can say with certainty that the ability to write a good game story is a unique skill that takes a lot of talent and practice to develop, even if you are already an accomplished writer in other mediums. Do you think the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring would be able to translate into good gameplay if someone just threw it into a game, word for word? Integrating story into gameplay, especially non-linear gameplay, requires a lot of forethought, editing, juggling, iteration, teamwork and compromise.

Story and dialogue in games, especially very story-intensive games such as RPGs, are usually written by multiple people, and game developers rarely enjoy the leisurely writing schedules of authors such as Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin, who take 5 (or more) years to write a single book.

The story for KotOR 2 was written by several different designers, all working together for a little over a year to create a consistent, engaging and non-linear story that ended up being about twice the size of War and Peace.

Books are written to *tell* a story. Screenplays are written to *show* a story. Games are about *experiencing* a story.

Let's say you were trying to illustrate to someone a day in your life (ie. go to work, go home, eat, play KotOR2)... The easiest thing to do is to tell them about it. The next easiest thing is to bring a video camera with you and play it back to them. The hardest thing to do is to put them in your shoes and direct them throughout your day so that they can experience your day for themselves.

Click Here

This is an article on Greg Zeshuk's GDC presentation about Storytelling. Most of what he talks about should be common sense to designers and writers who are accustomed to writing for games (such as the Obsidian designers), but it might be an eye-opener for some of the people who have posted in this thread.

Rich Taylor, Programmer

GUI Customizeable?
My thoughts on it are like this at the moment:
(Already in)
There are now global GUI variables and window-specific variables that can be used to cache and retrieve things like numbers, object IDs, text, etc.
Text fields in the GUI can display the contents of these variables with a simple OnUpdate callback.
For example, in the XML to define a text field, I add:
OnUpdate=DisplayVar( Global:1 )
then every time that text field updates, it will display the contents of the global GUI var at index 1.
Or
OnUpdate=DisplayVar( Local:3 )
Then every time that text field updates, it will display the contents of the local variable #3 located on the window that contains that text field.

(What I'd like to add)
#1) The custom buttons on the client-side GUI will be able to fire off messages to the server to execute scripts on the server side.

#2) Add script functions that can put values in the client's copy of the GUI Variables.
Like for example:
SetGlobalGuiVar( <numeric index>, "SomeString" );

Or maybe something more specific like:
SetGlobalGuiVar( <player>, <numeric index>, "SomeString" );

Or the local var version:
SetLocalGuiVar( <player>, <window-name>, <numeric-index>, "SomeString" );

So then what you could set up would be the ability to have the client execute scripts on the server. And have the client display information that the server wants by having the server store the data in GUI variables and let the text fields or whatever retrieve that data from the GUI variables.


A couple thoughts on this system.

#1) There would need to be a way to flag scripts as being able to be executed by the client-side GUIs or not.

#2) I'm not sure about having the server go so far as to /provide/ the GUI .xml files for the client. I think I'd much rather the client-user have to download those GUI files and install them manually, so they know what they're getting into. As opposed to having someone connect to some server and have their UI modified without them expecting it. Not to mention it'd add quite a bit of work to get the server to send the GUI files on its own.

Anyway, that's just some thoughts I have on how to approach this at the moment. Feel free to pick it apart, offer suggestions for improvement, or point out problems with this idea.

Again, I must emphasize that none of this is a sure thing, but I enjoy discussing the idea with you so I can't help but comment on some of the ideas that've come to mind.