Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News

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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.

Ferret, Developer

Diplomacy
I think diplomacy has its time and place (and for a Diplomacy-based character that time may be frequent), but just like the real world there are some things you just can't bargain with. And in the Realms, multiply that by a lot (the Umber Hulk example being a good one of that - but there are many many more critters like that).

FrankK, Programmer

Creature Design

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Except then you have to individually retexture all arms and armor for them, instead of simply applying a transform to existing geometry and using existing armor textures - and varying the .plt colors as necessary to fit the theme (tweaking for skin/scales/fur etc. as required). Maximum bang for the buck is .plt all around - including their use on placeables and terrain where possible as long as sufficient resources exist within the engine. Why reskin when you can change the texture dynamically? (an oversimplificaation as you are changing the color, not the texture, but there is something to be said for the power of the approach), The systems are interdependent - the work does not need to be done and redone and yet again redone - in short: there are too many new textures to do all over again if you do not. And most of all - the adjustments necessary to make this work within the existing system are not substantial. And who is to say a Goblin or orc PC is a bad idea? "Shouldn't be able" are strong words - and rarely wise ones.

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You've outlined the plusses of plt very well. The current engine generates a 32-bit texture from the greyscale for each paletted texture in the game (even if there are 'duplicates'). We are looking at several 'coloring' solutions for the skins and haven't ruled out keeping the current system. In terms of model geometry, we have something cooking that is much kinder on memory and more powerful in visual appearance than unique heads. Edit: we actually HAVE ruled out keeping the current system in its current format. What I meant to say is that we haven't ruled out keeping the greyscale palette system.

Visual Effects Browser
We are investigating ways to make visual effects more accessible to the masses.

System Requirements
Rather than futz with DX9 compliance/compatibilty the easier way to answer this question is: Does the card support at least vertex/pixel shader 2.0? You will need at least that to get per-pixel lighting in the game. Anything else will run plain-as-jane vertex lighting. We may throw in a few extras for shader 3.0 cards, but that's just optimistic lead programmer talk.