Neverwinter Nights Board Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Once again, some comments from the Official Neverwinter Nights message boards.

Trent Oster, Producer:

On tile size: Correct, minimum is 2x2 and maximum is 32x32 with a maximum of 32 tiles in either axis.

Creature spawning: There are three ways for creatures to get spawned into and area. The first and preferred method is to use encounters. Encounters have less overhead when players are not near and should be more efficient as a whole. The second method is to place an instance of a creature into the world. This is the method for creating a creature who will always appear. A third way could be to set up a script which spawns the creature(s) when an event is triggered.

Cord Grimwinder-8d, Interplaygames.com Moderator:

On servers: 64 (users) max is just their current "guess", that number may indeed any up being higher depending on the machine and connection used for the server but they wont know for certain until extensive play testing is done. So, stay tuned for more details closer to release...

On nonstandad races: Above and beyond any issues with the license, there's some other things you need to consider. You have to keep in mind that every player race added means a *ton* of extra animation and artwork.

Why? Because once you let little Johnny play a Centaur, little Johnny's gonna want to dress that Centaur up in clothes and equipment and make fancy moves and emotes just like all the other kids on the playground so he doesn't get picked on ;-). He's gonna also want some Centaur specific skills and feats thrown too while you're at it (not to mention special armors, weapons, and mane ornaments).

As for your Quake comments, yes, you can make skins in Quake. It takes one per model, in NWN you're looking at 40 or more per model. I'm sure it will end up being done in NWN but it will take a)3D art software and b) a lot of time and talent.

I don't mean to sound overly harsh here, but it's intellectually lazy to just say "Oh, they could easily let us play any race/creature as a PC if they just *wanted* to!". No, they can't. Sitting at your table and imagining that Centaur PC is simple, coding all the extra rules and regs and doing the animation/artwork for a computer is NOT. There is a *great* deal of time and work involved in adding *any* race or class to the game, much less adding *every* race and class to the game ;-).

So, lay off the "They're repressing me!" trip and really think about what it requires to do what you ask. I can assure you BioWare would *love* to have the time and resources to code NWN such that it would automatically allow us to play any imaginable way we please. But that's the problem, our imaginations still far outstrip the little boxes sitting on our desks.....