Neverwinter Nights Forum News (Feb. 03, 05)

Remove all ads!

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 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.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker wins RPG of the Year!
We are all pretty excited about the win that is for sure. Dan and Cori were very happy about the nomination nevermind the win! I expect both will cease talking to me now and insist on bowls of green m&m's in their offices.

02 Feb 2005 - BioWare Celebrates 10 Years of Game Development
Dragon Age has not mentioned any kind of release date as yet but I can say that 2005 would be veeeery optimistic.

02 Feb 2005 - NWN Epic Builds Are Back!
We seemed to run into a tiny issue with renaming of files...but it seems to work fine with the Death Hunter. We are in the process of redoing the files from the originals. Very cool builds!

Rob Bartel, Senior Designer Live Team

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker

---

---

Third, I don't like the authorisation process. Yes, I do have a permanent link to the internet, but I was becoming very annoyed by the end of the game having to wait 30 seconds or more to load a save game ... why not compromise and check the first time the module is loaded? You already have to have HoTU CD authorisation to purchase the module ... a simple check would determine if these matched.

---

Unfortunately, this is not the authorization (which is near instantaneous) but the de-encryption and unpacking of the moduel that's taking so long. Your processor and memory effects this - for some it's around 10-15 seconds, for others (me on a 1Ghz)) it can be as long as 45 seconds. Yes, yes, I need an upgrade to my processor.

---

As LdyShayna suggests, that delay is tied to the decryption process rather than the actual online authentication. We're looking into ways to improve this with future premium modules and are targeting a theoretical 10-second decryption window on min-spec machines, which should be much more bearable.

How To Distract The DD/PM Community
Unless something goes horribly wrong, you should see some new premium modules within the next six month window. The existing three modules have brought in sufficient funds to ensure that the project continues so that's no longer in doubt. With the pending completion of Jade, we should be in a position to commit a greater degree of internal resources to the project as well. In short, the future is coming and it will be fun.

Robin Mayne, Webmaster

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker wins RPG of the Year!
Congrats to Dan and Cori, Rob and Keith, and everyone on the team (past and present) - this game has legs! A big thanks to the community for supporting NWN so passionately, as well as the premium modules - there's definately more RPG-goodness to come!

HotU Monster List

---

Hey all, I was wondering if there is a monster list with specific stats for each of the monsters that are encountered throught the game... Things like their level, classes, abilities, feats, skills, HP, BAB, what their weapon is, and any other basic information.

---

This should provide some of what you are looking for: Creatures of HotU

Tom Ohle, Public Relations

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker wins RPG of the Year!
Click Here
Kingmaker was named Computer RPG of the Year by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the Interactive Achievement Awards! Hooray!

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Not Your Normal Too Many Instructions

---

I found this: Click Here

And found it very useful. It confirms what I actually thought was going on. The "Too many instructions" is not the number of instructions in the script.. it's the number of instructions in que. Basically it's the number of instructions waiting to happen in memory.

You ever, in the game, click on a chest to open it behind a locked door, then click on the door to open it? Your character gets stuck... because he's qued to open the chest then open the door.. but he needs to open the door first, then go to the chest (try it! particulary in the OC prison, try clicking on one of the bodies, then the jail door)... anyway.. In the script it's not that the NPC is trying to do things in the wrong oder (although that would cause problems) .. it's just the number of things qued up...

Check out that page, he's a better instructor then I.

---

You might be mistaking TMI with something else.

A TMI condition is reached when the game terminates a script that has exceeded the maximum number of allowed instructions per script. TMI's usually manifest with the game freezing for several seconds before the error message is signaled to the console

An Action Queue (Too many actions) overflow happens when a creature gets action faster assigned to it's queue than it can execute them.

Finally there is an AI Update overflow which happens when the game has to more events than it can process in an AI update frame. AI Updates are done based on AI_LEVEL (SetAILevel), with VERY_HIGH and HIGH priority objects first, followed by everything else. After each object has been processed, the loop checks whether or not the maximum allowed time for an AI frame has been reached.

AI Update overflows are usually not noticeable as freezes since the game will never take more than the allowed time per frame. They are signaled to the DM console when they happen (note that the object/script listed as triggering the overflow is not necessary the culprit, it's just the last object processed before the game said "no more time left" in that AI frame.)

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker wins RPG of the Year!
Finally I can claim to share an office with "the award winning Cori May". That sounds about right

Dan Whiteside, Designer

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker wins RPG of the Year!
I'm allergic to M&M's, so I'll take Allsorts, but not the Blue and Black man-shaped ones. If you could just pick those out for me Jay and then bring the bowl to my office? Thanks.
Well, first off I would like to thank God and the Academy...
I needed a pick me up, so I'm in a happy place right now. I'm sure large numbers of the forumites and RPGCodex will quickly bring me down to earth. Ah well, I shall enjoy it while it lasts.