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Neverwinter Nights Forum News

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Aug 15, 2004.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    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.

    Robin Mayne, Webmaster

    Rob I have know if this was intentional
    I chatted with Rob about the butterfly shadows when WWI was released (like you, I thought this was a great touch) - IIRC the discovery of the these cool shadows was accidental but welcome, considering the mood of the area! Feel free to correct my para-phrasing and occasionally-faulty memory, Rob

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    Loving the new "fail on 1" switch
    A lot of areas have been designed with the 5% chance for something to happen in mind (i.e. beholder caves) and when this is taken away, the campaign will appear very easy and boring.
    Except that it's not 5%, not by a longshot. The chance of dying is close to 65% every 20 die rolls for saves against death/petrification. You'll make a lot more than 20 of those in the OC. Every 50 rolls, the chance of death is 92.4%. Eventually, you will roll that '1' and have to reload/respawn, unless you have a lot of immunity items, in which case there's no point to saving throws.
    That'd be 5% per attack. And yes, this is intentional in the official campaign.

    List Servers that want your money
    Sorry, I don't agree. "Pornography" is quite different from the mere display of body parts, even if the behave anatomically correct.
    Sorry GZ, not to argue, but go check the definitioof pornography. Dictionary.com defines it as:
    Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.
    Note: Before you read on, please read the disclaimer at the end of this post. Thank you. hrhr, yea sure, whatever poor soul would get sexual arousal from a jiggly hakpak. Sounds fairly ridicoulous. I could see a problem when people would start to motion capture certain things, but thankfully NWNs graphics and creature models are not really suited to arouse anyone. Again it's a matter of definition and I'm sure that i.e. in some parts of the bible belt certain things that would not raise an eyebrow in Europe (nipplegate?) would be interpreted as pornography by some. I think sites like the Vault not cutting down their file archive to the lowest common denominator is a good thing, because otherwise there wouldn't be much left of it (some might be offended by the presence of blood, others by the presence of portraits without headscarfs). And modules like Lisa's "Sex and the single adventure" fall definitly under "comedy", not "pornography". It's not worse than stuff you get to see on (north american) TV every day or on a beach in europe.

    Anyway, I can't remember any really bad things on the Vault in this regard (maybe just because I don't download jiggly hakpaks) and I have not heard any complaints stuff either, while there have been a few complaints about violations over the "no commercial exploitation" rule that caused us headache. Personally (*IaNaL*) I don't see a problem with a PW or fansite accepting donations to help them run their operation as long as it is very clear that there is *no* in game benefit for people who donate. I think there are several good sites (i.e. nwconnections.com) that would have trouble to operate without some voluntary donations, and I don't think it is in our interest to shut those people down. It seems fine to me to have a thank you webpage and maybe even a statue epraising those who donate in game, but things like "consultation fees for attaching wings", "special ingame itemes", "access to new races or classes" or "special services to modify a character" cross the line for me. A lawyer might have a different stance on that issue of course, you never know. I'm happy to see that Aventia is no longer offering special in game benefits for people donating to their service. We have made our stance clear in this matter and the problem has been resolved. End of story.

    It is good when things like this are brought to our attention and it is good when a problem can be solved without getting the legal people involved. Things like the "Urath online affair" a while back mean headache for everyone. Sometimes the mob is calling for someone to be burned on a stick, but I don't think that is the point. The point is to guarantee the NWN's online game is free and there is no two class society between people who donate and people who don't. We achieve that without burning sticks, fine, better for everyone involved. IMO - if you run a PW and you start to realize that your PW has become a very expensive hobby you can not finance without getting cash by offering services for it, you need to take a step back. Stop accepting new players, and see if you can find a solution to scale back your costs.

    Yes it might suck if you run the most successful PW with a lot of players out there and not being able to break the EULA ruins your ability to finance your operation, but at this point you have probably stepped the line between hobby and business operation anyway. Also, keep in mind that even accepting donations without services in return may make you a target for your countries tax agencies. I would strongly recommend to inform yourself about these matters before putting up a donation page on your website. In some countries you need to be a registered charity to be able to accept donations and not declaring them when filing taxes might constitute tax fraud.

    Disclaimer: Again, I am not a lawyer and whatever interpretation for the EULA or local laws I might have, are just that, interpretations and do not constitute legal advice. All content in this post is my personal believe and not neccessarily the opinion of my employer or any other person at BioWare.

    More:
    ok, i'm not putting any quotes here, but adult nudity IS unquestionably more pornographic
    Cut that unquestionable. I.e. in most parts of Europe adult nudity is *not* pornographic. If you have complaints about content on fansites, you can always contact the owner to let them know you don't like it and that you think it violates the EULA - they will decide whether or not your complaints are justified.

    More: A last note on the "pay for play subject".

    Pay for play is
    - a violation of NWNs license agreement
    - commercial exploitation of BioWare's work
    - unauthorized use of WotC's and Hasbro's D&D license
    - violating the license agreement with Atari
    - probably violating the rights of third party artists (i.e. music)
    - commerically expointing BioWare's free services such as master server authentification / account verification.
    - using gamespy's services in a commercial fashion that might require you to pay for a license.

    It is not possible to create anything with the NWN toolset that does not include some of BioWare's art, scripts and other content.

    It is not possible to create anything with the NWN toolset that is not using licensed property such as the d20 rules engine.

    As soon as money changes hands, be it for "services", be it for preferential treatment or be it for the right to play, you are entering a business relationship with someone and you could not provide these services without NWN, it is essential to that "business" and a business tool - you are commercially exploiting other peoples work and licenses.

    By going pay to play you are not only violating NWNs EULA, you are also making unauthorized use other people's IP and licenses. Don't forget that companies pay a lot of cash for the right to use licenses like the D&D license in an online game.

    About the whole "selectivly enforcing the EULA issue". If an Eula violation is brought to our attention, it is investigated and decided whether or not it constitues a violation or not and what action is required. Some PWs got asked to change their donation policies and did in the past, nobody noticed it. Some modules/content got pulled of the vault in the past and people rarely notice at all. Conflicts like this are usually resolved without much fireworks and only the high profile cases make it to the boards, so whatever impression people get about "selective enforcement" does not reflect neccessarily reflect reality.

    More:
    Ok ok ok... so answer this simple question. Is asking for a simple "donation" to a server to help purchase better server items considered a violation? Nothing attached, the person receives no benifit (except maybe a faster server experience".
    I can not provide you a legal or official answer to this, but personally I don't see a problem with that (apart from the implications with your countries tax laws).

    saving throws not correct / why is the game cheating ?
    It is perfectly possible that the creature you are talking about has items to bump his will save (he might not drop them on death), feats to aid his willsave (i.e. willpower) or spell effects that provide that boost.

    In a related note, please do NOT post any plot specific questions into this forum but instead use the campaign forum to avoid spoiling parts of the plot to people who have yet to play it. Thank you.

    HotU / 1.6x: New Scripting/Toolset Functionality explained
    Introduction to Tag based item scripting     by Axe Murderer Click Here (or how to make custom scripted items that can be easily ported/shared.

    Player authentication
    So the whole authentication process take place only on the database web server and the external one only get the authentified username with the corresponding session_id. (I'm not sure I'm fully understandable in english so I wirte it as clearly as I can: This is not a request, just an information) Perhaps it can help someone somewhere even if it is out of this forum purpose :)
    Hey, I understand that, but please understand that we do not like to see any "use your BioWare account and password here" on any website outside of BioWare.com.

    saving throws not correct / why is the game cheating ?
    thanks for your quick answers - as I am pretty new to the board, what does "OC" mean? Original Campaign? And how exactly does the game cheat, any formulas how saving throws or hp's get increased? The "gang leader" has 135hp by the way .. 35 bonus hp thru his high constitution and 100 base hp -> :lol: Is "rule 0" as mentioned by Georg Zoeller an explanation of that system or was that referring to a board rule ? :) anyways sorry for posting this in the wrong forum
    rule 0 in Pnp means "the DM is always right and overrides any other game rules" rule 0 in our case means "gamplay is more important than rules because peole don't play your game if it is not fun and then it doesn't matter if you are sticking to the rules or not". It also means "The module creator is always right and can override any other rules if he thinks it is justified".

    Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

    Cannot Restart HotU
    This problem started after I had installed HotU. Half the time i try to play the game, (double-click icon, click "Play") it will just sit on my desktop with a spinning CD disc cursor. The other half of the time when i get into the game it works great. Also, when it fails to load the game, i cannot kill the nwnmain.exe from my taskmanager, ever. How can i fix it so it always launches the game?
    This sounds like it might be a SecureRom issue. I believe that you can right click on the nwmain.exe and generate a report (by clicking on "Launch Analysis" or something similar). This report can then be sent to SecureRom to help with the issue, but I don't remember all the details about doing that. There might be some more information about SecureRom on the Atari site.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    chevalier, Aug 15, 2004
    #1
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