Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by Veldrin)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Tokens: I tried both a simple, 1 NPC conversation with the PC using the token and the Jinn premade PC and the correct gender pronoun, her, was used. I then tried a more complex 2 NPC conversation using the same token and PC and the correct gender pronoun was also used. Can you provide any more details about how your conversation is structured?

BTW: Tokens such as , , , always refer to the PC. Other tokens may refer to things such as the time of day.

Editing Saved Games: You cannot edit saved game files using the toolset. While this is a feature I would love to add, there are a _lot_ of technical issues that would have to be resolved. For example, the saved game includes information about the current state of the virtual machine that is running all the scripts. What happens if a creature that is in the middle of executing a script is deleted? What if that creature was in combat with another creature or a PC? What if instead of running some script, that creature had, in its inventory, the sword the PCs are to return to the plot giver? What if you delete an area containing one or more PCs? We could avoid those problems by removing the ability to delete certain (or even all) placed objects and areas from a saved game, but that requires a huge interface change. Now, there are work-arounds currently available that generally ignore these issues and require the module designer to be aware of the potential problems. I would, personally, prefer to offer a more complete solution. That being said, if the module is not in the middle of being played (ie the actual saved game is not important for its own sake), there are a couple of ways to handle changes to a module:

1. Move the module's start location to a more appropriate point. If you don't want to plow through the entire module, simply reposition the module's start location temporarily and start the module with a sufficiently powerful PC.

2. Use a test area. If you're testing the effect of a change to the module's OnAcquireItem script, place the item in a test area and move the module's start location there. Do not add any area transitions to the test area.

3. Use a test module. Sometimes the things you wish to test are more complex than can be reasonably verified using a single test area. In those cases, create a stripped down test module that does nothing except test that feature.

BTW: I am currently unaware of any game that allows the players to actually edit their saved games. If anyone can provide an example, I'd love to take a look at it.

Spell Wizard: Adding new spells involves either:

1. Replacing an existing spell by changing it's script.
or
2. Changing at least 1 .2da file as well as the corresponding in-game GUIs.

This means that, unfortunately, a new spell wizard is unlikely.

A spell is replaced by replacing the script that the spell uses with a custom script you write with its own unique behaviour. The script would reside in the current module (or you could place it in a .hak file) and be used whenever that spell is activated by either a player or NPC. Obviously, the original spell is no longer available in that module. If, for example, you replaced the Magic Missile spell script with a script that gave the target 100 gp, then whenever the player cast Magic Missile (it would still be called Magic Missile), the target would gain 100 gp instead of being hit by the standard Magic Missile effect.