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.

David Gaider, Designer

Placeables: Have you ever seen that many mushrooms placed together in the caverns tileset? It's available as a placeable. As is the wall ivy, as are ground patches of moss/snow/dirt/cobblestone.

Quote: What all can the ivy cling to?

It doesn't actually cling. It's just a vertical placeable... you can have the ivy crawling up air, if you like. It looks really good against a wall, a gate or a pillar, though.

2DA Access: You guys are incorrigable. Now all of a sudden it just isn't good enough unless it also comes with convenient integer-converters and built-in search functions.

Quote: To answer the other question - I had assumed that it would have to be on both the client (via a Hak Pak) and the server (as with modified .2das), but you are correct - it might not. That would make it much easier. Any clarification on this point, David??

I would assume that if the .2da is custom it is handled like any other custom content. Could be wrong, though... you'll have to see for yourselves.

Rural Tileset Changes: One problem with this, however: the creatures are all designed to stand on flat surfaces. You won't notice much of a difference with the two-legged humanoids, but when the creature is four-legged or much larger (like a dragon) you're going to end up with one side visibly off the ground and one side clipping into the side of the hill when they are on a slope. I'm not saying that it doesn't look nice visually... it does... but I don't think we would put that kind of change in without also fixing this issue, and I'm not even certain exactly what that kind of fix would take.

Quote: Add more placeables. For instance, see the work of Martin E. His placeable trees completely put the standard ones in the toolset to shame. With good tree placeables, it is possible to turn the rural tileset into a forest. If we had more hill transitions/styles, we could create hills or even mountains. With more houses, we could have true rural communities in a variety of settings (mountains, hills, lightly wooded, plains, etc.)

Placeables are great, and I do like Martin E.'s trees. I would caution people against an over-reliance on them, however. For starters, placeables can wreak havoc on the walkmesh... creatures can't take placeables into account when calculating their path points, so if you have placeables littered about your area you can make pathing quite problematic. This can be doubly dangerous if you intend to have combat in the area. That said, there are a good deal more placeables in SoU, including many that can be used outdoors. (While the Rural tileset is indeed the work-horse of all the tilesets, we actually haven't used it in the OC at all. Fancy that.)

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Quote: I believe I have seen this happen when changing area and the server is autosaving.

You could try switching autosave off if you have it on. Yep that's the cause. When an autosave occurs while you are going through an area transition, this problem may happen (depends on a few other factors too). We've made a fix for this problem and the fix will be in an upcomming patch (don't know at this point when that will be).