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. 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.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Hail Of Arrows: My interpretation of "sneak attack", is, that the character performing the sneak attack is doing a precise attack targeted against vital areas of the opponent in order to inflict as much damage as possible. Since hail of arrows hits any creature on the screen, even if they are behind the archer, he has no chance of actually aiming his attack against vital parts. Thus I do not think this kind of magical attack is eligible for a sneak attack bonus. but again, this is my interpretation, not neccessarily the interpretation of those who actually implemented this feat

Quote: In PnP we can imbue arrows with multiple spells. Will NWN have any other arrows besides firballs as imbued. (acid arrow, etc.) Or is there a way to script our own?

"No comment" on the first part of this question. "possible" on the second part

Al Schilling, Product Manager

NWN Mac: First, let me thank all of you who have taken such an interest in NWN Mac for you participation in these forums. It's been very enlightening. As you are all aware, I've been on pins and needles awaiting the various approvals necessary to get NWN Mac into production-trying to hit a ship date of July 30th. I promised you all that you'd be the first to know when the approval process was over, and I'm happy to report that all approvals have been granted! I've handed off the gold master CDs to duplication and we will begin shipping from our facility on July 30. You should start seeing NWN on store shelves as early as next weekend. A big thanks to Derek, Darcy, Andrew and all the other folks at BioWare who have put so much effort into getting this done! Let the games begin.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

Bugs: Any repeatable crash that was identified with enough information was fixed. We did fix a number of them. There was a sound/music crash issue that was in the TT, but was resolved be the fine folks at RAD Game Tools. The new version of the Miles Sound library works great and is in the final version of NWN for Mac.

Patch 1.31 Beta: 1.31 Beta 2 should be out Monday. Beta 1 had some nasty issues.

David Gaider, Designer

NWN Engine: To use a brand-new engine for NWN2, as in starting right from scratch, would be pretty unrealistic. It would completely cancel out any good that comes out of having the original engine to begin with... doing BG2 was a dream, for example, because we had something that existed already right at the beginning. An engine can be modified as much as it needs to. Heck, look at Knights of the Old Republic... that was based off the Aurora engine. It all depends on how much work you're willing to put into it. Whenever we say "it's an engine limitation", keep in mind that we're talking about this iteration of the engine and the fact that big modifications take the kind of manpower and time that is ONLY available in a full-product project. At some point, though, you can only rip out so much of an engine's guts before keeping the superstructure becomes more trouble than it's worth. I guess there would be certain things beneficial about starting over completely... but in my opinion you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You're also inviting that whole new-engine process all over again, which is such a headache. Not saying that there are any plans to use the Aurora for NWN2 or that there is even a NWN2 in the works.

Quote: Does this mean that the next iteration of the Aurora toolset might be multiplatform friendly? (Seeing as how the current iteration isn't?)

Hmm? I'll assume you don't mean consoles... so you must mean platforms like Mac and Linux. If you want to talk mights and maybes, anything could happen. I really don't know Bio's plans regarding it.I have my doubts that it would be a priority, considering how small a market we're talking, but that's just my personal opinion. My assumption would be that such a decision would belong more to the publisher... Bioware is, after all, primarily a PC and console developer.