Neverwinter Nights Forum News

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by chevalier)

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.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Witch's Wake:
For the record, the notion of a pay-to-download framework is under discussion as a means of supporting ongoing Live Team involvement into the future. There's no guarantee it will come to pass, however, and there's no guarantee that the Witch's Wake series will or will not become a part of that framework should it arise.

Witch's Wake began as a free series highlighting the best content available in the community. Unfortunately, due to its nature as a free series, it became very hard to justify keeping a full-time designer assigned to it when other projects were experiencing design shortages and looming deadlines. While I firmly believe that the initial Witch's Wake module did its part to re-invigorate the builder community and drive sales of both the original NWN and its expansions, that's a very hard thing to prove to those who crunch the numbers and make the real decisions. Instead, the success of the original Witch's Wake module actually resulted in a greater internal demand for my skills. In the end, I've been able to spend only three months of the past year and a half on Witch's Wake.

The same has been true of the Live Team as a whole. Even before NWN's release, for instance, we identified a need for a dedicated Live Team artist to generate new downloadable content in regular installments. Because the Live Team was not directly responsible for generating revenue, however, such an artist was never assigned. We received some part-time art involvement that allowed us to add rats, kobolds, and gnolls via download but that well has since dried up. In short, if we do move toward some form of pay-to-download framework (for WW or otherwise), it will be to support the provision of ongoing content and value from the Live Team over the coming months and hopefully years.

Further:
Hehe. I warned Tom that I was stirring up a hornet's nest here. Regarding the concern about splintering the community, I assure you that it's a concern I share. The model I've been advocating is one where new base content (i.e. new creatures, new scripting functions, etc) is made readily available through the patch/update system just like kobolds and rats were for WW1. Under such a model, you would only be paying to download the actual playable module (be it WW or something else). If that's the approach we end up taking, there would be no splintering of the community because the individual components would be freely available to everyone. You'd be paying for the story, the gameplay, the chance to see those individual components integrated into a playable context but you'd be paying once for it, up front, with no hidden costs or implied exclusivity of content.

As for what made WW1 successful, I would heartily agree with Orik that it was a highly collaborative effort and one that I'd like to see continue in WW's future, regardless of whether it's developed under a pay-to-download framework or not. The Live Team and the QA department have been working together to develop an even better beta-testing environment than the effective but ad-hoc one we threw together for WW1. Personally, I'd love to see that environment extended in the future to accommodate our traditional retail titles as well. While the core vision on WW1 was always mine, the beta testers were the ones who really shaped it into something magical. The last point I'll make here is that any pay-to-download system is going to be an opt-in one. The onus is on us to develop content that's worth your gaming dollar. If the stuff we put out sucks, don't buy it. Treat it as you would a traditional retail game or expansion. It's your money and I encourage you to invest it wisely. I'm just going to go out there and do what I've always done: tell a good story and hope some of you join me for the ride.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Crafting switch: That switch will only switch off the crafting FEATS, not the skills. To switch of the skills, you can set another variable which I posted somewhere already (or just check the first conditional script on the crafting conversation).

Large battles: Some things we used for the large battles in HotU:

Graphics/Level Design
a) Use only up to 7 different creature appearances, the less the better.

b) Use predefined appeareances only instead of using creatures with customized appearances/outfits

c) Use few placeables that have a walkmesh in the area the battle takes place. The fewer the better

d) Never place placeable objects on tile seams

e) Use well designed, small areas for the battle - in any case stay below 16x16, better below 10x10

f) Switch off tile features like torches or smoke. Don't place smoke or fire placeables if not neccessary

g) Remove "persistent" effect spells (i.e. acid sheath) from the spell list of the creatures that participate in the combat. Nothing kills the frame rate faster than a lot of fancy fire shields

h) Minimize the use of weapons with particle effects (like flame arrows) in the battle.

i) Don't use "persistent corpses". Try to have no treasure on most creatures that get killed in the battle - this prevents lootbags to be spawned

j) Use open areas, the narrower the areas get, the higher the impact of pathfinding on the CPU.

Scripting
a) Remove most of the event scripts from all the creatures involved in the combat. Instead use "squad leader" creatures that give commands to the other creatures (squad based AI)

b) The OnBlocked event fires for creatures blocking another creatures path - it makes a very nice spot for a target selection routine

c) Tweak the spellcaster's spell lists to include only few cpu intensive spells (usually missile storm or area of effect spells) - they take too much CPU when

d) Use the module's script caching features. Tools like NWNX2 provide options to screen script usage / execution times and allow you to get a good picture which scripts should be cached - caching all nw_c2_* scripts makes perfectly sense as do all the x2_pc_* scripts.

some random ideas to make the battle look cool:

a) There are ballista bolt and arrow projectiles in spells.2da. Using ActionCastFakeSpellAtLocation allows you to create swarms of arrows or incoming ballista bolts or rocks hurled by catapults for the right battle feeling

b) Have creatures react to certain things (i.e. signal them an event if a player opens a gate or approaches a catapult). This will make the battle feel more intense and add the illusion of intelligent creatures.

c) lay down triggers that spawn random things like hails of arrows or monsters bursting through a gate.