Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(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

Digital Distribution: Syrsuro's correct in stating that the cost structure for DD would be different than for a printed magazine (magazines favor bulk content due to high production costs while DD favors separate content due to low production costs). As both of you allude to, however, there are often marketing benefits to bulk content and, once we develop a sufficient catalog of released content, we may choose to explore those kinds of options. Some possible approaches are as follows:

1) Completed Series - Once all of the WW mods have been released, for instance, we may bundle them together at a discounted price or even consider releasing them as a traditional retail expansion (though it might be hard to convince a publisher about the viability of the latter).

2) Starter Pack - If we have multiple series' underway, we may bundle them together at a discounted price to increase exposure and generate interest in upcoming instalments.

3) Gameplay-Related Pack - Once we have a bunch of previously released action-oriented modules or competitive play modules in our catalog, we may bundle those for people who enjoy that particular style of gameplay.

4) Asset-Related Pack - If we have a bunch of modules that all share the same or similar new art assets, we may bundle them together so you can get see the new asset in a variety of settings. As we'd like to avoid exclusive assets due to the splintering issues addressed in other threads, however, this approach probably isn't as valuable as some of the others.

5) Author-Related Pack - The may be some value in grouping modules by author, as well, so those who find they really like this module created by Joe Bob may be interested in getting all of his past work at bulk discount pricing.

6) Greatest Hits - As time passes, some clear 'hit modules' may emerge. After their download counts begin to fade, we could breathe new life into them by including them in some sort of Greatest Hits package.

I'll probably get into some sort of trouble for even speculating on this kind of stuff, but it was too interesting a question pass up. It's all pretty far into the fantastic future at this point and there's no way of knowing what we'll actually do when and if we ever get there. For now we have to focus on getting the project off the ground and an initial trickle of content into the pipeline. Baby steps.

Witch's Wake: For the record, "WW1: Remastered" will require both expansion packs (a huge thanks to all of our international players for waiting so long for us to release Hordes overseas. Apparently the bulk of the European language versions are just starting to appear on store shelves now). It's not so much an attempt to force you to run out and buy them but rather a desire on my part to use some of the resources made available in both expansions. I always envisioned the opening portions of the module to take place in a snowy, windswept mountain pass. With the Icy tileset from HotU and the Winter Rural tileset from SoU, I can finally achieve the effect that I had always wanted.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Coloured names: Colored names were an exploit and have been removed. Colored names also have nothing to do with PvP. Colored names will never come back. The damage vs. none was also a bug and has been removed, and since it was removed from everyone, it will not affect PvP fairness at all. We will continue to fix any exploit brought to our attention. From patch 1.63 on, any invalid sign in your characters name will automatically render the character invalid. And, finally, this gets locked because colored names are now a non topic. Gone for good.

Future:

Quote: I would interpret the comments from bioware that they are moving away from tile based artwork that future products will use the "good old" style of artwork for cost reasons. As to the prospect of another expansion for NWN I think the biggest factor will be the sucess of their IP game. If I am not mistaken I think that NWN is the largest product they have. If the IP works out and becomes a big seller then they will probably concentrate on that and the chance of a 3rd NWN expansion will be even less than it is now. If the IP fails my guess is that bioware will make a 3rd expansion to cash in on the large NWN community. This is after all a business.

Actually one of the main problems with a tile based approach is (among others) that locations get a very generic look and feel (and there are quite a lot of reviews that point this out). If you check the reviews for KotOR and Hordes (which features a several tiles that were made for the story .i.e. the well room) you see that people enjoy visiting exciting, special locations. Exploration is a good part of CRPGs and people really enjoy it - as good as our tilesets have become, they can't compete with the breathtaking sights you get when playing KotOR or Jade Empire (blunt advertisement for the game I'm working on). Not to mention that making those "custom tiles" like the well room is quite a lot more work for the same effect you achieve with creating a fully custom level geometry as I understand it.

Bottomline is: If the environment of the game is custom made for the story (as opposed to making the story based on an existing environment), your game gets more immersive and compelling. Ask around how hard it is to create a "non flat" level in NWN (i.e. rolling grasslands), or to have buildings you can enter without having to load a new area. Check the screenshots for Jade Empire to see what difference it makes. If you check out the few screenshots from the DLA campaign, you will notices that they have a similar approach - they model custom made level geometry and slice it into tile groups later on, leading to those breathtaking environments like shown in their last years teaser movie - making you ask "is this really NWN?"

I know that the tile based approach is the heart of NWN, making it the far best "create your own world / rpg" kind of toolkit in the field - many of us, including myself, would never have gotten as deep into building for NWN if we couldn't build our own worlds. A non tilebased engine would certainly have limited our (speaking as ex community builder) options, but I also think that we probably would have seen quite some amazing custom levels on the vault nevertheless. Making a tileset today takes a lot of work, and people capable of creating new tilesets probably would have the ability to create whole new new level layouts as well (think of them as just very large tilegroups, similar to DLA's approach). Currently, I don't think any hard decision has been made what kind of technology we will use into our next generation games, however, as Darcy pointed out in the interview, the general consensus seems to be that custom levels have an edge over a tile based approach - and after working a while on Jade, I wholeheartly agree with that. The optimal solution probably would be an engine that supports both approaches, but I'm not sure how possible something like that would be.

Quote: If the IP fails my guess is that bioware will make a 3rd expansion to cash in on the large NWN community. This is after all a business.

a) Jade will succeed, I know, I played it :

b) Let's stay realistic, NWN's age isn't exactly supporting the idea of a new expansion pack. Creating an expansion pack takes some time (about a year), which would set the release date for your "cash in" expansion pack around early 2006. By that time, computers can buy pizza and serve breakfast, I don't think people would feel compelled to buy another NWN expansion pack 4 years after the game was released.

Note: By all means, do NOT take this post as any indication regarding modability, toolset inclusion or custom content support in our future games, no decision on these topics has been made yet, so don't try to read anything from the above post, it's purely my personal opinion.