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

HotU rushed:

Quote: HotU? no. SoU was rushed. the last chapter felt like it was written during someone's coffee break. the contrast with HotU, whose final chapter was maybe the best work Bio has done since BG2, couldn't be greater.

Hehe. I wrote both of those and can give you a bit of perspective to compare by. The last chapter of SoU was created from the ground up to content completion in 3 weeks, working solo. The last chapter of HotU, on the other hand, was created over the course of 3 months, plus I had the talented Brad Prince handling the vast majority of the scripting and also doing some of the level and puzzle design for me. Was SoU rushed? Unfortunately yes. Was HotU rushed? I don't believe so and certainly not in comparison. I think we'd always like more time to add more features, clean out more bugs, introduce more bugs, and so forth, until we finally have it 'just so.' But, on a practical level, you have to lock down and release every work of art sometime.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Undroppable items:

Quote: Hello, I was wondering if there is a possible way for a DM to remove an undroppable item possessed by a PC. Any replies would be helpful, thank you.

In 1.62 without scripting, I don't think so. In the upcomming 1.63 version, should be a piece of cake!

David Gaider, Designer

HotU rest system: I wrote the rest system for HotU and you should have no trouble activating it for your module.

Checklist:

a) check the default module OnLoad script (x2_mod_def_load)

b) check the default module OnRest script
(x2_mod_def_rest) as well as the rest script used by the official campaign for HotU (I think it's x2_onrest).

c) IIRC, the rest script actually has an explaination which variables you want to set on an area

d) You need to check des_restsys.2da (or so), the 2da file which has the "template" definitions for wandering monsters

e) x2_inc_restsys.nss IS the official rest system. Its commented so reading through it should give you some ideas.

You need HotU to make use of the HotU rest system. Without HotU there are missing scripts and .2da files on your machine.

Portraits: If there's one thing we've learned over our time doing portraits for our games is that we will never produce enough variety to suit some folks. Considering the limited number of portraits that we can produce to begin with, if we started making political correctness a larger factor (ie. despite the fact that we do have portraits dark-skinned and asian characters, suddenly we need more of these in order to be "fair"? Somehow I get the sense that this does not mean less normal portraits but rather that these extra portraits would be magically added onto the total...) that wouldn't get us very far. We'd be far better served to make it easier to add custom portraits into the game to begin with. That's the lesson learned here, though I doubt it's something we'll change in NWN now (though you never know). Making more portraits, even if the Live Team did have an artist, isn't going to help address much. And more skin tones? Ummm... I know people like having the ability to customize their character to the Nth degree (and to a point I agree with that), but what exactly is the difference between having a character with mid-dark-dark-brown skin and mid-dark-dark-dark-brown skin, exactly? How many tones do you need? Is this one of those things that some people won't stop complaining about until they get a full photographic spectrum with 5,000 colors to play with?

Further:

Quote: But that is just my (and likely a few others') opinion. I have no expectation of change (although I do think it is something they should keep in mind for future games). No one is suggesting funky weird coloring. Just skin tones which are common in some parts of the real world and which might even approximate the colorations of some of your consumers.

Oh, we hear you, but if not being able to replicate a specific shade of brown skin is our worst offense, I don't think you'll see us losing much sleep over it. *shrug* I'm sorry, I just don't see it being a priority even in a future release, even if some of our consumers could supposedly have such coloration. We'll provide as much variety as we can... being "fair" is not really a factor, nor is accuracy as compared to the real world.

AI changes: AI changes usually don't happen in patches - as far as I there were two points where we made significant changes to the NWN default AI that would affect community modules: SoU and HotU - and I think these updates to the AI were well worth it.