Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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, Senior Designer

DD and NWN itself?
There has been discussion about it although we don't consider the issue to be particularly pressing at this point. From what I understand, Atari still has plans for further NWN retail SKUs so I suspect you'll still be finding NWN on store shelves in one form or another well into the future. If DD is still going strong but NWN and the various expansions are no longer available on store shelves, however, we may consider making it available for purchase through DD at that time. But that's still a ways in the future.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Need help with AI scripts
No need to rewrite the AI for that, you can hack it fairly fast using the Override AI feature

a) Create an override AI script that runs on top of the original AI like the mindflayer ai (x2_ai_mflayer (?))
b) In that script, perform a GetItemInSlot check to see if the amulet is equipped
c) If it is equipped, have the NPC cast the associated spells using ActionCastSpell with the bCheat flag set to TRUE
d) if not, fallback to default AI.

More: For Hordes I modified the main NWN combat AI function (DetermineCombatRound in nw_i0_generic) to support additions or replacement scripts by specifying a variable on a creature:

Check the "variables" page on the default mindflayer in the palette - he got a variable (forgot the name) set on him that points to x2_ai_mflayer(?) or so. This script is run every time the default combat AI kicks in to determine if he is able to use his brainsuck ability.

In the same fashion you can create a script that determines if the creature has the amulet equipped and make it cast some spells using the cheat flag on ActionCastSpell (because you can't really make creatures use certain items directly in NWN).

There's a demo creature availabe for download on my private webpage that demonstrates the feature: Click Here

More:
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Georg, won't that always prioritize using the amulet over any other thing the NPC might be capable of doing? Edit: had another idea. You're assigning the item properties dynamically, right? Well, what if you put the properties on the NPC's hide?
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You can code it any way you want. You can have certain conditions for the amulet to kick in (i.e. below a certain amount of health, only every x rounds, etc, etc) or you can go crazy and replace DetermineCombatRound alltogether (like the beholder ai)