Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Trent Oster, Producer:

Rapiers: Rapiers are in, as are two weapon fighting and double weapons. We had to limit the double weapons a bit more than I wanted, but they are supported and they are quite cool. As for a two bladed energy weapon, You'll just have to kill Darth Maul and take his. You could create a double sword and attach an energy effect to it. You would still be able to see the blades, but the energy effect would mostly obscure them, giving something very close to what you are after.

With regards to weapon lists, we'll post more as we get closer.

Weather and Day/Night Cycles: We have weather support in. You set the chance of rain when you create the area. We have a rural area in a test module right now and it seems to be quite rainy. As to the larger issue of day/night cycles, the hit of recalculating the shadows is quite severe, so we aren't moving the sun. You can change the color and intensity of the sun as dusk approaches, shifting to warm, red hues and then make the change to night, with a blue key light for the moon.

Creating "NEW" Creatures: You are correct, you cannot create "new" creatures on the fly. You can use any monster which has been created for use in the module, effectively making up your "toolbelt" of creatures. You will also have access to the standard pre-built creatures we have set up ahead of time, so this should be a very mild limitation. If you really want a creature that isn't in the module, just pop up the toolset, load the module, create the creature and start the module back up.

Modeling/Texture Q&A:
1-Is there a limit to the number of textures allowed for a model?

We use one texture per model. This is not a limitation, but a desire on our part to minimize texture binds. You can use multiple textures, but there is some overhead and the limit is one texture per object (no sub object textures)

2- What's the max resolution supported?

The largest textures we use are 512x512. Anything larger and you burn up a ton of memory.

3- Which texture channels will be supported? Diffuse... (duh) , bump... opacity... reflection... ...? Any other ones?
Alpha?

We support only the diffuse texture. To get an alpha, make a 32 bit texture with an 8 bit alpha channel. To get environment mapping you use the alpha channel in the texture and have to make a change in a 2DA (NWN data file)

4- Models will be seen from above at a fixed camera perspective, with zoom and rotation enabled. Alright, does that mean I don't have to have polygons under my models...
Bipeds need polies on the soles because they run... and there fore their soles will most likely be seen. But how about the Beholder, spherical monster... do I need the polies under the sphere ? I'm assuming not... but thought It would be a good idea to confirm
Also.. polygons on top of the mouth, for example. (I can cut down quite some if I don't need those)

You could, but we've found that during death animations, etc you see more of the creature, so we try to stay as solid as possible.

5- Any specific ways the texture maps should be arranged?

Keep your maps as powers of 2. We use the UVW unwrap to paint the characters how we want them, selecting the polys we want in sub oject mode and then applying a UVW unwrap.

6- Any specific skinning sys in max? I know you guys are using your own bone sys, but does it make a difference whether I use the regular bones in MAx? CS?

We use boxes and use the skin modifier. I think bones could work though

7- Is there support for mesh morph? Or is vertex deformation based on bones alone?

Bones alone.

8- Support for animated textures ? Can textures be morphed into one another? Say, if I wanted to make some sort of Chameleon monster, would he be able to change appearance, as far as textures are concerned, during specified events?

Animated textures work, but they are a little ugly to work with. I'd really recommend staying away from them unless you are ready for a good fight.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Items and Dead NPCs: I won't get into the "proper" way to design what happens when a creature dies but I will say that we're giving you the easy option to do it however you want, and you won't even have to rely upon YCSI (you can script it).

When you put an item into a creature's inventory, you have two flags. One is "dropable", and one is "pickpocketable".

By simply checking or unchecking these two flags, you can do whatever you want with your creature's inventory. Of course, if you prefer YCSI, there is the OnDeath event - feel free to use it however you wish.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Max Multiclass Levels: Yes, we are limiting multiclass to 3 classes in NWN mainly due to GUI restrictions. There is a certain point in multiclassing where with too many classes at a certain level you would incur a 100% experience penalty and therefore would not be able to advance your character.

No, sorry, the 3 class limit won't likely change at any time. I also found out that the multiclass also has a minor code impact as well as the GUI impact (character creation/record sheet/level up).

Prestige classes are still something that we are going to consider and investigate for an expansion. No decisions yet.

Custom Sounds: The music file format is still being played around with. We are considering mp3, Ogg Vorbis, and some others.

For now, you can start with .wav and once the format is finalized, encode from there.

NWN and IPMasq: Consider this an unofficial answer. There should be no problems with NWN and IPMasq. Since I run this type of setup at home, if I find any issues, I will be pretty grumpy and push hard for them to be addressed. Our network programming guy is really top notch, so I doubt there will any issues of this kind.

System Specs: It was most likely running at 640x480. What you have to understand is that the engine has not been optimized at all. At this stage of development optimization is not needed yet since various things have not been finalized yet. Messing with various rendering paths while you are still adding features, functionality, and data would make basic bug tracking much harder. Also, that test system was using a TNT1 video card. That is below our current targetted min spec system, so this, again, doesn't reflect how the released game will perform.

Don't panic as we once we do our optimization pass things will get much better.

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer:

Item Trading: You can enter into a barter mode with other players. The way this works is three panels are popped up, similar to Fallout and also including the "confirm trade" button. The GUI itself is see-through, like most of our GUIs, so you don't have to worry about stuff going on around you while you're trading.

Okay, I went back and checked the GUI. There are actually THREE buttons. One is "offer", and one is "accept" and one is "cancel"; should be good for all.