Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

David Gaider, Designer

X-Packs & Items: Well, okay, a few things:

- insofar as an expansion goes, that's simply the reality of it. The Live Team has two programmers on it and limited QA resources... they can only do so much. Larger changes require a larger programming team and more testing, and therefore require the kind of full team that can only be devoted to a legitimate project. And that costs money, no way around it. That said, the Live Team still intends to provide continual support (I was surprised, personally, when the decision was made to have a small team assigned permanently to support a game that does not have a continual source of revenue) and do as much as they can.

- Divorcing AC from appearance: I kind of get what people are asking for with this, but I'm scratching my head at how it could be easily done. It's not really as simple as just making the AC field for armor completely editable. Right now, the game takes whatever 'type' of armor has been selected and looks up that type in the appropriate .2da ...from there it assigns not only the AC and class of armor, but also the mix Dex, skill check penalty and arcane spell failure.
Even if you could use the current GUI to alter AC, weight and class, the other stats still have to be pulled from somewhere. If it pulled the base armor stats as it currently did, but the AC, weight and class were editable directly on the GUI, would that be enough? Or would it be useless unless everything was directly selectable? Because I'm thinking that requires additions to the GUI that probably aren't going to happen outside of an expansion.

Some other thoughts on that also occur to me. If you are directly editing AC without using an item property, then there's no subsequent change of value and no listing of the edit in the item description. Harder for a DM to spot (when the ability to look at the item becomes available) and this also then creates the possibility of mages running about in light armor with plate mail protection... all without subsequent magic properties and appropriate value or ILR. This sort of thing could be caught by a DM checking out inventory, but would be much harder to check for in scripts or server filters (unless certain types of changes just invalidate an item for transfer right off, but I'm not even sure how that would work). Just thoughts on the matter, at any rate.

- on manually adjusting the ILR: if you are able to manually adjust the ILR, what's the point of it? Unless what you're suggesting is that it could be raised but not lowered. I wonder if it would be possible to make the 'cost' and 'ILR' of an item automatically reset to their non-adjusted value if they are brought into a module they don't exist in as a blueprint? Perhaps that would settle the issue, but I'm unconvinced. The thing to keep in mind, perhaps, is that while the ultimate goal (once more power is put in the hands of the DMs, scripters and servers to check for this stuff) is not to circumvent cheaters to the detriment of builders, we also can't make it incredibly easy for the cheaters, either (and therefore put more pressure on those people running open servers... which, like it or not, is a legitimate type of game to run and must be considered).

Custom Content:

Quote: I hope you understand that convenience in bringing in custom content is NOT something we can live without. I for one need rather little, but I absolutely MUST have it. So far I have not succeeded in bring in one new item, and I have tried. The kludgy workarounds are just not good enough.

Custom content is never going to be simple. We are committed to making it easier, but there is a big difference between custom content (like new models) and hacking resources (like the .2da's). Either way, it can never be officially supported... so no matter how much you say you must have it, you won't get it. Now if it could be eventually added into the toolset so that brand new types of items could be created there, that's completely different. But that also is way outside what the Live Team could provide.

Quote: So make it so stores can be individually selected to pay only their modified version of the standard value. A simple bit flag that solves the problem.

A simple bit flag? What is that? If an item were to be brought into a module that had a 'cost' associated with it, there's no way to differentiate whether that value was set by the person who made the module or otherwise once an instance within the module is made.

Quote: I had that kind of problem come up a few days ago. I want to create a weapon which manifests itself as a low-end magic weapon in the hands of most, and a high-end in the hands of the intended class and such. Can't do it without these, or perhaps some complicated workaround that involves invisible objects, heartbeat scripts, and a lot of trouble.

I know and agree. I've come up against that, myself. As someone else mentioned, an OnPlayerHit event or similar would also be useful for expanding item scripting. I suspect that adding events might again require lots of programming resources, but if it didn't adding something like this would certainly be very useful.

Quote: Seriously, I think you'd do better to focus on giving gm & server ops better control in games that trying to prop up the local vault system which is clearly always going to be targeted by cheating no matter what you do. After all, we don't NEED local vault, we Do need gm's.

Opinion noted, though I doubt we're going to abandon local vault-using DM's to the wolves anytime soon.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Toolset Questions:

1. Environment | Refresh or press F5.

2. You placed at least one Skeleton Bones place-able object, which automatically spawn in skeletons when a player gets too close.

3. The encounter objects, which you place in the area by painting the vertices of the polygon the player must enter to activate it, select their monsters randomly from the list attached to the encounter. You can have the creatures appear at another point by selecting the encounter in the area and then selecting "Add Spawn Point" from the context menu by right clicking somewhere else in the area (not necessarily within the bounds of the encounter). Typically, you put the spawn points out of sight of the players as they enter the encounter.

Sound Icons: The sound icons indicate the type of sound.

Arrow - positional, the sound will appear to be coming from that spot

Dice w/ Box - random positional, the sound will appear to be coming from a point within the bounds of the box

Flat Circle - area wide, the sound will be coming from everywhere in the area.

More:
You can turn sounds on in the Toolset using the commands in the Environment menu.