Neverwinter Nights 2 Reviews by Gamepyre and Geek World[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Official News There are two reviews of Neverwinter Nights 2 to mention tonight. The first is from Geekworld who gave it a score of 8 out 10 to be updated to a 9 out of 10 once they feel the multiplayer support and graphic engine performance has been fixed. They listed the good sides as "Really fun campaign, Cleanup of rules, features from NWN1, Great graphics and Plenty of character choices" and and the bad sides as "Low performance, Bugs, Broken multiplayer support, and Disappointing package contents on Collector’s Edition." Thanks to Atari Community Manager, Gregg Baker at this forum thread for the lead.
The second review is from Gamepyre who gave the game an overall score of 92 out of 100. The low marks were price, compatibility and learning curve with an 8 and all the other categories received 9's or 10's. Here's an excerpt from that:
Obsidian, Atari, and Bioware score another hit with Neverwinter Nights 2. As a fan of the original Neverwinter Nights, I am not disappointed in the slightest. Everything I was hoping for from a sequel, and so much more. This game has an excellent story that pulls you in from the very beginning, great graphics, and tons of races and classes make this game have excellent replay value.
That’s before you even consider that it comes with its own editors, so players may create and upload their own worlds and epic stories, or perhaps even just a simple Player vs. Player arena so they can test the might of their own characters against a friend. The game has been a bit hard to find since its release, as many stores sold out of it, but new copies are quickly appearing on store shelves everywhere. To all Dungeons and Dragons fans and general RPG fans everywhere, do yourselves a favor and don’t miss this one. Hundreds of hours of gameplay online and off, a community of millions of players, plus endless modding possibilities make this one RPG that will withstand the test of time.
8. What are all the user interface changes have been made to the game? And can you talk more about the new control scheme that allows for a more RTS approach and how it is incorporated into the game and used?
[Anthony Davis] First of all, the GUI is modifiable and skinnable. The community has already released several modified versions of the GUI, including bigger hotbars and vertical hotbars.
The radial menu was replaced with a context sensitive menu. This is very similar to a regular Windows™ context sensitive menu. In other words, when I bring up the context menu on a game object, my only options that are allowed are the ones that are actually applicable for that object.
The Quickcast Screen is a new GUI screen we added that allows spellcasters to *VERY* quickly access all their prepared spells and cast them. This even works with the new prestige class, the Warlock, and allows for combining of essences and shapes very quickly.
The hotbar system was revamped to bring it in line with modern games. Every party member now has their own hotbar with up to 120 buttons. The buttons are accessible both with a mouse click and with a key press (1 through ‘=’). Players can rapidly change the hotbar they are on by pressing ‘shift’ plus the corresponding number.
We added a fourth camera to the game, the free camera, which allows the player to move their camera around freely without being attached to their controlled character. Most players will recognize this as the same type of camera from many RTS games and the Infinity engine games.
Good luck to all the authors and thanks in advance for your help voting on them. We've added the NWN2 voting guidelines to the page to help guide you in your voting. Look for the chart below the comment box.
I realized I didn't make this clear, but we plan to support Windows XP x64 to the best of our ability. Here's a link to an update we created that should fix issues with running on Windows XP x64.
I would consider the main balancing factor of Trip the fact that you can be immediately counter-tripped yourself, or must drop the weapon you are using.
I do not disagree that anything can be implemented. As a business, our limiting factors are time and money. I'm not going to cite this as an excuse. I know the Trip rules (and other obscure corners of 3.5 rules arcana) as well as many of the forum posters.
What I ask you to consider is this thought experiment. Imagine yourself as a producer on NWN2 who is in charge of scheduling things like implementing D&D rules. You have one programmer working on this particular task of implementing feats (the others are working on Multi-player, graphics, & etc.). The feat.2da lists the 1800+ feats we have in our game. Let's say that doing all of them 100% right would take about 1 day each; that is, 4 years to finish. You have 2.5 years to put out NWN2. What do you do?
I'll tell you what I would do: get 1800 community members to open-source it and have each of them work on one feat. Then NWN2, unlike Rome, would have been done in one day!
More: One of my very good friends in my old pencil & paper D&D crew is constantly riding me about implementing Grapple.
If you are him, then, a pox on thee and thy lying, cheating, rules-changing DM ways.
If you are not him, then I must politely respond that it is not currently under consideration, although things may change in the future.
To have a full AAA implementation with correct animations (not the "cloud of fists, claws, and punctuation marks" I keep suggesting to our lead designer) would be non-trivial. A functional implementation via script is highly possible; see the Bigby's hand spells for some ideas. I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
Chris Priestly - Community Coordinator -
Tips for Beginners This is a good thread. It's great when community members help each otehr out with tips like this.
I like it so much, I think I'll sticky this to the top of the boards where poeple can find it and help each other. BUT remember, no game spoilers here. Story-type questions belong over in the spoilers thread here: Click Here
Many people are suggesting changes or improvements or fixes or whatever to NwN2. To help the Devs find these suggestions, please post your suggestions here.
Please remember that just because you are asking for it, does not mean it will be changed. But by keeping them all in one place, the Dev team can look at the suggestions, weigh the options and make changes as they see appropriate.
Also please remember this is not a thread to report bugs. This is for suggested changes in upcoming patches. Bugs should be reported in the Tech Support thread over here: Click Here
I will be sure to get my magic screwdriver out and fix it all now.
Wow... that was... insulting?
Oh and, its from someone from atari no wonder I got the hint of insult.
No insult intended, just had an overdose of my happy pills that day. They soon wear off though, especially when I view my threads here (that be humour again)
More: I sent that review and two others to Selene so she can add them for me. I cant edit my post anymore as I dont get any special rights. Should be up by end of today.
More:
Glad to hear it, I hope it doesn't "magically" not appear by the end of today.
Nope, instead it has magically just appeared!
More: Thanks for updating it, much appreciated.
I don't doubt that Atari's future success relies on many games. But looking at Atari's other titles, I'd say NwN2 is a very big piece of the Atari pie.
To be fair, compared to the likes of DBZ, NWN2 is no big piece in any pie. But we are not banking on just PC/Console games for the future. There are many innovative projects in the pipeline, hopefully Atari can remember the innovation that made it a success all those years ago.
More: I cant speak for actions taken before I was even on the Atari staff. I see no reason why Atari wouldnt want to continue supporting the NWN series. Yes this is Obsidians first attempt but through things like forums you have the chance to make comments and suggestions knowing the developers are reading. Great position to be in, yes some things should have been done better this time, but the knowledge gained and the feedback gathered will certainly help for future versions.
Rich Taylor - Programmer, Obsidian Entertainment -
Export/import tools - suspending development. The challenge of trying to help the solo developer is actually hearing about their questions in order to respond to them. I haven't really had any time until recently to start reading the forums, and even then I've been focusing mostly on reading and researching the technical problems as much as possible.
If you don't mind dropping me a PM about the information you need at this point, I'll see what I can do to get some info back to you.
Charles Mead - NWN2 Lead Scripter, Obsidian Entertainment -
EffectVisual Effect bug? Here's the long answer which one of the other scripters detailed (he prefers to remain anonymous). ========================
The top-most code sample will compile, but will not produce the results that this user is probably intending. I will presume that the user is attempting to do one of two things (and possibly, both): 1) apply the “sleep” visual effect, and/or 2) apply the “sleep” gameplay effect.
For all visual effects (which are purely visual; there is no gameplay effect associated), we need to use the effect constructor EffectVisualEffect(). The constants that are prefixed with “VFX_” are the ones that are intended for use with the function EffectVisualEffect(). So, if the user wants to construct the visual effects that accompany the “sleep” effect, the constructor should look like this: View Post/Code in separate window
For gameplay effects (the non-visual effects), there are constructors already defined that will achieve the desired results. So, for example, if the user wants to apply the gameplay effects of the Sleep spell to an object, the constructor looks like this:
EffectSleep();
Gameplay effects and visual effects are two entirely separate concepts (and they were in NWN1 as well). Each needs to be constructed separately and applied correctly in order to affect an object with the combined or “full” effects. You can either construct the effects within the parameter list for ApplyEffectToObject(), like so…View Post/Code in separate window … or you can declare/define it beforehand and pass the effect variable, like so…View Post/Code in separate window Regarding the first user’s example, the function EffectVisualEffect() takes an integer parameter, which the integer constant EFFECT_TYPE_SLEEP satisfies. However, that constant’s value (30, as defined in nwscript.nss) actually maps to the visual effect constant VFX_FNF_PWKILL, which is a deprecated legacy visual effect and isn’t currently supported with any art assets. This results in the construction of a visual effect that is essentially “invisible”. This is also the case for the second user’s example. I will presume that the “tornado” effect that they refer to is actually the constant VFX_IMP_TORNADO, which is also deprecated and is not supported with any art assets in NWN2.
We may re-enable the “question mark fountain” for the deprecated VFX constants in a future patch to provide feedback to the user that the visual effect is no longer supported.
Official Forum Highlights[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN - NWN Forum Highlights Here are the latest posts from the Official Forums made by the developers. Please note these are only one part of the thread, and should not be taken out of context. If you find any forum threads we may have missed or you think should be in the highlights, send me an email.
So what you're saying is that scale adjustments for the horses (tails) are done in the Tail 2da?
If this is true, then you can't script different size horses, but have to create a 2da file to add to a hak.
Not tailmodel.2da but in appearance.2da using the WING_TAIL_SCALE column, and yes, you'd need to include the updated appearance.2da in a HAK.
Scaling within NWN I think all we did was remove the lforearm dummy node, so you should be able to readd them to the p[gender][race][phenotype].mdl supermodels.
All versions on our content server have been tested and are most definitely version 1.1
If you have the 1.1 version it should show up as 1.1 during the installer splash screen and in the module information window after it has been installed.
Are you sure it wasn't cached by your browser? Try emptying your web browser’s cache before reinstalling (or try out the brand spankin' new BioWare Download Manager).
Missing Votes for Hall of Fame[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN - Site Features Here are some of the entries that are short of the 25 votes needed to be considered for the Hall of Fame. If you've downloaded any of these files, please visit their pages and rate them. Getting feedback from the community is very important to content authors and ensures that they continue to produce more for you to download.
NWN2 Module Ideas Contest Entries Now Ready For Voting![ 5 Comments ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Site Features All the entries for the NWN2 Module Ideas Contest are now public for you to check out and vote on. So please take some time and pick the ideas that you like the best and vote. The full list can be seen be clicking the read more link below and the full contest details can be found here. Once the voting period is over, we'll reopen the module ideas as a regular feature for any of your ideas that you'd like to see the community create.
2. Could you please give newbies an overview of what "A Tangled Web" is about?
Let me start by saying that my goal with "A Tangled Web" was to produce a traditional pen-and-paper style experience that had an interesting plot, exciting encounters, visual appeal, and exceptional detail, all while using only the official BioWare game resources. The module, I believe, has an "old school" feel that keeps the game mechanics simple and does not try to impress with fancy new systems or envelope-pushing gameplay.
The module begins with an admittedly uninspiring premise. The players have come to the border town of Invermere to heed the desperate call of the Town Council for heroes to help thwart the aggressions of the nearby goblinoid tribes. It seems that Invermere and her neighbors had entered into a peace pact with the tribes of the Southern Akerly Wood that lasted for several years. Recent events however, including the killing of an Invermere Town Councilman, indicate that the treaty has collapsed. The Town Council is hoping that outside assistance will improve the defense of their town as well as reveal the reason why the pact has failed. From this humble beginning, players will uncover secrets and lies, long-buried planar portals, the hidden stronghold of an extinct race, and an insidious plot that threatens the region. You know, your standard adventurer fare.
Thanks to Bruce and Steve for taking the time to conduct the interview.
The Garden by David Z.(Multiplayer (1-4 Players)) - This is a test module, which features a number of small areas within a beautiful garden. There is some combat involved and you must kill the Kobold leader as soon as you reach level 2. Find weapons and potions that will help you along the way. Enjoy!
GameSpot Game Guide by GameSpot(Reference Guides) - GameSpot's Game Guide to Neverwinter Nights 2 will eventually be much more complete than it is now. For the moment, we've got plenty of general tips on the gameplay for you, some tips on the classes and character creation, crafting recipes, and a walkthrough of the first chapter of the game. We'll have plenty more to add to the guide, including walkthroughs for side quests and the rest of the game, details on multiclassing, prestige classes, and skills and feats, when we finish it off in Part Two of the guide.
AI by Even(Code Modifications) - Modified AI files for henchmen. Henchmen will no longer interupt battle to disarm traps and should no longer spam area of effect spells thru the party (Qara casting lightning bolt repeatedly). I haven't had time to fully tweak this so give me feedback. If people prefer it then I can have it apply to non henchmen as well. Place the files into your Override directory to have them take effect.
RoUM2 PWC file by Fell Brutal(Persistent Worlds) - The PWC file for The Ruins of UnderMountain. www.roum.org PW Action, Brutals Server, The Ruins of UnderMountain.
Maeve by Gray Jora(Persistent Worlds) - Just a little world I've created.
Lana by MaXX1969(Level 15-20) - She is a level 10 Arcane Archer level 7 Ranger and a 3rd level Sorcerer Nice all around charater. She has several nice Long Bows the best is the White
Adventure Island 2 (In Development)
Adventure Island 2: NWN2
Status: In development however playable
300 years have passed since the forces of good and evil lay sunder to the City and Island of Seafair. A hundred thousand adventurers were called on to help save the island but the deities of Celestia and Hades in the millions could not be stopped. The remaining survivors left the broken island and migrated to a small nearby island where they and rebuilt the stronger city of New Seafair which has become a vital stop for the trade routes between the Western and Easter world. While these dimensional deities have moved on to their next battle ground, the city grew prosperous but new forces have set hold on the old broken island. So the city elders again has sent a call out to the mainland to arrive by ship and take on quests of good, glory and wealth. However, as things are, evil has heard this call and adventurers of evil have also heard the call and arrive to do their own bidding, those who wish to be dread lords in their own glory, making their fortune from the ruin of good. All now arrive on the docks of New Seafair as the forces of good and evil continues their endless struggle.
If you'd like your game world promoted, enter it and we'll post it here. Thanks for the news.
The CCPs main goal is to gather,modify and create custom content creatures that are still needed by the community.Most especially original monsters from the First edition Monster Manual 1 and 2,plus the Fiend Folio.
You are invited to visit our website and post your views or just come and have a look.We have already amassed a collection of new creatures and your imput as to future content would be much appreciated. Lets help keep NWN going strong.
Thanks for the news. If you're doing something for Neverwinter Nights 2 and would like it in the spotlight, drop me a line.
Oriental Dreams a New start (Works on all versions)
I'm making a new Oriental Dreams (social mod) my friend made one but he stopped playing for a long time i'm looking for help to make Oriental Dreams and i need someone that can run the mod cuz i cant
i;m using haks calles jenx2.3 and sklace4comp the sklace4 hak that i dl got everything in one =) plus its a rpg server with two guild ..... its like good vs evil cuz we got a good guild and a evil guild =) i need someone that knows how to use a script how to build ^^ and stuff like that i hope you are the one
If you'd like your game world promoted, enter it and we'll post it here. Thanks for the news.
Petition Against SecuRom[ 9 Comments ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Community News Polygon420 has launched a petition on the Atari forums, which is being supported by several NWN2 community sites, against SecuRom, a copy protection system widely used for most video games. They are asking people to support getting Atari to remove it from Neverwinter Nights 2 and have outlined their reasons which include the inability to backup legitimate copies to avoid losing the original, the problems and bugs it introduces and the inconvenience to users.
I believe that games do need copy protection but I'm against the SecuRom approach for all the same reason. It doesn't stop the people who have no intention to pay for the game and only causes problems for people that have paid for it. Even certain developers from BioWare were against it and pushed to get it removed from NWN in a patch several years ago.
Hopefully at some point Atari will remove SecuRom from NWN2 but it might take the community to push for it's removal, with possibly the support of the developers as well, so please make your voice heard if you agree. One other option for those of you who don't like SecuRom is getting the game via direct download from Direct2Drive, which obviously doesn't require a disk in your drive though is only available for North American users.
1.) Numerous minor scripting, cut scene, dialog, item description and bug fixes to improve overall game play. 2.) Fix the quest “Ride like a Centaur” where Lord Huntcrown fails to talk about it if player returns the horn to Alice Broadhand first. 3.) Gloves of Mishandling can now be removed by Magnus along with any other cursed items. 4.) If you leave the horses in the Damsel area (Forest Edge), the gather command will now return them to party. 5.) Fixed journal entry if you report Imelda to the Crown Office early on. 6.) Race of the spare jousting horse changed to 'human' to prevent animal empathy being used on it, and subsequently expiring with issues mid joust. 7.) Fixes to Witch Lords dialog. 8.) Witch Lord has been given immunity to knockdown to prevent interference with the teleportation cut scene. 9.) Melf’s Acid Arrow removed from Witch Lord's spell list since persistent effects cause henchmen to keep attacking and can potentially break dialogue. 10.) Fixed Paladin duplicate mount issue. 11.) Fixed Paladin mount unsummon during joust. 12.) Fixed skill henchmen skill drop caused by area transition dismount 13.) Fixed henchman leveling issue. 14.) Fixed a number of scripts where 1 out of 0 alignment points are possible.
There is no need to uninstall the old module simply download and install the new version. Instructions to access your purchased modules can be found here.
BioWare Download Manager released! The BioWare Live team has created the BioWare Download Manager to assist our customers in downloading the Premium Neverwinter Nights Modules as well as other BioWare content. The BioWare Download manager is a small, unobtrusive program that will manage a download and ensure it is completed with all parts intact. It also allows users to pause and then resume a download at a later date.
There are now brand new Managed Download options for the Windows versions of the Premium Neverwinter Nights installers. These Managed Download Premium Module installers are available to users via their BioWare Store receipts page.
Weight limit on inventory set to 0 sfter modified strength As far as I know, the strength tables only go up to 50 (or was it 62?), so any value above that will result in odd game behavior. The game looks up what the settings are for that ability stat (weight, damage bonus, etc) and if it doesn't find any, results in a return of 0.
So in your case, I'm guessing using the console SetSTR() command just set the value to that, bypassing the normal game checks so your weight allowance was still the same as before. But when you got hit by the weakness effect, the game had to look up the new strength stat to update your new settings, doesn't find it, so resulted in the 0 for the weight allowance.
Set your strength back to it's original and casting Restoration might reset it.
Oh yeah!! great idea if your'e a sorceress and don't really need the +5 Charisma bonus of a Nymph Cloak!!!!
It also interferes with my celestial characters that have wings...instead of my beautiful wings I get scabby looking dishcloths hanging off the back of my characters!
edit: oops, I'm sorry Brian for being so harsh (I take it you designed them?), but I really don't like how they look.
No, fellow DLAers Lisa, ragnarok_mr4 and Francis Lacuna made them.
But it has more to do with the logic behind the action: I equip a cloak, I expect to see it covering my character. If I think the cloak is ugly, I don't wear it. It's not like I'm relying on the cloak to offer the buffs, since one can apply it on any equipable item you want. Or turn ILR off and apply every buff to a ring.
I guess what I should do is add a really ugly clown suit robe to the game and have it give +10 to every ability and watch the munchkins wanting the buffs but hating how ugly the clown suit looks.
Scaling within NWN I just received this in a private message and we figured this would be better in the public NWN1 CC forum to help everyone:
Quote: Sent 11/14/06 18:03 (GMT) by Michael_Patty There's been talk on the Bioware forum that the reason DLA used tails as horses is because tails are scaleable. This is a great idea, but I am at a loss as to how it's done.
When I look for it in both the lexicon (which I know is dated) AND my scripting screen, all I find is "SetCreatureTailType()," which doesn't have any scalability that I can see.
Does it require an include that I am not aware of?
Thanks for your time!
Michael
The issue that was raised when making the horses for WyvernCrown of Cormyr was the original spec had the horses applied as robes on the player, so we can swap the horses around (and not tied to the phenotype supermodel like the CEP horses are), and allow people to pick the horse colour they want. But that meant pre-scaling them for every race, gender and phenotype for every horse type, resulting in:
+ bare + saddled + saddled with packs + 5 barding styles + 5 barding styles with packs = 13 horses * 4 horse colours (walnut, gray, black, speckled) = 52 horse types + 13 jousting styles (the horse colours aren't changeable though to ease the texture creation on poor Lisa). * 6 races * 2 genders * 2 phenotypes = 1560 horse as robe models.
That's a lot of models! While I made a MAXscript to do all the scaling and saving and exporting for me, it still took over 30min for my computer to process it. Not to mention the HAKpack size (10mb for one set * 6 * 2 * 2 = 240mb JUST for horses!)
Then when looking at the appearance.2da file for something, I noticed the following column: WING_TAIL_SCALE.
Then it hit me - we're already using new phenotypes to swap in the new animations right? While the tail node is required, who's to say it HAS to be parented to the pelvis_g node, why can't be at the character model origin (0,0,0) and apply the horse there? Have the base horses applied as a tail and use the scaling factor, resulting in less horses to be made and a smaller HAK size.
And it also allows us to retain robes as robes, instead of having to strip it off mounted PCs or having to mix the horse texture with a robe texture (ooo talk about bloat).
It did require a new appearance.2da entry, but we have to do that anyway since we have to adjust the walk/run speeds and personal space for horses, so it all worked out. Sure you can't see a tail if you have one on your PC, but then again, you're sitting in a saddle, you probably wouldn't see it anyway - at least we didn't use the wing node!
Also, we can easily add other ridable models, so this system can easily support the CEP horses with minimal work, adding the models the tailmodel.2da (well, up to the 255 model max).
It's not a proper dynamic scaling system like what's in NWN2, but it does allow us to reduce the number of resources to model and you can position the wing or tail node whereever you want - dynamic hair/open face helms anyone?
If you were feeling really adventurous, you can have a null human, and apply an NPC as the tail model. Then have the appearance lines to set the scale value in 0.1 increments: Oooooh look! Enlarge/Reduce spell effect! (Can't be done for part-based races, but you can for NPCs or monsters).
I just need to beat Craig with my trout til he ups the tail/wing model count to something higher than 255...
Missing Votes for Hall of Fame[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN - Site Features Here are some of the entries that are short of the 25 votes needed to be considered for the Hall of Fame. If you've downloaded any of these files, please visit their pages and rate them. Getting feedback from the community is very important to content authors and ensures that they continue to produce more for you to download.
Site
no wonder I got the hint of insult.
(that be humour again)
