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NWN pseudo 3.5 edition d&d; with emphasis on making modules more fun and balanced for multiplayer. See faq.txt for the installation instructions, see readme.txt for the game rules customization, see changes.txt for the content. Changes include major reworking of cleric domains, significant AI improvements and lock up fixes, pale master undead armies, RDD bonus spell slots, spell sneak attacks, etc. Much customization allowable thru editing customization.2da.
NWN2 Spotlight - SpellPlug by codepoetz[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Spotlight Today we have a Neverwinter Nights 2 Plug-In in the spotlight created by Hall of Fame author, codepoetz. Titled SpellPlug, this handy plug-in supports five different languages, and can be used for spell-checking various things inside the Toolset, for example journal entries as well as Blueprints. This plug-in has recently been updated and is a real must for any module builder. Here's an excerpt:
This plugin integrates a spell checker into the NWN2 toolset. You can use this plugin to spell-check conversations, journals, areas and various types of blueprints. The download includes dictionary files for english, french, spanish, german, and italian dictionaries. Other dictionaries can be obtained from http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/dictionary.html. Or you can visit http://www.loresoft.com/netspell for instructions on building your own dictionaries.
Thanks for the contribution codepoetz. Thanks also to QSW for her help in preparing the spotlights. If you'd like your work in the spotlight, drop me a line.
World of Isandor - Heavy Roleplay - Medium Action Server (Persistent Worlds / Players Wanted)
We are looking for new players to join us in this RTS Realm. it's Very much freeform meaning you can do just about anything within an In Character stance.
"Finally, Grobnar is permitted to seek out the Wendersnaven--- and he is accompanied by one grumbling ranger and one enthusiastic bard...
�I dreamed about one a long time ago,� said Lianne.
�I heard a story about it only the other day,� said Grobnar.
�I have never seen or heard of one,� said Bishop flatly. Apparently, the drink had loosened him enough to allow him to enter a conversation about the Wendersnaven."
Female Outfit by Team Advent(Armor) - This is the accompanying female outfit to the male kilt released recently by Team Advent of Acheron's Spawn 2 Roleplaying server :) (Forums at http://circleowar.proboards81.com/index.cgi ) Also includes the accompanying male version.
Quitar & Glasses by Antenni(Inventory Items) - This hakpak REPLACES the mandolin models of the game with new quitar ones. Also it replaces the "party mask" model with sunglasses. To install simply put the stuff in the zip into your own override folder in "Neverwinter nights 2\Override". The color of the glasses can be changed trough the toolset, as can be the color of the quitars. NOTE Since I got a little
Snow panther half plate female armor by Eressil(Armor) - This female armor is my first release for NW2. Type ----- This is a mithral half plate without any magical bonus although you can add them via the toolset. At first I wanted to make it a full plate, but if you watch the screenshot carefully you see there is no so much pieces of armor :p Why ? ----- Crushing monsters with an almost nude female warrior with an unrealistic armor m
Cloaks of Faerun (pk4) by Wild Bill(Armor) - This pack includes cloaks for: Dwarves (male/female) 14 Religions Cities/Organizations offered in pk3 Gnomes (male/female) 7 Religions Cities/Organizations offered in pk3 Elves (male/female) 6 Dark Elf gods/goddesses 5 Underdark Camouflage patterns Cities/Organizations offered in pk3
Creature AI Test Module by K2(No Story (Ex: Resource, Level ups, etc.)) - (From Readme) - This is a simple mod for scripters and players alike to test and tweak the combat behavior of creatures and NPC's, whether it's with pre-made AI scripts (such as Tony K's or Even's) or one of your own making. The layout is very basic - a simple 4x4 interior with no exits, and a group of creatures/NPC's on each side of the room facing each other. One group has a hostile faction, while the second is set as Defender. The groups will engage each other in combat the moment you start the mod. Player faction for both Hostile and Defender is set to Neutral, so regardless of what player character you use to login to the mod with, you can watch the ensuing battle without fear of being harmed, or even noticed by either group (exception - AoE spells that do not discriminate). All creatures in this module will respawn fifteen seconds after death, indefinitely (see 'scripts included' below)...
SAGA: Presentation Video #3 by Fu'Miga(Trailers) - This is the third of SAGA's presentation videos built to let players meet first hand the lands they will be able to explore in SAGA: The Fangii Schism, a NWN2 PW. Here you will meet your doom... the afterlife!
We all know that one of the most important parts of a Persistent World is how it handles the way a character dies and reborns. The death systems a PW uses is often a target of criticism and because of this our project decided to query the members on how to handle this. After endless discussions we finally have the death systems figured out and being finished by our scripter: SpectralHare.
Weapon, waraxe by TaLLan(Animations) - This is a war axe in 3ds format with jpg and tga textures
Weapon, Forge hammers by TaLLan(Animations) - This is 10 of my forge Hammers in different metal and wood textures, they are done in 3ds format with jpg and tga textures
Animation, Magic staffs by TaLLan(Animations) - These are 3 magic staffs with animated orbs in 3ds format with jpg and tga textures
1) The toolset will immediately crash if you copy any waypoint. Very easy to test, simply start toolset, select File -> New -> Area -> add area. Take any waypoint from the blueprints (I was using NW_WAYPOINT001 from empty), place that anywhere to the area. Press esc to cancel placing more waypoints. Select the placed waypoint. Press Ctrl-C to try to copy the waypoint, and you immediately get error saying "Neverwinter Nights 2 Toolset has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.". This error is 100% reproducable.
Good catch.
2) The interior areas are now really dark. The defaults for the area creation has changed, and now the Day/Night cycle is False by default (I think it used to be true before). This is fine, so you just need to define the default Day/Night Cycle Stages to get some light, right? The thing that makes it a bit more challenging, that every single Day/Night Cycle stage is now named as "Sunrise", and they seem to have exactly same values each. Hmm.. Default should be [7] on the list, so I try to edit the [7], add sky light for 0.8, but nothing happens. No light on the screen... I close the area, open it again, and now I do not have 8 copies of Sunrise, but I have the normal names for them, and the lights are back again... Ok, so when you make area, simply close it immediately and reopen it so you can actually see some effects on the area day/night settings.
This is a strange one. We were looking at this the other day. If you use File > New Area you will get a different result than if you right click in the area list and select new area.
Patch 1.04 Bugs. The release notes are just a repost of Nathaniel's list.
The fix for the Win2k issue will be in the final release of the 1.04 patch.
Until that time, you Win2k users can download the .dll file from Microsoft's website, I am told. ----------------------------------- 1. 1.05 is in early process 2. Hide & Invis is intended for 1.05 3. Manyshot should be fixed in 1.04 4. Rapidshot should be fixed in 1.04 5. Practiced Spellcaster should be fixed in 1.04 6. Looping cutscene in Tavorick's manor intended for 1.04 final 7. Quick slots emptying on transition or cutscene should be fixed 1.04
I will try to answer some patch questions here. Check back with this post for updates.
J.E. Sawyer - NWN2 Lead Designer, Obsidian Entertainment -
nwn2_dieties They are present either for future use by us or by ambitious modders. They have no current function in the game.
I don't care what you say about the process, fixing things like this and simple errors in things like .2da files or scripts should have been done the first instant they were reported. There is no excuse whatsoever. NONE!
You're using a beta patch.
Quote: Seriously...what is the use of a in game patching system if you are only going to use it for few major patches over the course of a long period of time anyway???
This thing needs a minor update every week or two minimum, and a major update every couple of months or so.
The patching system for NWN2 is the same as the patching system for NWN1. Hurling out patches every couple of weeks dramatically increases the actual number of patch builds that need to be made. For every increment, there must be a patch build to transition from all old versions. This can result in an incredible amount of build and validation time. Short of re-writing the original patching system, there's nothing that can be done about it. We have to balance the desired frequency of patching with the realities listed above.
Why did D&D have a repuation for being "evil" and "satanic"? The discussion in this thread has been skirting the edges of what is appropriate material for this forum. As long as community members continue to debate and discuss with respect, civility, and respect for all the different belief systems invovled.
Please keep in mind that this thread is about the negative perceptions of D&D and its players, and that religious beliefs are but one aspect of that.
I, personally, believe firmly in the "people fear what they don't understand" angle, because I've had experience with plenty of non-religious folk who believe in the "evils" of D&D.
Mostly, I deal with it by comparing it to theatre due to the roleplaying aspect. Then I emphasize the fact that it's a game, with rules, restrictions, goals, and such. I also go into the social aspect because it's rare to find just two people engaged in a rousing D&D game.
So let's keep the discussion on track and let's try to not disparage anyone's faith, please. Thank you.
Brian Chung - Technical Artist
facelifting nwn Yeah, I would have liked to add lip syncing to the game as well, after seeing the effect in NWN2 and other games, but the logistics of available zots to benefits gained would admittedly be minimal - the average camera distance would mask a lot of the detail of work involved, hence why I'd rather focus on a dynamic hair or open face helm system over lip syncing. And having a higher priority is integrating horses and other WCoC content into 1.69...sigh...
Not to say you should stop this, but I suspect many are realizing why some things are the way they are in NWN, and why devs cringe when a feature request starts with "It would be easy to..." - often the case is that it's NOT easy at all.
Anyway, sorry folks, I have to lock this for length as it has hit 10 pages, feel free to continue on a new thread.
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 Spotlight - Date & Time Functions by WizardStorm Think Group[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Spotlight Tonight we have a Neverwinter Nights 2 Script in the spotlight created by WizardStorm Think Group. Titled Date & Time Functions, this code is packaged in a single .ERF and contains 15 date & time functions. Using the NWN calendar for 0-23 hours in the day, you can also move time not only into the future, but also the past. Here's an excerpt but check the entry for many more examples:
WizardStorm Think Group is pleased to provide a full compliment of Date & Time functions which are compatible with standard database DateTime strings. Please use and enjoy!
Thanks for the contribution WizardStorm Think Group. Thanks to QSW for her help in preparing the spotlights. If you'd like your work in the spotlight, drop me a line.
New NWN2 Models Section[ Comment ] Print News | Mail News | Category: NWN2 - Site News To help separate NWN and NWN2 models we've opened up the NWN2 Models Section and moved and/or copied some of the entries from what is now the NWN model section to it. Initially I felt the one section could support both but it makes more sense to separate them to avoid any confusion. Thanks to everyone that has contributed towards it!
Big Tower by Botumys(Placeables) - Big Tower v01 ------------- A tower very hudge in fact: 50 meters high, 20 meters width. In the futur, I will add a portail and other stuffs. Only one file to put in the override dir. I use textures from the game. Add a line in placeables.2da and copy paste settings of a building. Change the name of the objet and remove doors settings if exist. Duplicate a blueprint building and
Masterwork Weapons: Mundane, Cold Iron, Alchemical Silver by dirtywick(Items: Weapons) - Includes UTI files for masterwork versions (+1 Attack Bonus) of each base weapon, and masterwork versions of Cold Iron and Alchemical Silver where appropriate. Each weapon has a changed icon, changed tint (bluish for CI, whitish for AS), a generic description, and tags/resref that follow the NWN2 naming conventions.
Weapon, axe by TaLLan(Animations) - This is a single handed,broad edged, throwing axe it is in 3ds and OBJ format with jpg and tga textures
Weapon, Battlehammers002 by TaLLan(Animations) - These are my large, double handed Battlehammers, meant to be used with two hands. They are in 3ds format with jpg and tga textures
Weapon, Battlehammer001 by TaLLan(Animations) - These are my small, hand held Battlehammers, meant to be used with one hand. They are in 3ds format with jpg and tga textures
Weapons, swords002 by TaLLan(Animations) - These are the fire and water swords that go with the fire and water shields. They are in 3ds and OBJ format with jpg and tga textures
Weapons, Shields by TaLLan(Animations) - These fire and water shields go with the fire and water swords I will be adding in a bit. These are in 3ds and OBJ format with jpg and tga Textures
Alias of Westgate by paladin3333(Creatures) - Hello all. I'm actually working on the hall of heros, remapping somes models for nwn2. My first one is Alias of westgate. This Zip file adding a new humain chain armor (number 6 in custom list of editor) to official list of nwn2. Work only for Humain male/female. There is an "alias.erf" file adding my characters with history of alias in proprety of creature. She
Weapons001 by TaLLan(Animations) - These Ancient Blades are done in Damascus blades with Ivory, Lapis, Wooly Mammoth and Flint handles
Quick Pros :Intriguing atmosphere of dungeon adventuring. Quick Cons :Terrible syntax and grammar, certain areas are way too dark, combat is poorly balanced.
In AT1 - A Pathway to Adventure the player assumes the role of a novice adventurer. You will become separated from your companions and you'll have to enter dark dungeons and dangerous caves in order to find them. You'll need to overcome unexpected perils and survive through ambushes and traps before you can rejoin your friends.
Thanks Yorgos as well to QSW our Review Admin. If you would like to add your module for review, go here. The NWVault Review Guild is accepting applications for new members. If you are interested in joining the guild, follow this link
"Harper isn't exactly hero material...she's a bard, a damn good one, and has spent most of her life blandishing tales about other people. And when her life is thrust onto a pinwheel track of death, danger, magic, and adventure, she finds more and more people look to her for answers. And more than a few are looking to her for something more... "
When you run the NWN2 launcher, either from the shortcut on your desktop or from the start menu, it will automatically run the *XP.exe if needed.
Hope that helps.
e-mail bugs reports?? What's wrong with talking about in forums? Is the list too long? Is there QA on staff still looking for bugs? Yes. It's part of the reason it takes so long to get patches out to you guys. That doesn't mean that the product will be bug-free. There's just too many different hardware combinations and play-styles to contend with.
There needs to be a centralized place where the players can see what issues have been reported. That's something we've been discussing a bit. I can't go into any details about any possible improvements, but we do want you guys to have more visibility and feedback as to what has been reported. The Community Rep system is the first part of this.
How can there be this many bugs this late in the game? An RPG is the most difficult game to develop. There are so many things that can go wrong. You take all the feats, skills, classes, prestige classes, weapons, spells, items, play styles, computer hardware, single player and multiplayer modes, languages, etc. and multiply that all together and that will tell you how many possible breakdowns can occur in the game. We do our best to catch and squash all the bugs that occur for us, but there is no way we will catch everything. Some will get through and be reported by the community. It's just the nature of RPG development.
edit: I see Josh is still answering here, so I will let him
You can also post any bugs in the Tech Support (Self-help) forum. You may find that your issue isn't a bug or that they can help you out with it. But please, don't be afraid to post about bugs.
Would have liked to have said great work but as I use Win2K by necessity ( my pc links into corporate network and they are not updating to xp as the IT department think it sucks) I'll have to pass though I may see if i can get a copy of the 5.1 dll on my backup pc and see that works.
We are looking into the Win2k issue.
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Is tweaking the turning increment when using WASD controls a priority at all to Obsidian? I bought a couple copies of the game on launch day and haven't played since then because of the 36-degree increment. I have tried using mouselook and I just don't like it for the third person viewpoint. I'm hoping that Obsidian will greatly reduce the increment soon. Actually, I fully expected that this would be in one of the first two patches, which is why I wonder how much of a priority it is.
Thanks!
To answer your question, yes. We are looking at a couple ways to do this. I am told it's not as straight-forward of a fix that we would hope. I am told that an adjustable setting may not be possible the way this is set up in the aurora engine. If that's the case then we will need to find a happy medium and hard code the turn rate.
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In nwn1, during multiplayer, if one of you buddies is in conversation, the other people can continue to wonder around, check their inventory, rest, whatever. in NWN2, your locked in, your FORCED to be in the conversation. Why was this implimented and will it change?
It was a design decision to solve a lot of problems with multiple players breaking things. The OC is about the story, so it's a little more driven than your standard multiplayer game.
Also, in some instances multi or SP, there is no easy way out of a conversation. in nwn1, i could just hit ESC or simply walk away, being out of range to converse with a npc.
Not 100% sure, but I think you can ESC out of the NWN1-style cutscenes (the little windows).
Oh and uh, I was just curious, ive got a level 5 sorce and level 8 RDD and was wondering if he gets his wings at level 10 RDD when his conversion is complete like in NWN1.
I don't believe so, but I'm not sure on that.
P.S. when the patch is final, will I need to apply each patch up to 1.04 or whatever the final version is? Or will the next patch do it all for me?
You should just have to run the patcher included with the game and it will take care of it all automatically
Module Corruption warning! I work in either mode and turn autosave off. I have been lucky to have not encountered any crashes that resulted in corruption.
I also got in the habit with the NWN1 toolset of closing out every so often and restarting the toolset. This usually cleared up any memory leaks and drastically reduced the number of crashes.
oh yeah and windows -> reset does NOT work... where is that preferences folder you spoke of deleting?
Windows -> Reset should work. For the Campaign Scripts or Conversations tabs, you will probably have to close and re-open the toolset for the fix to take effect.
Wow, it feels good to give bugs back to you guys once in a while
More: Almost forgot: Nice plugin, by the way
Hey Rich Taylor... Linux??? I cannot speak for Rich, nor do I know the technical details as he does. But, what I can do is highlight part of his comment here:
"there were major systems decisions made along the way of developing NWN2 that make it borderline impossible to create a Linux dedicated server port at this time."
This could be for any number of reasons. And it does not rule out the server all the way. Given time, there may still be a server port to Linux.
DM Client Issue, 1.04 Beta Console commands should be available to DMs if you enter in the DebugMode 1 command.
More: Playing on a dedicated server, correct? Not a game hosted through the client?
Anyone else have all their saved games and characters just dissappear? Yes, please double check to make sure your files are there still in the appropriate folders. If they are, try moving them, then start the game and go to your select character screen and load save game screen - get the game to see there's nothing there. Then close out of the game and move the files back. That may help you.
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My bad...I guess I deleted them myself. I saw the folder Neverwinter Nights 2 in My Documents and thought that was just some trash folder I made a while ago and deleted it. Why in the world would they put files there in my documents when there's already an Atari/NWN2 folder in prgoram files? Seriously, who does that!? I've played lots of videogames and they never stick files in your my documents folder, especially if they already have a folder in program files...
I'm afraid you will start seeing that more and more. It is a requirement for games to be Windows Vista compliant.
Question for the game programmers. C++ is always a good way to go for game programming. It's powerful and what you learn with C++ is useful for many other languages - if not the exact syntax, the concepts.
There's a forum there about getting into the industry.
There are also a lot of great articles on gamasutra.com.
Whatever school you decide to go to, just make sure they are teaching you C++ and other full-blown programming languages, and not just scripting languages.
This topic will probably get locked since it is way off topic, so just head over to our boards.
More: For the first one: There is actually a great MMO game out there done in Python, which is a scripting language (though I think to be accurate, it is stackless Python). Oh yeah, the game is EvE Online.
C# is what we used for the toolset. I haven't looked at it for games, nor am I an expert on game programming. It probably could be used, but it may still be too new for the core of a game.
You can already see that there will be very different opinions on the subject. Just like there are advocates of only directX or only OpenGL, you will find the same when it comes to programming languages. My advice: read as many articles as you can, sift through the egoes and the pushing of a single technology or company.
Whichever language you learn, there's going to be a trade-off: you might be the only one in the industry that knows that language, but no company may be using that language. Game development is team-oriented.
Taking into account many of the other issues with the game, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most critical, what priority would you guys give to the chat/combat log fix?
J.E. Sawyer - NWN2 Lead Designer, Obsidian Entertainment -
Such glaring incompleteness should be at least hotfixed yesterday. Frankly, I don't see how it made it gold with such obvious problems.
The multiplayer testing team completed the game without any progression breaks. That doesn't mean there aren't bugs in multiplayer, but not everyone experiences the same problems.
Quote: The forums seem like a more organic way of communication. Most peoples first reaction isn't writing an email nwn2bugs@obsidian.net sticky or not. It's posting here in regular chat form and getting instant feedback.
No one has said that bugs can't be discussed here.
So last month we get a "partial sneak peak" of 1.04. The partial seank peak is missing dozens of easily fixed items like spells not doing the right damage (a simple code fix that would take a programmer 15 minutes).
24 tasks each taking fifteen minutes results in six hours of work for one person performing implementation. This ignores verifying aberrant behavior in the first place, compile time and developer testing time, and assumes that the person making the change encounters absolutely no problems during the course of the bug fix and does not need to confer with any other member of the team.
The bug then has to be forwarded to a producer who sends it out to a tester for verification. In the best case, this takes a tester at least another fifteen minutes including all proper steps. With many gameplay bugs, verification of proper behavior isn't as easy as just loading the game and immediately casting a spell. If anything is not working properly, the bug has to go back through the chain to a producer. It returns to the developer who implemented it, marked as "not fixed" and the developer has to review the problem again.
In practical terms, the process of bug fixing and verification takes place over a day or several days of non-continuous time spent on any given issue. In real time, even "simple" bugs that involve changing a number often take a total of an hour of real work between developers, producers, and testers. Bugs could be fixed at a faster rate with lower verification standards, but that would result in even more bugs than fixes currently cause.
If all bugs were instantly recognizable and could be fixed in a minute of time with no chance of error, we would have stopped after the first patch.
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Fair enough. I suppose I just feel a bit miffed by the lack of inclusion of stuff like practiced spellcaster or improved rapid shot that work as intended and have player created fixes on nwvault.
These are fixed and are in the beta. Nathaniel wasn't sure if those two (among others) were actually in the beta, so he didn't include them in the notes.
Minimizing issues If you find that after alt-tabbing back to NWN the game comes up, but you can't click on any buttons, you should be able to just press and release the ALT key again to have the game start registering input again.
I believe sometimes when you ALT-Tab back to the game, the ALT key release message sometimes gets lost leaving the game thinking that the ALT key is still depressed. Pressing and releasing the ALT key again seems to resolve the issue.
Configure failure This sounds familiar to an extremely old issue with the config utility from a long time ago.
I don't remember how it was resolved in the end (since its been so long), but if you haven't patched the game up to the most recent version of the game (version 1.68), try doing that and see if it helps.
However, after doing so you will still need to patch the game back up to the latest 1.68 version (if you don't patch the game afterwards you wont be able to open your old saved games/modules until you do).
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.
2. For newbies who still haven't played your mod, could you please give us a briefing of what "Sanctum of the Archmage I - The Sight" is about?
Sanctum of the Archmage is based on the backstory to a novel of the same name that I started writing years ago, but never finished. The novel in turn was loosely based on the D&D; campaigns I had run in the early 80's. It is set in a custom world, in the Kingdom of Carlissa, a land that has been conquered by an evil warlord called "The Black Magus" and his army of summoned demons. The protagonist (the player) is a young forest-dweller with an unusual gift of prophecy who is rescued from the monsters by a mysterious old wizard and his granddaughter. Through the course of events, he learns that his unique ability may be the only hope left for defeating the demons and their master. And he learns some shocking truths about the history of the world, and about a cosmic battle between good and evil that has been going on for thousands of years.
Rather than a "Hack n' Slash," Sanctum is a linear roleplaying module, written in the style of an "interactive story." There is a lot of writing in it, from conversations to journal entries to item and object descriptions, which the player really needs to read and to think about in order to solve the quests and progress the plot. My intent was to try to create an experience that was as much as possible like "reading a good story," but one that the player is viscerally immersed in and able to interact with.
Thanks to Andarian and Steve for taking the time to conduct the interview.
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