Neverwinter Nights 2 Announced

[MrHat]

http://www.obsidianent.com/press_releases/nwn2_announcement.html

Thought someone might care.

As for me, I'm overloaded on games right now balancing 2k5, Spellforce, Doom3, madden coming out and fable too.

But it's exciting nonetheless, NWN was a game that kept on giving.

[HaemishM]

Two years away with no real details on what will be done to the Aurora toolset to raise it up to snuff. Interesting, but only in an eyebrow-raising sort of way.

[schild]

Two years away with no real details on what will be done to the Aurora toolset to raise it up to snuff. Interesting, but only in an eyebrow-raising sort of way.

Or in a "no-shit, this is your golden property sort of way." Let the speculation begin.

A hearty 'MEH' for you Bioware.

[Rasix]

A hearty 'MEH' for you Bioware.

It's being developed by Obsidian.  Bioware is pretty much onboard as more of a guiding influence.

[schild]

A hearty 'MEH' for you Bioware.

It's being developed by Obsidian.

Yes, yes, I know. But it's a Bioware property. Black Iserhradmafm Obsidian Entertainment never gets a meh from me. Well, at least not until they severely fuck up.

[Jain Zar]

Maybe they will learn from NWN1's mistakes and make a party centered turn based D&D game with a robust and easy to use level editor that doesn't require scripts and some knowledge of C.

Oh wait, that makes sense.

The loudmouthed multiplayer minority will get catered to again, and the majority that just wants a superior version of the old Unlimited Adventures game with better pack in scenarios and an easy to use game maker will get boned.

[Alkiera]

I believe that's the same company that is making KotOR2, with Bioware in a supervisory position, as well.  Mostly, because Bioware is tired of making other people's games, I think...  Prolly realize the beating they are taking on liscensing fees.  Bioware themselves are focusing on Jade Empires, and their new RPG engine that isn't D&D-based...  Dragon somethingorother.

--
Alkiera

[Rodent]

Obsidian eh? Hopefully this means we won't have to wait for fans and expansions to make the game enjoyable.

[geldonyetich]

Neverwinter Nights 1 has demonstrated nearly unlimited replayability (so long as you're not utterly sick of the AD&D 3rD Edition ruleset).   Neverwinter Nights 2 gets any $50 I have to offer by default.

Actually, let me backpedal a bit.   NWN 2 will have to have a few things to make it worth my while:

1) Ideally, NWN 2 should be reverse compatible with the massive gobs of existing NWN 1 content.   Not vital (since I could always just boot up NWN 1) but ideal.   I'd like to see the Community Expansion Pack come bunded with NWN 2.

2) Despite previously mentiioned reverse compatibility, I'd like the engine to be capable of a hella lot more than the existing NWN Engine is.   Not that the NWN 1 engine wasn't somewhat ahead of it's time, and even serves pretty well by today's standards, but...

3) Higher number of supported players/server.   I think the max is 128 right now.  Lets say you've a T1 and a quad-processor server kicking around somewhere.  Lets push that up to 512.   Loosely translated: Player hosted massively multiplayer compatibility.

4) Ability to tweak base ruleset if desired.   Lets say I happen to be sick of traditional AD&D 3rd Edition ruleset and want to make up some nifty rules of my own.

5) Option for non-isometric perspective.  KOTOR showed it coudl be done.

[HaemishM]

1) Ideally, NWN 2 should be reverse compatible with the massive gobs of existing NWN 1 content.   Not vital (since I could always just boot up NWN 1) but ideal.   I'd like to see the Community Expansion Pack come bunded with NWN 2.

If this happens, expect the damn game to suck. Backwards compatibility will hinder the engine beyond belief, because the engine is already strained as it is, and with 2 more years on the old girl, she will seem antiquated if it's really just the current engine with new bump-mapped shinies. They really need to throw the old engine away and start from a new set of design maps. Maybe not a complete scrap job, but a sizeable rewrite is, IMO, required.

3) Higher number of supported players/server.   I think the max is 128 right now.  Lets say you've a T1 and a quad-processor server kicking around somewhere.  Lets push that up to 512.   Loosely translated: Player hosted massively multiplayer compatibility.

Not going to happen for less than $150 OR some kind of site license type of purchase. They aren't in the MMOG business and they don't want to be. Maybe, MAYBE they'll try to boost player limits, but I doubt it a lot. It just doesn't make fiscal sense for them to do so, especially with the hordes of frustrated MUD designers who are trying to make MUDs with the current engine, who will buy it anyway.

4) Ability to tweak base ruleset if desired.   Lets say I happen to be sick of traditional AD&D 3rd Edition ruleset and want to make up some nifty rules of my own.

Not going to happen in a licensed game. If it has the Forgotten Realms, D&D name on it, you can bet that's all you'll be able to make out of it without hacking it.

[personman]

I'm uninterested until Bioware abandons their position that NWN is a single-player game with MP/modding features.  The only thing that would capture my imagination is a PSW in a box, something the RunUO people were able to retrofit onto UO in less than six months with three people.

Otherwise NWN2 is just NWN with more expansion packs.

[Rasix]

I don't think you're going to get the next big thing in toolsets with NWN2.  First of all, this is not Bioware's project and I believe (not sure) that it's still going to be an offshoot of the Aurora toolset.  I'd imagine the scripting will still be C++. Perhaps it'll be a little more user friendly and content rich, but I doubt it'll be much easier to use than the last iteration.

However, Dragon Age from Bioware does merit paying attention to.  Although it is still seemingly very early in their development, they have already announced two things that make this a title to watch for mod hopefulls.  

A) Is is not a D&D d20 property.  It is their own game world with their own rules.  Hopefully this will translate into a better game system (NWN's system didn't translate well, IMO) and hopefully a more flexible mod tool that is able to change core game systems.

B) A entirely new toolset.  Hopefully they'll take to heart the issues with the Aurora toolset and come out with something that's a bit more user friendly while at the same time providing some more flexibility.

If they learned anything at all from NWN, this could be a massive title from Bioware.

[WayAbvPar]

I want a new millennium version of Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. Give me a retard GUI for the toolset; I don't have the time or inclination to either learn C++ or search the web for scripts and then debug them.

[Dark_MadMax]

I want a new millennium version of Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. Give me a retard GUI for the toolset; I don't have the time or inclination to either learn C++ or search the web for scripts and then debug them.

 Then please stay away from the toolset.  "Retard GUI toolset" never gonna have even half of the possibilities aurora toolset provides.

[WayAbvPar]

I want a new millennium version of Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. Give me a retard GUI for the toolset; I don't have the time or inclination to either learn C++ or search the web for scripts and then debug them.

 Then please stay away from the toolset.  "Retard GUI toolset" never gonna have even half of the possibilities aurora toolset provides.

By that logic, everyone should stay away from the toolset altogether and program their own game, since anything else limits the possibilities.

My point is that the toolset is nigh useless for a very broad section of the audience. Making it more approachable would make me a lot more interested in NWN2. As it stands now, I wouldn't pay $10 for it; the first one sucked- the interepretation of the D&D ruleset left a lot to be desired, and the the toolset's learning curve was SO steep that there were virtually no playable modules for the first 2 months (or even longer...I quit caring by then).

Edit- Alluvian and I posted at the same time-

What the hell, a turn based engine at least as an option. The pseudo realtime of nwn sucked.

AMEN. ToEE got the combat right...NWN should learn from that.

[Alluvian]

I would like to at least do elevation changes on a map, like hills and such.  Not the cliffs and steppes of NWN1.  I want to be able to enter a building without zoning.  That is mainly what I would like to see.  And much improved graphics.  What the hell, a turn based engine at least as an option.  The pseudo realtime of nwn sucked.

[Jain Zar]

I want a new millennium version of Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. Give me a retard GUI for the toolset; I don't have the time or inclination to either learn C++ or search the web for scripts and then debug them.

[Ed McMahon] You sir, are CORRECT. [/Ed McMahon]

Though I have to disagree with ToEE being a good system.  It was slow, clunky, and nigh unplayable.  Radial menus just don't work!

[geldonyetich]

People sure are quick to shoot down the idea of providing far more powerful development tools or reverse compatibility in NWN 2.   Please don't tell me the only reason why I should be looking forward to Neverwinter Nights 2 are prettier graphics.

[Riggswolfe]

A hearty 'MEH' for you Bioware.

If you give Bioware a meh then I have to say you have ZERO taste in roleplaying games.

As for those people saying Aurora is hard to use, what are you on? It is almost to simple. It's pretty much a color by numbers toolset. The scripting is a breeze as well especially if you read the tutorials/documentation out there.

Frankly, you want power with no effort to learn a scripting language. It won't happen people.

[schild]

If you give Bioware a meh then I have to say you have ZERO taste in roleplaying games.

The 'meh' was towards their one piece of concept art and lackluster press release.

[HaemishM]

A hearty 'MEH' for you Bioware.

If you give Bioware a meh then I have to say you have ZERO taste in roleplaying games.

As for those people saying Aurora is hard to use, what are you on? It is almost to simple. It's pretty much a color by numbers toolset. The scripting is a breeze as well especially if you read the tutorials/documentation out there.

Frankly, you want power with no effort to learn a scripting language. It won't happen people.

Yes, actually, we do. Aurora IS hard to use, unless you want to use the DM tools to control absolutely everything, or you are a competent enough programmer to handle the scripting.

Most people, including some real smart fucking people, are not competent enough programmers to work with Aurora. I am one of those people. Hell, I can fiddle with scripts all day, like Javascript or some PHP. I even fiddled with the Aurora scripting engines, in attempts to get NPC's to do routine stuff while the players were around.

It was like a fucking nova monkey being given a gigantic club and told he can build a space shuttle. Maybe one day he'll figure it out, but chances are he'll get frustrated and start smashing shit before he'll get it working right.

Some people just cannot program. I am one of them. Aurora seemed like a great thing at the start, but what it lacked was the ability to do much more than build uninteresting landscapes and dungeons and populate it with monsters who do nothing but hack-n-slash or people who stand around waiting to be your quest/item vending machine.

So it was like MMOG's, except with less people.

And I'll throw another vote towards "TURN-BASED PLEASE, YOU PIGFUCKERS." The real-time/psuedo-pausy-turn-based NWN combat really was not a good iteration of the D&D ruleset.

[WayAbvPar]

Though I have to disagree with ToEE being a good system. It was slow, clunky, and nigh unplayable. Radial menus just don't work!

I wasn't a big fan of the interface either; I just meant that they nailed the turn-based combat. It was very similar to a PnP session with all the options that were available in combat. The story was far too linear and it was buggy as fuck, but the combat was pretty sweet.

TURN-BASED PLEASE, YOU PIGFUCKERS

Hopefully that is on page 1 of the design doc.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

I want a new millennium version of Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set. Give me a retard GUI for the toolset; I don't have the time or inclination to either learn C++ or search the web for scripts and then debug them.

AND ALL THE LORDS PEOPLE SAID AMEN

[Alluvian]

TOEE combat was awesome.  I even loved the interface.  The bugs eventually became too much for me and I never quite finished it.  Random things started aggroing on me so that I had to save and reload 10 times to have a conversation without some random thing attacking me.  Hell, random villagers would attack me even.

[geldonyetich]

Yes, actually, we do. Aurora IS hard to use, unless you want to use the DM tools to control absolutely everything, or you are a competent enough programmer to handle the scripting.

Most people, including some real smart fucking people, are not competent enough programmers to work with Aurora. I am one of those people. Hell, I can fiddle with scripts all day, like Javascript or some PHP. I even fiddled with the Aurora scripting engines, in attempts to get NPC's to do routine stuff while the players were around.

Bah, it's not that tough HaemishM.  I'm a novice C++ and Java programmer who never really put together an app more complicated than a text based Tic-A-Toe game, and I've got a handle on it.   It just comes down to trying to crack their nebulous terminology, how they handle triggers and whatnot.  It's not very well documented.

Fortunately, the community has risen to the occation.   There's a little proggy I use called LilacSoul's Scipt Genertor which is both educational as to how Aurora works and also provides a horrendously simple means to get nearly anything you want done within the game.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, it IS that tough.

I am an intelligent man. I work with HTML daily (which admittedly, ain't hard). Programming requires a grasp of concepts that I cannot wrap my brain around. If thens and conditional math loops and all sorts of math shit that my brain has tried to understand and cannot. I've tried to learn Java, some C, Perl, etc. but I get to a certain point, usually about the point where you have to start iterations and I start screaming "I WANT THIS LITTLE FUCKER HERE TO GO THERE WHEN THE MOON IS FULL, WHY CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YOU OVERGROWN CALCULATOR!" And then I get stabby.

Were I younger, my brain could probably grow the necessary neural pathyways to comprehend this shit. By the time I tried to learn how to do it, I was too set in my modes of thinking to stretch that far without an aneurysm.

[geldonyetich]

Countrary to popular belief, old dogs can learn new tricks.   However, regardless of age, in the case of learning programming aneurysms are probably completely neccessary...

But you've a point that the bundled NWN Tools could provide considerably better support.   Something graphical.  

(Although if you have that LilacSoul tool, all you really need to know is.  "Okay, this thing is tagged x (it says so where it says 'tag'), so I'll select (in the script tool) `Make this blow up into a multicolored jumble of death' and then enter x under where it says 'tag'"   Then when you step on the trigger I drew (in the NWN toolset) that has this script I just made on the "OnEnter" slot, it will cause x to blow up into a multicolored jumble of death.)

[Trippy]

Some more information about NWN 2:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/536/536518p1.html

[geldonyetich]

"Basically we're going to take the original Neverwinter Nights and for all intents and purposes gut certain parts of it and totally rewrite them for things like DX 9, newer hardware and effects like all the new pixel shaders," Darren Monahan told us.

While the single-player experience should allow for dozens of hours of gameplay alone, Obsidian is keeping true to the vision of the original and making sure that the multiplayer experience is just as deep and refined. They're even looking into ways to add to the multiplayer side of the game. "A lot of what we're looking at is what some of the MMOs are doing now and how to incorporate the good points of that into the online experience," Darren told us. "The best way to describe it is a micro-MMO idea. There are a lot of Neverwinter players who have persistent world servers up now, and we're looking at these guys and seeing that they've built some pretty interesting stuff. These guys are running four or five servers that you can play across -- how do we make it so the community can set this up in an easy way?" However, just because Obsidian is looking toward massively-multi player games for some inspiration, the multiplayer experience in Neverwinter Nights 2 will not require a monthly fee to play as the servers are set up by players instead of having central servers for the game.

In addition to making user-created modules easier to produce, the Obsidian team also wants to make it easier for players to download all of the great content that the community creates. There are thousands of user-created modules available for download, but you have to go searching for the content now with the current game interface. "There's this great system in Neverwinter where you can download patches and get updates and get newsletters and all this great stuff for the game," Feargus told us. "Wouldn't it be great if a part of that menu provided instant-access to the top ten voted modules or something along those lines?"

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait a while to play the game for yourself as it won't be released until sometime in 2006. However, we will be bringing you plenty of updates as development on Neverwinter Nights 2 continues.

[personman]

"mini-MMO like".  They could save themselves a lot of time & money just investigating the RunUO team or their asset, and they'd wind up with a pretty robust product.

[Murgos]

In addition to making user-created modules easier to produce, the Obsidian team also wants to make it easier for players to download all of the great content that the community creates. There are thousands of user-created modules available for download, but you have to go searching for the content now with the current game interface.

Seems like there is an obvious solution to this.  Implement P2P along the lines of the original Napster model with a centralized DB, except you have to have a valid registration to access the DB and the client only shares files of the appropriate type (from a mods directory or summat) to keep people from swapping porn or music.

There you go, access to mods galore.  How do you publish your mod? Stick it in your mods directory enable sharing and put a blurb on a message board. Track the activity and you can make popularity lists and whatnot.

[Rasix]

Countrary to popular belief, old dogs can learn new tricks.   However, regardless of age, in the case of learning programming aneurysms are probably completely neccessary...

An aneurysm might be a painful thing to learn. *grin*

Anyhow, I think it is possible for them to create a tool that doesn't require scripting language knowledge to a point. A variety of wizards should be able to come up with solutions to a common problems, like quests, etc.  Monster pathing could also be a tool related.  

But really, do anything out of the ordinary or that stretches the limit of engine or is different from what the stock wizards can provide, is going to require scripting language knowledge.  There's no way to put out a tool like this, as powerful as it is, without it sometimes coming down to needing to script something.  However, how they choose to implement this can have a great effect on picking it up.  They really need to ditch anything C based and use something more akin to Perl or another scripting language that's easier for the dabblers to try.

The problem is requiring people to learn both a GUI interface and a scripting language may turn a lot of people off from creating user content. Automatic script generators may help, but these would need to be in at launch or you risk alienating a good deal of your audience right off the bat.

Anyhow, I'm not really looking for NWN2 to be the one true god of mod making tools at the moment.  I'm placing my bets with Dragon Age, just because they're going to be able to break free from the D20 D&D shackles.

[HaemishM]

Hmmm, so they are going to add in mini-MMO creation features?

Well, then this should have no trouble making it to market in 2008. Or 2009.

Or that will be the first feature cut from the design.

[geldonyetich]

One thing that does disturb me about what I'm hearing about NWN 2 is that they appear to be focusing mostly on the solo game.   What, did Hoardes Of The Underdark sell that well?

Eh, but then again, if there's one thing Massively Multiplayer games have taught me, it's: Lots of players do not neccessarily a better game make.

[Trippy]

Hmmm, so they are going to add in mini-MMO creation features?

Well, then this should have no trouble making it to market in 2008. Or 2009.

Or that will be the first feature cut from the design.

NWN already supports "mini-MMOs" or "persistent worlds" in NWN-speak. The problem is, though, it requires a third party add on to allow you to store things in an ODBC database and lots of clever scripting to make it work. Since the community has already identified most if not all of the limitations in the existing engine for supporting persistent worlds it's not like the developers are going to have to figure out how to do this from scrtach.