I dream of a day when 1-bit alpha will go away. It looks terrible. There are excuses for why we have to do it right now, but MAN does it look bad. Tree leaves with 1-bit alpha? Horrible. Hair with 1-bit alpha? Awful.
I have a dream. Share this dream with me. Together... we can make it real.
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
June 13th, 2007
NWN2 Game Update Version 1.06 Released!
That's right, the 1.06 game patch has been released. French-language users may have a little trouble downloading the patch. You can download the patch from the NWVault Official Patches page while we work on a fix. As always, we want to hear about any issues caused by the patch. You can let us know here, in the announcement thread on the Bioware forums.
We Have a Winner!
Congratulatio
One of the most important attributes of a good designer is the ability to apply critical thinking to any aspect of a game. At a convention recently, a bunch of game developers kept repeating how important critical thinking was. An audience member asked, "Well, what is that really?"
There's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Thinking but that doesn't necessarily give anyone a good idea of how that is applied to game development. One thing we often ask applicants at Obsidian i
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
June 7, 2007
For this week's Community Update, we'll take another look at some of the great community creations out there.
NWN2 Community Representatives In Europe
Working with Atari Europe, we are expanding the Community Representative program to Europe. Currently, we are testing the system with the French-speaking part of the community and, if all goes well, we should be expanding it to other languages as well. We have a great bunch of
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
Welcome back to another Community Update. Today we are going to spend a little time talking about the 1.07 patch. Of course, I can't give everything away, but I will give you a little peek into what's coming up.
NWN2 Worlds Down?
You may have noticed that the Persistent World-focused site NWN2worlds.net has been down for the last few days. Strauss is in the middle of moving and assures me his site will be up and running again shortly. If you
There were some concerns floating around about Aliens being an action RPG, so I thought it would best to clarify. While there will be action elements to it, it is still an RPG in every sense of the word.
An analysis of the elements, along with diagrams as to what constitutes an action RPG in the aliens universe, is presented for your viewing enjoyment here. Hypothetically, the diagrams may resemble cartoons. And it may not be a serious analysis. All other standard caveats apply.
Happy
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
May 16th and the year is flying by. Time for another update.
There's been a lot of action on the vault lately. I'm going to focus on the player-made shtuff again for this update.
Stained Glass Windows
Ar_Pharazon has created a great hakpack with some stained glass windows. If you have been looking for that special touch for your church or cathedral building, here it is. Great work.
Prestige Class Wizard
Thankfull
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
Welcome back to the Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update. This week's update will be a little on the short side and delayed due to workload. Because of this I am adding a little secret surprise at the bottom of the page. I think it may be well worth the wait.
Patch 1.06 Released as Beta
On Monday we released the 1.06 patch as a beta to the community. It contains a lot of fixes and new features for the builders in the community, chief among
Written by Rich Taylor, Lead Programmer.
Whew, sorry for not finishing off the UI Objects. There's not too many left to document here before all the basic UI types should be covered, I think...
Anyway, on to UIListBox. UIListBox is a container similar to UIPane and anything listed under UIPane that makes sense for UIListBox probably does the same thing under UIListBox. So I'm going to stick to discussing the attributes that are unique to UIListBox. Refer to UIPane for the basic attribu
As part of the discussion involving Aliens interface design, our Systems Lead, Paul Boyle, showed us this supercool lighttable interface.
Here's a glimpse of what future keyboards may be like.
There's also pretty lights and a cartoon in there as well, for your viewing pleasure.
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
Well, it's that time of week again, where I need to dig into the production list and scour the community for those things that may interest you.
Mod-Making Contest Complete
Monday was the last day for submissions to the mod-making contest. The theme for this contest was Grimm's Fairy Tales. We have quite a few submissions and, after playing a couple mods yesterday, I think the competition is going to be pretty fierce. The exteriors I have se
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
Hello again, everyone. This week I thought I would dedicate the update to a few of the community works. Just a warning, though: There's a lot of screenshots in this one, so it may take a while to load fully.
Formations, Formations, Formations
(Not to be confused with the famous "Developers" speech, from a certain MS guy).
Jasperre has been working on a great little AI script that allows for formations! After watching the video, I aske
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
Here we are with the second installment of the Community News. It's been a busy week, to say the least.
Update to the 1.05 Game Update Update
I think it's fair to say that the 1.05 patch has been my least favorite patch so far. Not because of content - the content of it is great - but because it has been a thorn in our side like no other. When we released the patch to everyone, a seemingly small issue was found that caused the toolset error ou
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update
So, based on the feedback from the Bioware NWN2 forum, it seems we have been neglecting the news side of things. One of the issues is that we give out information in so many places, it's difficult to remember what information was given where. Hopefully we can change that with this Blog.
Starting today, I plan on releasing some news every week, when there is news to give. If there is no news, I will probably post about some of the cool things I h
- By Rich Taylor
Just a note about a few more 1.06 things. But first, regarding 1.05 Final, it seriously, really, probably, maybe, should be coming out early next week (which means this week - Rob)... That's about all I know about it. =)
EnableAreaWater() - Turn water rendering on/off in an area.
SpeakOneLinerConversation() - Now takes a volume parameter (Only supports talk, whisper, and shout)
SetScale() - changed to accept x, y, z axis as parameters
Dedicated Server now correct
Rich Taylor brings us another look at what's happening on his end:
Here's a list many of the scripting changes made in 1.06 so far. Most of them come from the 1.67 and 1.68 updates of NWN1.
ActionRest() - The bIgnoreNoRestFlag wasn't actually doing anything. It will now force rest even if the area is flagged NoRest or there are monsters nearby. If the character is still in combat, it will not force rest.
CreateItemOnObject() - Added new string parameter to provide the newly create
I played GRAW2 back-to-back with Rainbow Six: Vegas, and I found the former lacking in many areas. Though I would say elements like the GUI, level design, animations, and sound were reasonably solid, the core gameplay itself was often frustrating. The problems were a culmination of bad AI, a poor command interface, some other generally clumsy mechanics, and story/dialogue elements that could have been much better.
Your teammates are not very effective. Not only do they fire their wea
'Sup G's?
Sooooo... lately I have been talking with some of the other Obsidz folks about issues that affect the making, use, and distribution of custom content. Chief among these are:
* The lack of an official hak editor.
* The lack of an official UTF-8 string editor.
* The lack of a place where "stand-alone" (unaffiliated with modules and campaigns) haks can live (override and data folders not really being a good home for such things).
* The lack of documentation on the order i
Caveat lector: I have not played any of the other Rainbow Six games, so I did not come into this title with many expectations. Also, I'm just jotting down thoughts in no particular order.
This was the first game I've played for more than a few hours on my Xbox 360. It felt easy to get into. Though the game had a lot of mechanics, they were introduced step-by-step, though I think I might have missed a few tips along the way. The controls seemed sensible for the most part, but switchin
By: Rich Taylor, Lead Programmer
The 1.05 beta was posted today. One tweak that I intend to have made before 1.05 final is to remove the 'tabs = 5 spaces' change in the script editor. While some people do want some option like that, I think it needs to be implemented as something that can be turned on/off/adjusted, so for now, it's best to leave it out and re-implement it correctly in 1.06.
As far as 1.06 goes, I've spent a lot of time this week integrating a lot of the NWN1 1.67 chang
Technically, this is "Unofficial GDC Report, Part 3." Technically. This is because this topic goes faaaaaar beyond GDC.
Regardless, I wanted to take a moment to show you why we love the fans who hate us.
Finally made it back from the Game Developer's Conference, and I'll be blogging the experiences through this coming week and the next.
I will say, that parties at GDC can get awkward, depending on the celebrity turnout.
