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New Community Blog (The Unintentional Gatekeeping of Video Games)

Blogs

Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

8-bit Alpha and Translucent Surfaces

Q: With 8-bit alpha, is it possible with the current NWN2 engine to use the alpha to make a surface translucent (as in 50% opacity with an alpha pixel value of 50%)?   A: There are two ways to make a surface translucent.   One way would be to make a special effect that edits the alpha. In the VFX editor this would be called a "game model effect". Then you'd have to assign the effect to the object via the toolset, or script.   The second way would be to export the model that you want the
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Special Screens

By: Rich Taylor   Taking a break from writing about the UI Elements for a moment, though there are still some of those that I will cover in future posts.   Most XML files are loaded as default UI Scene, which implies no special behaviors. There are, however, several XML files that will get special handling in code and most conform to specific rules in order to even be loaded. All of these scenes are distinguished by their identifying name in the INI file (Or the screen tag given to them wh
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

UIObject

UIObject is the 'base' GUI object. You can't actually define it in XML, but it contains attributes that are common to many different UI Objects, so I'm starting here.   The following are the attributes that will be loaded for every UI Object in the XML file except for the attributes.   Some attributes will be ignored or overridden depending on the situation. Note that attributes are case sensitive.   name String value for the name of the UI Object. This is used internally and will be
Joshin' Around!

rpg mechanics 'n stuff

I have written before about the strange position occupied by RPGs in modern computer gaming (PC or otherwise). In summary: tabletop RPGs and most of their CRPG kin were born out of mechanics necessitated by the realities of playing a game with dice, paper, and pencils. Everything was either uncontested expression on behalf of the player or a simulated contest governed by probability. Modern PCs and consoles can now, with a fair amount of accuracy, simulate movement, lighting, perception, and vir
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

UIPane

UIPane is the generic 'container' for other UI Objects. Panes can't be rendered, but they can contain 'child' objects which can be renderable objects.   Every scene has a 'rootpane', which is automatically defined by the engine when a new UIScene is loaded from a XML file.   Child objects within a pane will be positioned with their x,y origin relative to the origin of the UI Pane that contains the child. UIPanes can also simulate buttons with the tupple attribute, so many of the attributes
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Upcoming 1.05 Patch

Rich Taylor gives us a peek into what will be in the 1.05 patch:   While the 1.04 patch is about to come out for NWN2, the 1.05 patch isn't too far off either. Rather than make 1.05 a big patch like 1.04 is, we want to release a small, quick patch to try and quickly resolve some issues the custom content community for NWN2 is running into.   I recently revamped the auto-updater to allow for incremental patches. This means that if someone had 1.02, the patcher would patch them up to 1.03, t
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

UIScene

The UIScene tag at the top of the XML files defines certain global parameters about the entire GUI window being defined in the file.   A scene doesn't have anything to render by default, but rather contains items that will get rendered. So a file that defines a UIScene and nothing else will not appear as anything in the game.   Some of the attributes for UIScene overlap with those of UIObject, even though UIScene does not inherit from UIObject, so this attributes will be repeated here.  
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

MDB File Bitflags

Q: Some of the blocks in a MDB file have a 32-bit field in front of the vertex count field, which we assume is a flag bit vector. In most cases it has a value of 0, but occasionally some bits are set. What do they indicate?   A: The bitflags are as follows for skin and rigid packets:   const DWORD NWN2_ALPHA_TEST = 1 << 0; const DWORD NWN2_ALPHA_BLEND = 1 << 1; // #### SHOULD NOT BE USED const DWORD NWN2_ADDITIVE_BLEND = 1 << 2; // #### SHOULD NOT BE USED const DWOR
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Ranges.2da and Seeing Stars

Q: Ranges.2da has 2 columns labeled 'PrimaryRange' and 'SecondaryRange' which are apparently only used for perception ranges... Which of these columns affects the seeing range and which hearing (I assume 'Primary' is hearing based on my tests, but I'm not sure)? What values does the PercepRngDefault use? It uses the usual **** entries for default values, but where is that value defined?   A: Primary Range is the Spot range (Visual range) Secondary Range is the Listen range (Hearing range)
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Alpha Transparencies in Foliage

Q: Currently I am working on a community download pack containg a large variety of foilage placeables (ferns, shrubs, weeds, flowers, small trees etc.). I am using alpha layers in my textures, and currently have tried dxt5 interpolated alpha (this is what format I use for my foilage in other engines such as UT2003/4) and also dxt1 with alpha, but I get no transparency in the toolset. My models and textures are showing up in the toolset just fine, but the engine seems to ignore the alpha on my d
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Walkmesh and Textures and Music. Oh my!

Q: In walkmeshes, each face has a 32-bit flag. We have seen the values 0x0, 0x9, 0x11, 0x21, 0x41 and 0x101. The bottom bit seems to indicate whether the face is walkable or not, but what do the other bits mean?   A: The bit assignments for the walkmesh face flags are: bit 0: walk bit ( 1 = walk, 0 = no walk ) bit 1 - 2: reserved bit 3 - 13: material ( used for footstep sounds, etc... I dont know what will happen if more than one of these are set at the same time. I dont recommend it. )... bi
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Restricting Diety Selection and Addign Skills

Q: Is there a way that you can filter the domains available when taking the first level of cleric, based on the deity the player chooses? Torm, for example, might only offer the Good, Sun, War and Healing domains. Is this possible?   A: It is not currently possible to restrict domains based on deity selection.   The Domain GUI code has no knowledge of your deity selection, nor is there any data loaded up on a deity-by-deity basis on what domains are in that deity's portfolio. Also, default
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Variable Length, GetEffectInteger and SpellEffectID

Q: How long can a variable name be? How long can a string be?   A: While the runtime virtual machine doesn't have any limits that we could find, the compiler will reject tokens that are longer than 512 characters. So that would probably be the de facto limits of variable or hard coded string length.       Q: What effect information do different values for the Idx parameter give back for GetEffectInteger()? There doesn't appear to be many comments on this function that I can find.   A:
Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog

Welcome!

Welcome to the Neverwinter Nights 2 Blog!   Here you will find answers to questions asked on the official Neverwinter Nights 2 Forums and some additional information put out by some of the developers at Obsidian.   With these Blogs we hope to give you some insight into the workings of the game and answer some of the more difficult questions

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