Riftworm

Sawyer just explained this. Yes it does... unless you mean every part of the hair, in which case, you're saying all the hair moved in NWN1? *blink* Once again, so you liked the cartoony art as long as it was in authentic proportion and concept design? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> NWN2's weps looks more "cartoony" to me than NWN1's. Theya re dull in appearnce (texture) and the models themselves don;t look weighty enough to do damage. In light of his explanation that they had to look like illustrations and not actual armor or weapons that might explain why. I'm starting to appreciate the freedom that Bioware excercised in making the original with some of their own designs. In NWN2 It just looks like everyone is forced to wear the same hideous armor models and weild the same clay swords. Nothing appears solid or metallic. No clanging of metal that you expect to see in a game of this genre.

WotC is very particular about the following things: * Amount of skin shown on human-like races (humans, elves, halflings, etc.) * Head appearances (and creature appearances in general). * Weapon appearances. * Clothing and armor appearances. They started to become stricter on these subjects starting with BG: Dark Alliance 2 and ToEE. I'm actually fairly surprised the warlock outfits were approved, because almost every other outfit needed to cover from neck to ankles and wrists. I think Aribeth had a neat design, but the word "realistic" doesn't exactly leap into my head when I look at it. I think more flexibility in the types of outfits available to characters would be nice, but I don't think NWN1's characters were inherently better because they could show more skin. Some of the NWN weapons did look like traditional "Medieval" weapons, but some didn't. My brain didn't explode when I saw them in NWN1 and it doesn't explode when I see them in NWN2, either. I think our hair does look bad and I don't think (m)any Obsidian artists would disagree. I think there are two main culprits for this: 1) 1-bit alpha looks terrible 2) using a de-saturated base texture with multiplicative color tints is never going to look as nice as individual hair textures (or potentially a different tinting system). I think NWN2's hair looks a lot worse than Oblivion's hair, but I think NWN1 had pretty crummy hair too. Better for its time, but still crummy. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Perhaps you misunderstood me a bit on armor and showing skin. these are two seperate beefs of mine. The armor all having round shoulder pads, just doesn't look or seem very realistic. I'm sure if I comberd over WotC illustrations I would find a much greater variety in shoulder pads than NWN2 offers with the round shoulder pad mania it has now. The "skin" I don;t want to see with the armor, but like in NWN1, you could change your armor or remove it and you had an actual body underneath with underwear. That makes sense. But in NWN2 you remove your armor and you are fully clad..?? No offense but that's just corny any way you cut it, and seems like a rush job to avoid more work on body models. With hair, I agree NWN1 hair was pretty bad, no worse than the straw it is now, but it had one advantage - vertex weighting. It moved as you moved. Now it doesn't even do that. It's just straw. With weapons, and armor, I simply think they did a better job modeling those, and while I appreciate the new look of the rapier, it doesn't look "solid" or metallic. Lets assume that you are 100% on weapon appearances according to 3.5 ed and all are canon authentic. They don;t look metallic or solid. Even the shields look as thin as a pizza box. The blades look like paper, and have no dimension or angles. Certainly WotC didn'thandcuff you guys there.

The modeling looks uninspired for the NWN2 weapons system in general IMO. And though you may feel they "looked crappy" in NWN1, they looked closer to the real MCcoy than they do now. You may not care, many of the obsidian diehard fan types seem apathetic towards details of the game that aren't easily overlooked on the bioware forums though. These details add up, 1 at a time they all have an impact and contribute profoundly to how immersive the gaming experience is. These attention to details contribute to a standard that transcends you and arguing it on these forums and carries with it a repuation for the gaming developers.

Sure, but I don't think it's necessary for me to either confirm or condemn them on an individual basis. I definitely think there's a lot of stuff we could have done better on NWN2, but I also think it's a pretty good game and platform for building. With 20/20 hindsight I could list off a lot of things that I would have chosen to do differently, but that's not particularly helpful or insightful. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How about underwear and bare skin? Vertex weighting, straw hair, 80's Round shoulder pad hysteria, and 1 mm graphite sheet weapons? You did notice this stuiff right? Remember NWN1 you had an uber array of authentic looking medieval weapons that looked "solid"? You miss that along with us right? :ph34r:

Hey J, any of that 50 list you agree with?

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The only troll I see is you. We already beat this dead horse yesterday, got the thread closed and yet here we are again. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I didn't start this thread #2, and we aren't discussing the same things. But thanks for your shortsightedness.

Uh oh's the troll is back..Dark_Raven *cough* I can see his points about decision making concernign spells, especially when you have to assume a worst case scenario of maybe 50 spells going off at once ina multiplayer setting. I still think many offensive spells look pretty bad. IGMS and Wail..I mean..c'mon..You don't want to concede victory to Bioware on those do you? Well anyways now that bad spell vfx discussion is out of the way. Back to --> # 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 21, 31, 37, and 42. :D

My comment's purpose was solely to kill the claim that either game has effects that "really" look like a person buffed by spells. I do think the NWN2 spheres would look nicer as "true" spheres, though Justin attempted to avoid that for performance reasons IIRC. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I can see that. And while that is a genuine reason, you'd think the last palce they'd want to cut corners for performance sake is spells, as one of the main factors that people consider for overall graphics aestethic quality in a game. Spell VFX are up there. So it just seems better to want to make your "performance" cuts elsewhere if possible.

I feel they looked more impressive "fully buffed" in NWN1 as well. But I do agree with these people http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...&forum=109&sp=0 some offensive spells in NWN2 need to be changed as well. Paticularly IGMS as they point out, they just look worse now, less complex, and less cinematic than they used to.

Oh, you haven't yet seen the "101 things wrong with NWN2" list on Bioboards. That is insane. It is funny how people who hate the game waste so much time on such silly exercises. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not everyone shares your opinion. It's not insane, it's just different - get used to it.

And in that thread, it seems like a large chunk of the people state that despite the few flaws (such as Wail of the Banshee), on the whole, they prefer NWN2's spell animations over NWN1's. It wasn't really the best source you could find for how damning the spell animations were. As an aside, am I the only person that can look at the icons next to my portraits and tell what buffs and penalties I have on? I'm not really sure how this is much different than the huge row of markers that went across the top of the screen in NWN1, with the exception of the fact that it is now easy to see what buffs my NPCs also happen to have on. Maria: Thanks, that's what I thought. It's just I have done a lot of work with AI in the past, so when I think of pathfinding, I typically think of the algorithms that go into pathfinding, rather than the creation of the walkmesh that is utilized for the pathfinding <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's not true. Anyone can see that they all agree that 6-7 spells look bad. Why would you say they seem to think that when there is no indication of this. And whoever said underground mountains were ridiculous forgot the LOTR MODS. The 9 Layers, Dragon Moons, and a host of other custom mods, not to mention it's used quite a bit in Biowares campaigns. As I pointed out, not only does it give a boss a more promienent and imposing feel, but the option to strategicly place raised terrain should be there. Hell, even for aesthetic reasons it should be there on principle alone.

And that's why we're talking about it. Most of them are poinitng to 6 or 7 spells that look lame. I happened to agree that those same spells look lame. The IGMS, Implosion, Mage Armor, Protection from Evil, Weird and Wail look terrible compared to NWN1. Mage Armor and Protection in NWN1 didn't even have vfx, (MA had one when casting but no lasting vfx which was fine, PFE/G had glowing orbs coming off of you barely noticeable) but when looking at NWN2's version of those i'd rather have no vfx for those spells. The rest they mentioned just look rushed. Wail of the Banshee used to be it's own little #D animation and looked and sounded sick, now it's nothing at all. The animations iin this game are so...basic and uncinematic. It's all goes to lower tha bar for games. Bioware amde these thigns cinematic that way, it looked polished and pro. Obsidian can;t even get PC animations right let alone many spells that got rushed.

1. The noobs don't know that. One look at the ghost town that is NWN2 online and one would have to assume that some % over 15 of those missing were people that didn't understand why they couldnt join and never tried asking. 2. Hundreds are reporting it regardless. I'm one of them. I have it down to a science now to buff and attack and it's stilla good 20 seconds slower than NWN1 to do so. And in PVP that's an eternity. 4. I'm more interested in models than coloring. Would be nice if EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER wasn't forced to wear football shoulder pads. What happened to the various armor design options of NWN1 here? 5. lol.. these people do : http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...26250&forum=109 10. Agreed. It's a compunded headache in multiplayer.. 11. You feel me. 12. You feel me. 14.Yep.. 16. It goes well beyond fonts. We have newcomers in our forums online asking how to talk to us in game lol. 21. not in PVP multiplayer it's not. They need to fix this..lets be real here. 31. It's the linear issue again. Even if you don't want to or never did, this adds to the realism and should be included. You used to get alignment shifts this way as well. 37. To you it's not, but it's one less detail included. I don;t want nude characters, I want a sense of realism that when I'm changing my clothes there isnt armor painted to my skin but just underwear on...realism. 42. Vertex weighting is a big complaint with a big crowd. Mortas Nai says it rigth iin that Bioware managed to get bouncing hair and that was 5 years ago. Clothes not moving with the movement of body, body's not looking liek cardboard when they fall. These details add up.. .

THen you make the cave link to a transition to an "exterior" area that looks like a cave. As an experienced modder, I'd think that this solution would have been obvious for you. Make the cave entrance just like you always would, but instead of having it link to an interior cave tileset, link it to the "exterior" cave map. What are the telltale earmark signs that you're in a cave or a cavern tileset? The sky can be completely blacked out, so you wouldn't see a sky. As for the lack of a roof, I can't imagine it being too hard to suspend disbelief in this one (unless you're nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking because you just want to bash a game), given that most people play the game from a more isometric viewpoint and rooftops don't actually exist. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 1. So you're saying every server would just have some weird suspiciously outdoor feeling "cave" suddenly appear for when they wanted an elevation? That's gonna fly with all of the modders? I doubt this very much, but they will have to settle for this now wont they? In the end I feel protest will win out or community designed interior elevation tiles. 2. Cave and Cavern Tilesets are the earmarks ..Helloo? The community will fast become familiar with the caving system tiles, and suddenly not see them. 3. Fair enough for a jimmy rig. I'll probably end up trying this with all of this talk about it. .

I do mod, I said not at the moment. I'm on the Dungeon Eternal X development team. I made tons of mods for NWN1, including designing all of 6th Gate, and we just finished mapping DeX for NWN2. I wasn't trying to be insulting, it's seriosuly that if Obsidian "forgot" about elevated tiles for caves, the need to remedy that. We shouldn't have to think of ways to work around a glaring oversight of a major tileset feature lost in the bustle of rushing the product out. If you seriously want an example of how that wouldn't work in game here's why. 1. No one would beleive they were in a cave or cavern if they didn't transition through one. 2. No one would see the telltale earmark signs of a cave or cavern tileset to believe they were in one. 3. How are you in cave with a sky overhead? Even if you managed a rockfaced roof somehow where are the shafts of light? Cave objects ect.. Are you starting to get the picture? If worse comes to worst I have no doubt the community will make their own elevated interior tiles, but I can assure you "faking" caves won't fly with the gaming public.

Uhh I don't understand why everyone is weird about forcing simulated outdoor caves down my throat when I'm not even modding at the moment. I'm not interested in fake scenes, I'd like authentic interior tiles for both caverns (steps) and caves (hills). This isn't just me its lots of modders at the vault bioware who even raised the subject. I'm sure its not some epiphany to simulate a cave, it's just cheap and isn't the same obviously. --- On to --> # 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 21, 31, 37, and 42. please ..lol

Huh? lol No she just explained that she simulated a cave outside ..rofls. That's not my gripe. I'm talking about all interiors having an elevated tileset, and Obsidian forgot those. :crazy: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> /sigh. Yes, I realize this. In fact she used my idea as she said above. It would seem you're not understanding what I'm saying, or you're just arguing for argument's sake at this point. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Whoa what? No you don't understand, I'm not trying to argue, I'm saying that's nice she simulated an outside cave, but I'm not looking for a ghetto jimmy rig quick bandaid fix and fake scenes. I simply want them to reimplement and fix that glaring oversight. This isn't somethigng I'm doing now. I'm not modding at the moment, but when I tried I noticed that and it was confirmed it was occluded, but more than likely forgotten. In which case would be nice to reimplent some elevated interior tiles. This isn't even the focus of my 50 list. This is number 8 and didn't have much emphasis, I just thought it would be nice to redo that because yeah it kinda sucks they forgot yknow.

Huh? lol No she just explained that she simulated a cave outside ..rofls. That's not my gripe. I'm talking about all interiors having an elevated tileset, and Obsidian forgot those. :crazy:

Everyone seems a bit confused on a fairly simple concept. The old NWN1 Toolset allowed for raised tiles to be places to make hills in caves, or steps in caverns for interiors. Often as high as a mountain if you wanted. This not only made for great scene building for a boss scenario to have a much more grand apperance, but offered a wealth of options for map makers looking to add aesthetic variety or strategic points to their cave and cavern systems. Well Obsidian forgot that apparently and left those out.

Since it "seems you can" that's all that matters? How about just - you can? Can I get a confirmation? That would be really cool if we could once gain build an ascending elevated boss area underground. That's 1 down 49 to go.

Um..the "cave" discussion was pointing out Obsidian didn't include a way to elevate the ground on INTERIORS, like you could in NWN1. I can't even see that picture btw - you may wanna jiu-jitsu that in photoshop and raise the low value curves up a tad.

I won't flame him, I doubt Roshan, Wistrik, or Volourn will either. Well maybe Volourn, but he's unpredictable like a barrel of TNT. :D