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Wistrik

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    So how buggy is NWN2?

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted · Edited by metadigital

    A simple -1 doesn't mean that they hate you.  If you have 100 influence with someone, and then disagree with you, they'll still idol-worship you.

    I wasn't speaking in absolutes, but I forget that such is common in the English language today. In other languages, saying you love person#1 less than person#2 is the same as saying you hate person#1 more than person#2. You may care for them both, but you think more of one and less of the other. There are degrees of love/hate.

     

    My point isn't the quantity or degree, it's when this is applied.

     

    For example,

    Khelgor loves to fight, despite his LG alignment. (I think CG is more his style.) Problem is he's totally unreasonable about it and expects everyone around him to feel the same way. This is a childish attitude. Thus whenever I counter his desire to start a fight, I score a -1 with him. Even Elanee disagrees, saying after Khelgor starts an unnecessary fight with some sailors in Highcliff, "If we are through making new enemies, we should move on." Later it makes more sense; you only score -1 if you make a negative comment about his dwarven heritage. Sure, his change of attitude is part of his quest, but I don't want to be penalized for merely disagreeing with his point of view. He freely disagrees with mine, initially.

     

    So how buggy is NWN2?

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted · Edited by metadigital

    In Neverwinter, Ammon starts offing nobles while searching for a shard. The first noble he kills is mentioned by name ('Lord F....." I can't recall the name off the top of my head) by Cormick and later by Duncan. However the middle of the conversation with Sand, they start calling him 'Lord Gentry', and this glitch carries through to Captain Brelaina.

     

    This I believe isn't a glitch, but a storytelling problem.

    I believe 3 nobles eventually are killed, Gentry was the 2nd. They just talked about him like he was the only one who was killed, leaving you to believe that it was a glitch.

     

    It's a glitch because the name switches to Lord Gentry before the second noble is killed, and right in mid-conversation no less. Read the conversaion carefully next time when you first visit Duncan and ask him about the murder while Sand is there. They'll start off talking about Lord so-and-so and a few sentences later change over to Lord Gentry. Perhaps Gentry is the second noble, but he's not dead yet at this point in the game.

    Volourn's Wowwy Journey With NWN2:Spoiler Edition

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    Hmm, I've been posting a lot of bugs and gripes about the game so far, so I thought I'd make something of a balancing post to highlight the things I've enjoyed.

     

    Highlights:

     

    - Sand attempts to scry the two shards for me and the three of us are knocked to the floor. Cracks me up every time.

     

    - Elanee introduces herself. (My kind of woman.)

     

    - Khelgar's humor. Sure, he's a bit thickheaded early in the game, but some of his comments are hilarious.

     

    - Sand at the trial. Especially his responses when I cause Torio to throw a fit, and when she exposes him as a former Luskanite.

     

    - Aldenon's absentmindedness and way of speaking.

     

    - Shandra Jerro's character - well written.

     

    - Ammon Jerro's voice. Dunno why, I just like it.

     

    - Finally killing Bishop. What a waste of NPC.

     

    - Seeing Garius' surprise when I off his summoned Nightwalker.

     

    - The scene of the restoration of the Silver Sword.

     

    - The purification ritual.

     

    - The way the Web spell's projectile bounces along the ground.

     

    - Dragons are appropriately huge.

     

    - Nolaloth, the crystal dragon

     

    - Blooden, damn pretty (screenshots I've seen so far don't do her justice; she looks much better in my game)

     

    - Crossroads Keep, as my stronghold. Once I figured it out it was a lot of fun, and we spanked the shadow army.

     

    - If you build a monastary in your stronghold, you get a nigh-immune Greycloak monk in your party while you're in the Vale of Meredelain, up until you enter the room with the Shadow Reavers. You can't control him, but he will fight fearlessly and won't take damage.

     

    - I had a blast (literally even) fighting the siege ramps. Note that flaming weapons work well in the absence of fireballs.

     

    - Shadow Reavers are awesome, and the power of truenames should never be forgotten.

     

    - Mephasm, the friendliest devil I've ever encountered.

     

    - Scenery. Some places are good for sight-seeing. It'd look better with shadows and at high res, but that'll have to wait until I figure out how I want to upgrade my computer.

     

    - Cutscene dialogs; the majority are well done and look great.

     

    - The 'showfps' console command. This allowed me to fine-tune the game settings for a compromise between good looks and performance. I will sacrifice everything else to play this game with high quality textures; they help that much. Thankfully all I had to sacrifice was shadows (aside from drop shadows), water effects, and high resolution. (Using 1024x768 for now, but with high quality textures it still looks very nice.)

     

    - The music is well done.

     

    - Characters have mouth parts and eyeballs. Though they're mouths don't move as realistically as mouths in Half-Life 2, and their teeth tend to show from behind their lips when not speaking (might be a resolution issue), it's still a nice touch. When Elanee looks at me with those green/hazel eyes... :brows:

     

    - The sounds Shadow Priests make when they die... hilarious!!!

     

    - The 'Butcher of Ember' trial. Good stuff.

     

    That's it for now.

    So how buggy is NWN2?

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted · Edited by metadigital

    On average this game isn't any more bug-infested than prior games by these folks. (Going back to Infinity engine days since I won't touch KotoR.) That said, there is a fixpack for BG2 now that attempts to address thousands of mostly minor bugs which are bugs nonetheless. Taken as a whole, the fixpack subtly improves the game and makes it seem more polished.

     

    Back to NWN2... There are multiple textual errors, such as misspellings in NPC/Item descriptions, and conversation text not matching recorded vocals. Given developers' track record of fixing such things, I'll end up having to do it with the toolset, which isn't hard. (The toolset is a joy to use, thanks Obsidian.) They should have had me on the team to proofread their text, but oh well, my current employer benefits instead.

     

    The AI is atrocious, and I haven't looked into it yet, but it should be easy enough to modify the scripting and the XML Behavior interface (for additional options) so as to provide more robust, and more intelligent, AI. I've resorted to telling my party to Stand Ground while my rogue goes into stealth and runs around disarming traps; otherwise the idiots will run right over a detected trap and injure themselves. Additionally, the main character will not inititate new attacks once his current foes are dead, unless someone attacks him. Thus I'm always having to tell him to attack someone. This is with Puppet Mode disabled.

     

    Rogues 'stand up' prematurely while disarming traps and picking locks, which allows them to interrupt the process if they are attacked and return the favor. The amount of time before they 'stand up' seems to be random; I've had them stay hunched over until the progress bar reached 100%, and I've had them stand up before it got 25% complete. Certainly a bug in there somewhere.

     

    When entering an area for the first time, it's not uncommon to see all traps detected, even if they're clear across the map.

     

    There is a fog of war, of sorts, in that the game hides rooms you haven't found yet. But a bug can cause the game to reveal these rooms when you exit the map. I don't mind not having fog of war in the outdoor environments because line of sight is usually unobstructed. (Just as characters stand still while searching, so too can they climb a tree and scope the horizon without doing anything. That's how this game treats such activities.)

     

    Certain combat animations aren't working. Great Cleave and Cleave, for example, often do not display; instead the monsters take damage while my character stands there. Sometimes the animations display, but usually they don't. Same goes for multiple hits per round on high level fighters. Something's fishy there.

     

    Dialog cutscenes don't always focus on the speaker correctly. Last night we met Elanee and she initiated conversation after combat, but instead of seeing her, I was treated to a view of the blue sky. When someone else spoke, the camera corrected itself and focused on Elanee when it was again her turn to speak. (This annoyed me because I think Elanee is beautiful. :) )

     

    Neeshka has no tail. I've yet to keep her in the party after reaching Neverwinter, but so far only Khelgar has mentioned a tail. Neeshka never did.

     

     

    In Neverwinter, Ammon starts offing nobles while searching for a shard. The first noble he kills is mentioned by name ('Lord F....." I can't recall the name off the top of my head) by Cormick and later by Duncan. However the middle of the conversation with Sand, they start calling him 'Lord Gentry', and this glitch carries through to Captain Brelaina.

     

    Sometimes NPCs who are on the move will stop for cutscene dialog, say their piece, and then run out of view of the camera before they finish speaking. One example of this is Amie Fern in the tutorial when we're running over to the oversize hog (or maybe it was the man in green).

     

    Perhaps it's by design, but hats/helmets placed upon the heads of joinable NPCs will not display on their heads, although they'll get the bonuses. Not that I mind looking at Elanee's beautiful hair, but I thought she'd look good in a wizard hat. (You can buy four specialty hats from a merchant in Highcliff.)

     

    Pathfinding has bugs. If you command a character to attack an enemy and another NPC (regardless of allegiance) stands between them, the character may or may not path around the NPC to get to the enemy. This seems to be hit and miss 50/50, as it works sometimes and fails other times. I've also told a character to run to a point on the street, and instead of taking the broad street to get there, he paths around a stack of crates and other obstacles. He'll even reverse course to do this, oddly enough. Finally, NPCs will warp from place to place while traveling, even if they didn't get stuck on anything. I've had my character suddenly jump forward or backward, and last night he even managed to land a blow on a shadow priest who was clear across the screen, before one or the other finally warped to the right place. This kind of lag is usually expected with an online connection to a game server, but is ridiculous in a singleplayer environment.

     

    There are collision issues too. Characters can get stuck on each other and will humorously vibrate in place or look like they're having a spastic attack. If a character has ranks in Tumble and this happens in combat, you'll be treated to a stream of *Tumble* messages floating up from the character's head. If DebugMode is active, you'll occasionally see action overflow messages displayed in the text window when an NPC gets stuck.

     

    Furthermore, weapons do not collide with objects outside of combat/bash and will humorously run characters through while they're standing around or emoting. Finally, doors are considered ethereal once opened; characters will freely attack and walk through open doors as if they aren't there. These things may have been done for performance reasons, but it hurts realism.

     

    It is hard to click on a target NPC during combat because the hotspot is typically much smaller than the creature's outline, and isn't always located near the character's 'center'. Thus I have to pause the game to target reliably with the mouse, otherwise my character usually runs behind the creature I tried to target. (Do this sometime, pause and move your mouse over a creature and notice how small the hotspot is compared to the overall creature outline. Sometimes there is a huge difference. By 'hotspot' I'm referring to the location where the cursor changes to a sword or a dialog icon.

     

    Joinable NPCs don't keep their skill assignments. I can assign skills all I want, but when they level up, the skill points I previously assigned have vanished into thin air. Thus I gave up and just click Recommend to get past the skill assignment screen. At least they keep the feats you assign to them.

     

    The user notes portion of the journal is difficult to edit thanks to a very rudimentary text editor, and tends to disappear/reappear so I can't reliably keep notes in it. This is a shame because I used this heavily in NWN to keep track of puzzle solutions and whatnot. Now I'm back to writing notes in a notebook.

     

    A few NPCs with dialog have a blank state just before their dialog terminates, so you see an empty box with a Continue button in it. Doesn't break anything, but it's an extra click to get rid of a dialog box that should have already disappeared.

     

    The silver sword always replays its re-assembly animation when you enter an area while wielding it. Though the effect was cool the first time, it's unnecessary for the remainder of the game, and a bit unrealistic. Does my character's will waver whenever he steps through a door? :aiee:

     

    Not a bug, per se, but I wish it was overhauled. There is no way in the nine hells that I would ever, ever, invite someone like Bishop into my party, much less my stronghold. Thus the whole deal with his betrayal is a forced plot element. The final dialog with Garius was ridiculous, making wild, untrue assumptions about things that never took place. Ugh. Talk about breaking immersion. I place this above even the weak AI in terms of annoyance. The campaign would be so much better with a BG2 party system and no forced involvements.

     

     

    The influence system is nice, but characters are way too picky. I don't start hating someone just because they disagree with my point of view, and people who do display this behavior are often berated by their community. So why do our party members behave so childishly? Save the influence adjustments for major events and stop applying penalties to silly disagreements. If they don't like how I do things, they shouldn't have forced their way into my party!

     

    Okay so I advanced from bugs to design issues. These are things I'd like to see changed, but hold out little hope for. I can use the toolset to write my own module and have more realistic party control, but I can't fix code-based errors in the engine without breaking the EULA. :-" (Not that I'd want to wade through all that bloated code anyway.)

     

    I'm hoping most of these things will make it into the next major patch.

     

    Edit: added AI note about main character, corrected misspelling.

    Edit: added spolier tags. :angry:

    Volourn's Wowwy Journey With NWN2:Spoiler Edition

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    Casavir's right-hand gal can also become a sargeant. I had all three. I never saw Cormick again after his injury outside Aldenon's estate, but if you talk to the old-timer Watch guard who patrols Blacklake with a two-handed sword, he'll update you on Cormick's health.

     

    End game spoilers follow, don't read if you haven't finished yet, unless you don't care.

     

    I finished the game with most of my characters being level 20, and very close to 21 if it had been available. That's what happens when you get your quest rewards right, which is why I preferred to answer the questions of Never's statues properly. I had more history feats than I knew what to do with by the end of the game. One bad mofo. :huh:

     

    The suckiness of NPC shuffle came to a head in the final meeting with Garius. Suddenly these NPCs I tried not to adventure with were turning on me as if I'd wronged them somehow. Thus I had to sit there and read (with equally silly responses) a bunch of false claims about things that never happened. I enjoyed slitting their throats when it was all done. For the curious, the betrayers were Bishop (no surprise there!!!), Neeshka (I ditched her early because of her constant whining), and Qara (I didn't need her because I had Sand and Ammon Jerro, and I didn't feel like babysitting a spoiled brat). It was funny seeing Ammon side with me, though I did bring him along to read truenames, and generally we saw eye to eye in quest matters and combat preparedness. I never adventured much with the paladin or the bard, but since they were of good alignment that wasn't an issue. I hadn't wronged them either. Elanee was ready to bear my children, so I knew she'd stand with me. :)"

     

    The ending was a bit disappointing. All that hard work only to end up trapped in ruins, or so it would seem. Ugh. The rest of it was just fine, though the narrator doesn't have Bioware's awesome narrator voice. It sounded too much like a programmer reading a script, but it was passable I suppose. I wanted to help Elanee start a new druid circle, but I guess that'll have to be in my module. I thought she and my character made a great couple.

     

    It was nice seeing Brelaina and others doing good things after my passing. I still think Brelaina is one beautiful digital woman. Sometimes I wish I was like Tron. :thumbsup:

     

    Well, time to take my experiences in the virgin run-through and use them to make up a better character. This time I'm going to experiment a little more with this funky forced-party crap.

    Volourn's Wowwy Journey With NWN2:Spoiler Edition

    in Computer and Console

    Posted · Edited by Wistrik

    I know not everyone agrees with my point of view, but if I don't post it here, an Obsidian employee won't see it, and one of the points of these forums is to provide feedback. (I never have any success with e-mail filters, so I post on forums instead.) With that out of the way, here are more observations from last night's further play...

     

    There were several new areas opened up and I managed to find enough extra ore in most of them that my keep is now as fortified as it can be, and my soldiers have the best equipment that can be made for them. According to the keep report, I still have 53% of my preparation time remaining and I'm ready for war right now. (Side quests are slowing me down.)

     

    The druids and 'wendersnaven' were a total loss as far as allies go, but I managed to bring in the Ironfist Clan and the lizardfolk. I also gained the asimaar Light of Heaven as a sargeant and her twin sister Joy as a dancer in my inn. Went with Deekin and the drow woman (fire giant prisoner) in the merchant shop, the Sun Soul monks in the old converted church, and the Neverwinter Nine in the rebuilt tower. Got a huge magic spider ally (from the goblin caves) in my basement, and a golem I haven't found the liquid for yet. (Haven't found the book I'm supposed to find either, but it's coming.) It's also nice having Torio around; she's quite civil compared to my previous encounters with her. Fetching too; she resembles someone I know locally. :)

     

    We reformed the silver blade last night, but it was 2am, I was falling asleep, and my level 18 character managed to get himself petrified :) , so I closed the game and went to sleep. I'll try again in a few minutes.

     

    I ran into a possible scripting bug with the fire giant dragon. I visited their king first and agreed to find and kill a nearby dragon. Then I found the dragon and agreed to kill the fire giants for her, and she agreed to fight with us. I got back to the fire giant area and destroyed everyone, but the dragon was nowhere to be seen. I returned to the dragon and she was stuck in a dialog loop, telling me to go to the fire giants and she would help us attack them, but she never left her area. I was hoping to gain her as an ally after reading/hearing about someone else fighting the King of Shadows with a dragon ally. Alas, until this bug is fixed I won't know if it's possible. Anyone else get this to work?

     

    Yet again an evil character is injected into my good aligned party. Not only did AJ kill his granddaughter who was also my friend, but now I have to put up with his contrary comments and opinions. No wonder my influence with him is dropping like a rock. But since he completed one of the purification rituals, I apparently have to bring him along. Obsidian, if you make another campaign for this engine, please get rid of party shuffling, or at least let us have more control over who we want to include in the party.

     

    Like a true friend, Elanee stuck with me through the whole Shandra thing and has finally opened up to my character. I was able to convince her that the druid circle had been corrupted, so together we rescued the one uncorrupted druid that was there and disposed of the rest. I'm calling these relationships 'friendships' right now, instead of 'romances', because the romance aspect is kept very low key (so far) compared to other games with a similar feature. Unfortunately the game keeps forcing Bishop into the group and he can't seem to say anything about Elanee/Shandra that isn't crude and distasteful. (I've thought about loading the modules up with the toolset and removing Bishop from the campaign altogether. He is useless to me.)

    Volourn's Wowwy Journey With NWN2:Spoiler Edition

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    Just got into chapter 3. More NPC disappointment with Shandra. Looks like Elanee is the only valid romance for male characters, however due to some wrong dialog choices way back in chapter 1, I can't get her to reveal everything about herself to me. Love it when you can't play the game right without having meta-knowledge. WTG designers. Ah well, Khelgor is a monk now and kicks butt. The Gith cleric runs like she's wearing concrete boots, meaning she's always the last to arrive on the scene.

     

    I could have probably done more projects at the keep except there was one buggy ore deposit in one of the caves that wouldn't do anything when I clicked on it, so I was robbed of valuable resources by a game glitch. Nobody bothered to offer feedback on all the other ore deposits I clicked on, so I had no way of knowing if all of them counted.

     

    The keep could have been easier to manage. With my character's exploits, resources should have been the least of his concerns. Ah well, my party is more powerful than the entire keep, so no loss.

     

    Currently fending off an attack at Neverwinter Castle, but the game decided to crash (randomly) during a reload so I'm here posting recent thoughts. The statue questions are silly. Nobody told me I needed to memorize Neverwinter lore before getting this far into the game, and indeed, just when you could really use your Lore stat to answer a question, your Lore stat is completely ignored. Thus I'm resorting to wild guesses and reloads to get through the maze properly. WTG Obsidian. :deadhorse:

    NWN2: Technical Challenges

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted

    I believe I've found a crash bug...

     

    When a merchant first opens his shop display, nothing is selected. If you press the Buy button without selecting anything, the game will crash to the desktop.

     

    This happened while running the NWNMAIN_AMDXP.EXE file, which I had renamed to NWNMAIN.EXE because it gets better performance on my AMD machine than the default NWNMAIN.EXE does.

    Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX (DX10)

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted · Edited by Wistrik

    You didn't specify the resolution. They test everything from 1024x768 up to 25xx whatever. I was referring to the upper resolutions, not the lower or mid resolutions. <_<

     

    I'm not trying to cause a ruckus, but I did see big differences in all three reviews linked by this thread, but those big differences were mostly in the highest resolutions. The cards are much more competitive in the mid to lower resolutions.

    Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX (DX10)

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted · Edited by Wistrik

    Ok Nividia Fanboy. You must be on the mailing list.

    Wrong, and wrong. :thumbsup: I like whichever card is currently the best, and I'm on nobody's mailing list.

     

    Thanks for helping prove my point. You must've been looking at the low-res comparisons. Anyone can do well at 1024x768. NVidia clobbers ATI at hi-res even with everything cranked to maximum settings, and hi-res is what some of us care about.

     

    My expression 'twice as fast' was close enough. The reviews I've seen paint a consistent picture that's pretty close to that. Everyone's numbers are slightly different, so I used a generalization.

    Romances in NWN 2 and RPGs in general

    in Computer and Console

    Posted

    I like Shandra and Elanee so far (halfway through chapter 2).

     

    Shandra's the type I fall for quickly, but then decide later on that she's not so great. Elanee's the type I gradually warm up to, and would most likely remain with for the rest of my life. I meet a lot of Shandras IRL; haven't met an Elanee yet.

     

    Alas I've somewhat goofed on influences while getting used to the system, so probably won't get the full relationship in my current game.

    Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX (DX10)

    in Skeeter's Junkyard

    Posted

    Yeah, this card rocks. One thing noted in the first review is that it scales with the processor, which should be obvious. If the hardware can't get the data into the GPU fast enough, framerates will stall. Thus the card won't do that well on my current system, but later when I upgrade the mobo and cpu, the gpu will grow with them.

    Volourn's Wowwy Journey With NWN2:Spoiler Edition

    in Computer and Console

    Posted · Edited by Wistrik

    Agreed. It was easier to sneak about in NWN.

     

    When I'm trying to be sneaky, which fails more often than not, I usually broadcast to my party to "Stand your Ground" so they won't follow me. The AI is stupid enough that they'll run right over discovered traps, cast fireballs into the middle of a melee, and so on. I expected better from a game so much more advanced than BG2.

     

    Edit: another point, in NWN my character would perform the disarm animation until the trap was disarmed. In NWN2, my character stands up less than halfway through the process and promptly engages the enemy if they're nearby, thus canceling the disarm. This AI needs a complete overhaul.

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