MLMarkland

Or you might find that you prefer the nwn2 toolset to any alternative for combining power with extreme flexibility.

Indeed. I've never enjoyed a console shooter's multiplayer until now. MoH->CoD1->CoD4. Been playing a lot of CoD4 mp. Alternating between that and Mass Effect. Honestly, I'm having a hard time motivating myself to finish Mass Effect right now, just too many cutscenes, not enough actual meaningful roleplaying. I'd contrast it with MotB. MotB interupts the game just enough to keep the narrative moving, and yet provides lots of opportunities for significant decision-making by the player. Honestly, I feel like Mass Effect is more a game about being a film director directing a sci-fi movie starring someone named Shepherd, and less a game about playing Shepherd him/herself. Perhaps it is a step towards a new genre/niche of movies/games appropriately termed interactive movie. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but if that is the case it bears refining. Cut the length of the game in half and make the choices actually mean something and improve the squad AI beyond GRAW 1 levels and then I wouldn't be able to put the game down most likely. As it stands it hovers between game and interactive movie and never hits its stride. The atmosphere, music and presentation and excellent. The game definitely captures that semi-hard sci fi/space opera vibe of Reynolds, Niven, et al.

Like I said, drawing plotlines and story elements from previously successful endeavors is not particularly surprising or worthy of condemnation in the entertainment field. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars both draw substantially from previous works of art.

I've finally gotten around to playing cod4 multiplayer and its really outstanding. Best shooter mp since cod1, imho.

Alastair Reynolds

I've only played a few hours into the game, but the Reynolds vibe was evident from the beginning. That's not to say anything negative about borrowing liberally in the process of creating an entertainment product, it is pretty much sop. X borrows from Y who borrowed from Z who borrowed from Shakespeare who borrowed from some crusty merovingian who borrowed from Gilgamesh. The parallels to Reynolds are pretty striking though.

Did you not like the ferris wheel? Nah I thought the Ferris Wheel was a well balanced challenge at that point in the game, especially if you conserved explosives. That whole mission was great. The annoying sections occured, for the most part, from about the 1.5 to 4 hour marks if I recall correctly. 1.5 - 4 hour mark? That would be pretty much the entire US section right? Yeah, I was not a big fan of the US section of the game at all, I found it very not fun. Though it does end on an impressive, gripping and emotionally impacting note.

Did you not like the ferris wheel? Nah I thought the Ferris Wheel was a well balanced challenge at that point in the game, especially if you conserved explosives. That whole mission was great. The annoying sections occured, for the most part, from about the 1.5 to 4 hour marks if I recall correctly.

With CoD4 be prepared for some of the greatest shooter levels ever and some really mind-numbing sections as well. The game runs hot and cold. The best parts are easily worth the price of admission. The worst parts (on the hardest difficulty setting) are pretty much just endless waves of aimbotting fodder, which makes for annoyance rather than fun. Gears of War SP/Coop campaign is better than MP versus imho. Play it coop if you can, that's the best part of it.

Mass Effect Torn between being amazed and loving it and being bored by what is more movie than game. I like how it seems to be influenced by a lot of the past quarter-century's hard/semi-hard sci-fi writers like Alistair Reynolds, Larry Niven, et al. It definitely captures that vibe and atmosphere (If Alistair Reynolds wasn't consulted on this game directly, his books were certainly indirectly consulted). Combat is solid its the part of the game I enjoy the most so far (perhaps because it is the most gamey of the elements). The story is good even if the dialog is a little wooden. The universe is well-created and exploring has been awesome so far. The cinematics are a bit stiffling. I'm hoping Mass Effect signals the high-water mark of cutscenes and the device becomes less prevalent in future games as developers create their own language of storytelling and shed the little-brother-to-movies mentality. Still, I love sci-fi novels and its fun to "play" an interactive space opera. If I was not a sci-fi fan, however, I think I would be significantly less impressed.

Strict genre delimitations are a symptom of myopia. Saying Mass Effect is not an rpg is beyond silly.

Haven't played it at all yet, but the texture popping is peculiar to the unreal engine (happens a lot in Gears of War, a little but not as frequently from what I can tell in Bioshock).

Just started playing Assassin's Creed and so far its jaw dropping.

In this case, the fault lies with the player, not the game. If you don't like dialogue, you can play Halo 3. Or Oblivion. But whatever you do, don't complain about a lack of character development, 'cause that would be funny. Word. I think MotB is the most well-written game ever made, aside from perhaps Torment (scintillating economy vs. baroque excess, take your pick, both are fun).

I think you'll find MotB to run very smooth on any reasonable system, almost all of the kinks in the engine are worked out. Strategy camera mode is the best way to operate, alternating between the standard "focused on character" setting and switching to the completely free cam option of the strategy camera mode for complex, tactical battles. Character mode is good for getting views of some compelling environments in the game and for generally wandering around outside. In interiors stick with strat mode. Just as a side note, I disagree vehemently that the engine is a "pos". There is a reason there was no big Planescape module for NWN1 full of all of the custom content necessary for such a thing, and there is a reason there -will- be a big Planescape module for NWN2. The reason is the engine. It is emminently moddable, very modular and flexible, and strikes a great balance between the utilitarian and everyman nature of Aurora and the stringent technical challenge of Source or the UE engines. As I've said for 12 straight months and will continue to say, the value of the electron engine will be recognized in hindsight after folks take advantage of it for 5 years.

I've been super busy with Purgatorio the past month so I finally got a chance this week to play through MotB and I was blown away. Easily the best game of the year and probably one of the top ten crpgs ever made. We're going to have our work cut out for us to get Purgatorio to the standard that MotB sets for NWN2.

Alternating between MotB and Orange Box goodies.

And so, back to the topic... I think these previews help demonstrate why NWN2 is a brilliant modding platform. Phineas Ligistra Preview Baron and Hellfire's Report from Obsidian Maximus' Report from Obsidian Kalia @ Warcry Sights and Sounds of the Hive Kalia @ Warcry Report From Obsidian And it's not all about Purgatorio either. This is a module that just came out that everyone should download and try: Hugie's Moonshadows Hugie is one of the folks working for Ossian Studios on whatever secret project they got going on. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished so far for Purgatorio and can't wait for people to play it, but those previews barely even scratch the surface regarding how much custom content is going to be added to the community resource pool when Purgatorio gets released. 20 new custom creatures. Hundreds of custom placeables. New tilesets. Three and a half hours of music. Etc. Etc. Etc. None of that would be possible without the power and flexibility of the NWN2 game and engine.

It was a comment on the futility and pointlessness of arguing over the internet. I really despise how people like to derail threads and act the tough on the internet. The topic of this thread is the NWN2 modding scene.

facepalm.jpg NWN2 was not on consoles. Sure, but that's not the point. Next-gen is short-hand for the level of detail in the art assets. No, no it's not. Next-gen is short-hand for next generation, and refers to the generation of the platform. It has nothing to do with "dramatic change in the way video games "look"." It explicitly has to do with the generation of the platform it is released on. So, unless you're claiming that Neverwinter Nights 2 was released as a DX10, Vista, Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii game, which is wasn't, then you're still just throwing around a buzzword with no clue as to what it means. You can wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty but the pig likes it.

facepalm.jpg NWN2 was not on consoles. Sure, but that's not the point. Next-gen is short-hand for the level of detail in the art assets. It's a malleable term. Some people probably like to use it as a term of derision for making criticisms of certain companies. But that's not really important. It's short-hand for an order-of-magnitude change in the amount of detail presented on screen which is part and parcel with normal mapping tech and part and parcel with new programmable shader pipelines and part and parcel with things like real time dynamic shadow calculations. Next gen might have become a buzz word, but before it was a buzz word it was a real thing, a phrase that represented a dramatic change in the way video games "look".

Yes, and this is why the NWN2 Engine is an absolutely brilliant stroke of design, production and distribution: Because it simplifies the interface between a next gen engine and the consumer mod maker. Now it's not perfectly simple, but power and simplicity are a trade-off. And... it's not perfectly powerful because power and simplicity are a trade-off. But.. it strikes a brilliant balance between the two poles. People should embrace this technology because the alternative is that game developers will not bother to strike a balance, they will either not release toolsets or release toolsets that are purely functional with no attention given to the end-user interface. This is the way of the future... if you want it to be... a diffuse spread of creative control. The alternative is less dynamic and interesting. Either way could be profitable, but it is up to the consumer to decide.

While that would make everyone's jobs a lot easier, I imagine procedurally generating "fun" would be one of the most challenging tasks that could face an artificially intelligent game engine. I was jesting :| Hey, I'm not actually kidding entirely. You want, eventually, for the game engine to be able to procedurally generate "fun". I just think it's a long ways off For example, you want the AI algos to provide a broad coverage of difficulty, challenge, etc. but to adjust dynamically to the player, not entirely or across the board, but locally, so that the game system is optimized on a per-player basis. That's AI-driven procedural fun. It's certainly beyond my technical knowledge. But it's what you want eventually, in an ideal world. But what I am saying is that you don't really want to have to re-design that over and over. You want that sort of tool to exist as a tool that's re-used by everybody telling stories with games. I'm saying there's code, interface and client. The game designer is the client. The code is the engine. The interface is the floaty area in between 'em. You want to re-use the code (engine) as much as possible. You want the interface to be as intuitive as possible (NWN2 can certainly use some interface intuition improvements). You want the client to be able to do what they want with the code via the interface, without actually having to get down into the code.

While that would make everyone's jobs a lot easier, I imagine procedurally generating "fun" would be one of the most challenging tasks that could face an artificially intelligent game engine.

In an ideal world, game designers should never even have to consider code. A film director does not hire engineers to create a camera before shooting. The future will be marked by a handful of amazingly talented teams of coders creating engines to run games, and a larger spread of studios using those engines to create games. There will still be some coding to be sure, as the teams interface with the engines, but the wholesale creation of new engines for new games as the standard is too risky, inefficient and is a prime target for some object-oriented-style cleanup. If you want to code engines, then coding your own engine is certainly what you should do. If you want to do anything else related to the game business, you should shelve the idea of coding your own engine and instead do what it is you want to do, which is make a game. The engine is a tool, not the end goal. That doesn't diminish its importance; but no one plays an engine. If you want to code render tech for a living, creating an adventure with NWN2 is certainly not the best use of your time. If you want to make crpg mods, NWN2 is clearly the best choice.