J.E. Sawyer

Nathaniel compiled the beta patch notes without being able to confirm all of the fixes that had gone into it (not all programmers were back from their holiday vacation at the time). The final 1.04 patch will have a full fix list. I think it's the dullest base class in NWN2.

I think +2 items are pretty appropriate at 8th level unless you're in a low-magic setting.

Personal tastes aside, the old engine's art pipeline was absolutely terrible and there's no way I'd want to use that again. Anyone who complains about NWN2's walkmesh baking times never had to wait seven hours for a single level's lightmaps to burn.

The "old" engine had really nice lighting, mostly because we pre-baked all of our lightmaps and had full radiosity. Also, Vance could go through and vertex paint the entire landscape for some really beautiful and subtle effects. That's also what contributed to making the art pipeline really terrible. The desktop "screenshot" from the old engine is also taken from a very flattering distance. Dennis Presnell was looking at some of the old models and comparing them to NWN2 models. Not only are the textures from the old engine pretty low-res, but the models have about 1/3 the number of polys -- that's 1/3 the number of polys in the low-res model. A NWN2 high-poly model used for generating normal maps is even crazier.

I could throw guys through walls all day long and not get bored with it.

1) It would be nice just to deal with the main Black Hound campaign and see what happens. I'd estimate about 15-20 modules worth of material, which is an enormous undertaking. 2) Still levels 1-8, core PHB classes only (no warlock and no prestige classes).

R-r-r-r-racism!

Thanks. It's all heavy photo manipulation done in Photoshop using the skew tools, layers, heavy color re-balancing, filters, and other tricks. Since Guard Dog gave me the go-ahead, I'll post a sample that I may have posted way back when. I have a tendency to write pretty dry characters, but this guy is a little out of the ordinary. In the campaign, you have the opportunity to meet a lot of Sembians, many of them members of the Silver Ravens. At one location, you can come across a group of Silver Ravens involved in a standoff with a group of Red Wizards. Out of personal pride, neither group wants to break the standoff despite the fact they they are out in the middle of nowhere. One of the Sembians is this intense dude named Guelfa who is seething with rage over the murder of a comrade by the Thayans. If you ask him why he's so worked up, he goes off on a bit of a rant. More of a monologue than a dialogue, I suppose, but it's the most colorful thing I have on hand.

I'm unable to download the .exe, mvBarracuda. It just times out. Can you post a list of what's new in this version?

I might wrangle a few assets out of some people if I can convince them to help me. Other folks are contributing advice on level building and scripting and generally just offering encouraging comments. The only assets I can use from the original game are the design docs I wrote and the dialogues I wrote. I don't really want it to become a premium module. I'd rather work on it by myself as a personal project with all of the inherent benefits and limitations that come with that. I think it will probably take me between 1 and 3 years to fully build. Since this isn't actually my thread, I'm going to stop answering questions now. When I have more to show, I'll start a new thread specifically about the campaign. P.S.: Permadeath with a "death's door"-style system is planned.

They had to cut into the bone of my lower jaw on both sides to remove bone spurs that were present around the teeth.

One big campaign. TBH was designed to be very open, and I think it would undermine some of my goals to make it episodic. I don't have any custom buildings for White Ford, so the three distinctive elements of the community are the small fords themselves (though the "real" ford over the River Arkhen lies outside the town), Beacon Tor, and the Wolf Wall. One of the fords and the Wolf Wall can be seen in that shot. When I think I have enough going on "fo' rilla" in the town, I'll take some more shots.

Thanks for the kind words. Here's a small glimpse of the first community the Protagonist is likely to enter. I think it's at about 90% visually. I've laid out all of the "featured" interiors and exteriors in the module and created all of the NPCs, but only a small number of dialogues. http://diogenes-lamp.info/images/tbh/tbh001.jpg

I'm going to pretend this is a toolset/custom content thread! I've been working on a personal project in recent free time (mostly spent recovering from wisdom teeth being removed). In addition to learning a lot about mapping, I'm starting to get involved in scripting (which I've actually never done much of) and creating custom icons. Today I worked on aspects of the epithet system for the campaign I'm building. Epithets are specialized reputations that are built over time across the campaign. Unlike local reputations that may only affect interactions with NPCs within a set of maps, epithets draw reactions from characters all over the campaign -- though they are very spread out. The system itself is pretty simple. Each epithet has a global variable that is incremented in coversation (and occasionally outside of conversation). When the character has increased that particular variable enough, they will be "awarded" with the epithet, which takes the form of a feat. The feat has no statistical bonus, but is occasionally checked in NPC conversations. Anyway, I made a bunch of icons for the feats today and I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

My beloved friend the houndeye has returned.

I just had all of my wisdom teeth taken out on the 26th. I am still in pain.

Not do-able. The systems are very, very different.

I think a lot of the pre-3E Forgotten Realms materials (FR Adventures hardcover, the various Volo's guides, etc.) are all available on the WotC website for free download.

Looks pretty cool. I especially like the idea of Moonsea modules.

Atheists are among the least trusted minorities in the country; I'd be very surprised to see any get elected at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr_6q9DcSiM

So Aram when are you going head over to the Aliens thread and offer your opinions on the weapons presented in the Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M56_Smart_Gun

According to Battlefield: 1942, you should be able to kill the entire population of a small nation with impunity now.

No one can knock his programming ability, but Doom 3 didn't excel in game design or storytelling. If either one were good in that game, the graphics could have carried it the rest of the way.

In the original Fallout, you have to get the water chip and go to deal with the Master. Actually, you don't even have to do the second part if you want to join the Master's army. Considering the enormous amount of content you can skip or do in any order, it's a very big exception to what you suggested. Since it's the topic of the thread, I think it's worth noting.