Rhomal

Seems like this game is a pain in the @#$... It kinda worries me... I haven't bought it yet, but I hope they will have most bugs fixed when I decide to do so... Sounds to me he is using a sub-standard system. NWN2 plays fine on any average or better system. My save times are ~5-8 secs Load times ~10-15 secs My system is not anything bleeding edge: AMD64 x2 4200+ 512meg DDR2 x2 dual channel 80gig SATA x2 RAID0 7600GT 256meg video Win XP Save and load times shouldn't be affected by anything other than HDD and system ram, since the HDD is obviously the bottleneck anyway. I have the same card with double the ram, and 1 gig system ram. I think 2 is recommended. regardless 15 secs is way too long as well. I may have embelished time spent staring at load bars for effect. I do have 1 gig system RAM... 512 x2 heh That aside ~10-15sec isn't that bad, certainly no worse then Vampire:Bloodlines *shrugs*

Thats not surprising, they took a VERY outdated engine and gutted it even more so then FrankK the Kommander and others did to nwn2. Trying to build all modern FX around that caused the same issues OEI ran into just more so since they reused even less of the original code. I think it would have been better for them, considering all the time it took them to get this game gold anyways, to just re-write the thing from line 1. One could have written a game from scratch the time it took them to re-write most of the aurora code.

*shrugs* They started this game a bit before nwn2 and went gold by the time the first XP1 came out. I honestly didn't think this was going to be released, past 6+ months 'vaporware' came to mind when I saw mention of this title. None the less, good for them they did get it out. I just don't think it going to make much of a impact on the CRPG scene. Too little to late as it was in dev hell for way too long; the buzz died down quite a bit about it.

Seems like this game is a pain in the @#$... It kinda worries me... I haven't bought it yet, but I hope they will have most bugs fixed when I decide to do so... Sounds to me he is using a sub-standard system. NWN2 plays fine on any average or better system. My save times are ~5-8 secs Load times ~10-15 secs My system is not anything bleeding edge: AMD64 x2 4200+ 512meg DDR2 x2 dual channel 80gig SATA x2 RAID0 7600GT 256meg video Win XP

ermmm... when did I say anything about the OC? the topic was about custom content/haks.

I think its a fair educated guess someone from WotC (remember they are now owned by hasbro. The maker of those warm and fuzzy family friendly commercials) saw the more mature content for nwn1 and they didn't like what they saw. I think if it was just some semi-nude to tastefully nude female skins it would have been one thing. but when you have male meshes with over sized erections, females with massive, over sized breasts, 'social' servers for 'meetings' with these haks under the D&D banner and all the other gratutius, over the top sexual content/servers, that did it in. So one of the stipulations this time around was mode it more difficult for people to make such as it does not jive with hasbro's pro family image. Which, of course, OEI had to agree too. Thats my take anyways.

Are we heading out to a re-enactment of the 100 yrs war or are we playing a fantasy computer game? With that logic why not strip the flashy magic, potions, monsters, elves and anything else not 'realistic' to the uber degree? *shrugs* Yes I like a reasonable degree of realism in my ©RPG but seriously, skimpy female armor is a staple in fantasy RPGs. Has been for decades and always well be most likely.

> Which ones? DA has always been pretty much aiming for a late 2007 (at the earliest) or sometime in 2008 release. At the time of the convos, it was being bantered about DA would be released ~6 months after NWN2. As who specifically I talked too. No clue - too long ago, check the archives would be my suggestion. > That's coming a fanboy of Obsidian, and their sequels to BIO games not to mentioned not their own IPs. btw, I fine nothing wrong with 'unoriginal games' as long as theya re fun. The comment was mainly how houses brought under the EA umbrella ultimately turn out. But IMO bioware has had a really good idea for a story since BG1 (perhaps HotU). > I could happily play BG10, NWN15, FO8, or NHL 2025 as long as those games are fun than some lameo 'new' game that sucks. L0L Conceivably like DA then? But I am not saying sequels or expansions are naturally bad. They certainly can be done right. However, the ones that are just cookie cutter in they slept though the design process is what I am referring too. For example the exp for Oblivion took your char to a totally new realm with a ton of new content and interesting story. OTOH you have 50% of the expansions for the sims or most of the madden games.

And to stay on topic... heh... Ditto Sand and company. I'd say 75% chance Bioware will be very different (more on the worse side then better) in 18 months. Thats assuming they were not consolidated into EA in a 'cost saving measure' as the new brass won't know how to run such a studio big picture wise. and like other acquisitions EA losses its grip on, just dissolve or merge it. None the less, as was implied here if they do remain 'independent', they are going to jump on the EA SOP and be pressured to make many recycled games. Or at least 1 original game (at much as Bioware has done as of late) then several recycled games (cookie cutter RPGs reusing engines), rinse and repeat.

Funny. 6-8 months before NWN2 release I stated DA won't hit the market until about the first NWN2 XP1 is on the shelves. I was laughed at by the bioware fanbois saying it would be out long before. Now it seems indeed, I was off. However in the OPPOSITE direction that I was scorned for. what did Kahn say? ahh yes... 'revenge is a dish best served cold'

Not completely true. Then again its a matter of context. There is a NPC hack to give all the female NPC's 'sexy armor'. I am running though the OC again before I hit NX1 just for the sake of it and put this hak into my override folder to mix it up a bit. It certainly makes the visuals of my party and major female NPCs more... entertaining. Also there are several 'retouched heads' on the vault that you can drop, again, in your override. They 'smoothed' them out and added some basic makeup to some (mostly human and elf were edited) to make the female heads more attractive. Aside form that, nothing else I found has been done by the community.

Not a huge surprise IMO. While this game is on my radar I was not expecting it for some time. I mean seriously, how do you expect to make a game thats civ, galactic civ and sim city all on one in just a few years? Just one of those games took several years from design to going gold. Now wright wants to mush them all up in one game? Is it possible? Sure. But the zots are going to be though the roof. Even bioware took 5 years from design to gold for a game that looked dated out of the box, and thats a SINGLE concept game. I will be surprised if spore does not suffer one more delay. My guess is summer 2010. but then we only have less then 2 yrs to play it before the end of the world anyways, so really, its kinda moot. :ermm:/

I disagree. I do not think there is much real debate against FO as a mmorpg except from a purist standpoint. FO is ideal for a mmorpg setting more so then most IMO. Same argument for Shadowrun can be made, great game to make into a mmorpg, however I could see some purists getting their panties in a bunch over it. The real issue/question is who can execute such that does it justice and make it a viable business. I think with IP its a 50/50 gamble at best due to all the factors.

Lets be honest, as J.E. said a while back 'the fallout fans are small in number but have mighty voices' (at least I think it was J.E... perhaps Ferret... Either way it was a OEI dev). Point being the number of original FO 1/2 peeps still around and active in the net community is small. Small enough where except for their soapbox at NMA or rpgcodex (their last 2 centers for FO 1/2 fans to cry among themselves about the lack of 'good crpgs') they really are drowned out but the wave of new gamers. No serious dev team would give them any more consideration then anyone else when it came to their wants and opinions. It is a bitter pill, and a ego bruiser to them (myself included as a original FO 1/2 player) but reality is reality. It been so long since the FO games the community has lost most of its pull due to simple lack of no fresh blood and attrition as members move on over the yrs to other games/interests. Leaving a very small core that is overshadowed by all the new people jumping on board. Plus they have not done themselves any favors past several yrs, some of the temper tantrums they have thrown over at NMA and rpgcodex (the admins included). If I was a developer I'd tend to take their over board fanboi, almost delusional rantings at times with a grain of salt. And sadly that hurts them when they do have a valid point to make.

That is a great quote. I've got to remember that one. Funny... yet true!

As I said 2 yrs ago its going to be more quality vs. less quantity unlike the opposite in nwn1. If you take away all the made-over-the-weekend mods and custom content (translation: garbage) in nwn1 you really won't have much more then what we have in nwn2 in the same time period.

For what its worth, nwn2worlds is back online

Sadly NWN 2 Worlds is still offline, however I do not feel keeping our interview from the community we were going to use as our 'welcome back' present. So here is the interview; Does this mean nwn2news/nwn2worlds is RIP? At this point I do not know. It seems I have done all I can for this community and perhaps my interests/energies should go into another topic when I do get back online. but back to the point, here is our (perhaps final) OEI interview. Enjoy and either way thanks for all those that have given my staff, nwn2worlds/nwn2news and myself support, also for all the great memories! As for this interview; These answers come from Robert McGinnis (NWN2 Community Coordinator), Rich Taylor (Lead Programmer on the Live Team), Nathaniel Chapman (Live Team Producer) and Kevin Saunders (Mask of the Betrayer expansion Producer). Strauss/Rhomal --- 1. How are you trying to improve the situation concerning PWs (For example: auto-download of changed files, memory management of larger worlds, etc)? Aside from the general Multiplayer issues, we will be making improvements to the DM client and also exploring options to solve the content distribution issues. 2. What future patch version is being geared specifically to MP issues if any? We don

I want to apologize and give a update on the status of nwn2worlds. LONG story short, gf went off the deep end, I kicked myself out, ending up crashing at a friends place, got some $ together and moved into my own place. Sadly due to all the moving and such the server has been down during this time since it had no stable home. I however now am into my new place and have put in order in today to get my DSL back up and running, they state if all goes well 7-10 business days I should have service again. As a nice thank you to the community for being patient we will have a brand new interview from OEI with the questions you submitted last month on our re-opening I am sorry again about the abrupt downtime. -S

More or less correct. Amazing what 768k upstream can host. The site gets over 1,000 unique visitors a day and I am transferring 40+gigs of html data a month. I prefer to host my own server as I like the ability to admin it on a OS level just not a site level. This way I am not dependent on some company to keep up with patches, firewall changes, security issue, site updates, etc. Call me a control freak but as my good friend Strutter says "Your really not the admin unless you control the power button"

It's already been offline for five days without prior warning (since Saturday, or earlier); not even the site's own volunteer staff had prior notice of the closure. Real life sadly does not always give advanced notice of changes...

NWN 2 Worlds is down for a week or two as I move back to Boston. Will post a update when we are back online!

We here at NWN 2 Worlds had a very honest, interesting and frank discussion with the NWN 2 module/custom content makers Rogue Dao Studios. Click for the full article: http://www.nwn2worlds.net/Articles/Communi...-Interview.aspx Here is a snip: Q: Rogue Dao Studios is a interesting name, where did it come from? Monty: I was in a hash bar in Madrid when a short, stocky Ukrainian offered me a cigar. The Ukrainian warned me that traffic in Madrid was particularly bad in the late-afternoon on a hot day, but that no one would trouble me if I was interested in lunch before noon. The Ukrainian paid his tab and left. I glanced over at where he had been sitting and the words "rogue dao" were scrawled in cyrillic letters on his napkin. Michael: We hit random keys on the keyboard and then connected them with vowels. Q: As a follow up question, there is no doubt going to be some comparison, fair or not, of you and the former CODI group. While CODI did release a fair amount at the beginning they seemed to get marred down after the first year and a half or so of NWN1's life (as did most other groups in fairness to them). For those that draw this comparison of the same fate what do you say? Were you concerned of the association? Monty: Well, I think we'd be ecstatic to release as much custom content for NWN2 as CODI did for NWN1, the new creatures alone were phenomenal. I think the major difference between our situation and CODI's is that the electron engine is more flexible, and makes it easier to recreate elements of Planescape with less reliance on custom content. Early on, we also developed a game-module-first mentality. Everything we, as a team, do serves the end goal of producing the single player modules. So, when you make it all about completing the modules in a reasonable time frame, that overarching goal sort of drags everything - and everyone - else along, kicking and screaming. Michael: It's an unavoidable one, given the uniqueness of Planescape. Concerned with the association? I suppose so, given the fate of CODI. By that, I don't mean to say their fate was in any way "grim" - they've released a lot of wonderful things to the NWN community, but never actually got around to creating their module. This, along with DLA's eventual premium deal, spread a very narrowed view of teamed projects in the NWN community; one that automatically categorizes them as custom content factories. This isn't what we do, and was my prime concern when we first started out. Thus, we made sure to put "Module" on a higher priority than "Content". We'll release Purgatorio, with or without all of the custom content we are presently working on.

Bioware should stick to what it does right. pseudo-turned based, 2D or semi-3D, epic story line CRPGs. I do not foresee, if this is indeed the case, them being able to pull this off to be successful enough to warrant it more then a 18months lifespan after it goes live. Bioware has proven IMO it handles multi-tasking poorly. Look at BG1 vs BG2. BG1 was certainly good but BG2 was far superior on most levels. Why? Because they had to design and develop the game engine on top of producing the story/OC. When BG2 came around most all resources could easily be dropped into the game play rather then engine development Same goes for nwn1. The initial game OC and engine suffered from them trying to multi-task as they did in bg1 (but with worse results). However with Xp2 they got much better as they could focus on simple story/module design as the engine was complete. I feel if a franchise needs to be MMOG-morphed Shadowrun, Fallout or even V:tM are much better ideas and setting that fit into a MMO concept then SW... considering there is ALREADY a SW MMOG on the market. My 2 coppers

Mr. Kettle meet Mr. Pot. *chuckle* And before any rumors come of this, let me plainly state I LIKE V... in a manly, I don't question my sexuality kind of way. We argue on and off but hey thats what friends do that both are opinionated and have strong will. My online life would be much more dull without him.