Rhomal

Thanks! I do as well. I forgot to add we are also looking for a typical news reporter. Peep to post general nwn2 news like dev posts, patch info, community news, etc. Less taxing then playing and reviewing products for those that want to help out but do not have the time for the other positions.

NWN 2 News is once again expanding! We are seeking a Review & Editor manager and several staff to join our team. You must be able to give 2-3 hrs a week minimum. Review Manager a. Responsible of overseeing and giving guidance/advice to the staff b. Editor-in-chief for all reviews for both him/herself and their staff c. In charge of determining, organizing & scheduling what sites/projects will be reviewed. d. Has full editor control of the review section, in charge of posting/formatting reviews e. Also duties of the review staff Module/Custom Content Review Staff a. Under the direction of the Review Manager; responsible for loading and playing community made modules and testing out custom content. Also interviewing the creators of such. b. Working with staff and the manager to help plan and bring ideas to the table of places of interest NWN 2 News readers may want to read reviews about. c. Will have moderator access to the review discussion message forum Server Review Staff a. Under the direction of the Review Manager; responsible for going 'on site' to various NWN 2 related web sites, servers and IRC rooms to write reviews or/and interviews of said projects. b. Working with staff and the manager to help plan and bring ideas to the table of places of interest NWN 2 News readers may want to read reviews about c. Will have moderator access to the review discussion message forum FAQ/Wiki Editor Manager a. Responsible of overseeing and giving guidance/advice/tasks to the editing staff b. Editor-in-cheif for all FAQ edits, keeping the FAQ up-to-date and clear of old or conflicting data. c. In charge of oversight of the Wiki and keeping it orderly and establishing/enforcing policies. Also duties of the editing staff FAQ/Wiki Editor a. Under the direction of the Editor Manager; responsible for all keeping both the FAQ and Wiki up-to-date with the most current news postings. b. Will address any Wiki abuse via members violating the TOS of this site. We don't have spare meatballs to pay you with but you will be privy to all the behind the scenes going on and will build some good relationships with people within the community. If you are interested in any of these positions please do PM or email me here: http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/contact/ Please include a little about your self, background and why you'd like to join our team.

QFT!

Someone from OEI correct me if I am wrong, as it has been a while since I had this discussion. but a while back I believe on of the devs stated (Mr. Davis or The Kommander?) they were in charge of re-writing the AI. My point being nwn2 is going to go though some of the the same pains nwn1 did (and many other games) on release. nwn1 AI was far from perfect (if you have your rose colored glasses on go peruse the nwn1 archives of the first 6 months.) but it did get better. I am sure the AI is on OEI's to-do list. I'd be shocked if it wasn't.

On the initial release of nwn1 the AI wasn't any better frankly. However it got slowly better with time the expansions. One could then assume the same will occur with nwn2.

Are you going to convert making your episodes to nwn2 perchance?

We have our NWN 2 review up with over 15 new in-game OC screenshots! Here is a snip: The Electron Engine As you can see by our new screenshots for this review the new FX engine is amazing. I have read other reviews that claimed the new engine looked dated out of the box. I am perplexed by such statements. Again I refer you to the screens shots I took in game as evidence and draw your own conclusions. But I was VERY happy with the visual art direction Obsidian went with NWN 2. It is a more grounded, realistic gritty approach unlike classic NWN. I and many others have posted in the forums to various developers on the art team to have a more Lord of the Rings type approach and they certainly heard our pleas. The default clothing and look of the towns appear more low fantasy such as the Conan and LotR movies then the ultra-high fantasy styles of classic NWN. So I send kudos to the NWN 2 art team on this subject. They in my opinion did a wonderful job. The monsters also look well done and I like some of the more organic look to some of them. For example in NWN 1 the elemental monsters looks just like large humanoid shapes made of the element in question. Here, a air elemental looks just a spheroid gust of wind tossing small debris about. Or a fire elemental which has no real discernable body shape, just a flaming pillar of fire. Some of the classic monsters are missing (Medusa comes to mind), and ones we knew were in development earlier (We were told the Owlbear was in development about a year ago for example) did not seem to make the cut sadly. But one can

Thanks for all the feedback!

Our gold copy of NWN2 is in the mail for review. With that said I would like to get community input on a very debatable topic on how you would like us to conduct our full review. With the day one patch availiable should we review the patched ver of NWN 2 or out of the box version only? I know there are 2 sides of this discussion and I am on the fence. Please give your input on the topic as to what you would like and how we should conduct the full review. Thanks for your time!

We have 7 new official exclusive screens in our Gallery. Feel free to take a view and post your feedback on them. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/myalbum/vi...hp?num=10&cid=2

AFAIK the DMC is still being released for download oct 31/nov 1 If not they are going to have a riot on their hands... :)/

Part 2 of our 2 part toolset preview with new screen shots and a detailed look at blueprint editing, tilesets and the NWScript 2 import function is now online. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartsecti...m.php?itemid=66 You can also see 5 more new screens in our gallery as well. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?cid=3 Feel free to post feedback!

Part 1 of our NWN 2 toolset preview covers the new toolset as a whole and covers all the major functions when buildings a module. Part 2 will be posted in a few days and will contain monsters, stores, creating new blueprints, NWScript 2 and our final thoughts. You can read the full preview, with new screenshots in our article section. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartsecti...m.php?itemid=65 You also can see some more exclusive screenshots on our Gallery. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?cid=3

And as a side note, find a band that knows the real/true meaning behind the penticle. Too many people get their occult knowledge from watching B horror flicks and think its fact.

You're missing the point. The number of fps doesn't matter, the point is that Windows XP (probably) wouldn't be the best platform for gaming if there were alternatives. I mean, if a Linux variant can beat Windows XP in performance for a game primarily developed for Windows, that's not very assuring, is it? I for one would love to see more competing OS'es with full Windows executable compability. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How convient you can only point too one example. Show me a consistent sampling of games that have this issue then you may have a case. Of course there are always going to be exceptions to the rule. No fair sampling/statistics/odds is ever going to be 100% one way or the other.

> I say "only choice", definently not "best choice". Thats matter of opinion I do beleive. > Many Linux distributions and in some cases MacOS are actually faster, more stable and handle system resources more efficiently than Windows. If you play Quake4 on a linux machine youll gain maybe 10% in FPS, and that game was made for Windows primarily. So you are saying, assuming you have accurate numbers to start with but ill go with it, that I as a gamer on winxp is going to see a difference in my 70pfs v.s 77fps? Is 10% even matter when your still talking way more fps then the human eye can discern? Unless your one very outdated hardware 10% is moot. and if you are on outdated hardware you not going got be a serious gamer anyways, so again, moot. Back 7 or 8 yrs ago sure 10% was a big increase/deal. Now with FPS easily breaking 80+ on a consistant basis 10% eaither way is pointless. > Microsoft doesnt want the kind of product where you go into a store and pick out their OS because its the best there is. What they want is for you to walk into the store and the only OS on the shelves will be Windows. And neither does coke or ford or gap or.... Thats a commercial world and the sellers only want you to buy from them. If a seller wanted you to take your business elsewhere thats not a very good economic model is it?

If it isn't broke... XP does a fantastic job as gaming. So whats the issue? Show me a OS that, technically, is better for gaming? I fail to see one that currently exists v.s the bells XP and DX has. This is a bitter pill for open source zelots but this is where commercialware excels. The ability (read resources/motivation) to stay on the bleeding edge of technology and why windows, OS X and every other commercial product will always be several steps ahead of hobbiest or open source operations. IMO this (and the geek mentaility of linux devs) is why linux has always trailed windows on ease of use, apps and support and unless a large mindset shift happens always will.

The FAQ is your friend: http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=29 http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=102 oh and the new toolset is re-written in C# as well.

While classic NWN was in its 5 year development hell I got into the player run Ultima Online servers. For those of you that are not familiar with it, in a nutshell, some peeps reversed engineered the communication protocols from the UO client and the UO master servers. Took that data and created a script based server. Then people, with the UO client data files could run their own UO server. It is a very similar concept to the NWN client/server setup. Thus while waiting for NWN to be released for a year and a half I played and eventually ran my own successful UO server. When NWN finally came out I switched over and got a very popular server off the ground as well. Now as you know I run a high traffic news and community NWN 2 site. With NWN 2 around the corner I was reflecting upon all of this and felt it would be a good article to write about my experiences with such. What I did right, what I did wrong and hopefully for those interested in starting a NWN 2 project to pick up something and help your own project get going. Full article: http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/news/artic...hp?storyid=1160

Not 100% correct. They do fix things like broken dialog and quest triggers. But as said above they do also mod the game. Some good changes others debatable. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If I want mods I would download mods. If I want something that fixes the game's errors that is what I want, they did not have to add their mods to the fix pack IMO. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> When did I disagree? I was factually correcting him.

Not 100% correct. They do fix things like broken dialog and quest triggers. But as said above they do also mod the game. Some good changes others debatable.

Don't tease them just post a link... http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/news/artic...hp?storyid=1142

We have a NWN 2 specific Q&A in the works with Obsidian. While the staff and I could pool togeather a bunch of questions that interest us, or what we think interest you, I rather take the more direct approach. So I would like those to add a comment/reply here: http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/news/artic...hp?storyid=1061 with the top 3 questions you have about NWN 2 or/and would like to pose to the developers. We will compile what we think are the top dozen or so and send them off. Please choose wisely, asking yet again for example, about the DM client release probably is not the most effective use of one of your 3 alloted questions. And odds are such a question won't make the final cut. We will stop collecting submissions by this Monday.

Strauss pokes around the brain that is NWN 2 Lead Designer J.E. on where hes been, whats he's doing and where he sees CRPG's heading. Here is a snip: How do you feel that the market for CRPG's have changed, have they become more popular as action-based games, or is the market loosing a group, by favoring elements more prevalent in the FPS genre? CRPGs are losing some of the more hardcore folks because the games are moving away from catering to hardcore RPG tastes. Some hardcore players stay because they see appeal in the new games coming along, but plenty just get fed up and leave. On the flip side, we have a lot more people getting into immersive RPGs like Oblivion. Oblivion isn't a simple game, but if you go into it expecting mechanics like the character stat-driven systems in Fallout, you're not going to be happy. But hey, people are stampeding in droves to sing the praises of Oblivion, so I doubt Bethesda employees are crying themselves to sleep on their pillows stuffed with $100 bills. http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/smartsecti...m.php?itemid=45

Maybe they can get lionhead a real Q/A dept now... *peers at his buggy 'the movies' DVD*