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NWN 2 Rogue Dao Studios interview @ NWN2Worlds


Rhomal

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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.

Admin of World of Darkness Online News

News/Community site for the WoD MMORPG

http://www.wodonlinenews.net

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Jericho sassed me so I broke into his house and stabbed him to death in his sleep. Problem solved. - J.E. Sawyer

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"I cannot profess to be a theologian; but it seems to me that Christians who believe in a super human Satan have got themselves into a logical impasse with regard to their own religion. For either God can not prevent the mischief of Satan, in which case he is not omnipotent; or else He could do so if he wished, but will not, in which case He is not benevolent. Fortunately, being a pagan witch, I am not called upon to solve this problem."

- Doreen Valiente

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Expecting "innovation" from Bioware is like expecting "normality" from Valve -Moatilliatta

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Interesting. I finally got around to buying a copy of NWN2... well, it's on backorder at the local PC shop. Hopefully will be here soon. This sounds like something I'd like to try out. While waiting for NWN2 to arrive, I've been considering re-installing Torment for old times sake.

I took this job because I thought you were just a legend. Just a story. A story to scare little kids. But you're the real deal. The demon who dares to challenge God.

So what the hell do you want? Don't seem to me like you're out to make this stinkin' world a better place. Why you gotta kill all my men? Why you gotta kill me?

Nothing personal. It's just revenge.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This might get me to finally buy NWN2

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"I have also been slowly coming to the realisation that knowledge and happiness are not necessarily coincident, and quite often mutually exclusive" - meta

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No really. I've been looking forward to something more in the Planescape setting since I played PS:T the first time. It's been a loong time and I really, really, really am looking forward to this. Keep up the great work. Thanks is a poor word for how I feel. ;D

 

-Farb

"Politicians. Little tin gods on wheels". -Rudyard Kipling. A European Fallout timeline? Dont mind if I do!

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Just watched a trailer for the game. woot! good stuff guys. :ermm:

I took this job because I thought you were just a legend. Just a story. A story to scare little kids. But you're the real deal. The demon who dares to challenge God.

So what the hell do you want? Don't seem to me like you're out to make this stinkin' world a better place. Why you gotta kill all my men? Why you gotta kill me?

Nothing personal. It's just revenge.

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Btw, could you post that same dialogue stuff you posted at Codex, Markland? :)

Edited by Xard

How can it be a no ob build. It has PROVEN effective. I dare you to show your builds and I will tear you apart in an arugment about how these builds will won them.

- OverPowered Godzilla (OPG)

 

 

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How about old AND new stuff? >_<

 

Your dialogue was very good, so I'm eager to see more

How can it be a no ob build. It has PROVEN effective. I dare you to show your builds and I will tear you apart in an arugment about how these builds will won them.

- OverPowered Godzilla (OPG)

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Howdy Xard, better late than never eh? I grabbed some screens of things we're working on today, and here they are along with the older shots of dialogs from the rpgcodex post:

[Remember that there will be grammatical errors and the like throughout these, some shots are months old, while others are things we're working on now, but we certainly appreciate any reports]

 

<spoilerationbegins>

 

A conversation from a Doomguard sidequest:

DoomguardSideQuest01ScreenshotOfPetersConvoInEditor.jpg

 

Ponzo is a Powderman, a cant word for drug dealer:

HardheadFactionQuest01ScreenshotOfPonzoConvoInEditor.jpg

 

This is one of the generic one-liners convos that random Cagers draw from:

[Faction members draw from their own one-liner convos, these are for unaffiliated cutters]

GlobalHiveBarksPart01InConvoEditor.jpg

 

A sidequest for the Fated goes through this conversation:

FatedFactionQuest01ScreenshotOfZbwayConvoInEditor.jpg

 

This is a beat from the critical path:

RozMainPlotBeat002_SamplePerRequestOnBoards.jpg

 

Qaida is one of the Cagers you are likely to meet early on in the Hive:

FracQaidaSidequest001_SamplePerRequestOnBoards.jpg

 

We give a lot of attention to every detail that makes up the Hive Ward, right down to every single one of hundreds of custom items having a unique description:

AbyssalLinksDesc_RDSJun10.jpg

 

BuryMeInItItemDescription_RDSJun10.jpg

 

BlackattikoticaShieldItemDescription_RdsJun10.jpg

 

</endspoileration>

 

Things are progressing well, we've got a ton of work left to do, but I'm excited to see it all coming together. When we're finished, I think Purgatorio will have a word count of around 150,000.

 

All that writing is certainly not the work of one person, by any stretch. There are six people on the writing team (including myself), so rather than a single person writing what is effectively a 600 page novel, it's more like six people each writing a short novel and then throwing them at each other.

 

Roz - Writing Team

Fractal - Writing Team

Snowy - Writing Team

Kobold Avenger - Writing Team

Lordchaos - Writing Team

Some jerk - Writing Team

 

One of the most fun things about the project is working with planar cant. We've taken the original cant vocabulary from the source books and Planescape: Torment, and expanded it dramatically, using references from the internet like mimir.net (Planar Cant Dictionary); the Grose 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (Grose 1811) -- I believe this dictionary was one of the sources for the original Planar Cant; along with some phrases from ****ney slang and stuff we've just made up.

 

All of this makes understanding what some NPCs are saying a little difficult at times, so right now DavionShores is working on a browsable Planar Cant dictionary for the in-game GUI, so that you can flip through and look up words you need to get while inside a conversation (it won't be accessible during cutscenes, but most of the more inscrutable cant-speakers use NWN1-Style dialogs.).

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Wow, thanks :)

 

Keep up the great work :sorcerer:

How can it be a no ob build. It has PROVEN effective. I dare you to show your builds and I will tear you apart in an arugment about how these builds will won them.

- OverPowered Godzilla (OPG)

 

 

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As a wannabe-linguist; that cant news is superbly interesting. Can you elaborate on it a bit? For example, does it demand a lot from your voice actors?

kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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I think it creates an interesting challenge for the voice-actors, since oftentimes we've got an American writing the dialog using 19th century English thieves cant + Planescape cant and then a voice actor from Spain or the Netherlands or South Africa or whatnot recording the dialog. It all makes for a very eclectic mix of things.

 

Also though, we tend to keep our most excessive cant-sprees in the non-cutscene dialog. There's definitely a lot of cant in the cutscene dialog as well, which is the dialog that gets voiced, but we get a lot more experimental with the NWN1-style dialogs because we know a) no one is going to have to voice it; and b) pending a satisfactory implementation of the cant dictionary GUI, the player will have access to definitions of words they can't translate from the context.

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I see. I'd imagine it's a lot of work implementing this stuff.

 

Thanks for effort, I've become a fan. :sorcerer:

kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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I see. I'd imagine it's a lot of work implementing this stuff.

 

Thanks for effort, I've become a fan. :sorcerer:

 

Deciding early on that we would do VO for the cinematic cutscenes definitely increased the amount of work necessary to complete the modules, so we've tried to keep the number of VO'd cutscenes and the amount of dialog to be VO'd limited. Whereas the NWN2OC has 11,000 voice clips, Purgatorio will probably end up with around 600 or so. The vast majority of dialog in the game is old school NWN1-style.

 

Thanks for the support :)

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