Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir

[Musopticon?]

Hahhahhah, shredded to death!

[Xard]

Hahhahhah, shredded to death!

 

Even better, from the songlist:

 

Rambo Sankari ("Rambo Hero")

 

Raivostunut parranleikkaaja (roughly translated this means "Furious Beardcutter")

 

What the hell

[RangerSG]

This is interesting. I like the blended party idea. I wouldn't want a full IWD-style party, as I missed the personality of BG NPCs. But being able to choose your own PCs to form the bedrock of a unit sounds nice.

 

I'd like to see Mystic Theurge implemented. It's the one class in both NWNs that I've regretted not seeing. And since the 4e carp means it will never 'be' seen there, now would be a good time. Swashbuckler would be a good fit. Overland maps beg for horses, though large NWN2 area maps get laggy fast, so it may not be plausible. From a gameplay standpoint, I'd like to see ridable horses and ride skills implemented along with paladin/blackguard mounts.

 

 

I really could've done with Obsidian ignoring the existence of 4e and the Spellplague events. Please...Mystra dead...again. *yawn*

The FR isn't my favorite campaign setting anyway, but the debacle in storywriting that was done to set up 4e is proof that WotSC doesn't have 3 firing grey cells between the lot of them. And that's aside from the D&D as a card game rules.

 

I'll be buying this, and it will probably be my final D&D related purchase. That's courtesy of the imbeciles at WotSC. Please make it a grand send-off, Obsidian. Then go get the rights to the Pathfinder rule set and stay away from anything 4e related...please.

Edited June 10, 2008 by RangerSG

[Zoma]

ROFL! Lute hero! Goodness!

 

Awesome to know they have the music of the first Doom level. Ah, the nostalgia.

[Jaesun]

I really could've done with Obsidian ignoring the existence of 4e and the Spellplague events. Please...Mystra dead...again. *yawn*

 

NX2 (DR 1374) takes place BEFORE the Spellplague (DR 1385). They won't be touching that event. (Though, they could do some foreshadowing of it...). So far the only 4ED they are touching on is the rise (I assume) of Zehir.

[RangerSG]

I really could've done with Obsidian ignoring the existence of 4e and the Spellplague events. Please...Mystra dead...again. *yawn*

 

NX2 (DR 1374) takes place BEFORE the Spellplague (DR 1385). They won't be touching that event. (Though, they could do some foreshadowing of it...). So far the only 4ED they are touching on is the rise (I assume) of Zehir.

 

I'm aware that it takes place before that. I just wish they could've ignored that the monstrosity that is 4e existed at all. Anyway, as I said, This is my final WotSC-related purchase. Hopefully Obsidian will make me remember the chapter in my life that was D&D fondly, one that goes back over 2 decades.

Edited June 10, 2008 by RangerSG

[Tale]

Crikey, I'm getting my Neverwinter Nights 2 excitement mixed with my Metal Gear Solid excitment. I've started to think of what build would Big Boss, Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, and Raiden have. Or maybe I should consider Foxhound or Cobra Unit.

[Pavlos]

Guys, I just found an important topic about NWN2: SoZ that this totally awesome guy made: http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewt...1&forum=128

The crates are spreading? I wonder if barrels and cats will catch on in other forums.

[Jaesun]

Also, the guy who did the MotB music: He is Obsidian's Audio Director, so yeah, he is in charge of it.

 

yay!

[Zoma]

Mr Brandon is certainly a busy man.

 

Making music for Alpha Protocol, Aliens and SoZ all by himself. I wonder if he has an assistant/partner in Obsidian's music studio department though.

[Sand]

I'm aware that it takes place before that. I just wish they could've ignored that the monstrosity that is 4e existed at all. Anyway, as I said, This is my final WotSC-related purchase. Hopefully Obsidian will make me remember the chapter in my life that was D&D fondly, one that goes back over 2 decades.

 

The way I see it, this is Dungeons and Dragons last hoorah.

[Gfted1]

I wonder if this will be held up by the secrom thing thats been holding up the other expansion for months.

[Sand]

I thought Atari was developing their own in house copy protection and not SecuROM.

[Gfted1]

I dunno, I was referring to whichever copyright protection system they are struggling with now.

[Tale]

That's using a different delivery method, so I doubt they'd use the same. Additionally, this isn't scheduled to come out for a while and that will likely be done before then.

[Sand]

Werll, they could just say screw it and put it on the same DVD as SoZ and charge us an extra $10.

[AnthonyD]

I really, really want to know how that guy pulled of Lute Hero.

 

That is really amazing. I mean it, I want to know how he did it!

 

Good stuff.

[Sand]

I am sure you aren't the only one. Either Obsidian or Bioware needs to hire this guy.

[Zoma]

You know, I'm concerned of the resting system in SoZ.

 

MotB forces the players to consider their strategic situation before resting, thus forcing the players not to abuse resting.

 

How will SoZ stop players from abusing the resting system that affected the gameplay of NWN2 and NWN1? One way I could guess would be using time to affect the gameplay along the lines of Fallout 1. The world is dynamic to the point that after XX days later, if the player do not accomplish certain quests it would result in branching into a different scenario and ending. Another would be that it would affect the In-game economic status where bandits would attack your trade outpost or caravans that would affect your wealth or in-game opportunities if not dealt sooner.

 

But again that seems to be quite complicated for such system to be integrated into a NWN2 engine where it keeps track of days and time.

Edited June 10, 2008 by Zoma

[Xard]

I really, really want to know how that guy pulled of Lute Hero.

 

That is really amazing. I mean it, I want to know how he did it!

 

Good stuff.

The scrolling image and UI are awesome. How long did this take you to put together, and what obstacles did you face?

 

First off, I was insane to even attempt this.

 

The scrolling buttons and image are actually all static images. Movement is simulated by hiding and showing individual elements so that it gives the illusion of movement. I ended up using Excel to create the XML file because there are 470 lines just for the background images. Amazingly, it worked and the game engine didn't complain too much.

 

The second huge problem was one of timing. The script that checks notes fires every .01 seconds, but the reality is that it may fire quite a bit later than that if the script engine gets busy. I ended up doing some very complicated things in order to figure out how far I was into the song and what frets should be displaying on the screen. The module is also extremely taxing on the game engine, and you can easily stutter if there are a lot of things going on. I ended up having to do a funky "caching" step before the song plays in order to get it loaded into memory. I also ended up creating an option to switch to a low quality setting which hopefully helps run it on slower machines.

 

I spent a few days getting the camera controls working relatively well. There's actually a hidden GUI I made that lets me control the lighting, effects, and camera settings. I used that to create a large number of camera movements I could string together to pull off the American Bandstand feel of Death's Domain.

 

Finally, getting the songs into the game was very challenging. I end up with two sound objects, one for the vocals and another for the lute. I had to write a program to translate the MIDI file into a 2DA file I could read. Getting all of that to work properly took a ton of time.

 

 

Read rest here

 

 

I share Zoma's concern. I wonder how you'll deal with it but I trust you'll come up with something

[Gorgon]

This looks interesting.

[Zoma]

If Obsidian ever considers implementing a mini-game in NX3, look no further than Lute Hero for inspiration!

Edited June 10, 2008 by Zoma

[Tale]

Holy crud. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Geography Is this what Faerun really looks like? Quite possibly the ugliest geography in existence. It's like a bunch of nations were independently created, then tossed on the ground and stitched together as they lay.

Edited June 10, 2008 by Tale

[Gorgon]

Are there two adons, or is this just westgate renamed ?

[Tale]

Are there two adons, or is this just westgate renamed ?

This is an expansion from Obsidian.

 

Westgate is an adventure pack from Ossian.