|
|
 Inicio  Archivos del foro NwN2 - Pre-Release Archives NWN 2 Toolset and Custom Content Niah's NWN2 GenCon Toolset Report
NWN 2 Toolset and Custom Content
Lord Niah
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
 Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 04:18 |
First of all, I would like to thank the helpful folks at Obsidian entertainment for answering my questions and allowing me to play with the toolset. They were all very approachable and were even gracious enough to allow all comers to play with the game.
As such, I had the great fortune to be able to spend extensive time with the toolset over my two days at GenCon. In fact, I was there so much that senior producer Ryan Rucinski joked that I was helping them demo the toolset.
Here is my report, starting with the bad (though that is probably too strong a word for some of the issues) and ending with what I really liked about the toolset.
The Bad
--Creatures: There were no horse models in the toolset. Senior Producer Ryan Rucinski assured me that the toolset contained all game assets, so I am assuming horses are completely out. The fact that there are still some riding functions in the game, though, makes me wonder if we might not see rideable horses in an expansion.
I also noted that there were no snake-like creatures, including no Maralith.
--Indoor Tilesets: They are more difficult to paint than in the first game. You have to select individual tile elements and line them up properly. For instance, if you select a hall section that is open on both ends and then add a closed room section with a door facing the open hallway, you will not get the results you were expecting. Instead of seeing a solid wall with a door from the hallway side, you will see an opening into the room. On the other side, though, you will see the wall and door. This means that you have to have a wall section with door on both sides to get it to work correctly. I assume they did it this way so that it would be easy to fit tilepieces from various sets together.
--Water: All water within an outdoor tile has to be of the same type, including the same height. If you want to create a waterfall, for instance, you have to position it at the edge of a tile so that you can have two bodies of water at different heights, then you have to use a particle effect to simulate the waterfall. Considering how good water looks and how much you can do with it, I am not too concerned.
--Tinting: I tried tinting various creatures with differing results. Some tinted very nicely while others not at all. For instance, I found it impossible to make either of the two dragons look anything other than a red and black. Perhaps this is something that will be fixed by the time the game ships. There are also no metallic tints (unless the object that is being tinted already appears metallic)
--Scripting: I was not able to launch the script editor from the properties box for various objects. Instead, I got a viewer showing me the script, but with not editing capability. This means that you have to launch the scripting interface separately. Maybe this isn’t a big deal, though, since you can have multiple windows open and tab between them.
--Performance: There were a few toolset crashes and some lag. I will attribute this to the fact that they are still tuning the game and also that the machines they were using were not powerful enough for the large resolution monitors they were displaying the game on.
I also noticed a few other oddities that were most likely bugs. For instance, while scrolling through various appearances for a creature I discovered that some appearances were not displaying properly. For instance, when I tried to change a spider into a succubus, I ended up with a headless succubus.
The Good
--Creatures: There was a good selection of the most commonly used creatures. I saw most varieties of humanoids (including gnolls, bugbears, goblins, lizardmen, and orcs), a very comprehensive selection of undead (including shadow and wraith), and at least 8 demons/devils, with one demon type that has never been in a D&D game before (not the Maralith, though). With tinting and scaling, you should be able to create even more varieties.
I also noticed that most humanoid creatures have at least 2-3 different varieties of armor that you can select. This will also help add some variety to the game.
--Placeables: There were loads of placeables and trees, probably many more than in the original game. This is probably due to the fact that all buildings are now handled as placeables as opposed to being prebaked into the tilesets. Basically, you add doors to the appropriate slots on placeables.
I also discovered that there are a huge variety of wall, gate, and balcony placeables that can be fitted together to create a very authentic looking castle/keep. It also appears that some of the walls are walkable. I discovered this while watching the now famous cutscene from the stronghold quest, which showed a pitched siege of the player’s fortress, with NPCs running back and forth across the castle battlements while the enemy rolled in siege towers and fired arrows at the defenders. It was very impressive and gave a good idea of what is possible with the toolset.
--Scaling: You can scale creatures in any way imaginable. I experimented with scaling various creatures and noticed that there was no visible stretching of textures even at very large sizes. So it is very possible to create truly colossal creatures (though there would probably be some issues with ground clipping on height-mapped terrain and possibly some animation oddities). You can also scale by small fractions, so it is very possible to create skinny, fat, tall, and short creatures.
One bad thing about scaling of buildings is that the doorways will increase in size as well. So if you make a really large tower, for instance, it will look like something more appropriate for giants. This may be a good thing in some cases, though.
--Placeable Lights: You can now place light objects that look similar to the placeable sounds in the first toolset. You can then adjust various lighting properties as well as the radius that the light covers. This lighting is in addition to the ambient lighting for areas, which can be turned off so that you can light only with placeables.
--Placeable Effects: The toolset now comes with “effect helpers”. These are basically invisible placeables on which you can select various effects to play. This makes it very easy to place effects without any scripting.
--Paintable Encounters: There seemed to be more options for encounters. For instance, you can select to spawn creatures at a random spawn point or evenly distribute them among all spawn points.
--Plugins: We have a nice selection of plugins, though I am still not sure which ones will ship with the toolset. For instance, I found a 2DA viewer in the plugins menu, and it appeared that I could edit the files. I also thought the animation viewer plugin was cool I have some videos of it posted in NWN2Wiki. You can basically open up any creature in the game and then select multiple animations from a dropdown list and then play them in sequence. This should be useful for figuring out what animations to use in cutscenes and such.
The Awesome
--Terrain painting: The outdoor painting system is incredible. Despite what some people might claim, it is incredibly easy to start using. You can adjust the paint brush pressure, size, and the size of the primary section that applies pressure (looks like a circle within a circle). Once you open the terrain painting interface, you can choose to raise, lower, smooth, add random distortions, paint textures, paint grass, and paint water. The brush will change its shape to hug the piece of terrain you are morphing or texturing, so painting is very easy and can be done fairly quickly. For grass and textures, you can also blend several different types. For instance, I was able to blend some flowers with another type of grass and the brush mixed the two.
Basic textures cover the gamut of different types of grass, stone, dirt, and some man made types such as wooden planks and cobblestone. One of the dirt types included is a very good looking sand texture, so deserts and beaches are very doable. Unfortunately, though, there are no snow textures -- but according to Feargus, it should be fairly easy to add new textures by altering a 2da file and adding a new texture file.
In addition to the base textures, you also have paintable grass that reacts to wind. Some included grass types I spotted were flowers of various types, water reeds, and various colors of grass. One cool thing about the grass is you can select multiple grass textures at once and blend them together.
The water system is also very cool, but has one major limitation, as noted above. Other than this one short-coming, the water system is very powerful. Water consists of three layers. You can set various properties for each of the layers as well as global water properties. For individual layers, you can set “scroll rate” and “scroll direction”. These effect how quickly the water flows and in which direction it flows. Therefore, if you want ice you set these values to zero for all layers.
You can also set waves on the x and y axis, control the height of the water, and change the color of the water. By changing these different values you can create more than just water. For instance, you can make ice, lava, sludge, black obsidian rock, stagnant marsh water, a pool of blood, or whatever.
One last thing I would like to mention about outdoor areas is that they seem much larger than in the original game. To verify this, I tried lining up orcs across one of the tiles. I managed to get roughly 52 orcs into one tile. In the old toolset, I placed thirty orcs across an entire 4x4 area!!! So it appears that just one tile in the new outdoor area is larger than an entire 4x4 area in the original game.
_________________
Sunken Cemetery ReduxEdited By Lord Niah on 08/14/06 16:30 | 
|
Demetrious
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Mass Effect PC
Suscrito: 22 oct 2001
De: Riverside |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 04:26 |
Nice review. I am expecting that the toolset will be a highlight. My only concern is stability so I'm hoping that continues to improve. IMO that is a true strength of the current version.
Thanks for giving us a new slant.
_________________
Riverside: NWN2 City of DM Dreams
DMFI Guild: Help Improve the DMFI Tools
Community Rep: DM Client | |
|
DeathMutant
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 18 jun 2002
De: Longmont, CO (USA) |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 04:32 |
Thanks for the update, Niah, and to all those who sacrificed their weekend to go to GenCon -- and not play D&D(!) -- just to get the scoop for the rest of us.  | |
|
Lord Niah
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 04:34 |
Yes, it was extremely difficult to spend all day playing with the new toolset and game. Very trying.
_________________
Sunken Cemetery Redux | |
|
Segal
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 17 oct 2001
De: Houston Texas |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 04:48 |
Great Post.
I may add this to my website if you dont mind.
_________________
Segal
www.ShroudWorld.Com
Shroud World - A Quest Driven World
"Persistent World's might be what Neverwinter Night's is remembered for" | |
|
Lord Niah
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 05:30 |
No problem. Feel free to link or redistribute. Just don't change the text
_________________
Sunken Cemetery Redux | |
|
Crawl
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 03 jun 2002 |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 06:03 |
Very detailed preview that answers some of the tech stuff many of us have wanted to know, but no dev talks about
Since you created an interior tileset based area, did you have a chance to test tinting of the tiles? If so, can in individual tile pieces you place down be tinted seperately (so, tinting just that piece of a wall one color and that peice of a floor one color) or will tinting a certain group of tiles (castle interior) affect all those tiles? Basically, can I create a room with red tinted walls, and another with blue tinted walls in the samea area? I'm hoping you can tint on an individually placed tile by tile basis, and that would make the most sense really since interior "tilesets" can be mixed and matched with each other, but I haven't found anyone who can give me that info.
Also, on lighting, did you see a way to create lighting that was directed. I know we can create lighting that shines in a 360 radius, but did you see any way to create a directed light source such as a spotlight? Is there any way to creating a lighting scheme that looks like this:
Click Here
It's too complex for an example I know without killing frame rate, but it does illustrate what I mean by directed lighting.
_________________
Soul Forge - Persistent Worlds for NWN and NWN2
http://soulforge.nwvault.ign.com/
NWN2 Audolo - Click
HereEdited By Crawl on 08/14/06 18:14 | |
|
Lord Niah
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 06:06 |
Quote: Posted 08/14/06 18:03:16 (GMT) by Crawl Very detailed preview that answers some of the tech stuff many of us have wanted to know, but no dev talks about Since you created an interior tileset based area, did you have a chance to test tinting of the tiles? If so, can in individual tile pieces you place down be tinted seperately (so, tinting just that piece of a wall one color and that peice of a floor one color) or will tinting a certain group of tiles (castle interior) affect all those tiles? Basically, can I create a room with red tinted walls, and another with blue tinted walls? I'm hoping you can tint on an individually placed tile by tile basis, and that would make the most sense really since interior "tilesets" can be mixed and matched with each other, but I haven't found anyone who can give me that info. Also, on lighting, did you see a way to create lighting that was directed. I know we can create lighting that shines in a 360 radius, but did you see any way to create a directed light source such as a spotlight? Is there any way to creating a lighting scheme that looks like this: Click HereIt's too complex for an example I know without killing frame rate, but it does illustrate what I mean by directed lighting.
I didn't try tinting interior tiles, but I believe Feargus or Rucinski showed off tile tinting, and it was just sections.
As for lighting, I didn't look at it very closely. I would assume that you can make a point light source, though. But I may be wrong about this.
[Edit} you could probably create the circle of light on the ground, but not the beam from the spot light.
_________________
Sunken Cemetery ReduxEdited By Lord Niah on 08/14/06 18:08 | |
|
Crawl
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 03 jun 2002 |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 06:20 |
It sounds promising at least. Perhaps I can lure I developer in here with promises of gift certificates to Best Buy and get him to confirm how tileset tinting works. I'd be most thrilled if I could vary the look of my interiors to such a degree. If you add to that the trick of painting a thin layer of water on the floor to get an ultra high gloss look, or being able to tint it to whatever color you want, you should be able to do quite a lot with the number of tilesets obsidian has given us.
Did you notice any heing variations in interior tilesets? I'm fairly sure they said no to this in the past, but I guess it never hurts to check at a later date. General stairs/ramps would be all I'm looking for really.
_________________
Soul Forge - Persistent Worlds for NWN and NWN2
http://soulforge.nwvault.ign.com/
NWN2 Audolo - Click
HereEdited By Crawl on 08/14/06 18:21 | |
|
Lord Niah
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 07:08 |
It turns out that areas are not as big as I at first thought. Each tilset is divided into several red squares, each one of which is 20M (or equal to two NWN1 tile squares.) In addition, there is a large unplayable area around the edges so that each area, though it looks larger, is actually only as big as a similar area in NWN1. You can still make the areas look huge, though, by placing objects in the non-playable areas.
_________________
Sunken Cemetery Redux | |
|
Lord Niah
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
SW: KotOR PC
Jade Empire
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 19 jun 2002
De: Chicago |
Colgado: lunes, 14 agosto 2006 07:13 |
Quote: Posted 08/14/06 18:20:53 (GMT) by Crawl
It sounds promising at least. Perhaps I can lure I developer in here with promises of gift certificates to Best Buy and get him to confirm how tileset tinting works. I'd be most thrilled if I could vary the look of my interiors to such a degree. If you add to that the trick of painting a thin layer of water on the floor to get an ultra high gloss look, or being able to tint it to whatever color you want, you should be able to do quite a lot with the number of tilesets obsidian has given us.
Did you notice any heing variations in interior tilesets? I'm fairly sure they said no to this in the past, but I guess it never hurts to check at a later date. General stairs/ramps would be all I'm looking for really.
There were some stair pieces, but no height variations that I could see. You can get some texturing variations for each tile piece, though, by using the up/down arrow keys to scroll through the options. Rotating tiles is also different. Instead of left clicking to rotate tiles, you use the right/left arrow keys.
_________________
Sunken Cemetery ReduxEdited By Lord Niah on 08/14/06 19:14 | |
|
maxam
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 29 jul 2002
De: Sydney, Australia |
Colgado: martes, 15 agosto 2006 03:51 |
Quote: Posted 08/14/06 16:18:24 (GMT) by Lord Niah
--Indoor Tilesets: They are more difficult to paint than in the first game. You have to select individual tile elements and line them up properly.
Youch!
Was there an intuitive interface for selecting appropriate tiles? If all you're doing is painting simple rectangular rooms and passageways - it's not a problem, but take these sample tiles from the Bioware crypt tileset:
How intuitively would/could they be categorized?
It would seem to me that the richness of possibilites that the combination of different types of terrain can bring may be locked out without a painting system.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the idea of hand placing individual tiles (spare me from clicking through tile after tile to get the right one), but I'd love the option to paint terrain down too.
_________________
-=| Versatile Dungeon Tileset |=-
-=| Classic Dungeon Tileset |=-Edited By maxam on 08/15/06 03:53 | |
|
NWN DM
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
NWN 2: MotB
NWN 2: SoZ
Suscrito: 17 oct 2001
De: Winnipeg Manitoba |
Colgado: martes, 15 agosto 2006 04:04 |
I'd imagine that the slight change in conceptual thinking required for interior areas will be quickly accomplished by people who have been using the toolset for 4+ years already though.
_________________
- USB
- Neverwinter Connections DM Hall of Fame Inductee: 12/07
- Northern Cormyr; an ongoing RP/MP campaign for NWN2 Click Here
- Supporting the MW2 community boycott. | |
|
maxam
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 29 jul 2002
De: Sydney, Australia |
Colgado: martes, 15 agosto 2006 05:17 |
Quote: Posted 08/15/06 04:04:21 (GMT) by NWN DM
I'd imagine that the slight change in conceptual thinking required for interior areas will be quickly accomplished by people who have been using the toolset for 4+ years already though.
(^_^)
As one who has been using the toolset for that long it's certainly not going to be a problem for me to adjust, but then, that's not my point.
IMHO in an ideal world, you would have the ability to paint an internal area, just like in NWN 1, then individually place tiles from a menu over the tiles that have already been painted.
However, that's doesn't appear to be what we're getting with NWN 2 - my concern is not how we are going to be able to cope with the conceptual change, but how easy/obtuse the system will be.
Let's take the NWN1 Bioware Crypt tileset as an example.
If you take away the tiles used for features/groups you are left with 105 tiles.
What I am curious to see, if we have to place every tile by hand, is how intuitively our access to these tiles is organised in the toolset.
It's easy enough to organise the standard "corner, wall and floor" tiles. Where you run into difficulty is tiles that are the intersection of 3 or more terrains/crossers.
Take for example the first tile in my previous post, which using my own terminology I would describe as "opposing walls with pit and floor". Now is that a Pit tile (corner) with a floor corner, or a Floor tile(corner) with a pit corner? Or an Opposing wall tile with floor and pit corners?
Or in the example of the second tile - are we to file this under Corridor or Pit? (yes we could a reference to the same file in both categories - that's certainly an option)
I'm sure Obsidian have devised an intuitive system, I just wonder what it may be like.
_________________
-=| Versatile Dungeon Tileset |=-
-=| Classic Dungeon Tileset |=- | |
|
Crawl
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Suscrito: 03 jun 2002 |
Colgado: martes, 15 agosto 2006 06:12 |
Interesting question. I think I still prefer this method to the old method, but you are correct in that paiting would probably be better. However, that also sounds like an even bigger change than this one. Probably the *best* thing for those creative minds out there would be a sort sort of constuction kit simmilar to something easy like sketchup, where you could push pull your wall shapes/pits, insert doors, select the types of wall/floor/pit textures to cover it all, create height transitions, etc. It would be a bit like combining an polygon/arc push pull tool with the terrain deformation tool. But that would be pushing it I think for the average user (and the system requirements for that matter considering how much resources the extiors claim now).
_________________
Soul Forge - Persistent Worlds for NWN and NWN2
http://soulforge.nwvault.ign.com/
NWN2 Audolo - Click
Here | |
|
|
Buscar foros |
Preguntas frecuentes sobre los foros |
Archivos del foro
|
NeverWinter Nights 2, Forgotten Realms and the Forgotten Realms logo, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, and the Dungeons & Dragons logo, and Wizards of the Coast and its logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. © 2004 Wizards. Software © 2004 Atari Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved. HASBRO and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Manufactured and marketed by Atari, Inc., New York, NY. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Potenciado por BioBoards versión 3.00.0 10.1.12.23
Web Site Help
Jobs | Website Terms of Use Agreement | Privacy Policy
Rules of Conduct | Copyright and Trademark Information
|
|
Support
