Way to stick it to the masses

[gimpz0r]

Well I instantly bookmarked this site once I read in your year end review not one mention of the overly hyped, lame ass NeverWinter Nights

Way to stick to your guns fellas, that game really sucked and Im glad someone wasnt so brainwashed as to not see it.

By the way, nice site, I will visit it often!

I wrote a little rant about NWN myself last week as a matter of fact

But I warn you, harsh language on my website.

But again, nice work and good call on Divine Divinity, glad to see someone else is playing it.

http://www.angrygamer.net/1230_132003.html

 

[Mistress]

Heh, welcome to RPGCodex - glad you like it. I'm not a fella though

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, about that Mac and Linux client for NWN.. BioWare promised that those clients would be out "soon after release". Then again, much like everything BioWare said about NWN, it was bullshit. If I used a Mac or Linux and I bought the $60-$70 lump of horseshit that was NWN, and hadn't gotten to play it because BioWare is sitting back, counting their cash from the game, I'd be pissed too.

Hell, NWN's OpenGL. Other than writing the sound stuff for Macs and Linux, if they'd written it halfway decently, then it should be a fairly easy port. It's been six months though. Where is it?

 

[gimpz0r]

I hear that

it was also the pompous attitude of the scripters and the fact that I could get no where in an editor that was billed as "easy for all" that pissed me off

the editor is good for one thing: making a Diablo 2 clone and having merchants.

other than that, without hours of searching on forums and scriupt sites, it is a complete let down

 

[protobob]

I used the editor a bit for a campagin I've been runing with nwn for some friends scattered across the country. in my situation I don't really have to worry about scripting or dialogue, I just do that as the DM on the fly. It works pretty well. Of course you have to build everything beforehand. Generally I just sit down and create areas when I get the idea for one, and then throw in some npcs when it comes time for the campaign and go with it from there.

Of course the DM client interface can trip you up pretty bad...it's a learning experience. I stick with it cause we get some great roleplay fun out of it. But at times it really really gets on my nerves.

 

[Araanor]

And oh Bioware…..DO NOT fuck up my Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic!

You know they will...

 

[gimpz0r]

heh heh

well i saw some shots at some site yesterday and it looks damn nice...but graphics do not a game make young padawan

i still think if they had gone infinity engine with NWN and given us a 2D editor it would have been much more fun

its a shame when IWD2 was better than NWN

 

[protobob]

heh heh

well i saw some shots at some site yesterday and it looks damn nice...but graphics do not a game make young padawan

i still think if they had gone infinity engine with NWN and given us a 2D editor it would have been much more fun

its a shame when IWD2 was better than NWN

I disagree. As much as I dilike the NWN engine, I dislike the IE engine more. Plus laying down tiles in NWN is as easy as it gets. Sure you trade off flexibility, but I've found with a bit of creative tile use you can do some cool things with it.

 

[gimpz0r]

interesting

yes i would have to agree about the map making, but i think i like the overall look of the 2D IE better, which is kinda sad considering how old it is compared to NWN

who knows maybe some day someone will have a good trade off.

Right now I have more fun with AOW2 editor than the NWN one

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, the Infinity Engine was fairly.. shit coded. The pathfinding in it is just plain awful, for example. However, there's also a number of problems with the way it was set up, which prevented BlackIsle from doing all the nice 3E stuff they wanted to do in IWD2.

I think the Infinity Engine should be a footnote in history, under the caption, "Never let Canadians make an engine."

 

[Sol Invictus]

I hear that

it was also the pompous attitude of the scripters and the fact that I could get no where in an editor that was billed as "easy for all" that pissed me off

the editor is good for one thing: making a Diablo 2 clone and having merchants.

other than that, without hours of searching on forums and scriupt sites, it is a complete let down

First, let me welcome you to the RPG Codex.

One of the many things that makes me sick of Bioware is the way they advertise the Multiplayer feature of NWN like it's one of the most widely played games in the world. It's a fact that there's no more than a thousand players online at any given moment on the BioWare game look-up server. So much for mass multiplayer gaming, eh?

Another thing that gets to me is the fact that the few hard-core BioWare Fanboys they have (numbering somewhere between 50-500) raise their voices so high that it gives everyone the impression that there's hundreds upon thousands of them. It's a funny fact that most of them don't even play NWN anymore - they just visit the NWN boards and spam anyone who knocks their 'baby'.

Also, most of the NWN mod makers stopped making mods and bacame rather disillusioned with BioWare for their lax behaviour and poor product support. It's amusing, though, how BioWare calls them 'loyal' and such. It even has the audacity to review NWN mods and give them low ratings like 2/10. Talk about assholes!

As for NWN's editor making Diablo 2 clones... well, that's only the case if the 'clones' are in the same kind of condition as the thousand or so Dolly the Sheep clones - that is to say: deformed.

Bottom line: NWN sucks.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Well, the Infinity Engine was fairly.. shit coded. The pathfinding in it is just plain awful, for example. However, there's also a number of problems with the way it was set up, which prevented BlackIsle from doing all the nice 3E stuff they wanted to do in IWD2.

I think the Infinity Engine should be a footnote in history, under the caption, "Never let Canadians make an engine."

It's a sad fact that NWN suffers from more pathfinding problems than the even Infinity Engine. You can't walk up a staircase by clicking on the platform you wish to go to, for instance... you'll have to make several thousand manual clicks upon the staircase itself in order to proceed upwards.

Also, the pathfinding in NWN doesn't even detect doors, barrels or even WALLS! You'll just walk into one if it's in the way and your character won't even try to walk around it.

Hell, it takes several hundred tries just to get one of the dumb npcs in NWN to lockpick a door, chest or untrap a floor... even when ordered. Sometimes, if you're standing in the way, they just won't do it.

As for the Infinity Engine, sure, it's got crappy pathfinding, but unlike NWN, it has actual layers and platforms. i.e. you can walk on an area 'above' something else below, so two characters can be standing in the exact same 'spot', overlaying each other above and below. It's pretty hard to set up from what I hear, but there's a few locations like that in Neverwinter Nights, with overhead bridges and so forth.

NWN on the other hand is really a 2d engine with 3d graphics. Crap graphics. Go figure!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

One of the many things that makes me sick of Bioware is the way they advertise the Multiplayer feature of NWN like it's one of the most widely played games in the world. It's a fact that there's no more than a thousand players online at any given moment on the BioWare game look-up server. So much for mass multiplayer gaming, eh?

What's funny is that these fanboys like to claim there's a hell of a lot more people playing online than shown on that NWN page, even though I've pointed out that even the private internet games require that CD Key server look up.

It's almost like they can't accept the fact that NWN's MP really isn't that popular compared to Diablo 2 despite all the things they like to hype up about that multiplayer, like the DM mode.

Also, most of the NWN mod makers stopped making mods and bacame rather disillusioned with BioWare for their lax behaviour and poor product support. It's amusing, though, how BioWare calls them 'loyal' and such. It even has the audacity to review NWN mods and give them low ratings like 2/10. Talk about assholes!

I wouldn't say most, but a lot of them have. Many of them have gone from saying, "Wow, look at all that's possible!" to "What the fuck is up with all these hard coded limits?" or "BioWare, when the hell are you going to fix this bug?!"

Like gimpz0r said, you can lay out an area and shove monsters and loot in there. Anything special you want to do requires that scripting language though and even then it may not be possible.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Your site (angrygamer) has like a totally bad memetic influence on my demeanor/personality. Now I'm angry and want to hurt things, too. Damn you.

I hope I just don't make an ass out of myself later in college.

 

[protobob]

Well, you do have to take into consideration that some people only play NWN a few hours a week in scheduled campaigns. How many people do this, though, I can't really say. I run two three hour session a week for about 9 people total.

NWN sucks for pickup games though. I've never had a good experience at joining random servers. Some people seem to enjoy the persistant servers...but I've never had a good experience with them. It's just not going to be a fun game without a good deal of planing involved. And even with the planning it can still suck. Most servers focus on hack and slash, and hack and slash is pretty boring (not to mention NWN does combat poorly).

I feel bad for people that thought they could just buy the game and then actually get a good multiplayer experience out of it just by joining a server. That kind of thing is very rare.

 

[gimpz0r]

Yahoo!

Wow I really like this thread. Whenever talk of NWN pisses me off or it gets another award, I may just have to come and read this. Its kinda like how the American Music Awards keeps giving Lifetime Achievement awards to Michael Jackson.

 

[gimpz0r]

speaking of no role playing in RPG's i just posted a rant about that on my site

I also picked up Arx Fatalis yesterday, not a bad game really, but damn I hate that interface.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Speaking of the Mac port for NWN.. check this out

There is, however, some bad news for those who were looking forward to the NWN Toolset. Schilling said that they've decided to cancel the port of the toolset. He told IMG that the development of the toolset had to be halted because it would have taken over a year to port it to the Mac. Schilling explained that the project to port the toolset was underway, but as the developers (Omni Group) dug deeper into the code, the estimate grew from 6 months to over a year of development time. So instead of delaying the game another 6 months, the hard decision to cancel the toolset was made.

Over a year to port a fucking editor? What?! I don't even think it'd take over a year to port WINDOWS to the MacOS if you had the source code!

 

[protobob]

I also picked up Arx Fatalis yesterday, not a bad game really, but damn I hate that interface.

I finished that game last week. It was a pretty good experience, as far as linear action RPGs go, grin. It definelty had the atmosphere going. My biggest complaint is that several times during the game it just doesn't give you any clues on what to do next. You have to go and talk to everyone you know of and hope you randomly find some NPC that can move the story (read: cutscene with no user interaction) on.

I thought the spell system was interesting. It really doesn't work well in combat (except for the measley three spells you can precast), but it is pretty interactive. You feel like you're the one that's actually casting the spell. I thought that was pretty cool. It was fun to learn the different runes and what they mean. ie. Create Fire Missle (Fireball), Improve Space Movment (Levitation), Destroy Death Space (Disable Trap).

 

[Rosh]

Over a year to port a fucking editor? What?! I don't even think it'd take over a year to port WINDOWS to the MacOS if you had the source code!

Holy shit...

And, for the record, BioWare's programming capability really blows. They might be able to crunch numbers, but when it comes to runtime critical operations like pathfinding or AI, forget it because they are far too incompetent.

Also, about NWN, check the link in my sig. Musashi has it summed up quite nicely.

Seriously, what were those morons doing for over 5 years?

 

[Mad_Dog]

I think the Infinity Engine should be a footnote in history, under the caption, "Never let Canadians make an engine."

Sirtech is Canadian. They're even from the same town I think.:p

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Holy shit...

And, for the record, BioWare's programming capability really blows. They might be able to crunch numbers, but when it comes to runtime critical operations like pathfinding or AI, forget it because they are far too incompetent.

Apparently, considering NWN's pathfinding is fairly simple compared to the Infinity Engine's requirements, and it still doesn't work worth a crap. If you're perpendicular to a set of stairs, and you click on something behind the stairs, it'll run up to the stairs wall and stop nine times out of ten. Fallout Tactics' pathfinding is semi-understandable, because they had an extremely hard task to make their pathfinding work in. In terms of pathfinding and NWN, the situation is on par with Doom.

Also, about NWN, check the link in my sig. Musashi has it summed up quite nicely.

Seriously, what were those morons doing for over 5 years?

Speaking of unhappy modders, check this out:

• This MOD is not what we wanted you to download, we wanted it to be finished (this is a 100% working world, but it is unfinished)
  
   The reason we quit is as follows:  RoUM was going to be a FAIR place to play, NWN did not allow that, people could push people through a locked door, they could port around to get out of trouble, summon a level 1 creature to cheat the XP etc etc...(all of the above 3 examples are FIXED in RoUM)  the limits of the game where to great to overcome when trying to make a REAL PW... I say real because most of the PW's out there are just power-hungry mods that are just not what we ever wanted RoUM to become.... there are way's to cheat them, there is no way to cheat RoUM as of the above build (except when Bioware patches a cheat like the AC bug that would double and triple your AC)... We started to spend more time fixing problems from Bioware then working on the MOD...
  
  This was the game that could have been, they where SO close in making NWN great, but they only took 9 of the 10 steps they needed to take, introducing major problems and then not fixing them for 3 weeks (the 1st AC bug where a shield would stack 2X for AC) was "the straw that broke the camels back"... with all the awards the game has won, and everything else I find it very disappointing and disheartening that there are only 1039 people playing online right now in the middle of the afternoon 14 of which are on my stupid little server. 
  
  On the above note we can not describe how pathetic we feel Bioware did on supporting this game, they must realize that this game had some major issues, and did when it shipped. As late as Bioware was on the release of the game, they should have delayed it more.

The original page is gone, but that's the cached one in that link, and that's basically the front page of it cut and pasted above.

Of course, he's wrong about NWN needing more time. They had more than enough, they just didn't do enough with all the vast amount of time they had.

Sirtech is Canadian. They're even from the same town I think.:p

They're the exception that makes the rule.

I'd love to see them make a game in another setting similar to JA2, actually, with most of the features of JA2 in tact.

 

[Mad_Dog]

yep, I'd very much like to see a turnbased tactical combat game like JA2 in a postapocalyptic (Fallout) or a cyberpunk (Syndicate) setting - FOT didn't quite do it for me.

I had a blast with FOT... The only real problem I had with it was that the missions were too big. I got to the seventeenth on, and just lost interest. I still haven't finished it.

 

[triCritical]

Hell, NWN's OpenGL. Other than writing the sound stuff for Macs and Linux, if they'd written it halfway decently, then it should be a fairly easy port. It's been six months though. Where is it?

The OpenGL, should not be the problem, but the network code itself. If they used WinSock the windows socket API's found in Visual C++, then they will have to rewrite the entire networking part of there engine. Linux uses sockets very similar to UNIX systems, and is very different from windows. And this can be a huge amount of code for an online game.

Whats funny is that a member of BIS, whose name will go unmentioned, told me how poorly the IE was coded up where everything was essentially a tangled mess. Needless to say no programmer there enjoyed working on that engine. If the Aurora is programmed the same way, it will be no surprise why they are having a tough time porting.

Apparently, considering NWN's pathfinding is fairly simple compared to the Infinity Engine's requirements, and it still doesn't work worth a crap. If you're perpendicular to a set of stairs, and you click on something behind the stairs, it'll run up to the stairs wall and stop nine times out of ten.

Pathfinding should be bloody simple in 3D. Its just a REALLY CRAPPY ENGINE!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The OpenGL, should not be the problem, but the network code itself. If they used WinSock the windows socket API's found in Visual C++, then they will have to rewrite the entire networking part of there engine. Linux uses sockets very similar to UNIX systems, and is very different from windows. And this can be a huge amount of code for an online game.

Well, I know they don't use DirectPlay because I have fits trying to get a server working with my firewall/ICS. Had they used DirectPlay for the networking, that wouldn't be an issue. However, it's easier to port straight WinSock than it is DirectPlay.

Sound would be another area that may present problems. However, those two are fairly insignificant compared to the graphics engine. The rest of the code should be fairly portable, assuming BioWare was smart enough to use GLUT along with OpenGL.

Whats funny is that a member of BIS, whose name will go unmentioned, told me how poorly the IE was coded up where everything was essentially a tangled mess. Needless to say no programmer there enjoyed working on that engine. If the Aurora is programmed the same way, it will be no surprise why they are having a tough time porting.

JE Sawyer used to bitch about this on IRC, actually. He said there was a lot of things they wanted to do in IWD2 that involved the 3E rules which were impossible because of how shitty the engine was coded.

Pathfinding should be bloody simple in 3D. Its just a REALLY CRAPPY ENGINE!

Pathfinding in 3D isn't that easy, it's case by case NWN is basically like Doom though, where there really aren't structures over structures. That's pretty easy.