Interview NWN2 Q&A at ActionTrip

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights 2

<A href="http://www.actiontrip.com/">Action Trip</a> has an <A href="http://www.actiontrip.com/previews/neverwinternights2_i.phtml">interview</a> with <b>Ferret Boy</b> of <a href="http://www.obsidianent.com">Obsidian Entertainment</a> about the upcoming sequel to <A href="http://nwn.bioware.com">Neverwinter Nights</a>. Here's a bit on the aurora engine:
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<blockquote><b>AT: What in your opinion are the advantages and the downsides of using the old Aurora engine for creating Neverwinter Nights 2?
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Ferret Boy:</b> The original Neverwinter Nights shipped with a formidable package - a single player campaign, multiplayer, online DM support, and an powerful toolset. The Aurora engine also delivered one of the best adaptations of Dungeons and Dragons to date. There are many benefits to having that package to build from. It's given us a tremendous opportunity to take something great and make it even better - the rules are being adapted to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, improve the tools to make our lives and the community's lives easier, and the graphic engine is being completely overhauled using the latest technology. <u>If there's a downside to using Aurora, it's eluding me.</u></blockquote>
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Gosh, <b>Ferret</b>, how long of a list would you like?
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Thanks, <b>butsomuch</b>!
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[Volourn]

There is very little wrong with Aurora. Unless you are a nitpicker.

As for their story idea. Hahahaa.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Well, if they revamp the entire graphics engine, and get rid of the crappy tiling system while they're at it, Aurora's not bad. The Witcher's doing that, and that game's looking pretty good. I don't know if Obsidian has the visual capabilities of CD Projekt, though. I am not too impressed with the way KOTOR II looks. The textures are bland as hell.

 

[Volourn]

"I am not too impressed with the way KOTOR II looks. The textures are bland as hell."

I thought you liked KOTOR's graphics? KOTOR2's graphics are the same...


"get rid of the crappy tiling system while they're at it,"

They're not. They're upgrading the graphics though. Inf act, I believe yesterday, I saw a post from an Obsidan freak that the graphics engine is actually not really Aurora supposedly, and Aurora is the rules system and other stuff. Supposedly... <>

 

[dojoteef]

"We're trying to make the world feel alive, and it evolves with the story. The player isn't a passive bystander in this, and at many stages of the game the player's choices can have real ramifications."

I just hope Obsidian can pull it off. I think they may be among the few who have experience in pulling off a rich story, but ultimately who knows if they really did it this time or not.

 

[Volourn]

Hahaha. No. Consideirng the story evolves around a silly artifact. R00fles!

 

[Reklar]

I thought one of the key complaints about the Aurora Engine was that practically everything was hardcoded and difficult to manipulate by modders? Having never seen the game firsthand I can't say, but from talking with friends who did work with the toolset they said there was a difficult learning curve, and even once you knew how it supposedly worked it was still akin to putting a square peg into a round hole with a hammer. Being the longtime D&D fans they are though, they didn't give up on it. I can't say I'd have the same patience.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[Surlent]

Enough of that overhaul talk, Fergie should release screen shots so we could judge ourselves how well they have improved the engine.

Obsidian guys have said they're going with directx9, so I'd guess the game has fair chances to look good. I wonder how much the source code of Aurora does limit that ?
Like polygon models ?

 

[AlanC9]

I thought one of the key complaints about the Aurora Engine was that practically everything was hardcoded and difficult to manipulate by modders?

Aurora's quite easy as long as you don't mind using the tilesets and creature models that it shipped with. Adding new models and tiles is a lot more difficult, but doable.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Here's my list:

• Overly huge save game files where the module edits itself as you play and the save games are nothing more than the editted version of the module.
• Overly large fixed sized tiles.
• Pathfinding.
• Hardcoded limitations as mentioned by Reklar.
• The 2.5D thing where you can't have multiple floors or things over and under anything.
• All the quirky rules implimentation.
• 3E needs to be updated to 3.5E, if possible due to:
• BioWare's traditional spaghetti code fun.
• Problems keeping information from module chapter to module chapter.

And that's just off the top of my head.

 

[DrattedTin]

Problems keeping information from module chapter to module chapter.

Actually, you can do this. It's funny, but a lot of the stuff that seems "impossible" about the game, scripting-wise, Bioware just decided to be lazy and *not* do.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Here's my list:

• Hardcoded limitations as mentioned by Reklar.

• 
  
  IIRC, hardcoded elements are based on a conscious decision to hardcode them, it wasn't an engine problem. Obsidian, after all, will be making plenty of code alteration to the base Neverwinter Nights structure, which seems to indicate the engine and code are not hardcoded at all.
  
  

  [*] All the quirky rules implimentation.

  
  That's largely a game design issue, not an engine problem. The only engine-related problem when it comes to rules seems to be the realtime combat.
  
  

  [*] Problems keeping information from module chapter to module chapter.

Aside the Tokens, I'm not sure if this was improved on or not, but it was bloody annoying. I think AlanC9 once brought up a workaround for this at the Obsidiam forums, but I can't remember it. If this was the case, sorry about that, Alan.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Actually, you can do this. It's funny, but a lot of the stuff that seems "impossible" about the game, scripting-wise, Bioware just decided to be lazy and *not* do.

There are a few tricks you can use to pass some information from module to module, but you can't really pass a huge number of flags from module to module. Think of how many events a game like Fallout or Planescape Torment keep track of.

Also, the module thing and keeping track of all the little events that go on would create issues in making a non-linear game where you might want to revisit an earlier area to complete something you didn't do originally.

IIRC, hardcoded elements are based on a conscious decision to hardcode them, it wasn't an engine problem. Obsidian, after all, will be making plenty of code alteration to the base Neverwinter Nights structure, which seems to indicate the engine and code are not hardcoded at all.

Okay.. Here's what I mean. Obsidian will have to either alter the code base of the Aurora engine to remove this limits or just run with them. Some of the limits might be fairly easy to just pull out and come up with a better system, but some of those limitations are due to the multiplayer system and/or the modularity of the game itself. Some of those limits might be there to prevent multiplayer exploits for example, or deal with hacked objects. If you remove them, you might have those issues crop up. If you don't remove them, you have to deal with them in the design. If you come up with a better work around system, you might run the risk of a little of both problems and lose a lot of time reworking the old system.

That's largely a game design issue, not an engine problem. The only engine-related problem when it comes to rules seems to be the realtime combat.

Kind of like adding flakey 3E to the Infinity Engine in IWD2 was a design issue? Well, it wasn't. It was an engine problem. If you go with 3.5E, you might have to either hybrid the thing with 3E because of how BioWare coded up the rule system, rip sections of it out and start over, or just deal with 3E.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Kind of like adding flakey 3E to the Infinity Engine in IWD2 was a design issue? Well, it wasn't. It was an engine problem.

Kind of like adding flakey 3E to Troika's engine in Temple of Elemental Evil? Design problem or engine problem in that one, Saint?

No, I don't think the problem you mentioned was about the Infinity Engine itself at all. If you're going to pick up on a game system (in this case, D&D) and try to adapt it to an engine that is running contrary to parts of the original system, or wasn't built to sustain it (such as the Infinity Engine which was geared towards realtime combat with pause), where is the problem? It's neither a problem with the original system (because it was designed to fit into a specific medium) nor with the engine (which was designed to support specific games), but rather, of trying to make them both work with each other, since the original system wasn't made to work with the engine and vice versa. Yet, each element on their own are fine. The problem came from the decision to force one onto the other.

Its easy to claim that the Infinity Engine was the element that was responsible for the rules issues, but it's obvious the problem was trying to adapt D&D into a different engine (regardless of whatever engine was behind it), not the engine itself. If we're going to blame the IE because it wasn't designed to support the D&D system, then we could just as well blame the D&D ruleset itself because it wasn't designed to support the IE's realtime framework.

Of course, this obviously doesn't excuse pure technical problems with the Infinity Engine, however, such as the atrocious pathfinding.

 

[Sammael]

Role-Player, it's not about pausable real-time combat, it's about rules being hardcoded into the engine rather than being stored in a well-designed internal rules database or some other easily modified layer.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Saint specifically mentioned "quirky rules implementation", which is a bit different from wheter they're hardcoded or not. I know them being hardcoded caused heap o' problems to the IWD2 team, but my point is that this didn't felt like a specific engine problem, more like how the engine was handled. I could be wrong, of course.

 

[dojoteef]

Gabor Torok, the guy behind the game SCOURGE was describing the differences between turn-based (which is inheirently what D&D should be) and real time gameplay. I think he put it very well in saying:

"Strangely, turn-based appears harder to code... in RT you can "gloss over" details like movement range, etc."

This is probably the sort of thing that happens in the Bioware implementation of D&D, they probably have something things that are glossed over had to simplify. I'm not sure, but that could be what the problem is. The thing is if that is the case it more than likely an engine issue. It's probably the fact that they were unable to convert from the engine implementation of distance, speed, or whatever and the D&D implementation precisely enough. So sometimes things might seem to work properly while other times they won't. It's pretty much turns into a sort of round off error problem.

It's probably a big program coordination issue in that the programmers that did the rules implementation and the programmers that did the engine programming did not think before hand how to deal with these issues. That might not be the case; it could be that it's too difficult to do, but I tend to disagree with that assumption.

 

[Volourn]

Saint shows his lack of knowledge or just his bias again. It's sad really.

Let's go over this list shall we:



"Overly huge save game files where the module edits itself as you play and the save games are nothing more than the editted version of the module."

Woopity do dah. If you have a computer capable of handling NWN this should be no problem. It surely isn't a sign of a"horrible" engine and I don't consider it a negative; but I'll give you this one as you are being anal.

"Overly large fixed sized tiles."

Huh? What does this have to do with the engine? The tiles sizes are just fine. geez.. You'll whine about anything as long as it concerns BIO.

"Pathfinding."

While not perfect; it surely isn't that bad. I've seen worse for sure.

"Hardcoded limitations as mentioned by Reklar."

These so called hardcoded limits are a) not really about the engine and b) aren't as ahrdcodedas uou'd like everyone to believe as they sure get unhardcoded quite often.

"The 2.5D thing where you can't have multiple floors or things over and under anything."

And? WOW! That is so horrible. Or not.

"All the quirky rules implimentation."

Eh? Not engine.

3E needs to be updated to 3.5E, if possible due to:

"BioWare's traditional spaghetti code fun."

The code seems to be eaisly handled by Obsidian and by user coders. Can't be that spaghetti.

"Problems keeping information from module chapter to module chapter."

You'd think consideirng that you played HOTU that has been dealt with which is proves as most things in your retarded list has nothing to do with the engine. Information can be passed module to module relatively easy.This is how the new and "improved" WW series is gonna do it as well as the other Premium Modules that may have more than one chapter.


Next.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Woopity do dah. If you have a computer capable of handling NWN this should be no problem. It surely isn't a sign of a"horrible" engine and I don't consider it a negative; but I'll give you this one as you are being anal.

I'm not sure of how negative this was for some people, but I have to agree with Saint because I experienced firsthand the main problem this was. When making multiple saves which can reach up to 20 MBs in size, it becomes problematic. I was pretty surprised to find out my computer was alerting me about dangerously low disk space, and even more surprised when I found out it was because of the size of NWN savegames. I don't mind large savegames, but chancing upon 15~20 MB range is overkill.

 

[Spazmo]

A game that leaves 3GB of saves on the 30GB HD I had at the time--and this is on top of the already beefy NWN install--has a problem. NWN was taking up 10% of my hard drive just for save games. Besides that, having savegames just be the whole module is really lazy on BioWare's part.

 

[Volourn]

How small are your hard drives? I simply didn't come close. Heck, if it wasn't for Saint and others on this forum complaining about the overly large saves; I'd *never* would have noticed that. How many svaes do you guys use per game? 10? 15? 20?

 

[Spazmo]

Volourn, let's say that right now you, middle class person that you are, like to eat bacon. You buy regular Valu-Pak bacon from your local Loblaws. This is good bacon. You are very happy with this bacon. You don't see any reason to be the least bit unsatisfied with your bacon. But one day--oh me oh my--you strike it rich and now are very rich. Would you suddenly start buying bacon that comes wrapped in a shell of real diamond (none of the cheap artificial kind for you) and is imported overnight from Paraguay, the international Mecca of bacon, just for the hell of it? Unless you're a dumbass (and you keep providing proof supporting that theory...), no, you'll keep eating your good old Valu-Pak bacon from Loblaws.

The same reasoning applies to NWN: they shouldn't be using ridiculous amounts of HD space just because they can. Right now I have a 160 gig HD, but I'd still be really annoyed if a game crapped 3 gigs of savegames on me. It's just unnecessarily wasteful and excessively lazy.

 

[Volourn]

Your example is irrelevant. Come back when your example makes sense.

I quite frnakly don't care how big save files are. Sorry, I have more important things to worry about when I play games. Save file sizes never become an issue. And, no one here knows why BIO made them so big so it could be laziness, or some other reason.

 

[Spazmo]

The example is perfectly relevant. An abundance of resources is never an excuse for unnecessary waste.

And if it's not laziness, that likely means it was the only possible way of doing it in Aurora... which means incompetence. That make you happier?

 

[Volourn]

It just means you know nothing, and are making wild gusses on why it was done how it wa done. Come back when you have actual facts. Next.