Game News NWN2 Ditches Aurora Engine Toolset

[Sol Invictus]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights 2; Obsidian Entertainment

It looks like Obsidian Entertainment finally realized what a horrible piece of crap the toolset in NWN (Aurora Engine Toolset) really was and decided to ditch it for something of their own design. Here's <a href=http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=408648&post=3389970&forum=95&highlight=>Brian D. Lawson</a>, resident programmer at <a href=http://www.obsidianent.com>Obsidian Entertainment</a>:
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<b>Brian D. Lawson - Programmer, Obsidian Entertainment</b>
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<blockquote>Quote: Posted 02/01/05 20:51:22 (GMT) by Gaiseric the Vandal
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NWN2 is using the Aurora toolset as a base to work off of, correct? That means at least not having to re-invent the wheel as far as the actual development tool to make the game, correct?</blockquote>
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Wrong...and uh, wrong.
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Please see the "NWN2 Toolset and Custom Content" forum for the "right" answers to these questions.</blockquote>
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Here's NWVault's take on it:
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<blockquote> More: It's not our FAQ, it's Rhomal's. While we "started with" the "Aurora Engine" many things have changed. The toolset has been complpetely rewritten...from scratch. Hence, there is no underlying Aurora Tool code or anything of that nature. The tool that will be used to "build" the game will be brand new. Electron is the new rendering engine and the same goes for it. It's 100% stand alone in the sense that it uses nothing from Aurora. Hope that clarifies.</blockquote>
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It should also be noted that NWN2 uses a completely new graphics engine, currently called the <b>Electron Graphics Engine</b>. The models are rendered at a polycount of up to 3,000 with support for Sims 2-like face creation.
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Thanks to <b>Kerec</b>'s vague comments earlier today, and <a href=http://nwvault.ign.com/comments/1107319370,14051,.shtml>NWVault</a> for the proper news, because Kerec couldn't find the post.

 

[Sarvis]

Interesting.

 

[dojoteef]

Wow, whoda thunk it.

 

[Eclecticist]

Isn't that dandy. Good news, if not great news.

 

[Pegultagol]

I still think that Obsidian would have a close collaboration with Bioware on it though.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

This bit of news shows there may be hope for Obsidian after all. Especially if this Electron engine really works out well. Be nice if it was actual TB, but I won't hold my breath on that one. Let's at least hope there's more strategy involved and it's not going to be just a prettier engine.

 

[Fez]

At least no one can claim now they are going the easy route and just knocking this sequel out to cash in as fast as possible. If they get a hit like the first NWN they'll be set up for a good while.

 

[Eclecticist]

This bit of news shows there may be hope for Obsidian after all. Especially if this Electron engine really works out well. Be nice if it was actual TB, but I won't hold my breath on that one. Let's at least hope there's more strategy involved and it's not going to be just a prettier engine.

I'll bet you $400,000 that it isn't turn-based.

You could win a lot of money! C'mon..

 

[Nomad]

Otaku_Hanzo, as I understand it, Electron is the graphics engine, not the game engine and probably has no impact on the turn-based vs. real-time w/ pause status of the game itself.

While rewriting the graphics engine and toolset may not be taking the "easy" way out, I don't know that it's entirely the smartest thing to do. It appears that they are largely invalidating the very reason to license the engine in the first place, namely to save time / money that you would otherwise spend developing your own. As they're rewriting two large components and making some fundamentel changes to the remaining systems (in migrating from the 3.0 to the 3.5 edition of D&D) what advantage did licensing Aurora from BioWare give Obsidian?

Personally, Exitium, out of the Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, Elder Scrolls, Dungeon Seige and Neverwinter Nights generation of CRPG toolsets, I think NWN still wins hands-down overall.


N.

 

[MarFish]

Otaku_Hanzo, as I understand it, Electron is the graphics engine, not the game engine and probably has no impact on the turn-based vs. real-time w/ pause status of the game itself.

While rewriting the graphics engine and toolset may not be taking the "easy" way out, I don't know that it's entirely the smartest thing to do. It appears that they are largely invalidating the very reason to license the engine in the first place, namely to save time / money that you would otherwise spend developing your own. As they're rewriting two large components and making some fundamentel changes to the remaining systems (in migrating from the 3.0 to the 3.5 edition of D&D) what advantage did licensing Aurora from BioWare give Obsidian?

Personally, Exitium, out of the Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, Elder Scrolls, Dungeon Seige and Neverwinter Nights generation of CRPG toolsets, I think NWN still wins hands-down overall.


N.

Contrary to popular believe, graphics is not even the main part of most engine packages, it's one out of many modules that build a core engine framework - unless, of course, you talk about a graphics engine. People just associate graphics with the engine because that's what they see - who, except the people who do the real implementation work, cares if the network code runs on Source, Aurora or Unreal.

Bioware's Aurora, as far as I can see, is a full package - networking, client/server, rules engine, graphics, resource management, etc.

The Witcher guys removed Aurora's rendering component for their own system. KotOR's engine replaced other parts of Aurora, but everyone familiar with KotOR modding knows that it is essentially still what was powering NWN. Hell, some of the aspects of Aurora seem to be ripped from Infinity (i.e. chitin.key anyone?)

Since engines are usually modular frameworks, you can still save a great amount of time and cash by licensing them and then replacing the compontents you no longer need with new ones. Graphics is the obvious choice due to the rapid advancement in technology and minspecs.

I bet that NWN2 will not have any significant changes to the game mechanics as they work and sold more than 2 million units for Atari - they would be stupid to change what works. Remember that, contrary to what you on Internet forums where people bitch about how bad things are, the general population doesn't care about this stuff. Go to the World of Warcraft (or any MMORPG) forum. If your read them, you wonder why people actually play - only bitching, whining and whatever, but still hundreds of thousands play these games.

The whole "there is hope for Obisidan, they ditched Aurora" thing is an illusion - they chose to rewrite the toolset, likely because it was written in Borland C++ which makes porting things like the graphics engine a pain if you have people coding in Visual Studio. They'll replace the graphics module of the engine with a modernized version. That's it. Business as usual. NWN2 gameplay still will very likely be very close to NWN1 with cosmetical changes and improvements so they don't alienate the 2 million people that bought NWN1. Everything else would be stupid.

 

[DemonKing]

I wish they'd get rid of the tilesets - I think the mod community proved with the original that they can produce some pretty decent stuff without having their hand held and the tilesets ruined the original game for me - everywhere ended up looking basically identical which sucked after the great hand-crafted look of the IE games.

 

[Mendoza]

Otaku_Hanzo, as I understand it, Electron is the graphics engine, not the game engine and probably has no impact on the turn-based vs. real-time w/ pause status of the game itself.

While rewriting the graphics engine and toolset may not be taking the "easy" way out, I don't know that it's entirely the smartest thing to do. It appears that they are largely invalidating the very reason to license the engine in the first place, namely to save time / money that you would otherwise spend developing your own. As they're rewriting two large components and making some fundamentel changes to the remaining systems (in migrating from the 3.0 to the 3.5 edition of D&D) what advantage did licensing Aurora from BioWare give Obsidian?

Personally, Exitium, out of the Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, Elder Scrolls, Dungeon Seige and Neverwinter Nights generation of CRPG toolsets, I think NWN still wins hands-down overall.


N.

Not to mention that completely writing NWN2 from scratch would be pretty damn difficult in the time frame Obsidian has. Where as new graphics, toolset and 3.5 rules sounds fairly feasible. I really want to see some screenshots of NWN2 though, so we can judge it for ourselves.

 

[Smiffus]

I wish they'd get rid of the tilesets - I think the mod community proved with the original that they can produce some pretty decent stuff without having their hand held and the tilesets ruined the original game for me - everywhere ended up looking basically identical which sucked after the great hand-crafted look of the IE games.

Mainstream appeal has a lot to do with it I think, make modding easy enough that not only the dedicated few can make great modules, but everyone can make the module they want to have. Interestingly BioWare seems to get away from tilesets with their Dragon Age RPG, but the question is how they market that game (make your own modules a la NWN or keep the module making to the dedicated few)

 

[Sol Invictus]

According to the devs they completely got rid of NWN's tilesets because they're too small/undetailed, and therefore can't be used. The Electron engine renders the game quite differently than NWN.

 

[Volourn]

Actually, they got rid of NWN's tilesets because it was released in 2002; and NWN2 will be released in 2006. Hello, wake up. Still, NWN2 will have tilesets - just 2006 grahic versions hopefully.

As for them changing engines; the Aurora Engine is still there. It's what is powering the gameplay at least last we checked. Remember, though one won't be able to port areas area; scripts will easily be portable.

P.S. NWN Toolset doesn't suck. It's awesome. Anyone who thinks otherwise is retarded. Period.

 

[MrBrown]

/me agrees with Marfish.


Also, I'm pretty sure NWN2 will aim for the same as NWN, meaning easier but less powerful in the end.

For Dragon Age, I think BIO has said many times that the SP-campaign comes first, but the modding tools will be there. It just remains to be seen how hard those tools are for the average modder, and to what length the modders will want to go to makes mods for DA.

 

[Volourn]

Modding is gonna be ahrd. Way past my abikities for sure in DA. Just on craftinga reas alone is gonna suck. I'm not even gonan try to learn how most likely. I'll stick to NWN1/NWN2. I'm slowly getting used to scripting. That's enoguh for me.

 

[Ortchel]

All these new people, the Codex is blossoming like a tulip.

 

[Surlent]

Feargus likes to slamdunk again.

NWN2 might turn up good, ya know, something between BG and IWD only with good graphics.
Shame it's bound to be munchin fest though.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I don't mind munchkin fests, as long as the game is fun, and not TOO out of proportion. I doubt I'm going to be playing it on any public servers if I play multiplayer at all.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

One thing alot of people aren't taking into consideration is the fact that Obsidian may very well have been going with this new engine right from the start and just decided now to leak info about it. I don't recall reading anywhere where they said they were using Aurora. I think pretty much everyone just assumed they were. Could be wrong though. I don't hang around any other forums except this one much.

 

[Ortchel]

What's a 'munchkin fest'? A game popular with kids?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

What's a 'munchkin fest'?

It's when the little people of Oz get together for an orgy.

 

[Ortchel]

My worst fears confirmed

 

[Mendoza]

One thing alot of people aren't taking into consideration is the fact that Obsidian may very well have been going with this new engine right from the start and just decided now to leak info about it. I don't recall reading anywhere where they said they were using Aurora. I think pretty much everyone just assumed they were. Could be wrong though. I don't hang around any other forums except this one much.

Whilst I'm too lazy to find quotes, I'm pretty sure that Obsidian have said several times that NWN2 is based on Aurora, explicitly pointing out that the graphics engine was something new that they'd done from scratch (which if nothing else implies the rest is reused). And whilst they'll no doubt be changes to the engine, I wouldn't expect any major changes. Otherwise they'd be trying to make in 2 years a more modern version of what Bioware did in 5. Which, whatever you think of Bioware or Obsidian's coding abilities, sounds pretty unlikely.