Black Isle Studios Board Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

How about some more posts from the developers on the BIS message boards? Yes? Okay, here you go...

Neverwinter Nights

Rob Bartel, Co-Lead Designer

Toolset Windows Only: Hi all! Wow, that should teach me for taking a coupla days off, huh? Yikes! Okay, here's the skinny:

As Trent explained, the nature of our development cycle has required us to build the toolset using Borland Builder, an environment that speeds up development time by providing programmers with a lot of pre-built components (scrollbars, text fields, radio buttons, and so forth - the standard Windows schtuff). Basically, it keeps you from having to constantly reinvent the wheel. Without a product such as Builder, the Neverwinter Toolset would probably take about 5 years to build (and that's just for a Windows version).

So the big question in everyone's minds seems to be "Why did you wait this long to tell us that the toolset is Windows-only?" That's a fair question and the honest answer is that we didn't know, we still don't know. As Brent mentioned, we haven't ruled out Mac and Linux versions of the toolset yet although they do seem unlikely at this point. The truth is that we want our toolset to be available on all platforms... Unfortunately, we don't always get what we want, either.

In his post, Trent explained that Borland did have plans for a Linux version of Builder and we had been pinning a lot of our hopes on that (and who knows, it still might happen). Sadly, their development seems to have stalled somewhere along the line whereas we need to keep moving forward. Likewise, we had been in discussions with Macintosh about getting a third-party developer to port the toolset as either a simultaneous or a subsequent release but that discussion seems to have dried up as well.

Now all of these things may still happen but we have to look at the situation realistically. Neverwinter is really starting to solidify and take shape right now and, while that's a really good thing, it unfortunately means that some of these outstanding issues need to be put to rest, at least for the time being. We'd rather tell you now and have to retract it later (Yay! Toolsets for everybody!) than keep it under wraps any longer and give you this kind of a shock on the day your pre-order arrives.

So if you really feel that not having a native Linux or Mac toolset kills Neverwinter for you, then I apologize. We would have loved to have you as part of our community, we would have loved to have a toolset there for you, we'll definitely miss you and all of the creativity that you would have brought to bear. Ultimately, however, you've got some tough choices you have to make, just like we do.

Trent Oster, Producer:

Toolset: We chose to develop the toolset in Borland's C++ builder to speed development as we felt it would reduce the development time by over a year. We looked into a number of options for porting the toolset and we will continue to look for solutions. With that said, we are pushing very hard to complete NWN and we are not able to allocate much time to looking for a solution for the porting issue.

On another issue, we only demoed at the last two E3 shows. (I know, it seems like three).

Brent Knowles, Co-Lead Designer:

How NWN Works: I'm going to try and remove some of the confusion in regards to how Neverwinter works.

You *CAN* play Neverwinter Nights single-player. This will work just like any other game. You can save. You don't need to connect to the internet. You don't need to run any weird programs. You simply run the game and play. Everything else is optional...

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Control Animations: It's actually really easy, and doesn't require any scripting at the moment. In the conversation editor, there is an "actions taken" tab. If you click it, you have three choices. The choices are "run script", "play animation", and "play sound". Click on "play animation" and you have a drop-down box of selectable animations.
Cake!

Anyone who saw the E3 demo might have picked this out already.

Hit Points at Level-up: Actually, we've decided to remove level up hit points from the game. All characters who gain a level do not also gain hit points. You can, however, use skill points to buy hit points.

Kidding.

We have not yet decided this. It'd be nice to see what everyone else thought, considering that we want people to gain their hit points and NOT attempt to re-roll / re-load; we want players to continue moving forward. We have a few ideas, but we would like suggestions as well. Of course, try to keep the suggestions simple, as we don't want to pull programmers off of game creation so that they can put together a system to police a small percentage of the gamers who'd likely rather not be policed in the first place.

By the way, all he meant was that any changes that occur to a character could be "undone" by loading a prior version from the character vault. For example, I check into the character vault before gaining a level, then gain that level. If I don't like the result, I go back to the character vault and undo all changes made to the character, restoring me to the point right before I gained the level, and then try again.

Dice-rolling: There's a dice-rolling section in the radial menu, equipped with various types of dice.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Hours of Gameplay: The 50 hours I quoted was a current guess from one of the designers. Another argued that it would be 80. All of these numbers are quite meaningless at this time as playtesting (of which "fun" is an important part) will determine what parts need more fleshing out and what parts need shortening. None of these times are set in stone and nothing will be finalized until later.

NWN on DVD: The whole CD/DVD issue will not be addressed until right near the end of development. NWN will definately come out on CD. While DVDs are gaining in popularity the install base is not that large. A DVD version is really up to our publisher, Black Isle, and again, won't be made until the end of development. We do not have a CD count for you at this time, nor an install size. It will all be done at the end.

Single and Multiplayer: Unfortunately, this is the biggest miscoception of NWN right now. NWN is primarily a fantastic single-player game with a strong and integrated multiplayer aspect. The emphasis between the two is almost equal. We are taking what we have learned from BG2 multiplayer and made it seemless into the single player aspect.

Again (and I have no idea how we will be able to properly emphasize and explain this to everyone), the emphasis on gameplay in Neverwinter is equal between single player and multiplayer. You can play our 50 hour campaign (known to some as the "single player" part of NWN) on your own, or you can play the same 50 hour campaign with friends in multiplayer. I personally don't consider a 50 hour campaign that takes your character from 1st to 12th level (subject to playtesting, etc.) in 3rd edition rules a "tutorial".

Neverwinter Nights is designed to be the ultimate transition of PnP D&D rules to the computer. Doing this on a computer allows us to give individual users the ability to play a D&D game with no need for anyone else.

You have to realize that 90% of the games with single and multiplayer modes sold out there are played in single player mode only for various reasons. This messageboard skews the perspective slightly because we all have internet access and most of us play internet multiplayer games. This would be the worst place for a poll to ask how many would play single player only

Since the single player market is still the dominant force and thus we are building and equally strong single and multiplayer game.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

Cloak of Mirroring: Nope. Maybe I'm not being understood here.

The graphic isn't being assigned separately. As soon as you assign the 'absorb' effect, the item automatically gets that sphere graphic...it's hard-coded.

It's like the way the energy drain icon works. If you get level drained, it's hard-coded that the energy drain icon appears on the character's portrait. You don't have to add the icon seperately.

So as long as the cloak has the absorb effect, it has the sphere graphic.

Some people found it annoying. But it was the closest we could come to what the cloak was supposed to do without leaving it stupid powerful. Take your pick.

I think the cloak will go back to its old graphic if you restore its old powers...or give it some other abilities other than absorb. That's all that can be done about it.

Future Patches: Just to reiterate: future patches will only deal with things that are currently broken, meaning they do not work at all. Gameplay changes, graphical changes, et al, are not going to be included in any future patch... period.

(sigh)

The game is very complex. There's always going to be a lot of little bugs. We do have a live group that is working on a patch. You want it yesterday? Sorry. It'll be done as soon as it can. And there will probably still be lingering bugs afterwards.

You can complain all you like, but for most people their game is relatively bug-free. Play the game a lot under a microscope and, yes, there are going to be small bugs in lots of places. After months of QA and 10,000 bugs or more eliminated, we could have kept QA'ing this thing for years and it would never be completely bug free.

We appreciate what Kevin does, of course. We never asked him to do it, but he does it and we thank him.

I nor has anyone at Bio ever dissed Blizzard. Blizzard is a great company. It's also a company that makes lots of money hand over fist and can afford to assign lots of people to fixing bugs.

As for the Cloak of Mirroring...I've commented on that one before. The change wasn't made to its graphic on purpose. The graphic that you see is hard-coded to the effect that the cloak has. It can't be changed. I'm sorry you feel the way you do, Sir Terilem, but saying you won't be our friend anymore unless you get instant satisfaction doesn't change the fact that the cloak a) needed to be changed and b) can't have its graphic changed with a simple fix.

I know there's always going to be small things that we didn't do right or can't do. It's irritating for us to, to a degree. I'm glad, however, that most people can appreciate the BG series for what it does have, regardless.

Oh, I didn't think you were rude. It's just frustrating on this side when you hear people think that their bugs are easily reproduced...they will send us their saved game and we just won't be able to do it here. Very often these are related to hardware set-ups but mostly they are completely unrelated to what the player thinks they are.

The problem with de-bugging BG and BG2 is that there's SO MUCH of it. It's so complex and has so much scripting and different possibilities, etc., that something you did in another area, some change of status that happened two hours ago for you, will affect some quest in a way you hadn't thought of.

QA teams are only so large...there's no way we can play it in as many ways as a million people out there can. They will find stuff we won't...and considering we only had twenty guys playing the game, I think it was pretty polished (but I'm also comparing to other releases, which maybe I shouldn't). I know what some people think is the solution: open beta. I don't know about that, personally.

As for more bug-fixing: I agree. So does Bio. We wish we had the resources to dedicate a team (even a small one) to fixing everything quickly. I totally sympathize with those who run across a bug. But fixing them at this point...when three-quarters of your time is spent trying to duplicate what might otherwise appear to be a simple bug...is a long process. And we're spending all our time on the important bugs, the show-stoppers, which means that all the teeny bugs that people think should be 'no trouble' to change don't even get looked at.

Unfortunate but true.