The Neverwinter Nights Topic:

[ShadowTiger]

Huzzah. I just played through the single player campaign for the (Expansion-less) Original Neverwinter Nights. It just gets better and better each time. It's like playing a really good book. Sure, it could've been a little better, but that can be said of everything. :P

I'm toying around with the Editor now. It's amazingly powerful, yet also rather simple. You can do a lot of the basic adventure things, such as building the world, laying monster encounters, items, terrain, placing items and scenery, doors, linking areas, creating visual effects, etc, but the rest is handled by scripting. Yes, C++ scripting. That's where my experience stops cold. However, I've found a program which takes you by the hand and lets you do some relatively simple stuff with it and tells you where to put the scripts you've got whatever effects you'd like. You just need all the triggers and things to apply those scripts to beforehand. Not a problem.

There's a lot you can do in it. I'm rather surprised. The entire NWN campaign was made just using that editor and nothing more. Pretty damn impressive if you ask me. There's some great stuff in there, and it'll floor you. (I loved the final battle. <3 )


So.

Infinite Heroes, Infinite Legends. What story will you play?








EDIT: ... Oh ... Holy ... Crap ... ... I just played the best NWN module I've every seen. That's not inclusive of Neverwinter Nights either. I mean, I just played the most intense Roleplaying experience I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.


Elegia Eternum (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2863)

19 MB of Purest Bliss. Download the CEP pack, and enjoy yourself. I cannot believe how immersive this was. It's not even a game. It's literally, "an Experience." That's all I can say.

[Darth Marsden]

I haven't played it in a while (any RPG after Knights of the Old Republic is bound to be somewhat dissapointing in comparison :rolleyes: ) but it was a very good game. I was particularly fond of playing the first few chapters then exporting my character and starting the game over again with it. One duel-katana-wielding fighter/ranger/mage, at your service.

And some of those add-ons are bloody good fun as well. I haven't played the one you've linked, but given the high 'reviews' it's gotten on the site, I'll believe you when you say it's very, very good. I'm a particular fan of the Zelda remakes... much more interesting then the original NES games.

[ShadowTiger]

... There were Zelda Remakes in Neverwinter Nights? o.o' I mean, I know there are Ultima Remakes, (You just need the expansions, of which I only have the (Free) CEP. :rolleyes: ) but ZELDA modules? O_O'

[Darth Marsden]

Wait up, lemme see if I can find them.

The Legend of Zelda (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2988) (requires both expansions)
Zelda 2 - Link's Adventure (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=3362) (requires both expansions)
Zelda - A Link To The Past (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2332) (requires HOTU expansion)

None of these are finished or being continued, sadly, but they're still fun. There's also a reimagining of Ocarina of Time (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=4091) that is still being updated that only goes up to the Forest Temple, but I haven't played that one.

[Dechipher]

Quick question. Why the hell is this in ASWGL?

[Master Ghaleon]

Its now back. Someone is/was fucking around.

[Darth Marsden]

Pun intended, I hope?

[AtmaWeapon]

Oh man this game was pretty awesome. Played through the first single-player mission first as an Elf Rogue (sneak attack whut whut) but that proved pretty difficult since Rogue is not exaclty well-attuned to the 2-person parties you could form.

I put it down and played KOTOR (d10 for Dummies), and after that crapfest* I was craving some real d10 action again so I played through Neverwinter as a Dwarf Fighter and that son of a gun could kick some major butt. He had hp out the wazoo, cleave, great cleave, and a buttload of other feats that made criticals happen lots and dodging as well.

Next, I tackled SoU as a sorcerer. With the right spells in your arsenal, you really don't need a sidekick on this expansion. The final boss did not get a single hit on me. It seems the poor thing had a poor saving throw against my carefully chosen spells and spent the entire time sitting on the ground.

I haven't quite gone after Hordes of the Underdark yet. About that time I bought a new computer and tried playing KOTOR again, and after that I swore off all future Bioware products forever. One of my friends runs a module that I keep meaning to investigate (I think it's 'Blackstone Keep' or 'Darkstone Keep' or something) but I'm scared to get into it because I get too absorbed.

* KOTOR on the PC has horrible hardware compatibility issues, and I found that upon saving my game there was a 2 out of 3 chance that the game would lock up my PC AND corrupt my save file. Plus, I enjoyed .2-.5 FPS on Dantooine, along with texture glitches. After posting on the support forums, I found I was among 12 pages of people with the exact same problem, all being told "Your video card is too new!" "Your video card is too old!" "You are trying to use a video card!" "Why not skip that level?" and I got fed up. So yeah, screw KOTOR.

As to it being d10 for dummies, there is nowhere near the depth of playstyles in KOTOR as in Neverwinter. There is no reason to go with any gun-wielding character EVER when you have a Jedi available, and the Rogue-like class with double lightsaber, flurry (or whatever it was called), and force speed is capable of 5 hits per turn + sneak attack bonus when used properly. In other words, few enemies (bosses included) survived 3 rounds of my Jedi.

On top of that, once you get force heal maxed, there's no need to worry about taking damage. Unless you do something really stupid, nothing can do enough damage fast enough to kill you.

In short, I was bored.

[Darth Marsden]

I'm sorry, no. NO. KOTOR is one of the best RPGs I have ever played. And I've played a lot. I'm sorry you had such a hard time playing it, but there's always the console version. You really do need to play this game to the end, it has the mother of all twists and a bloody good ending.

Just don't play the sequel until the ending gets sorted. More info here. (http://www.team-gizka.org/)

But yeah, Neverwinter Nights is still cool. And the sequel's just been released, so good times may be had by all.

[AtmaWeapon]

I'm sorry, no. NO. KOTOR is one of the best RPGs I have ever played. And I've played a lot. I'm sorry you had such a hard time playing it, but there's always the console version. You really do need to play this game to the end, it has the mother of all twists and a bloody good ending.

Just don't play the sequel until the ending gets sorted. More info here. (http://www.team-gizka.org/)

But yeah, Neverwinter Nights is still cool. And the sequel's just been released, so good times may be had by all.

Oh don't get me wrong, I played through to both endings. I even got a kick out of killing the final boss in one hit the second playthrough. But honestly it felt like Bioware said "It works on XBox, let's go gold" and never tested the PC version. I mean for crying out loud, there was a known issue with ALL ATI CARDS at release and their recommendation was to DOWNGRADE YOUR DRIVER. Why even use OpenGL if you are going to code for specific hardware platforms?

Honestly if that's the best RPG you've ever played you haven't played many RPGs. It was tedious, you couldn't speed up or skip dialog on the second playthrough, the battle system was clumsy, the stat system was broken, the force system was broken, and the endings fell into two categories:

*spoilers*

DARK SIDE:
You win.

LIGHT SIDE:
"Good job, yes. But evil always exists. Perhaps a sequel there will be, hmm?"

*end spoilers*

So yeah I was pretty disappointed that, much like Neverwinter, it took me longer to load the ending than it took me to watch it. However, at least in Neverwinter I had compelling reasons to play through the game again.

[Darth Marsden]

There was an issue with ATI cards? Never knew that. Runs fine on my system.

And as I mentioned, I've played a lot of RPGs. This is one of my favourites. I guess it's the setting. And HK-47, he was hilarious. However, I respect your opinion and will not attempt to change it further.

[AtmaWeapon]

Yeah if you check the support forums (http://swforums.bioware.com/forums/viewforum.html?forum=80) you will find that it is such a common problem there is a stickied thread (http://swforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=383347&forum=80) in which they place the blame squarely on ATI and try their best to dodge the blame.

In fact, it seems the game is still host to a plague of video errors, despite the fact that newer, compatible versions of OpenGL are used by all of the card manufacturers now.

I don't know who's to blame; it seems they try to indicate that Lucasgames has to release any patches. Its support however is on Bioware's site which makes me wonder. It was still a fun game but like GTA 3 and Vice City it suffers from a piss-poor PC port and I can't think highly of a game that I had to play basically 3 times over due to crashes and corruption of save files.

[Darth Marsden]

Again, this is all news to me. Ran absolutely fine on my system. So do GTA3 and Vice City for that matter, two other of my favourite games.

[AtmaWeapon]

Oh really? What video card do you run and (here's the important one) do you have the frame limiter turned on?

See, the folks at Rockstar decided to optimize their engine for displaying 30FPS, which is horrible by modern gaming standards. (Though everything I read puts the human eye as perceiving 24FPS, all of computer gaming seems to target 60FPS as a minimum and I must admit anything under that seems choppy). However, realizing that not everyone had a low-end PC and that users might upgrade one day, this frame limiter can be turned on and off at will on the options screen.

I like GTA with the frame limiter off. It provides a beautiful framerate and after a few minutes with it on it takes me hours to get used to 30FPS again. However, from what I have found in my research this drives approximately 90% of hardware configurations absolutely crazy and bizarre rendering errors become the norm.

Here's examples from my experience:
After it rains in GTA3, the road is covered with a slightly transparent and reflective layer of "moisture" to simulate puddles. With the frame limiter on, the road beneath the puddles does not render and it always looks like I am approaching the edge of a cliff at high velocity.

Another effect (this one is in both GTA3 and Vice City) involves buildings and other complex structures. For some reason turning the frame limiter off causes the game to either partially render buildings or not render them at all.

I've experienced the same problems on my laptop (GeForce 440 MX Go) and my PC (2x GeForce 6600 GT SLI). I have tried it with and without SLI enabled (just as I did with KOTOR) and nothing seems to resolve the problem.

Some people have no problems at all, and those that do tend to be running very specific graphics cards (most prominently the GeForce Ti 4600 or something named similar to that) though sometimes people with the right cards still have problems.

From the rumors I've heard, my take on this is that the GTA3 engine was developed and tested on a relatively small set of graphics configurations (read: 1 Nvidia and 1 ATI), possibly without disabling the frame limiter. Choosing a small set of cards to test isn't that big a deal when using some form of high level graphics library (like DirectX or OpenGL), but I think at some point some GPU-specific optimizations were added to the code. These optimizations work great on the particular hardware they target, but introduce oddities on other platforms.