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Hordes of the Underdark Goes Gold
MattW writes "Bioware announced that Hordes of the Underdark has gone gold. This is the second expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights, and the first to be developed in-house by Bioware. It's also the first CRPG to feature 3rd Edition epic levels. Looks like it will be fun. Some of the biggest requests from the custom content community are in, like custom talk-tables, that should allow for a much better level of customization for the game." I can't say enough good things about the Neverwinter Nights titles, but if this game is anything like the last couple, it's going to steal a lot of my time. I hope I manage to make it home for the holidays.
Most of the people that play NWN don't play the orginal story outside of maybe one time through. The real charm to NWN is downloading other people's senerios and stories to play.
I'd like to see graphs of rising game sales vs. plummeting airline ticket sales.
Correlations, anyone?
The Law of Falling Bodies
Well even though it took a l-o-n-g time for the Linux client to come out, it is a fun game. In fact it is the only game I play on a daily basis on my Linux system. Granted I have had moments of outrage to long delay's it is a great game, and I'm so happy to see the company still support the game and develop for it. This is a game that truly allows the end user and developers to continue the legacy as long as there is a demand. If they actually make a NWN II I hope they will concentrate on bring the Linux release up to par.
P.s. The gfx is pretty cool, not great but I don't play a game solely based on gfx, I need good playability and challenging tasks.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
NWN Gold comes with Shadows of Udrentide.
Which, I may add, makes a nice alternative to the original campaign when you're levelling up your 50 characters...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
i just remember going to a talk at gdconf last year where the lead AI programmer talked about decisions they made in neverwinter nights and said "please don't hurt me" when describing the AI system and problems they were having
I believe there's one for NWN and the first expansion, SoU.
0 00 09MGVF/qid=1069164519/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/104-769983 3-0575100?v=glance&s=videogames&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B
Now, of course I haven't seen the game yet but I have followed the news as it leaked out of Bioware. It's truely wonderful what they've included in HotU. Hordes is a module designer's wet dream, really. From robes, to Ioun stones to skyboxes, to hundreds of new scripting functions. Especially nice - and available for all versions via the Live team/patches - are the improvement for the stores, like what does this merchant sell, what does he buy, and so on.
I ordered my copy today, and I am still mad at Bioware for not releasing a Linux toolset (editor) for the game as they had promised.
About the only feature that I am really missing is... spellcaster prestige classes. There's a bug in their code that doesn't allow them to do "casterlevel +1" for a prestige class. This is really sad.
Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, but I am really excited about HotU (much more than I was over SoU). You should really check out Bioware (http://nwn.bioware.com) or the Vault (http://nwvault.ign.com) for some info.
Not just a rant, but compared to Baulders Gate 1 and 2, NWN came up WAYYYYYYYY short. The engine, story, and "party" controls were all a huge step backwards. It's only step forward were custom levels being able to be made, but today that doesn't go far enough when people all want a great story and graphics engine (2D please, 3D sucks for this.).
While I loved the idea of NWN, it didn't meet the expectations I had brewing for the four years of hype leading up to it. Surprised?
The endless customizations are awesome and it really is the closest thing to tabletop D&D. But it takes way too long to put together a quality module, on the order of hours of work:minutes of gameplay. The defenders will say "Yeah, but I, as the DM, can just roleplay the characters and other things I didn't have time to add." True, but you still can't match the open endedness of a PnP game, where all you need is your imagination.
Again, love the idea, but still waiting for something that truly replaces tabletop. This isn't it... yet.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
They have 2 new 2da fields -- Divine and Spellcaster level offset in classes.2da, so they say. They allow you to give a +1 spellcaster level to any PrC, and they're using it themselves for Pale Master (which gets +1 every other level per the books).
The custom talk tables are a REALLY big deal, however, since they allow you to add in custom strings, needed for custom classes, spells, etc, without including the 8+ Mb dialog.tlk file in a hak pak (or requiring people to put a new dialog.tlk in their override directory, since it wasn't even hakable before)
But yeah, HotU > Sou, big time. Although SoU had a nice official campaign, IMO -- more fun and better story than the NWN OC -- it was feeble. The PrCs were broken, the spell additions were either dull or unbalancing (say, flare and Isaac's * Missile Storm, respectively), and the 'new tilesets' were rather bare -- totally lacking placables and features that they didn't absolutely need for the SoU OC.
Incidentally, you can run the toolset under Wine, or so I hear. I'm pretty happy they did a linux version at all. In fact, if they'd done it simultaneous release, I'd be using it. (But who could wait a year?!)
The whole point of NWN *is* the toolset. Look online, how many people are running stock games? Not many. The actual NWN games are fun, but the real fun is making your own, or playing other peoples homemade games. Theres a million and one games to choose from. Its not just one game.
still waiting for something that truly replaces tabletop
You're going to be waiting for quite some time. The problem lies in the fundamental openness of a tabletop game and the lack of the same in computer games: You can't do anything the designer didn't think of or didn't want you to do, and part of the fun of D&D is the creativity it requires to win on some occasions. Often you end up bypassing a trap or monster easily because you thought of something the DM didn't. (example from one of my D&D games) Suppose you're facing extremely fast but not very intelligent enemies, wrap a rope around their necks when they stop and hold on tight. When they take off again, pop goes the weasel. Until you can tell a computer game "I wrap a rope around its neck" and it correctly interprets and responds appropriately, no computer game will replace D&D.
NWN's original campaign got me interested. I charged through as a barbarian on a rampage and loved every minute of it. When I went to online play the game shined and shot me in the keister too for game exploits.
I really enjoyed the fact the Linux client came out for it. Once I switched over to Linux I have little reason for Windows anymore. Right now the only thing keeping Windows alive on my other machine is the fact I need the NWN Toolset. I really, REALLY!, wish they would put out a toolset for Linux. I feel sorta cheated for not having it.
I'll definatly pick up the HoU expansion but I won't be buying any new titles from Bioware or any other game company unless there's direct Linux support and no half way, "Oh here it is a day late." type deals either. I just hope they keep the HoU release in step with both Windows and Linux.
As for the client on my Linux Mandrake box, thing runs better then it did on Windows with the same graphics resolution. I'm flat out amazed and the picture seems slightly sharper and things are snappier for me. Nice job and keep it up and make things better! By that I mean make a toolset for Linux!
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Personally I never finished the OC, never even bothered to play the SoU campaign. The game sat kind of idle for a while until I tried out multiplayer, but now I feel like I am seeing NwN as it was envisioned to be. Wait until you are in an army of 20+ high level characters attacking some epic fortress, it is fantastic!
I'm not going to mention which PW I play on because I don't want all of you slashdot dorks ruining my fun. I leave it to you to find a suitable campaign which suits you.
Clickety Click
There's a reason it seems that way. BG2 was expectation-shattering. I mean, BG1 was like: wow, this is a fun game, and nicely nonlinear.
BG2 was like: Wow, this is totally mind-numbingly amazing. It reproduced tons of fun kits, all the crazy spells like limited wish and contingency that we'd never seen in a game before, and the impossible hugeness of the game... you could play it 3 times and not find all the quests or read all the funny comments from the NPCs.
NWN, partially because of the huge success of BG2, had huge expectations attached. It definitely fell short, largely because the OC was just rather weak, partially because of a story that felt somehow mechanical, and partially because there were just too damn many chests... it literally slowed the game down.
Go back and play BG2 now though, and you'll realize without pause, its nearly impossible to control 1 character, let alone 6, and you'll find you REALLY want to rotate the screen around to see things from another angle... I find myself wanting to do that with ToEE all the time.
I would love to know how the sales compared to their expected sales... personally, I'd like to see them build on it. With a graphical update and a bunch of engine enhancements, NWN2 could be to NWN what BG2 was to BG. NWN already has a LOT of staying power: the City Of Doors and Dragonlance Adventures teams are producing projects far more impressive in scope than the OC, and containing more custom content than the first expansion pack. They've released custom modeling tools, creatures, and tilesets already. So there's actually a LOT of longevity left in the game -- because the biggest, best of the third-party projects are only going to start coming out now.
Hoards allows up to 40th level attainment. That's too high. D&D, both the board game and the various computer rpgs is best at low to medium levels. Temple of Elemental Evil is a great example of this. The first half of NWN was great but once your characters get above 12th a lot of it becomes tedious.
Players making thier own games is the future of gaming. You see this trend starting way back in old school MUDs, continuing into Load Runner map editors, Tony Hawk skate park editors, The SecondLife MMOG, what Sims Online Should have been, etc... and NWN.
And for those who complain that hours of developement in NWN equal minutes of game time. Yes, you have to expect this.
If you want a system that provides REAL customization and expandibilty then it is going to be complex, and take time.
I do agree that NWN is far from replacing PnP, but it will be MANY years until a system is developed that could do so, and when the system does come out, it will probaly be 5x more complex than NWN currently is.
Anyway, you need games like NWN to get the ball rolling and show that there is an interest in end-user modding and it is a very good attempt. I enjoy it.
HotU looks awesome and has more expanded features than they could possible even advertise.
I think I best summarize what I think about this game with a pro/con list:
:-/
Pros:
- Highly flexible modding tools that are fairly easy to use.
- Available in a Windows, Mac and Linux version.
- Good availability of custom campaigns of varying quality.
- Many implemented D&D rules.
Cons:
- Very outdated game engine already when NWN went gold. Almost back to Doom II with a sort of pseudo-3D. Sure, the 3D is "real", but the feature set doesn't make it look like that. No swimming, no flying, no jumping (!), no crouching. What happened with the Z axis!? You can barely design campaigns that have slopes, much less rolling hills. Wha..!? Also, forget about any spells or monsters that involve levitation of any kind. Like Dragons. Yes, there are those in NWN, but they can't fly, just take a walk! Laughable for a modern game. Why didn't they just leave them out instead of banishing them to a life on ground?
- Poor and shallow built-in campaigns both in NWN and SoU using cliche stories.
- Modifications usually look similar to each other due to rather large tiles. Some custom tilesets are nice, and others amateurish. All campaigns using custom tiles grow considerably in download size.
- Almost completely lacking the proper RPG "feeling" in worlds composed of undetailed polygons and monsters with poor AI.
- Still many missing D&D rules or improperly implemented spells, etc. Mordenkainen's Sword is a monster (not a sword) for example.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Bioware took lots of liberties in the combat and game mechanics. It's not even close to following the D&D v3.x ruleset.
If you like proper D&D tactical combat, you owe it to yourself to check out Temple of Elemental Evil. The game, as a whole is great, although there are a few bugs which are supposed to be addressed in an upcoming patch. It has THE BEST tactical turn-based combat engine I have seen, and it follows as closely to the letter of D&D 3.5 as you can get. As a matter of fact, the developers list (in the maual) the rare circumstances where the D&D ruleset is abandoned, why, and how it effects gameplay.
The combat in ToEE is D&D combat bliss.
There are some really spectacular community-produced modules too. CC1 and CC2 in particular were really very good. There are some really strong writers out there.
And Bioware has been keeping the Linux client up to date (and in some cases, even slightly advanced over) the Windows client. I'm VERY happy with the Linux support. Supposedly there is a Linux toolset coming too (OpenNights or something like that)
Thumbs WAY up BioWare!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Have you seen BG1TuTu yet? It lets you play thru Tales of the Sword Coast using the Throne of Bhaal engine. I've played it thru till the end just recently. It's great. Breathes new life into a game from the late 90's.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
For the single player game, BGI/II/ToB are hard to beat, but compared to live action NwN multiplayer on a good server with competent players and a well designed module, well it just isn't anything like NwN at all. NwN really has transcended to a new kind of game entirely. Think along the lines of counterstrike, except playing in Co-op mode, with the NwN engine, and a hodge-podge group of character classes. You should see the fireworks when you put a wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and a couple fighters together in a group and get in a decent sized battle. It is just amazing.
Clickety Click
0. If you've never played check out www.bioware.com and download the free demo trial to see if it's your cup of tea. 1. Buy the Gold Edition. (you get the original and the first expansion) 2. Install it and patch it up to 1.32. (Use the operating system of your choice)(With the patches it's stable, without the patches it runs like something from Evil Bill. Early criticism of the stability was well founded but it's stable now.) 3. Do not waste even one second playing the official campaign (even if you were the kind of kid that followed the instructions with your Lego set and then put it away.) 4. Knowing how to play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons will help but you may find it easier to go to www.gamefaqs.com and do a search on "Neverwinter" 5. Log onto the muliplayer and look for a good persistent world. 6. Get the hak packs and custom content from http://neverwinter.ign.com 7. Set up some games with other people at http://www.neverwinterconnections.com 8. Get a dedicated server and bandwidth. Create your own persistent world with the toolset. (The scripting language is trivial to learn if you know c.) -- See you online! Coral Reef
The Memeitc AI Toolkit is a comprehensive system for designing realistic NPC AI for persistant worlds. It uses a meme metaphor to rationalize the hows and whys of NPC life. The Memetic AI Toolkit provides an artificial life designer with a host of tools, documentation, example code, and a community to help with their projects.
This implementation is written in NWScript and is designed to run on a stand alone server using Bioware's NeverwinterNights game platform. It is distributed as a set of scripts that can be imported into Bioware's toolkit. It does not require a database, or hacks to the original game.
Links:
Major features include:
-W. Bull
Hordes? All this time I've been waiting with baited breath for Whores of the Underdark and it turns out to be Hordes! Damn!!!
as much as I enjoyed playing NWN, it's still just a souless video game.
Recently, I picked up playing pen and paper D&D. It's unimagineably more fun. Less repetitive, more focus on throught and problem solving, and more dynamic overall. That, and imagining a world in your mind is many times more addictive and involving than one on a screen - especially if you envision the world differently than the game creators made it.
I can't say I've played many video games at all in the last while. Especially fantasy RPGs.
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