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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.
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!)
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.
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.
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! ~~
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.
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
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