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.

Re:Good news

[darkstar949]

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.

A truly long lasting game.

[Martigan80]

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.

Re:Box Set

[Erwos]

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

AI

[musikit]

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

Box set

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe there's one for NWN and the first expansion, SoU.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0 00 09MGVF/qid=1069164519/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/104-769983 3-0575100?v=glance&s=videogames&n=507846

Re:HotU Opinion

[Ferro_Man]

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.

i thought they fixed that
with the dragon disciple and the pale master both needing that fixed...
you would think they could have done it

i am looking forward to the max level cap being raised to level 40 and the 6 new prestige classes...
some of them seem interesting enough to use
unlike the harpers scout of shadows of undrentide

Re:Someone actually *liked* NWN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try playing online on a persistant world server. It makes the official campign modules seem like training camp. Hell I never even bothered to play the OC for SoU, still haven't in fact, and I never even finished the original module. Multiplayer for NwN is where its happening.

no, spellcaster +1 is in

[MattW]

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?!)

Community Content is awesome too

[DG]

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

IGN Community MOD contest

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: IGN has a contest going for the best community created module for the transition from SOU to HOU.

Check it out: http://nwvault.ign.com/features/contests/IGNContes tHotU.shtml

So far I have only played Shadohaunt since it had such high reviews. After finishing it, I can certainly tell you it deserves it. decent plot, lots of laughs, and some neat items (the deck of cards is my fav ... two cards I know of: wyrm card ... RED DRAGON!, and the Knave card .. :( ... looose all backpacked equipment!! ... nasty but fun :)

I HIGHLY recommend playing it. My only complaint is that its abit too easy.
http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/modules/data/1 0661123 20015.shtml

In short, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The scripting language has GetSecond() to get the number of seconds since the module began, and you can use that info to vary your monster spawns.

Re:A truly long lasting game.

[EvilAlien]

I don't miss the in-game video... its pretty irrelevant, IMO. The expansion will be for Linux as well, its just extra modules and a client version update anyways. I play NWN exclusively on Linux since the client became stable.

BTW, the graphics and whatnot are updated for this expansion. More polygons, better models, more varieties of "heads"... oh, and robes. You can actually have a robe. w00t!

MemeticAI v6.6 for NWN Developers Out

[Kilkonie]

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:

• Project Homepage [memeticai.org]
• Download Latest Release, Here [memeticai.org]
• API Reference Manual [memeticai.org]
• Example XML Debug Log [207.198.90.123]

Major features include:

• Complete implementation of classes and (multiple) inheritance for NWScript
• Full support for automatic preemption, and resumption of actions, without losing state
• Response-tables, child behaviors, decaying variables.
• Non-linear time to ease the handling of real-time to game-time coding.
• Trails & landmarks, a resuable path system based on NPC preference
• Non-polling solutions for points of interest observation
• Complete asynchronous messaging, direct to NPC or via channel subscriptions
• Completely modularization of response, behavior, and message handlers.
• Chains of actions, sequence can resume or restart based on preemption
• Sample code, forums, documentation, and an active friendly community.

-W. Bull [mailto]

Re:A truly long lasting game.

[VertigoAce]

It would have worked just fine, except that Bioware chose to use a Windows-only codec and player (Bink) for their video files. I got the impression they made a deal that wouldn't let them distribute mpeg/ogm versions with the Linux version. The hack that exists shows that there is no technical reason for it to not work. Instead Bioware screwed up with their licensing.

As far as usability, I prefer the way NWN works under Linux. If you have the bandwidth you download the data files and the Linux client. Type in the CD key when it asks and you're done. (You could also copy the resources from a Windows install, or have someone with more bandwidth download them for you). The first expansion pack had a linux install script that would have worked nicely had the manufacturer not screwed up line endings. Instead you just had to unzip a few files (clearly explained on the website). Anyway, it was far quicker to install under Linux than on Windows. And the best part is that the Linux client doesn't require a CD to play. The only copy protection is the CD key. Plus you don't have to skip through all of the publisher and developer videos; it starts at the main menu.