205 réponses à ce sujet

[morreski]

apologies to all those still modding NW2, this may be heresy, but i have to ask.   DA is clearly superior in at least some if not every single respect - character animation is what most impresses me - why would anyone still be working with the older toolset?  Unless it's the extra complexity, which i freely admit has me completely beat. 

[morreski]

well, if you can do things with the new toolset that you couldn't do with the old, and if more people will be using the new game engine (i'm not presuming, that's part of my question), why wouldn't you?

[kamalpoe]

morreski wrote...

well, if you can do things with the new toolset that you couldn't do with the old

That's a pretty biased thread name.

There is an amount of "and vice versa" with the DA toolset, things that NWN2 can do that DA can not.

[casadechrisso]

I loved DA:O and especially the animations in it, however, the two games are too different to make such a conclusion. For one, as far as I've heard and can tell from only a few hours of trying, DA's toolset is actually not very easy to use and comes with some serious flaws too. The whole SQL database thing alone drove me crazy.

And, NWN2 has actually quite a few very positive points too. Not only is everything easily moddable at every corner and the gates for custom content and rule changes open wide, it also has that nice little thing called multiplayer that a minority of us are still very very interested in. Had DA:O had multiplayer capabilities, I might've switched over, but it hasn't, so I'm sticking to what I have. Also, most standard game resources of DA didn't blew me away. It's actually easier for me to make a good looking area in NWN2 - in DA you'd have to retexture almost everything first, since Bioware partly did a very bad job there.

[MokahTGS]

There are clear differences between the two games, but as for NWN2's modding capabilities, NWN2 can:

• Create areas with full day & night cycles
  
• Create areas with dynamic shadows
  
• Utilize 15 base classes and 24 PrCs for really great character building and detailed storylines baseed on class strengths and weaknesses.  Add in the community PrC packs and you are into the hundreds of possibilities.
  
• Allow for co=op multiplayer in modules
  
• Allow the creation of online persistant worlds for endless multiplayer and weekly DMed games.
  
• Scads of Community bult custom content that allows for many many many more creatures in custom built modules for the still active community of players.
  
• Far far far more options for building as far as placeables, tilesets, and terrain options thanks to the community.
  
• Overland map functionality allowing for very different gameplay options and very large scale worlds.
  
• We can use MySQL in NWN2 allowing online PWs to do dynamic things that DA couldn't dream of doing.
• For players, NWN2 offers hundreds of hours of deep single player gameplay and unlimited hours of online.  Add in community made modules and your bang for buck ratio goes through the roof.

I've used both toolsets, and I can tell you hands down that I prefer NWN2 for all my building needs.  DA may do a few things bettter, but easier to use?  No way.

Modifié par MokahTGS, 22 août 2010 - 08:55 .

[The Puppeteer]

Dragon Age has no multiplayer support. That alone makes it impossible for me to utilize regardless of how good the toolset may or may not be.

[The Fred]

I don't own DA and so don't really know of the limits of the toolset, but from what I hear it's not so much an improvement over the NWN2 one as something different to it. I mean, there are still things NWN1 has over NWN2, but I would say that overall the opportunities in NWN2 are much greater. However, there are quite a few things I think which NWN2 has over DA. Aside from anything, the standard setting and resources make it a lot easier to make D&D-based or similar mods, as well as giving you flexibility without having to make custom content for everything.



Incidentally, people are still modding BG with archaic tools many years after NWN came along.

[morreski]

This is encouraging. i guess i should have said at the beginning - i've spent a lot of time building a mod in nw2, and i have a long, long way to go to finish it, and i was beginning to despair that anyone would still be playing the game once i finish - if i ever do. Or that community support will continue. So if people are still going to be playing for a while, then it's worth it. thanks.



Full agreement as to ease of use. at least i've been able to get some distance with NW2. I don't even see a way to build a new area in DA. I mean a completely new environment. And there sure do seem to be more options. I just wish Bioware would continue some level of improvement. One thing DA definitely has improved on is how much more lifelike the characters are in physical gesture.

[NWN DM]

morreski wrote...

apologies to all those still modding NW2, this may be heresy, but i have to ask.

Thou shall not blaspheme!  Burn the heretic!

[WyrinDnjargo]

morreski wrote...

apologies to all those still modding NW2, this may be heresy, but i have to ask.   DA is clearly superior in at least some if not every single respect - character animation is what most impresses me - why would anyone still be working with the older toolset?  Unless it's the extra complexity, which i freely admit has me completely beat. 

If well animated characters is what sells a game to you, then knock yourself out.

Not everyone is sold on DA. Me? WHy I still mod NWN2? I really didnt think DA was much fun to play, gameplay sucked, character building was routine and uninspiring and I couldn't care less about character animations. Interesting story got lost in tedious, repetitive and unexciting gameplay. So I didn't buy into the lore of DA and saw no point modding for it when I could do far more to far better effect in NWN2. Plus I love D&D, and all that goes with it.  Mokah covers most the key points that spring to mind.

If the question is why build if there's no community to play it... well, YMMV but I build for the love of building as much as for any prospective players. Sitting back and seeing what I've created come to life is reward in itself. Not all builders might feel that way, but player feedback is icing on a cake that I'd almost be happy to eat without the icing

[morreski]

i was dreading the thought of having to rebuild the damn thing in the DA toolset.

i guess i don't understand wanting to tell a story if there's no-one to listen.

as for the animations, they just make the conversations look more realistic. But if NW2 still does other things better, i'm all for it.

[Lightfoot8]

You have no fear of your NWN2 players not being around. Just look at how many people are out there that still swear by NWN1. It also, is still a living community.

[LeeMer47]

It looks like DA2 may not be compatible with DA:O, and it won't have a toolset. It also looks like the DA:O toolset will no longer be updated. Or so I heard a few weeks ago. Not really interested in the DA forums.



I have too many TSR modules to convert over to leave NWN2. Lack of content does make me do some thingsin NWN1 only. If only there were crocodiles, owlbears, griffons, elephants and frogs in NWN2. AD&D and DA don't go together.

[Shaun the Crazy One]

morreski wrote...

well, if you can do things with the new toolset that you couldn't do with the old, and if more people will be using the new game engine (i'm not presuming, that's part of my question), why wouldn't you?

One thing you can't do in the DA toolset is bring over all the things you did in the NWN2 toolset.  Some the modders here (such as the Bauldur's Gate team) have been working on their mods for over a year.  Rest assure there is a huge NWN2 comunity still.

[Shallina]

The DAO toolset seems to be dead. EA doesn't care about it.

- Bad class system.
- Consol limitation all over the place so the game can run for XBOX and PS3
- no multiplayer
- very few custom content develloped for it by the community.
- No support at all.

The first point can be corrected, someone talented could change all the class and make them interesting. The 4 other are killing DAO community and will make sure it will never grow. It also make it inferior to NWN2 and NWN1 for modding.

Modifié par Shallina, 23 août 2010 - 06:51 .

[diophant]

I had the same doubts as morreski. In fact, I released my first mod of a NWN1 campaign at a very bad moment. Everybody was waiting for NWN2, my mod was lost between thousands of mods from a short story contest, and it was german. So, I got very few downloads, and I decided to not continue the project in NWN1, and reimplement it in NWN2 (this time as blilingual mod). I'm still working on it, and when DAO was released, I was afraid that I will have the same problem again. But I decided to continue the project, because I realized that there will always be a newer game until I finish my mod with any toolset.

[rjshae]

For me I suppose it is a matter of inertia. I've spent enough time in NWN2 to be able to construct something interesting, and there is still more to learn. If I switched over to DA it sounds like I'd be starting over. Eventually I'll probably switch to something else (possibly DA), but for the moment the NWN2 toolset still has some interesting elements (despite the many frustrating limitations).

My ideal for a 3D RPG toolset would be something open source, powerful, highly extensible, well-supported by the modding community, and sufficiently capable to be widely adopted by commercial gaming companies for their products (with some type of game-specific plugin). I'm hoping some day...

Modifié par rjshae, 23 août 2010 - 03:12 .

[-Semper-]

-Semper- wrote...

pro nwn2:
- lots of skills, races, classes, monsters to choose from
- working level building tool with far better lighting engine
- easier and faster to build, even as a one man army
- scaling resources in size
- nwn1/classical dialogue system with no close ups
- the ability to integrate new monsters (completely new meshes with custom skeletons)
- custom and easy ui integration
- easy fx editor
- lots of props to choose from (with the two addons and the content made by the community)
- advanced dialogue building tool
- much better minimap creation
- easy integration of custom sounds and music

cons nwn2:
- hard in handling 2da merging (you have to do this manually - right now a modder is programming a merging tool)
- more or less static cutscenes
- sometimes unstable toolset with the chance to breake your module (save as directory will help)
- the need of an external 3d modeling tool to create custom indoor tiles
- problems with custom talktable integration (you have to extend the core talktable)
- no ongoing support by obsidian (BUT they provided lots of patches for their toolset)
- no editing of heads (you will need an external 3d modeling tool to
create different heads BUT the integration of totally custom heads is
possible - therefore easy integration of different races)
- no rotating around the z axis

pro da:o:
- cutscene management with animation blending and easy camera control
- easier integration of new level props and textures
- far superior 2da handling
- the ability to rotate around z axis
- very stable toolset
- level design is easy and straight foward, gives more flexibility
- no tiles
- easy fx editor
- stunning morph tool for quick and easy head creation (BUT you can't add custom base heads like different races)

cons da:o:
- totally bugged lightmapper
- problems with custom talktables
- few monsters and skills to choose from, only 3 classes
- lots of bugs the toolset suffers from (link)
- no scaling in size
- fewer props to choose from
- ingame level scaling (if that's a con for you)
- scripting is a bit different than from nwn1/nwn2, handling of plots (personally i found it more difficult)
- no support at all by bioware (they provided one patch which fixes only the database exporting issue)
- more or less hardcoded ui
- only 1 cinema conversation system with limitations both in options and characters/letters
- very difficult to almost impossible integration of new sounds and music
- long time baking process - we talk about hours if your machine does not
contain multiple cores (with clunky outcome of the lightmaps)
- toolset tends to crash while morphing heads

here's a collection of pros and cons editing the two games so you can decide what fits your needs best

my personal opinion: if you want to tell any story, go for nwn2's toolset. if you want your story to be within the dragon age lore, then the toolset of da:o will be fine.

Modifié par -Semper-, 23 août 2010 - 03:23 .

[morreski]

all encouraging.

one of the things i've been wondering about is whether there are going to be new models - creatures, tiles, buildings. Haven't been to the Vault in a while, but if there's contributions still coming in, then i guess the game is still alive. Cheers.

[The Fred]

Animations are nice, but to my mind, at least, a more interesting class system and things are bigger issues. I can live with having to use a little imagination, but I can't make my abilities more interesting if they're not.

Lightfoot8 wrote...

You have no fear of your NWN2 players not being around. Just look at how many people are out there that still swear by NWN1. It also, is still a living community.

This is very true. In fact, look at how many people still swear by BG (and not just "BG was the greatest game ever", but "BG is the greatest game ever and I still play it every year!"). DA was good for bringing in non-traditional RPG fans (i.e. people other than the BG veterans, the old D&D-players etc) and got much better advertising and stuff (I even saw it on TV once!) but I don't think there's anyway it's going to replace NWN.

[dunniteowl]

NWN and NWN2 are still definitely well worth the time invested, in all cases, be you player, builder or custom content creator. We still have new tricks being created that breathe more life into the games. There are still creative folks in the Community that make new things happen. And the stories for players to play just keep getting better and better. Not to mention the level of variety of story and story telling is just nothing short of astonishing.

I won't even touch on the toolset and variety within the assets. That's nothing more than a time/techincal issue. Currently the assets that have grown around both games. DA:O will just take time to gather those.



dunniteowl

[M. Rieder]

I got in the modding game late, and only now just released my first module and I had some of the same concerns. I will echo what others have said: look at the Baldur's Gate and NWN 1 communities. I am sure there will be plenty of people around to play your Mod when you release it.



Furthermore, as far as I understand, Dragon Age is not Dungeons and Dragons. I like Neverwinter Nights because it is dungeons and dragons. I like the system for fantasy adventures.



I am sure one day someone will make an updated computer game based on Dungeons and Dragons, but until then I am definitely not switching.

[dethia]

Well it's been said enough times to hammer a nail into the ground but I'll go ahead and say it again:



DA:O -> NO MULTIPLAYER



I loooooove me the concept of PW's. It is revolutionary, a great step forward passed instancing of diablo/diablo 2 days and FPS games where you have multiple instances all connected and people can jump from one to another seamlessly and if any person is in the same instance they always meet. A role-playing multi-player online system, it just wins automatically. Things like lan are cumbersome in getting people together, but with Persistent Multi-Player worlds you meet people from all over who enjoy the game for its various aspects whether it's the pvp or action or dnd or rp. I do have DA:O and hmm the game wasn't bad, but when I learned it had no mp support I didn't even bother looking at their toolset (other than to hack my second play-through character). I think NWN2 is going to be around until a new game is released with as much flexibility and a similar persistent world capability.

[Eguintir Eligard]

As many things as the DA toolset does not offer according to this thread, it does offer an actual audience for any project you will finish a year or more from now. What suits my building needs better doesnt matter because I dont build for myself. The edge is definitely with DA ability wise regardless. But DA really lacks content. Theres literally like 7 monsters.

Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 02 septembre 2010 - 06:43 .