33 réponses à ce sujet

[ffbj]

 Yes, I know to many that is merely a conclusion they arrived at long ago, its been 12 years approx. now, and to steal a few lines from Firesign Theatre: "Here, in the technical vastness of the future, we can certainly say that the past was very different."  Well what is that supposed to mean relative to what I am trying to say?
 On first reading it is just a joke really, but the implication is, to me by inference, that the past was much worse. Howsoever in terms of gaming,  and more specifically this game, I think the inference should be reversed, in that things were better for creators of modules for example due to the vast scope of what could be created.  Recently playing the MMO NwN, I had sort an epiphany about the state of gaming, having been a gamer, oh well, for most of my life, and that is that modern games especially MMO's are one trick ponies.  Sure they can put lipstick on a pig and dress it up in finery but its still a pig.

Don't get me wrong I am not bashing NwN online (the new one).  I am saying the bygones days of NwN1 will never happen again.  So we have this jewel, created by jewels, and continuing to be supported and contributed to all thse years. Possibly the greatest game ever created, and if I may be so bold, the greatest game that ever will be created.
Congratulations to everyone who made and have kept this Frankenstein of a game going all these years.
 IT"S 
ALIVE.

Modifié par ffbj, 07 mai 2013 - 01:15 .

[SuperFly_2000]

Well yes...as long as the industry continues to only produce exactly the same looking MMORPG's....NWN1 will really never die...

[henesua]

NWN will die. There is no question to that. For some it is already dead. For others it lives on. But eventually someday no one will play it. That day has not yet come, but it will.

Rather than dwell in fantasy that people will be playing NWN forever, I think it would behoove people in the community to seriously consider replacing it so that the community can live on without the old software. An open source "NWN" if you will - similar in some respects to how Rogue generated countless rogue-like games. I think projects like NWNX get us part way there, but its only a half-step. I hope that the community is able to come up with some new innovations to get us all there soon.

I have my own ideas about how to do it. Others have their own ideas. I have flirted with participating in a couple groups that had ambition and arrogance but not enough realism to make it happen. And this has lead me to think that due to the personality issues that arise on these sorts of projects, that coding such a thing from scratch is not the way to go. Perhaps this effort should look at piece meal ways to achieve this effort.

Modifié par henesua, 07 mai 2013 - 02:11 .

[FunkySwerve]

Actually, given the recent flourishing of groupsourced games via Kickstarter and the like (like the upcoming Planescape: Torment sequel), I think it's just a matter of time until someone develops an opensourced program that closely approximates NWN. Obviously, it will have to use a more generic ruleset, but that has advantages as well as downsides - it could utilize a more granular d100, for example.

Funky

[kamal_]

henesua wrote...
An open source "NWN" if you will -

Already exists and runs (but incomplete because it's mostly one person). I posted about it a long time back.

[Tybae]

The game will eventually die, but there will be the select few die hard DnD fans that keep it alive in some form. That and the toolset is why it has lasted almost 12 years so far, IMO.

[painofdungeoneternal]

It died soon after release. The very idea goes against the planned obsolescence needed by commercial interests.

Then the community cast animate dead, in a very grand ritual including thousands of casters, programmers, toolset users, sacrifices of time and blood ( and hapless players ). What Atari/Bioware gave us, we remade, we reinvented, and they even took what we the community did into what we know as this game, adding in database support to PW's, recreating the script compiler and making our own models, modules and scripts.

While some say that which does not kill us makes us stronger, this frankenstein lich of a game is actually quite stronger for having died. Chop off gamespy support, and we bolt a new one on just like frankenstein getting a new head bolted on. It is proof as long as there is a will, there is a way to keep it going and to improve it.

It will keep going as long as we can keep the Phylactery safe, and there exists those who care enough to pay attention to it. Yeah it might be a small minority running archaic computers. At some point we are going to look at what we are playing and realize there just isn't any of the original game left.

Of course new copies will keep getting sold, there will likely be a iPad version released in a few years, and new players are finding it on GOG.com. ( Baldurs gate for example is very popular right now on iDevices from what i am hearing, very likely to have NWN1 and NWN2 eventually join tablets as they gain more and more horsepower )

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 07 mai 2013 - 05:43 .

[henesua]

As lame as it is to do so, I must make a GoT reference: "what is dead will never die."

[edited for reference clarity.]

Modifié par henesua, 07 mai 2013 - 10:21 .

[ffbj]

No, that was the Mummy, who was lame, also something that could not be killed, since it was already dead. It could be destroyed however.

[tzaeru]

kamal_ wrote...

henesua wrote...
An open source "NWN" if you will -

Already exists and runs (but incomplete because it's mostly one person). I posted about it a long time back.

I'm a little unsure if it's worth it to concentrate focus on simply replacing NWN's engine. NWN official assets can't be used. The module format is not necessarily all so good that it was worth keeping. The model formats probably should be replaced, too.

I also do not believe that it is the right way to go to start a project immediatelly on one's own - I'd consider it better if people who really believed they can realistically do it got together and first discussed the program structure, dependencies, hierarchies.. And so forth. I'm sure some have already done it. But yeah, figure communication is always an issue..

Also doing it from scratch is silly and a waste of time. Should use some ready game engine, or at least a rendering engine.

If you want a long-lasting replacement, you'd probably want to take use of OpenGL 3, possibly with door open for OpenGL 4s tesselation shaders - relatively simple to do some graphic improvements with them. While graphics are not the main thing and there are plenty of well-to-do projects with much more humble graphics, the bulky early 00s 3D style is not very pleasant; I like Battle For Wesnoth's graphics. I don't like NWN's.

henesua wrote...

NWN will die. There is no question to
that. For some it is already dead. For others it lives on. But
eventually someday no one will play it. That day has not yet come, but
it will.

True words.

I've also played around with the idea of participating in somekind of a recreation of NWN. I just don't want it to be a direct copy.. And I don't want to be part of a project that does everything from scratch. That wont work. And I'd like if the core people of the project really were going to pull it off and that it was even remotely sensibly managed.

Modifié par tzaeru, 08 mai 2013 - 01:44 .

[Tarot Redhand]

The following is a genuine question that I have. Having read in the press elsewhere regarding support (or more accurately the lack of ) by the main graphics board makers, it it wise to use OpenGL?

TR

[tzaeru]

Tarot Redhand wrote...

The following is a genuine question that I have. Having read in the press elsewhere regarding support (or more accurately the lack of ) by the main graphics board makers, it it wise to use OpenGL?

TR

It is.

There are some odd quirks in following the specifications (mostly from AMD/ATI's side) but there are plenty of known workarounds.

Additionally, using a ready game/rendering engine - which I feel is rather quintessential - there already are many fixes in for ATI cards.

Besides, there's no alternative anyway, unless you wish to alienate all Linux and OS X users.

Modifié par tzaeru, 08 mai 2013 - 02:55 .

[OldTimeRadio]

Had a little time to catch up on threads here, flying on my second third cup of strong coffee this morning, thought I'd toss in my two coppers in response to some of the ideas in the thread:

Making a new NWN is just not going to happen anytime soon.  I once was as optimistic as anyone that it was possible but the reality of what it would take to come up with a real replacement eventually disabused me of that idea.  Despite its age, the NWN game creation system is an extremely complex and robust product. 

A flawed masterpiece, which will not likely be seen from a major gaming studio anytime soon and whose 70+ developers' 160 man-years of work will not likely be reproduced by a community effort, either.  BTW Funky, you might want to check out page 2 on that first link.  You guys at HG got a nice bump on page 2.

---

More existentially, IMO the overall psychological health of the NWN community appears to be higher than just about any time in the game's history.  One unexpected benefit of the austerity of such an old game is that many (but not all) of the griefers, trolls, narcissists and other troublemakers are at an all-time low on the forums.  The game of vendetta is not so popular anymore.  Turned out there is no crown that's mailed to you when you achieve King of Neverwinter status and so most of them drifted away to greener-eyed pastures...or self-destructed or whatever that personality type does. 

While questions may go unanswered in the CC, Module Making or Scripting forums, they are far less likely to be responded to derisively or discouragingly.  Same with submissions to the Vault.  This is a very good thing.

Nitpicky conflagrations of the variety such as D20's initial posting to the Modules section of the Vault or the question of who had the authority to include Wemics in their project simply aren't happening as much, if at all, anymore.  In the last two years I've seen a couple of people try to gin up a controversy only to have their ass handed to them by everyone else. 

Not because they were right or wrong but because most all of the regulars can spot the difference between two authorities disagreeing on a matter and old-fashioned trolling- and seem to have little patience for the latter nowadays.

---

I think there are still a lot of possibilities to draw in more players which haven't been fuly explored.  One of my favorite things about the Forrestwolf's Firefly System and D20 in general is the ability to coax people into trying NWN who otherwise might not have.  Innovations like Enki/Goudea's space combat system, for instance, could be re-applied to other situations (driving, sailing, for instance) genres to make wildly different environments in this old game. 

There are still niche communities hungry to create and play games in the world they favor.  Post-apocalyptic genre comes to mind.  Or the Lego-style/Minecraft "look" or sandbox.   I'm sure there are many others.  It would be an amazing thing to hook up a community like that to Neverwinter and provide enough of a bridge to bring them in and get them started.  After seeing what's available in the way of 3D model packs for games and the hourly rates of professional lowpoly 3D modelers, if I had about 2-3 grand I could afford to part with to get standardized base meshes made and four-six months or so of free time, I'd probably do it just to see how it would pan out.

The lack of support in so many areas also means less restrictions.  While it still definitely has its limitations, I believe this game creation system is usable to create a lot more than most people think, and to tell stories in environments a lot more varied than it generally has been tasked with.

Meh.  That's my fantasy for this winter, anyway.

Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 08 mai 2013 - 06:04 .

[tzaeru]

OldTimeRadio wrote...

A flawed masterpiece, which will not likely be seen from a major gaming studio anytime soon and whose 70+ developers' 160 man-years of work will not likely be reproduced by a community effort, either.  BTW Funky, you might want to check out page 2 on that first link.  You guys at HG got a nice bump on page 2.

But Aurora was basically from scratch. Far as I know, it didn't use much in the way of a ready rendering engine, yet alone a more complex game engine.

Additionally, much of that work is assets; Music, scripts, quests, models, textures.. But there's a lot for free for all of those, for one, Witcher's assets.

There are absolutely massive and fantastic open source, non-profit, commune-driven game projects. For example, PlaneShift.

Modifié par tzaeru, 08 mai 2013 - 06:20 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

Who has not recognized by now what nwn/aurora is capable of will never understand it anyway or was only temporarily interested. I call those "engine jumper" always seeking for this one engine that is exactly build for what his own vision is... now search and die

Why would a developer (or more a publsiher...lol) be interested in a game that is in the longrun not done for the money but for the creativity of individualls. The days of halflife 1, quake and nwn games alike are over imo period!

Also the games from now a day are much harder to mod for. You need a 3dsmax version 12 and zbrush and a pc that is like a monster because toolsets render much much more then the hardware has to ingame etc...

Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 08 mai 2013 - 06:56 .

[OldTimeRadio]

tzaeru wrote...

But Aurora was basically from scratch. Far as I know, it didn't use much in the way of a ready rendering engine, yet alone a more complex game engine.

The Aurora engine was basically the Omen graphics engine from MDK2 and parts of the Infinity rules engine smooshed together and heavily punched up, reworked as necessary.  The additional work was obviously considerable but it wasn't from scratch.  A large part of the base graphics system from MDK2 was used as the base for NWN's,  including the particle system and volumetric shadows.  I also believe the animation system as well.  Built on, expanded?  Definitely.  But not from scratch.  Googling "omen engine" AND "neverwinter" will yield lots more specifics.

Additionally, much of that work is assets; Music, scripts, quests, models, textures.

True, but this was an enormous project from a purely programming standpoint.  From the GamaSutra link in my previous message:

At its peak, the team numbered more than 75 people - with 22 programmers working on aspects as diverse as the game client, independent servers,  the Dungeon Master client, and the world creation tools (the BioWare Aurora Neverwinter Toolset).

Mmm, I can't say I disagree about Witcher assets or the amount of open-source material available otherwise.  It's not always easy to derive consistent-looking material for NWN from most of the 3D models floating around, though.  Ryzom is a notable exception (which is also free to use) but it is very difficult to extract and prep in my experience.  The last time I checked PlaneShift, while the game engine was open-source, the actual game content was not.  I'm not sure if the content is what you were speaking about, though.

[kamal_]

NWN_baba yaga wrote...
Why would a developer (or more a publsiher...lol) be interested in a game that is in the longrun not done for the money but for the creativity of individualls. The days of halflife 1, quake and nwn games alike are over imo period!

LittleBigPlanet is a major studio game that is all about user created content, so it can happen.

[tzaeru]

OldTimeRadio wrote...
The last time I checked PlaneShift, while the game engine was open-source, the actual game content was not.  I'm not sure if the content is what you were speaking about, though.

It was just to make a point that pretty sizeable game projects are done by community effort.

And yes, the content isn't, which I believe is because they don't want the project to split.

[FunkySwerve]

OldTimeRadio wrote...
  BTW Funky, you might want to check out page 2 on that first link.  You guys at HG got a nice bump on page 2.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that before.

Funky

[MerricksDad]

I seriously believe that if I can single-handedly reproduce (and upgrade) the infinity engine from scratch (which I did marvelously in 2005), that a small group of like-minded people could EASILY reproduce aurora and expand upon it in a community sense

[Edge2177]

I'm working on a brand new NWN server myself, so I entirely agree until another game medium comes that has the level of construction related to the toolset and allows players to design their own worlds the others just do not measure up.

[Pstemarie]

I've been playing with Foundry a bit and, although the potential is there, in its current state it just doesn't measure up to Aurora. You can't design custom exterior areas - the raw map anyway, and you're very limited with regard to characters. You can't really customize those either
So while the intent is clearly there its a disappointment.

[Rolo Kipp]

<adjusting...>

Just to be clear, in case anyone missed this, I am quite interested in developing new tools, server and client for nwn1 & 2.

I believe there are two things that make this game exceptional - the relative ease of use of the toolset and the fantastic community-produced content. The game engine and dated graphics are severely limiting and absolutely need to be redesigned. The decision to use a proprietary animation format (Granny 2) in nwn2 makes it extraordinarily difficult to produce quality content with community tools.

On the other hand, it's that community content that *needs* to be preserved, if not upgraded.

While I have back-burnered my attempts in this direction while we deal with the current urgent crisis, I do hope to pursue it in a staged, backward compatible manner.

Specifically, the tools I build or support will work with Bioware file formats and recreate similar gameplay. The exception to this is looking for a more open animation & skeleton format (perhaps ogre 3d or j3o) to replace the gr2 for nwn2 (a model converter for legacy content is a high priority).

If we make tools that support both legacy formats and newer formats, and the client to display them; if builders don't lose years of effort shifting to a new game platform, and *gain* new abilities, well... It will be like that moment when you hear the chime and see that your character just gained a level :-)

But it can't/won't be done monolithically, all at once. A tool here, a tool there. A toolset core and the tools converted to plugins. A server replacement with nwnx-like functionality native and extender plugin architecture. And the client. Drop dedicated SP completely and make SP games merely spawn a local host server.

I've been meandering in this direction for years. And, I think, we're actually getting pretty close.

<...the focus>

[kamal_]

Pstemarie wrote...

I've been playing with Foundry a bit and, although the potential is there, in its current state it just doesn't measure up to Aurora. You can't design custom exterior areas - the raw map anyway, and you're very limited with regard to characters. You can't really customize those either
So while the intent is clearly there its a disappointment.

I was a Foundry beta tester. I made and published a 4 "module" "campaign" in two weeks from start to end while waiting on beta testers for my NWN2 work. Below you'll see why I put module and campaign in quotes.

None of these "modules" has more than a few hundred words of dialog in them. It took about two weeks to make the whole campaign. In NWN terms, the entire "campaign" would barely be a sidequest. Each "module"'s length and number of maps is typical of Foundry "modules". 3-4 maps, 15-20 minutes, a few hundred words of dialog. (Each of these is counted as a "module" by Cryptic, so when they talk about how many thousands of modules they have, keep that in mind.)

There are some longer modules that take 45-60 minutes. From the two I played of this length, these mostly mean
significant running around on large and conspicuously empty maps (the two authors did not have a good understanding of map content density, and fortunately I have a freebie horse as a Foundry beta author to get around quickly). Because the Foundry gives you a resource budget (and the budget was cut by around 80% during beta) you can not make a large map and have an appropriate detail density unless you are making a plains area where it would naturally be low, or using one of the pre- detailed prefab maps.

Finally, getting anyone to play your work requires serious pandering and "play my quest-whoring", but once you get plays people jump into the content whether it's good or not because it's popular so it shows up at the top of the Foundry quest lists. I didn't do any pandering or quest whoring on purpose as an experiment to see what the experience of the typical author would be.

As a Foundry beta author, my content was available day 1 of open beta so I had a big headstart on most content simply from a visibility standpoint of having content on day 1 before everyone could get in the Foundry. Since open beta started my first quest has been played less than 10 times, the fourth quest in my campaign has never been played. My entry into a Foundry beta contest, which meant it was listed in two different posts by Cryptic employees and on an official NWO publicity page, was played one time during the contest. The contest authors who did the "play my quest whoring" got a couple hundred and won the contest. Last time I looked, the contest winners had 10k-15k plays, my contest entry has less than 10 (The people that did play my contest entry have loved it and a few even sent me ingame mail about it.). One of the contest winners is a xp farming mission dressed up with extra lines of dialog and running around in between to hide it, they even sic the monsters on unkillable npcs for a while so the monsters don't react to you killing them.

The most popular Foundry quest is currently a beat-em-up xp with by dancing bikini girls at the end (not kidding, the author fills the room with 30-40 female npcs playing various dance animations and wearing only the minimum clothing Cryptic requires on the character models). While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's probably not the type of content a NWN author would want to make.

I released a campaign for NWN2 at the same time as my Foundry content. As "dead" as NWN 1/2 are, the NWN2 content has gotten roughly 2500x the playtime as my Foundry content. I spent about 20 hours making Foundry content and while it obviously took more time it certainly didn't take 2500x the time I spent on my Foundry content to make my NWN2 content.

Modifié par kamal_, 10 mai 2013 - 03:55 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

When i read your post _kamal i´m happy that nwn is not known to many and it stays in the hands of a few... .

I could not imagine having the top10 or even 100 modules on the vault that are about farming or bikini girls or whatever these idiots came up with just to see their name mentioned in a forum or a modsite...
how low can someone fall if he needs this attention?

I always thought myself F... it if someone doesnt likes my stuff. There you have the exact opposite of creativity thinking when peoples do stuff just for fame and are dependant on their feedback and praise lol!  But it´s everywhere the same... nude mods, sexy outfits or nasty storys are the most downloaded content whereever i look and search for some inspiration and whatelse can it be as these downloaders are mostly teens who never saw a real (you know) in life and the floor beneath their chair must think... uh not again please - pfff hot Air

Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 10 mai 2013 - 04:41 .