275 réponses à ce sujet

[-Semper-]

I would easily spend 10x as long trying to get something decent-looking out of such a tile-based system!  Especially since I like changes of elevation (both in interiors and exteriors).  I think NWN2's terrain system is much, much easier to use.

 

ask the housewife next door who probably never used any editor before. after fiddling around with the tools from nwn she'll definitely love it. now give her the power of nwn2, and most likely she'll run away screaming because of all the "complicated" stuff she has to learn. plus the common user doesn't care that much about artistically good looking areas. it has to get the job done to tell the story they wanna tell, nothing more. a tile system is perfectly suited for that.

[Tchos]

I'm not talking about a hypothetical housewife.  I presented myself as an example to show that it's not a universal objective truth that areas take significantly longer to design in NWN2 vs NWN1.  I can't speak for anyone else on the matter, but I can say that people should try them both themselves before declaring one or the other to be easier.

 

I also find it hard to believe that a random housewife (or any other non-gamer) would "love" the NWN1 toolset.

[-Semper-]

that was just a hypothetical example to express the easy handling of nwn's toolset. the point was that nwn introduced lots of people to module creation who would never touch a "serious" editor. btw afaik you used lots of other toolsets throughout your modding career which excludes you from the common user

[Berliad]

Hmmm...  Tchos, you definitely make a good point, and I'm sure you're not alone.  My feeling is that if I were to make an exterior area in NWN1, I'd probably spend at most about 10% of the time compared to what I'd spend in NWN2.  But I probably am a bit less exacting about what I'd want in an area than others would be: a tileset would probably satisfy me in only a few clicks, most of the time.  Granted, other improvements in the editor, like the improved scripting, ability to have multiple windows and tabs open, etc, would bring back some of that lost time.

 

And as far as stories go, you're definitely right again that there are a lot of phenomenal, intimate modules for NWN2.  If one wants meaningful interaction between a PC and NPC, one can't do much better than Maimed God's Saga or PJ's Tales campaign.  I guess my general impression, looking back, is that the simplicity of NWN1 tended to emphasize these kinds of things more often.  But it's a subjective opinion, nothing more.  There's no question that it's been done very well for NWN2.

 

I think it's almost a certainly true that there's no module that was done in NWN1 that couldn't be done, arguably better, in NWN2 (possible exception, I suppose: a module critically hinges on the use of a specific creature that isn't in nwn2).  And the opposite isn't true, mostly because NWN2's companion system allows things to happen that couldn't happen in NWN1.  Yet I still do think that, for most modders, adventure building is a bigger job in NWN2.  I think that time cost is ultimately a big part of why there are so many fewer NWN2 modules than NWN1 modules.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

Just because something is easier to use, it doesn't mean that people will do good things with it though.  In fact, perhaps the perceived difficulty of the more advanced NWN2 Toolset prevented people from releasing really bad stuff.  How many of the NWN modules that were released were really well done?  How many of the NWN2 modules released were really well done?  Of course this is subjective.  I did download a few NWN modules though and not only was I unimpressed, I was shocked at how sloppy they were. Basic things like doors not working properly, typos in journal entries and conversations, poor lighting. I had to wonder if the NWN toolset set made it a little too easy and so attracted people who meant well but rushed to implement, resulting in shoddy work.

 

Regards 

[Berliad]

Just because something is easier to use, it doesn't mean that people will do good things with it though.  In fact, perhaps the perceived difficulty of the more advanced NWN2 Toolset prevented people from releasing really bad stuff.  How many of the NWN modules that were released were really well done?  How many of the NWN2 modules released were really well done?  Of course this is subjective.  I did download a few NWN modules though and not only was I unimpressed, I was shocked at how sloppy they were. Basic things like doors not working properly, typos in journal entries and conversations, poor lighting. I had to wonder if the NWN toolset set made it a little too easy and so attracted people who meant well but rushed to implement, resulting in shoddy work.

There are some incredibly brilliant modules for NWN1, at least in my opinion.  But yes, absolutely, there's a lot of chaff too.  Whether there's more low-quality work for NWN1 than was released for NWN2, I'm really not sure.  Maybe?  Your idea that the higher (perceived?) bar for the editor helps weed out some of the poorer work makes a lot of sense.

[Tchos]

that was just a hypothetical example to express the easy handling of nwn's toolset. the point was that nwn introduced lots of people to module creation who would never touch a "serious" editor. btw afaik you used lots of other toolsets throughout your modding career which excludes you from the common user

 

Yes, I created mods using the toolsets of Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3, which were basically all the same toolset, since it was for the same engine (Gamebryo).  It was my first experience with a modern toolset of any kind, and it used the same kind of terrain sculpting as NWN2.  After the Gamebryo toolset, I used the toolset of Dragon Age: Origins, which also used that kind of terrain sculpting, and I found it very easy there, too.  It was one of the fastest parts of level design (putting down placeables and dealing with the lighting took much longer).  My development diary for the DA:O module records that I spent on average 1 to 3 days on each exterior area depending on size, and I'm very happy with how they look (I'm sure you remember, since you posted in that diary thread).  This was in a toolset that I had only been using less than a week.  Afterward, I moved to NWN2.

 

Anyway, I didn't claim to be a common user, but I think I do represent some portion of game modders.  The size of the portion is an unknown quantity, but I can at least say with certainty that it exists.

 

I don't think that the fact that I used those other toolsets actually made terrain sculpting in NWN2 easier for me; rather, I think it's just the logical way of doing it, and that's why it's so widely used in different games.

 

Hmmm...  Tchos, you definitely make a good point, and I'm sure you're not alone.  My feeling is that if I were to make an exterior area in NWN1, I'd probably spend at most about 10% of the time compared to what I'd spend in NWN2.  But I probably am a bit less exacting about what I'd want in an area than others would be: a tileset would probably satisfy me in only a few clicks, most of the time.

 

I think that time cost is ultimately a big part of why there are so many fewer NWN2 modules than NWN1 modules.

 

I'd say that prefabs are definitely the way to go if you're not too exacting about what you want in the exterior.  Could be just as quick as tiles for you that way -- just a few clicks to download and import into your module.

 

Also consider that the NWN2 community seems to be much smaller than the NWN1 community.  That accounts for the number of modules as well.

[Arkalezth]

Well.
 

1: A general purpose roleplaying system integrated in their game mechanics.
2: Toolset and modability support.
3: Multiplayer freedom to DM and host the kind of server for the kind of game you want.

 

 

That's the quote from the other thread. Toolset ease of use aside, of which I cannot give an opinion because I'm not a modder, NWN2 has all those things. Period. You don't like the game for whatever reason? Fine, but it's still there, and that's not up for debate.

[-Semper-]

Just because something is easier to use, it doesn't mean that people will do good things with it though.

 

the debate was about the somewhat steeper learning curve, especially in exterior design, and how this puts off the common user experienced with an easy to use tile system.

 

 

I don't think that the fact that I used those other toolsets actually made terrain sculpting in NWN2 easier for me; rather, I think it's just the logical way of doing it, and that's why it's so widely used in different games.

 

but you "grew up" with those editors in mind. you did know the principle of terrain sculpting. you already experienced and worked with an editor cluttered with tiny little buttons and dozens of different windows enabled all at the same time. it was nothing new and you instantly kinda felt at home. at least that was my experience. i came from duke3d atomic build editor, quake's qradiant, 3dsmax, unrealed, half life's hammer, vampire's sdk, and i was impressed how easy and clear nwn's toolset was.

 

now take the other route, coming from nwn to all the other editors - it can be too overwhelming of an experience.

[Tchos]

I don't see why it should be more overwhelming if I had come to it from a tile-based system like NWN1 than coming to it from nothing at all.  Perhaps you don't believe that I did not find terrain sculpting overwhelming the first time I experienced it in those other editors, when it was something new?  Is it because I watched a couple of video tutorials first, as I think anyone should if they want to learn a new tool?  That was all it took to explain the basic concepts, and it was very straightforward.  How exactly is it easier to scroll through lists of tiles and find ones that connect properly together than to just paint with a brush, where one brush raises or lowers terrain, and another brush paints textures onto it?

 

(Lest I be misunderstood here, I mean which concept is more intuitive?)

[Loki_999]

When people say the toolset is more complicate, mainly what they are referring to is area creation is more complicated.  Scripting is more or less the same, although NWN2 has a lot more built in functionality. As primarily as scripter i really appreciate the power of NWN2 scripting.  Area creation is more difficult, but you can also make much more beautiful areas, so its a trade off.

 

However, its not the toolset that i think killed NWN2s chances of being a major game (although a contributing factor). I lay the blame firmly at Atari's feet. Sure, we joke about Obsidian, calling them Bugsidian, but i feel that this was largely due to the constraints Atari put on them, focusing on short term profits rather than long term gain.

 

If Atari hadn't screwed around demanding DRM in MoW, then it would have been released much earlier and kept interest in the game engine and the sales coming in. This could have led to further modules, expansions, and possibly a NWN3... of course, WotC were already pushing D&D 4th edition, so next version of NWN would have been using that abomination... so not all is bad.

[kamal_]

There are no reasons why you can not have an "exterior" tileset in nwn2. One of the very first community made tilesets was an "exterior". It was a proof of concept, and just had a flat tile with no ceiling and a grass texture.

 

There is a nwn2 terrain tutorial out there that takes you building a more than adequate complete small forest with a stream running through it in 90 minutes.

[kamal_]

I agree with the idea that if you make a toolset that's so easy everyone can whip something up in an hour, everyone will whip something up in an hour. That leads to a flood of "LOLZ DRAGONZ!" modules. There's a spot somewhere between that and a toolset needs a PH.D and four years of study before you can begin.

 

It's the same with art assets. My understanding is it's comparatively easier to make art assets in nwn1 than in nwn2. This has resulted in lots of nwn1 assets, but many of dubious quality (CEP's kitchen sink approach). The recent nwn1 work almost all very good compared to stock nwn1 (see Project Q for instance), because only the determined and knowledgeable from experience creators still do it. NWN2 has fewer community made art assets as it's harder to make them (requiring specialized software for one thing). Now look at Skyrim for example, there's plenty of it as the audience is comparatively huge, but most stuff for it is single item/very small package. This is because making an item of Skyrim level asset quality is difficult.

[Shallina]

The main reason NWN2 was disliked is beceause it wasn 't made by Bioware.

 

KOTOR was awesome, and KOTOR 2 without the big modding patch has only a better story, but for all the rest was inferior to KOTOR.

 

Poeple assumed the same for NWN2 vs NWN without giving a fair chance to NWN2.

[-Semper-]

KOTOR was awesome, and KOTOR 2 without the big modding patch has only a better story, but for all the rest was inferior to KOTOR.

 

no to derail the thread but that's total gibberish, and i am not talkig about personal opinion.

with your own words putting aside the story aspect, kotor2 had:

- higher lvl cap (30?)

- prestige classes

- more feats/powers

- weapon customization and crafting

- companion influence system

 

what's missing is story, which was left out. graphics, where there's no real difference between both games, and gameplay, which is almost identical.

[Shallina]

the lvl cap isn 't important at all in the quality of a game.

 

Also what 's really important is the fact that it 's a game, so no bugs, no crash. KOTOR2 was less polishedn and the graphics weren 't the same, they were inferior to KOTOR.*

 

It's better to be able to complete a game without bugs than to have a couple of prestige class.

[Luminus]

To answer the original post first, it's called fanboyism.

I have played both NwN games to death and for years. Campaigns, modules, multiplayer, toolset. Starting with NwN1 before NwN2 was released, I believe.
Both have SERIOUS flaws. But personally, I will take NwN2 most of the times, both online and offline.

And after reading all the posts I can agree with the points many make, I feel the same.

NwN1's toolset is easier and the various Wizards make creature or item creation much easier. Of course NwN1 had many many modules but many of them were sloppy as it has been said. I even played some Hall of Fame modules that I considered sloppy after a bit.

NwN2's toolset is a lot harder. But it looks and works like a professional tool. You can put a LOT of detail in the environments.

Also, in my opinion, NwN1's biggest sin was the lack of party control. How do you make a DnD game without a controllable party?
I also find level 40 ridiculous. 30 is a nice cap. Epic but not insane and god-like.

Also, the Baldur's Gate Remake (made mainly by Drew and Shallina) would be impossible, both in body and spirit.

Body because everything would look blocky, without detail, every area would be squared, square houses, square fences, square everything.

And spirit because of total lack of party control. You CANNOT make a Baldur's Gate remake without full party tactical control.

Can you imagine what a mess it would be if you had 5 NwN1 henchmen all attacking at the same time? Even with Tony K's AI it would be a nightmare to play.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

I can see how the level cap reduction might have been seen by some NWN players as an issue. If they spent many hours building a level 40 NWN character then I can imagine them having a desire to rebuild that character in NWN2. Personally I really couldn't care less about builds and leveling but there were many many posts in the old forums that showed how passionate some people are about their builds.

I don't understand why modders would care about this though, since most modules are not for epic play and require starting a new low level character anyway.

Regards

[rjshae]

There are no reasons why you can not have an "exterior" tileset in nwn2. One of the very first community made tilesets was an "exterior". It was a proof of concept, and just had a flat tile with no ceiling and a grass texture.

 

There is a nwn2 terrain tutorial out there that takes you building a more than adequate complete small forest with a stream running through it in 90 minutes.

 

The lighting seems to work differently with the interior tileset than it does with exterior areas. For example, more distant vistas are darkened, even with no roof. It doesn't seem like an attractive look for an open exterior, at least not to me.

 

An element of NWN2 that makes for lengthier area building is the increased reliance on placeables. When you have to populate a small room with 10-50 placeables that must be individually placed, that takes a lot longer than just plopping down a NWN tileset. Of course, it will look much better afterward.

[Shadooow]

Haha, thats a really big pack of assumptions, fiction and emotions. Obviously, when this thread is on NWN2 forums. If you want real answers you need to ask on NWN1 forums.

 

I can answer for myself - in 2004/5 I and my team was recreating a PW module and we decided we will move to NWN2 once it going to release, one of our builder was invited into betatest. But the promising features turned out to be a wrong. We wasnt able to port our existing content to NWN2 so we had to start over, building exteriors took days where previously it took just hours and the HW requirements were absurd in that time so in the end our team fell apart and thats was the end of store. Please note I do not blame NWN2 for that its not emotional issue.

 

I was monitoring the NWN2 development in czech republic beyond that, two other teams (and thats only I am aware of) that made a PW for NWN1 and tried to make a sequel for NWN2 had a same fate. From these three independant groups only two builders "survived" and returned to NWN and I am one of them. The other is now working on their old NWN1 PW which is still active. Only one PW emerged for NWN2 in czech republic (compared to over 10 different PWs for NWN1, four still very active today) and that one didnt last very long. I was monitoring the situation there, they had several technical issues with NWN2 engine. Lags, lags, even bigger lags and crashes. In one point they found out that players moving in PW using keyboard keys (WASD) are causing the lags. They had also some HW issues with server - crashing, not properly restarting etc. and after one year this PW was down for good. The current ammount of existing PWs and players playing them shows that the NWN1 is still preffered by both builders and players and the SP scene is definitely richer for NWN1 as well.

 

As for my own experiences with NWN2.

 

The camera and control is horrible. Graphic isn't any better, it looks more cartoonish if anything. Loading new areas is slower than in NWN1 (might be due to my not superior HW - dual core 3.0ghz, 4gb ram, GT640graphic - but even if it is due to my HW its not a very good excuse given how bad the graphic is and I can play newer games just fine (AC1,2, Gothic3,PoE,Battlefield 3)). Toolset is a complete mess, I wasnt able to figure out how to work in it, after some time I found out how to paint some tiles etc. but I was really annoyed by it. All this, I could probably somehow ignore, the NWN2 has some good features and ideas such as easier visual effect creating, GUI modifying and... hmm thats probably all. Anyway, NWN1 still leads in engine modifications and extra features using NWNX - I am NWNX developer myself so I know that. And mainly, there is no standardization.

 

Since I spend over five years for fixing any kind of bugs in NWN1 and improving the graphic/assets and making new features I learned that many of these issues (mainly in scripts) are still present in NWN2 as well. So that would mean that if I would switch to NWN2 I would have to deal with those issues again. And there are actually far more issues than ever was in NWN1 judge from the various fixes for anything that are available for download on neverwinter vault. Sadly, every NWN2 builder thinks he knows better so there are multiple versions of the same (like spell fixes) and the NWN2 community is scattered and everyone recommends different package. So actually, anyone new to the NWN2 who would want to make a serious PW would have to learn about all the issues that NWN2 suffer, all the bugs and all the packages that fixes them and install them one by one etc. And I am not willing to do that again. I would advise to unite together and make a community patch like the one I did for NWN1 so new builders doesnt have to repeat the same painful learning process you guys did.

 

In the end, the question isn't why NWN1 builders haven't switched to NWN2 but why the NWN1 builders haven't switched to any of the newer game with fewer modding possibilities but bigger player base and thus higher chance of satisfaction. And many of them did...

[kamal_]

Aha, I found the post I made that I was referring to earlier. http://forum.bioware...xus/?p=16974559

 

"When the old vault when down and we asked the Nexus owner if we could have a Nexus (and he came to this site and asked us we wanted in one), the request came from nwn2 people. We crossposted in the nwn1 bioware forums asking them to start submitting but got little response. So a bit of not invented here and stubbornness and change is bad and "i dont like x about nexus", plus the old vault came back fast enough that people could pretend that vault death wasnt an issue.

There is still pretending things will be ressurected on old vault death this time, but it finally seems to be starting to sink in for people and we're getting a steady flow of migration to new vault now thanks to people uploading from both communities. It helps that the new vault admins are mostly from the nwn1 community, so getting the nwn1 community on board was easier this time."

 

Substitute nwn2 for Nexus.

[kamal_]

Sadly, every NWN2 builder thinks he knows better so there are multiple versions of the same (like spell fixes) ...

The ability for everyone to make things to their own taste is not sad, it's the very core of the NWN 1 and 2 experience. Here are the tools, make whatever  you want.

 

[Arkalezth]

The camera and control is horrible.

I keep reading this, and I keep not getting it (that also applies to many of those other issues the game apparently had at release - I didn't have it back then). At least since SOZ came out, 5-6 years ago. Especially if compared to NWN1, it's the same! At least in NWN2 you can move the camera with the mouse and you don't have to click on every damn enemy.

 

Either way, like I said, I understand that some people prefer NWN1. But NWN2 does have the features the other thread's OP asked for.

[-Semper-]

...

 

in other words: i hit the bull's eye.

[Tchos]

Haha, thats a really big pack of assumptions, fiction and emotions. Obviously, when this thread is on NWN2 forums. If you want real answers you need to ask on NWN1 forums.

 

Most of the answers I gave are reporting what I have seen people posting in the NWN1 forums over the years.  I, for one, am tired of the abuse.