NWN2 Walking

[zicada]

I mapped walk to the arrow keys. Did the same in NWN1.

What beefs me right now about NWN2 is that you lose your buffs on transitions. And it's very hard to walk past others. Very hard. Getting trapped in combat seems the norm.

Huh ? You have walk as an option to map to keys in NWN2 ?

[Rick7475]

Yeah, let us in how you map walk forward to a key stroke. I can only do run forward.

[Cendran]

This was one of my mine gripes for NWN1, and while I haven't obtained NWN2 yet, I find it absolutely pathetic that they couldn't figure out something so simple. How hard could it have been to code in a simple walk/run toggle button?....something that has existed for years in almost every other game I play.

[Mayhem]

I just use tracking mode.

The only annoying thing is that unlike detect and hide, it doesn't switch off automatically when combat starts

[Souvarine]

I've always used keyboard movement in nwn, same goes for nwn2, but there are some weird stuff with the animations.

-when you run, it seems like the model is ahead of your actual position, in fact, if you turn with the keyboard, you'll find out that the "steerwheel" of the character is located behind his feets when he runs. So when you stop running, your character falls back like half a yard behind, into his "circle".

-walking looks unfortunately uglier than Lord Butt's armpits.

that said, nwn2 i wouldn't go back to nwn. Let's keep faith in the community's skills.

[dergon darkhelm]

I never used any of the keyboard commands for NWN1 with the exception of liberal use of the "tab" key and quickslots.

I targeted, moved, rotated camera all with the mouse.

In NWN2 I am currently using the track mode.

If one of the techy geniuses could figure out how to make it turn off in combat *and* make the "You search the nearby area for traps" script that fires every five seconds go away I would be quite greatful.

[AcadiusLost]

I've been using shift-click for walking in NWN2, it's not as bad once you get used to it, but I find it also ends up interfering with my quickbar- since I tend to do a lot of camera adjustment with the mouse while I'm walking, I will inevitably try to zoom before releasing the shift key, which scrolls my quickbar. When there are 10 of them, it's hard to find the one that has your sword quickslotted :p.

I'll have a look for how the "modes" interface with the scripts, it's possible we can do something about the "You Search the Area for Traps" spam (which would help everyone but elves) or to add autoremoval of tracking when combat starts (which has already caused me some frustration, heh).

[Munmun]

Sorry for bumping an old thread but I wanted to see if you guys are aware of a problem with WASD walking vs pointer click walking.

In NWN and NWN2 when you use WASD to walk or run, it sends an updated walking path for each 'step' (5ft-ish movement) your character makes. Each step path goes to the server and then must be processed and sent to every PC and DM in the area. This, understandably creates a lot of needless CPU use and packet spamming which can get quite intensive when a lot of people are in the same area and some of them are using WASD to move around.

Using the pointer to click (or shift + click) and move around sends one walk path to the server for that entire route, which is then processed and sent as one packet to each player and DM in the area. This avoids the constant stream of packet spam to the server and players that causes the unnecessary lag.

It sucks, I know. I myself used WASD exclusively as my preferred movement style until I found out about this. I've seen laggy servers that had constant crashes attributed to "unknown memory leaks" suddenly become lag free when they made pointer click walking into a rule.

[indio]

It's a very timely reminder. Thanks.

We'll have to put together an official announcement of sorts, because mouse-clicks are the only way to move.

[Stefan]

I've been using shift-click for walking in NWN2, it's not as bad once you get used to it, but I find it also ends up interfering with my quickbar- since I tend to do a lot of camera adjustment with the mouse while I'm walking, I will inevitably try to zoom before releasing the shift key, which scrolls my quickbar. When there are 10 of them, it's hard to find the one that has your sword quickslotted :p.

This is exactly what annoys me for some time already. I have always played NWN using Top Down camera mode and mouse to move and adjust camera. I avoid using keyboard for moving because of semi-3D engine and walkmashes and overall I don't think that such controls are suitable for NWN. I believe that this problem will be significantly worse for me, when it comes to the multiplayer. I mentioned problem on the official NWN2 boards, but well I got impression that most of the players don't care.

As for "toggle" button (like search mode), I consider it too slow and because of that, too dangerous.

Lack of the option to "lock" the interfece is also going on my nerves.

[AcadiusLost]

I've played a good deal more since posting those comments (a year or so ago?)- these days I find tracking mode a pretty fair option, I just make sure to deselect the mode when combat starts or appears imminent, then move to shift-clicking if necessary until things are back into a more reasonable pace.

Would still be nice to have tracking mode drop when you enter combat, though. There is a SetActionMode() function in nwscript that we might be able to call to autoterminate tracking mode, the question becomes what should count as a cancellation trigger for it, game-event-wise. We don't have "PC Events" with NWN2, so we can't just fire it off when a PC attacks AFAIK.

[darrenhfx]

Glad you bumped, I didn't realize that we should be doing this.

Come to think of it, this might be a good thing to put in a load screen message.

[Stefan]

I've played a good deal more since posting those comments (a year or so ago?)

*shocked* April 15. 2007!!? *blushes*

*clears throat* Well... everything I have written, still stands for me :) As for idea of improvement through the scripts, I don't think that would be fruitful. This way of walking through search mode is not consistant as far as I know, since it doesn't work for elves, as mentioned earlier. I just hope that Obsidian will fix this mess, I mean they just need to add walk as mappable key if they don't want to remove that annoying combo.

[AcadiusLost]

As it's been said here: tracking mode does work for elves, and mapping a "walk" key would just result in more people using the keyboard to walk (the aforementioned troublesome "WASD" movement), which isn't good for server stability and performance in a multiplayer PW setting.

The scripting aid floated was just a way to remove the most likely problem associated with use of tracking mode for walking, namely, that it must be manually deactivated to start running again in combat.

[indio]

I had been playing fine for 30 minutes the other day on Silverymoon using the mouse. Pressed W for some reason....crashed to the desktop.

It's volatile for both clients and hosts, and we really ought to make it a condtion of playing that we don't use WASD.