Please Welcome our Distinguished Guest

[Faeryl]

McGnome, from Obsidian, has stopped by the forums to answer any questions we might have and to offer advice. He's also looking for feedback from our testers on the 1.23 beta.

Members may post their questions here and I'm sure McGome will answer them as time allows.

Welcome McGnome! Thanks for paying us a visit!

[[OEI] McGnome]

Hi everyone! I hope things are going well for you all. I'll start with my question

What are your general feelings about the 1.23 beta?

In addition to your feedback, please feel free to post up any questions you may have. I may not be able to answer them all, but I will answer what I can.

Rob

[Riotnrrd]

Thank you for making time to join us, sir!

I'm guessing you are the dev known as Rob McGinnis (sp?)

I LOVE the options that have been presented with 1.23. It is wonderful to hear that Obsidian is responding to community requests, and continuing to improve the experience for our game world!

Thanks so much for your efforts!

PS: I'd love to have a way to change PC hitpoints in the scripts so that we might implement random or average HPs per level instead of max, or even better yet provide the option in the Hard Core settings similar to NWN1... We have exhaustingly debated the merits of doing so within our standards, but right now we don't even have the option...

[AcadiusLost]

I've been very impressed with the 1.23 Beta functions so far. Highlights for us include:


1. Haks/custom tlk loading before character creation.

Major, major improvement. So many things we've wanted to do have been stymied by the challenge of trying to make alterations in things like feat/spell/skill/race availability during character creation, as well as frustrations from new members who pick options visible on logging into the server, which turn out to be altered/restricted/banned/etc when they arrive in the starting area. With this, we're actually able to convey ALFA-specific information to a new player as they are making their first character, as well as expand their options to include community-developed content (new heads, hairstyles, color palletes) and ALFA-developed content (additional/altered spells, PnP skills, etc). It's also opened up the ability to specify a PC's region of origin from the full list of regions in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, assigning a custom feat to specify this (also allowing appropriate language options based on PC background after character creation is over).



2. Server option to hide Challenge rating.

We've been using Heed's No Con 2 pack off the vault (a modified examine.xml that runs from inside our alfa_gui.hak) to roughly accomplish the same sort of thing, but it's prone to a number of different problems, including hiding descriptions on items tooled up by novice builders (if their build mods aren't running the right serverside script), and periodic malfunctions that hide description text in many other inappropriate contexts. So far the 1.23 server option (though the =1 still has to be set to =0) works great for this.



3. Autodownloader.

We've been using Worldgate for this purpose thus far, and it's been an essential tool, especially given the incremental updates for bug fixes and slow roll in of community and in-house developed content. We've had to split up to three Worldgate profiles; one for the Live server PWCs and haks, one for the Beta server PWCs, and a third (currently unused) one for the Open Application Server, for new applicants. Already, players who are exclusive to one Live server (Baldur's gate, for ex), have to wait while walkmesh updates specific to the Silver Marches server download to get updates specific to their playing region. Though this is a minor issue now, it will get more serious as we expand beyond 2 Live servers. The new downloader, since it keys off the server the player is trying to join, should streamline that process (and speed up the time to set up to play on one's first server as a new member... The Silver Marches PWC file is > 1 gigabyte uncompressed by itself).

So far we've set up ADL staged resources on a public FTP, but the configuration isn't quite right yet it seems to get them downloading from a client trying to join.



4. OnChat scripting event.

There is a great deal we can accomplish with this small addition, which I've not yet had the chance to scratch the surface of. Among other things, this and the associated scripting functions should allow us to redirect party chat text to specific DM "channels" to help facilitate multiple parties on a server at once without overwhelming the DMs. We'd also like to redirect DMFI translation text so it can be captured by chatlogging, also should be quite feasible. One of our other scripters, Creslyn, is looking into other possibilities for this event now.

(lots of other nice improvements in 1.23 that I haven't had a chance to play with yet as well).

So far, I've got the following ALFA members set up with the 1.23 Beta resources:
-AcadiusLost
-Creslyn
-Riotnrrd
-Kest

I would like to recruit some more beta testers as well, hopefully this thread will help stimulate interest and participation in the Beta process. We've had some internal interest in trying to shift the entire PW over to the 1.23 Beta (perhaps after a revision or two, depending on the timescale), but that does create complications for members who are also active on other PWs, and we're shorthanded in the tech dept for making those preparations in a rapid manner.

I'd like to thank Rob for his continuing support of NWN2 as a vehicle for ALFA and other Persistent World communities, and for his inclusion of ALFA among the worlds that are being offered the ability to work with the patch 1.23 Beta.

-Tom / AcadiusLost

[Grand Fromage]

McG you fool! Long time no see, glad you stopped in.

[Wynna]

Welcome Rob. Good to see you here. If there's anything you need from or want to see on our Silver Marches server, just give a shout.

[Ithildur]

Thanks for your time Rob.

1.23 is the dream patch a lot of us that play on hardcore RP PWs have been waiting for. I for one am glad the past three years of bribery and weekly virgin sacrifices have finally paid off.

[Ithildur]

PS: I'd love to have a way to change PC hitpoints in the scripts so that we might implement random or average HPs per level instead of max, or even better yet provide the option in the Hard Core settings similar to NWN1... We have exhaustingly debated the merits of doing so within our standards, but right now we don't even have the option...

NWN2 is the first DnD CRPG that I'm aware of, going back to the goldbox games through the infinity engine games, TOEE, NWN1, etc that actually offers no option at all for using standard DnD rules for HPs, a core part of the game mechanics that directly or indirectly effects all kinds of things and is balanced vs all the variable forms of dmg in the game such as weapon dmg, spell dmg, trap dmg, falling dmg, etc etc. While I can certainly understand that many people (including myself at times) would like to have extra beefy characters and use less than core rules settings for single player games or to romp around on a hack/slash server, it was always an option in previous games, not forced on us.

NWN1 had a rather good compromise system for it's 'Hardcore DnD' setting (which Alfa used, tweaked so that people didn't reroll endlessly until they got max HPs): max HPs from lvl 1-3 then rolled HPs thereafter weighted so that it was impossible to get really poor results, a good compromise for online/realtime play environments. But max HPs with no options available to have something closer to pnp rules is... something that bothers some of us who would like a gameplay experience that's somewhat more faithful to pnp and balanced so that mid lvl warriors aren't laughing at spells and traps etc that are traditionally supposed to be deadly and scary.

Any chance this might be addressed? Perhaps 1.23 patch might allow for tweaking this?

[[OEI] McGnome]

Yup, I am the infamous Rob McGinnis.

Do you guys plan on using the multi-server portal system on ALFA?

As for the hitpoints, I am sure you all understand why we went the way we did. Just like the original death system in NWN2, the max HP system is sort of the way games are going nowadays. In general terms, newer game players do not look well upon weak characters and they find final death frustrating.

We have been slowly trying to bring challenge back into RPGs by implementing "real" death. I too, would like to see the Hitpoint system changed - at least opened up to allow for a server setting. I can't make any promises on this one, but I will see what I can do.

[Dorn]

Allo Rob,

Welcome and thanks for showing and interest in a land far away.

As you've probably picked up, this place loves anything we* can get to make a great game closer to the 'hardcore' DnD this world we've** built using what you guys gave us.

Even from my tekonogikaly neanderthal brain, 1.23 looks great. for a place like alfa the more customisation the better. The ongoing improvements to this game are greatly appreciated.

That being said we'll never stop crying out for more more MORE!....as we are a dedicated and completely hooked crowd.

Thanks again
And if you ever feel like a bit of roleplay, i know this great server....


* I mean the awesome scripters and technoboofins like Acadius Lost and his team which continue to stretch the toolset to meet our mewling demands
** mean the awesome builders and DMs we have here that have sustained a PW since before NWN1 was released until now with no signs of slowing down

[AcadiusLost]

Re: Server portalling; I'm looking forward to trying the 1.23 function for this. Currently we have the two "Live" servers (Silver Marches and Baldur's Gate) linked by a means similar to what we used for our NWN1 worlds, namely that clicking on the "Server AT" grants the character the ability to log into the destination server and arrive on the "other side" by logging out of the initial server, and into the next. Logging into a different server without this sort of portaling results in being sent to a special "quarantine" area in which your actions are limited to sending tells and /dm messages for assistance. The system is managed through a central remote SQL server with a shared database schema that all the Live servers use to coordinate persistency data.

My initial examinations of the (unfinished) ActivatePortal function left me with the impression that it was meant to facilitate travel between two modules hosted on the same computer (using the same /servervault folder); since we use a network share as our servervault, I have some concerns about lag with the write of character data coming at the same time as the read by the remote server in a direct module to module portal. We know from past and recent experience that the NWN1 (and, it seems NWN2) code does not always handle filewrites gracefully when network latency is involved. Once I've got a testmod working reliably with 1.23B, I'll see if we can set up some scripted portals between it an a mirror of itself hosted by another of our beta testers. If the completed function can handle remote server transitions with large .bic files gracefully, I'll be thrilled to incorporate it into our Live servers.

On the question of hitpoint "rolls", all that ALFA would need to enable this would be a SetMaxHP() function, similar to the SetBaseSkillRank() one GrinningFool added for 1.23. Since LevelUP is a module event, it would be pretty straightforward to script the hidden roll with whatever sorts of balance we wanted. We have the option of doing this currently with a Letoscript/GFF editor plugin for NWNx4, but I've put off doing anything with that while we are on our current shared servervault arrangement, as it involves a second independent application doing writes across that same, comparatively high-latency connection just after the server has done so, and hopefully in time to be completed before the read action of the player logging back in. Much cleaner to have it as part of the normal .bic export/update on logout, as we'd have with an integrated function. Having a server ini option for this, similar to the HealOnLogin one, would be great for new PWs that lack the sort of infrastructure ALFA has built up, certainly, but would likely be many more developer-hours to implement and test than would be necessary for us.

I'll post when I have more feedback on the ActivatePortal() function, 1.23 has (happily!) given me more things to experiment than I can keep straight off the top of my head.

[AcadiusLost]

On a similar topic, nwscript functions similar to NWN1's CopyItemAndEdit() would be a major boon to PWs like ALFA, especially if some of the new NWN2-specific fields were exposed for editing. Like SetMaxHP (and SetBaseSkillRank()), these ought to be relatively straightforward writes to GFF object fields, but exceedingly challenging without official function support.

[Ithildur]

Just like the original death system in NWN2, the max HP system is sort of the way games are going nowadays. In general terms, newer game players do not look well upon weak characters and they find final death frustrating.

We have been slowly trying to bring challenge back into RPGs by implementing "real" death. I too, would like to see the Hitpoint system changed - at least opened up to allow for a server setting. I can't make any promises on this one, but I will see what I can do.

It's understandable why the trend is to make the games easier for newer players/mass market. We ALFAns are a strange lot; we like stuff like perma/final death and being scared out of our pants by foes that do not have epic lvls, the original NWN1 healing kits were looked upon as utterly evil things in ALFA, etc.

Thanks for the response; it'd be great to see a server setting option that would fit hardcore style play better.

[bartleby]

Thanks for stoping by!

Im looking forward to playing around with the new features in 1.23 and was wondering if any of the changes allowing custom content to be loaded at character creation might extend to refreshing other systems ...

Being able to use a different fontfamily.xml located in a hak would be extremely usefull in allowing PWs to use their own custom set of fonts with out having to modify the standard fontfamily.xml or conflict with one another.

I cant wait to get a chance to stress test the beta patch

[NickD]

I have a couple of questions/requests that aren't strictly related to patch 1.23. I hope that's OK.

Are there any command line parameters one can use with nwn2.exe? I've tried the NWN1, nwmain.exe +connect [ipaddress:port] +password [password] command line parameters but it doesn't appear to work for nwn2.exe. Having a way of direct connecting to a specfic server from the command line (batch file - or an app I've written in my case) would be really nice.

What would be super nice and somewhat related to 1.23 would be having a nwn2.exe command line parameter to update the pwc from the command line. Something like nwn2.exe +update [ipaddress:port]... or even a separate app other than nwn2.exe that just does pwc updates.