What's GOOD about NWN2?

[Zelknolf]

Familiars that at least resemble familiars, both in looks and function.

False.

Check what we have in NWN before pretending my work doesn't exist, kthx.

[indio]

This is why this thread irritated me...it was an invitation to annoy people.

NWN1 has all the stuff NWN2 doesn't. NWN2 has all the stuff NWN1 doesn't.

Can we all agree that unless you try both platforms, extensively, all you'll do is invite people to be annoyed about what you don't know about the other platform? And this is not directed at holly or Zelk, nor at Nalo. It's just directed to anyone who thinks there's an answer out there that doesn't require you discovering it personally by exploring both platforms thoroughly.

[hollyfant]

What are we comparing anyway? Vanilla 1 and 2? ALFA 1 and 2? Or all the optional trimmings available in the Vault?

And... we have touch-spell delivering familiars in ALFA-1? I never even knew! Go Zelknolf!

/me starts tweaking out that Druid-Sorcerer to be prepared for a NWN1 revival.

[FanaticusIncendi]

And... we have touch-spell delivering familiars in ALFA-1? I never even knew! Go Zelknolf!

My PC's familiar delivered 'Touch of Idiocy' in a major session a few weeks ago. Armed with a cat and an illusion 3 people prevailed over 20. Well and then of course there were the efforts of the other PCs but mine prefers to think she did it all herself

[AcadiusLost]

Just talking the platforms themselves, NWN1 and NWN2, without taking into account improvements we've made to them in terms of trying to achieve a more enjoyable playing environment, here is my take:

NWN2:

-More graphical flexibility (textures, terrains, slopes, rescaling, non-tile-based exteriors). This is good, for making an area exactly like you might envision it, but means much larger files, slower to build, more artistic/technical expertise required. Note also that interiors for NWN2 work much the same as ones for NWN1, though they get tinting and rescalable placeables to play with.

-GUI customizability. NWN2 incorporates an extra layer of files we can monkey around with (XML files for GUIs), which as far as I know, aren't exposed to hak adjustments for NWN1. This is good, in that it means amazing things are possible like Bartleby's readable/writable books, without having to work them into a "conversation" interface. The DMFI DM tools for NWN2 are another impressive use for this- it's much easier to have a custom GUI to do complex things, than to step through levels of conversation options (Omega Wand) or radial menus each time. The downside is, it's a completely different coding language than nwscript, so a steep learning curve there as well. Cipher and Bartleby have done some promising things with it, but we've barely scratched the surface so far.


NWN1:

-Better overall stability and reliability. This comes from the many years of patches and support it's received; as a mature platform most of the annoying bugs have been worked out of NWN1. Far fewer arcane tricks need to be used to make custom content of various kinds work smoothly under NWN1.

-Better community support. The years of interest NWN1 has enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) have provided a sea of additional tilesets, creatures, models, systems, etc. This can be a challenge to wade through, but there is a lot more out there to choose and draw from.


So, both platforms have definite strengths. I enjoyed NWN1-ALFA for years before shifting my focus to NWN2; when I did, it wasn't because of any disdain for the NWN1 platform. There was a great deal that needed to be done to get NWN2 up to the level that we could have a functional ALFA experience via that platform. Some of that was due to the legacy of Ronan and Cipher, who, being both ambitious and skilled, set out to rewrite most all of our core scripts from the ground up, aiming to have them ready to test with the Beta server builds as they approached Live status. Like the build teams, the NWN2 tech group experienced a good deal of attrition, so what we've ended up with is a single NWN2 server with enough core systems to get by, plus a handful of beta servers in the wings.

I certainly don't think anyone needs to switch to NWN2 in order to have a satisfying ALFA experience. It's true that NWN1-ALFA has many things that NWN2-ALFA is still lacking. It's also true that NWN2-ALFA has some things that are not really possible in a NWN1 environment. The beauty of our arrangement is that any of us can play (and/or DM) in both platforms if they so choose, so each of us can find the niche that turns out to be most enjoyable. I think all of us would prefer more players and DMs wherever it is that they enjoy playing or DMing, but I don't see it as a direct competition. Neither platform is somehow "responsible" for perceived inadequacies; people should just invest their time where their interest lies.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt for everyone to give the other side of the fence a try now and then as well, either. The shortcomings are always going to be the most noticeable at first, but the RP and the stories are presumably what we're all here for in the first place, and those can be had no matter which client you're loading to enter an ALFA server.

[Nalo Jade]

+1 ...

I should have known this would get derailed into "my toy is better than your toy"

Sorry that wasn't what I intended. I just wanted to hear from the NWN2 people what is GOOD about that platform. I appreciate the feedback it fills in some of the holes in my perception, I agree that the only way to really know is for me to get into the NWN2 ... and I will as soon as I can. Which won't be for a long while yet, short of some distant obscure relative passing on an inheritance I never counted on...

So far from memory of reading through the thread some of the good things are...

Familiars that can administer touch attacks (Zelk we have familiar AI that lets us do that?)
Scaleable placeables (awesome )
Fluid building not based on tiles (I had only heard it was harder to build ... this sounds better.)
GUI manipulation (Frickin ROCKS SOCKS!)
Graphics (This one I knew about)
Dynamic Skys ... (I want to see that bad)
something about Customizable lighting... (sounds interesting would have to see it first hand prolly)

Vaguely someone described being able to see that you are in a valley...can someone expound on that? How is NWN2 different at the "edge of the world"?

Something I can tell you that is good about NWN2 ... we aren't "behind the power curve" ... A lot of folks on NWConnections would love to get involved in a NWN2 campaign ... not too many old DMs out there have been able to "whip up" a game world. So don't "despair" too much at only having one server Live and one knocking at the door. You NWN2 people have a "fresh start" good luck!

[Zelknolf]

You can edit GUIs with NWN1. The prime thing that was stopping us in the past was a lack of tools to do so frequently. In fact, we have an edited gui in the haks (examine_basic.gui -- it's responsible for hiding challenge ratings on creatures/players before we had access to a switch in nwn.ini to do it for us.) that's been there for as far back as I have hak versions to look at. But the good tools for editing guis didn't come out until after NWN2 was out, (and if I understand properly, NWN2 has plenty of slots for custom guis while NWN1 requires that tweakings alter existing ones), so all of the cool applications of gui editing are there.

The familiars delivering touch attacks by script are lying fallow. Archmages were rejected, and with them my original touch attack scripts (which were meant to handle holding charges, arcane reach (30' and 60'), and familiars delivering touch attacks). We can do it, but for some reason ALFA didn't want to. (apperantly, all of our level 15 wizards were going to insist on rebuilding with 2 levels of archmage?) My comment was more toward the fact that we have non-ridiculous familiars. Cats, bats, ravens, lizards, weasels, toads, etc. They've been in the NWN1 content for a bit over a year now.

Also a high degree of customizability in lighting and fog in both NWNs. It's generally underutilized in the first (as the cooler applications require a good eye for scripting and coordination of scripts), and I'm to understand NWN2 has more versatility there. This links to customizable skies in NWN1 (something that I don't think anyone but me really knows about -- we have functions to check on and tweak the sky.) but the custom content there is pretty lacking there in NWN1. The ability to put objects in the sky and move them around doesn't really agree with the cameras, so efforts to make an orbiting sun would require some clever animation and a pseudoheartbeat with the beforementioned functions. I slap it in the "possible, but with lower quality" explanation.

Huge huge handiness in NWN2's placeable/creature scaling, NWN1's shot at the latter is made of fail, and it didn't even try on the former. Getting exteriors as an editable walkmesh instead of a collection of tiles makes for more natural exteriors, something that I've only really seen in worms tilesets in NWN1.

[mr duncan]

Vaguely someone described being able to see that you are in a valley...can someone expound on that? How is NWN2 different at the "edge of the world"?

Depends on the builder, but all areas give you a border to work with and decorate. you can, by making one area then copying it and adjusting its size/walkmesh make the area next to it with the exact same stuff placed as they saw it on the border of area they were just in. makes your world seem more whole when you can look behind you and still see the things from the last area you were in.

and it really makes for some cool shots when you have big valleys, especially with cities in them like silvy.

[Nalo Jade]

So you can actually put in placeables and stuff off the area?

I am envisioning showing a city wall and maybe using small block placeables 4 boards away as you get closer the scene gets bigger until you come upon the city...

Do you think you could pull that off?

Same thing in reverse say their is a mountain range 8 boards away, can you increase the size of the mountain range as you get closer to give that feel of being able to see vast distances if you have a good vantage point?

[mr duncan]

Sorta, but not so drastic. being able to walk up to a city and see the skyline of it from the outside will be a feature available to those that play in the upcoming BG server.

Inside silvy you can look around and see the skyline from other parts, but you cant see it from an area away from the outside.

Ive also seen some servers play with perspective like that too, making things small on borders to give more illusion of depth.

[AsteroidX]

child choir skeletons can be made in the toolset.

NwN2 FTW if your cpu can make the specs

[Thangorn]

So you can actually put in placeables and stuff off the area?

I am envisioning showing a city wall and maybe using small block placeables 4 boards away as you get closer the scene gets bigger until you come upon the city...

Do you think you could pull that off?

Same thing in reverse say their is a mountain range 8 boards away, can you increase the size of the mountain range as you get closer to give that feel of being able to see vast distances if you have a good vantage point?

yes it can be done.. YATT/Terracoppa plugins can pull some of this stuff off, the rest is freehanding and adding skybox haks..

All exterior areas have non-walkable border zones that are designed for just this sort of thing..

[zicada]

So you can actually put in placeables and stuff off the area?

I am envisioning showing a city wall and maybe using small block placeables 4 boards away as you get closer the scene gets bigger until you come upon the city...

Do you think you could pull that off?

Same thing in reverse say their is a mountain range 8 boards away, can you increase the size of the mountain range as you get closer to give that feel of being able to see vast distances if you have a good vantage point?

yes it can be done.. YATT/Terracoppa plugins can pull some of this stuff off, the rest is freehanding and adding skybox haks..

All exterior areas have non-walkable border zones that are designed for just this sort of thing..

Yeah the nonwalkable border zones and techniques for making them look good were big topics and were already done very nicely back when I was messing around with the toolset just after NWN2 was released.
After walking around on BG, i've seen it in action.

[HATEFACE]

- Better scripting.

- More 'accurate' rules. Originally NWN1 was pretty shat on the rules of spells and etc. NWN2 is fairly accurate. It even has cones so you know where your spells will and the range of damage.

- scalable races (though no fat phenotypes)

- Better looking environ.

- Better graphics and hours spent not playing crappy nwn2 devoting that free time to more worthy endevours.

[Nalo Jade]

-
- Better graphics and hours spent not playing crappy nwn2 devoting that free time to more worthy endevours.

I read this line, like a dozen times, I still can't figure it out...