Could(n't) NWN be modded into something like the Infinity or Pillars of Eternity engine?

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I have already extracted a bunch of maps from certain facebook games for you if you like to poke at the idea further. I have a forest clearing, the same clearing with party streamers (medieval times), a spider forest with rocky regions, a town similar to diablo 1 tristram (but smaller), and an ogre village in the crags with suspension bridges. All are represented by multiple 1024 high quality jpg images. I would put them on the vault, but I don't think their owner would be happy.

 

Edit: Here's an example of the spider forest

 

Edit again:

 

If you like that kind of stuff, you can check out constructed mini-maps of various areas here.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

It's too bad a proof of concept for something like this would be too time-intensive just to sort of show what I mean.

 

It might not be as bad as you think. My guess is it would simply take these few things:

 

1. Tilt tiles for a tileset at a certain direction in relation to the locked camera angle.

   
2. fill the tileset with images like those I showed just above.

   
3. Define exceptionally complex walkmeshes which work precisely with your image (that will take the most time).

   
4. And/or tilt the angle in the base animation for the human model ( if played correctly, you can just use it as is)

   
5. Fit the tiles with interesting walkmesh style so you can walk up and down, left and right, and it slides you on the texture at the speed you really need.

• Side note here: I recently figured out that the internal workings of the engine move your character at the proper speed it takes to traverse 3d space from one point to another, not just simply traverse x/y coordinates. What I mean is: when you walk up a walkmesh which is 45 degrees or steeper, you can see your character physically slow down to match the actual distance across the face he is walking. This is very useful toward making a 2d game because you can manipulate the speed by altering the walkmesh. My infinity engine clone failed to do this. If you walked up or down a hill, you moved faster or slower than you should have. I never went back to fix it. I think they made the same mistake in the sims 1/2, as well as everquest.

I think a test example could be built pretty quickly. Of course it won't have all that neat lighting and what not we'd expect from advanced 2d games. And I personally have no idea how to use the data in the height/blocking maps for the images I have extracted. Or if we even could in NWN. Probably not. Those blocking maps also show where something is supposed to conceal the user by 50%. I don't know how to pull that off in NWN. But I am sure it wouldn't be that hard.

 

Thinking about that specifically, you might have to chop a section of the 2d image out and clone it into a placeable. That way if you walk behind it, it conceals the player correctly. Using the blocking map, it would be easy to disect from the main tile image.

 

Dammit. Now you got me wanting to try this '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

 

Not only would improvements to NWN's AI of course always be nice, but the ability to have greater control over henchmen has always been very high on my wishlist.

NWN AI improvements are available. TonyK AI or AI improvements in my unofficial patch.

 

Full henchman control is doable via NWNX. I found a way how to possess animal companion (and this is possible in CPP 1.72beta) and the same method could be used to possess henchman, but for henchmans there would have to be some further modification of how to select them and I smell a possible problem with henchman's familiar so I didn't worked on this. Still Im fairy confident its doable (if NWNCX wouldn't be so big obstacle for many players of course).