Author Topic: This could be a new Neverwinter nights type game.  (Read 3859 times)

Legacy_MayCaesar

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This could be a new Neverwinter nights type game.
« Reply #75 on: September 24, 2015, 07:51:53 pm »


               


Given that currently SCL area creation amounts to selecting an area prefab and adding minor customisation, I don't see any major difference between creating your area in SCL or in either NWN game, if you use an area prefab for the latter two.


 


Well, although since there are so many more prefabs available for the latter than for SCL, perhaps you would have a slightly longer time of it, but if you intentionally limit yourself to, say, redressing the areas provided in the NWN2 official campaigns, I think it would be directly comparable.  Prefabs are plentiful, convenient, and there are many well-designed ones.




 


Right now, indeed, area creation in SCL is limited to selecting one of the few prefabs provided by the developers. But I was talking about potentially modified SCL toolset in the future, which would have better tools for area creation: tile-by-tile has already been essentially confirmed by the developers, and grid-based area edition could appear eventually as well.


Right now, SCL editor is hardly a toolset per se, it is closer to a Lego constructor. But there is a chance it will become a functional toolset eventually, and if it happens, I am likely to choose it over NWN1/2 for the reasons stated.


 


Still, I don't like talking about what doesn't exist at the moment. So, as of now, I can say that SCL is little more than a button mashing hack'n'slash RPG with weird combat, poor editor and total lack of polish - or at least I see it this way. What the fate of this game is remains to be seen.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_kamal_

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« Reply #76 on: September 24, 2015, 11:29:56 pm »


               


Well, for me personally SCL toolset could be potentially attractive for two reasons:


1) The community is much larger, which means that the modules I make will be played by many people, while in NWN1/2 I am still yet to decide to start making my full scale module, since I am not sure anyone will play it.


2) It takes much less time to create something in such a simple toolset than in NWN1 and, especially, NWN2.




 


I think I went over my experience with such a simple toolset as SCL has, specifically Neverwinter Online's Foundry system. If anything, I think Foundry actually takes longer than SCL seems to, since you have to actually sort of build areas. In any case, the problem for authors is that because it's so quick to create something, there is a tidal wave of content created. A given author's content might get a lucky break and be popular, but the typical experience is an author's content gets virtually no plays. For example, I made something during the Neverwinter beta, an entry into a official Cryptic contest (and thus promoted by Cryptic itself in their forums and news) that had a total of eight entries. The entry got a single play, (they reviewed it in a forum thread there and liked it, the positive review didn't get it any more plays). The popular entries got hundreds of plays. With so much content, there is a big herd mentality towards content that is popular. There is simply so much content that the odds of a player playing your content is small, if you're not first page of search results, your quest may as well not exist. My Foundry content (before I eventually deleted it) had less plays than my NWN2 content, despite the potentially much larger audience of Neverwinter near it's release.


 


In the Foundry system, content that was popular right off the bat at launch is basically the only content that ever got played. Content made after launch was buried in the tidal wave, unable to get players because it was hidden by the sheer numbers of published content. In my experience, the popular content wasn't particularly high quality either, and non-serious content was the most popular.


 


So my advice if you wish to be a popular SCL author would be to make sure you got into whatever preview/beta they have so you can have an adventure ready for day one, if not ready during beta so you can be at the top of the charts on day one. Also, promote your content as much as possible to get plays. Finally, there are less savory methods that happened in Foundry such as the organized downvoting of competitors. Not that I suggest you do such, but I predict it will happen with SCL and you might be a potential target.


 


In any case, since you have ordered the game and adventure creation sounds super fast, I would say make something there and see how it is received. If it doesn't work there you could still create it in nwn-land if you wanted.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_MayCaesar

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« Reply #77 on: September 25, 2015, 12:33:34 am »


               


I think I went over my experience with such a simple toolset as SCL has, specifically Neverwinter Online's Foundry system. If anything, I think Foundry actually takes longer than SCL seems to, since you have to actually sort of build areas. In any case, the problem for authors is that because it's so quick to create something, there is a tidal wave of content created. A given author's content might get a lucky break and be popular, but the typical experience is an author's content gets virtually no plays. For example, I made something during the Neverwinter beta, an entry into a official Cryptic contest (and thus promoted by Cryptic itself in their forums and news) that had a total of eight entries. The entry got a single play, (they reviewed it in a forum thread there and liked it, the positive review didn't get it any more plays). The popular entries got hundreds of plays. With so much content, there is a big herd mentality towards content that is popular. There is simply so much content that the odds of a player playing your content is small, if you're not first page of search results, your quest may as well not exist. My Foundry content (before I eventually deleted it) had less plays than my NWN2 content, despite the potentially much larger audience of Neverwinter near it's release.


 


In the Foundry system, content that was popular right off the bat at launch is basically the only content that ever got played. Content made after launch was buried in the tidal wave, unable to get players because it was hidden by the sheer numbers of published content. In my experience, the popular content wasn't particularly high quality either, and non-serious content was the most popular.


 


So my advice if you wish to be a popular SCL author would be to make sure you got into whatever preview/beta they have so you can have an adventure ready for day one, if not ready during beta so you can be at the top of the charts on day one. Also, promote your content as much as possible to get plays. Finally, there are less savory methods that happened in Foundry such as the organized downvoting of competitors. Not that I suggest you do such, but I predict it will happen with SCL and you might be a potential target.


 


In any case, since you have ordered the game and adventure creation sounds super fast, I would say make something there and see how it is received. If it doesn't work there you could still create it in nwn-land if you wanted.




 


I think it really depends on what map submission system is used and what kind of community is there. What you described with regards to Neverwinter's Foundry is quite typical for popular multiplayer-focused games, and the same problem exists, for example, in Starcraft 2: submitted maps are thrown somewhere into a huge pile, and, unless they are also actively promoted somewhere, the only real chance to dig them out is to use "Fun or not" system constantly, which selects a random map and lets you evaluate it. Of course, since there are hundreds thousands maps, most of them random works of the kind "I grabbed some beer, opened an editor and messed around a bit", most people give up on the system soon after trying it out (I gave up too). And there are not real platforms to promote your map on: there is only SC2Mapster and Hive Workshop, from what I know, and the latter is focused on Warcraft 3 and there are very few Starcraft 2 players, while SC2Mapster is mostly visited by map developers, more interested in working on their own maps than checking out each other's works.


 


In Warcraft 3 it was different, however (despite its editor being much simpler to use than Starcraft 2 editor). Somehow that game quickly generated an enormous number of fan sites, with people enthusiastically sharing their works between each other. Even today, 13 years after release, Hive Workshop still has a very active community with people constantly uploading high quality maps - although, understandably, few people there are interested in RPG maps.


 


I have some hopes with SCL editor due to the fact that the game is quite niche and yet, at the same time, quite popular (at least judging on how many people there are on their forums). Neverwinter Online is an MMO, and few MMO players play the game for the story. SCL is D&D, however, focused on attracting old school D&D tabletop players (failing at this currently, but no one knows how it will be in a few months). I'm pretty sure, as long as the toolset is seriously improved, there will be people to play high quality story-based modules. I think it really depends on how the developers approach this. If they want this game to remain the button mashing MMO-like hack'n'slash game, then, of course, using the editor to create something that will be played actively would be pointless.


 


As of now, I see no reason to use the editor, since there are no storytelling tools in it. No branching dialogues (and severely limited size of quest text - many people call it "quest twittering"), no custom-made companions, no scripting - I played a couple of user-made modules and they looked very professional (and that is given that they were created in just a couple of days during the headstart access), but they weren't anything like NWN modules story-wise, if there was any story at all. I'll wait until they, at the very least, introduce branching dialogues and custom companions, and then we will see. I am not very demanding in what I want from the toolset, but some basic functions just have to be there.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_NWN_baba yaga

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« Reply #78 on: September 25, 2015, 07:43:02 am »


               

I dont know what is so spectacular about an editor where you can only paint down enemys which represents the complete plot. It´s like Kill XYZ and go straight to exit! Blerp '<img'>



               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #79 on: September 28, 2015, 12:57:10 pm »


               

I can totally relate to this. When I watch boss fights in raids in WoW on Youtube, I cannot quite understand what is the point of this all, if all those circles and helper addons tell you every second what you need to do and where you need to move.


I can totally relate to that.

When I watch people climbing Mount Everest on YouTube I cannot quite understand what is the point of this all, if all those Sherpas and written guides tell you every step of the way what you need to do and where you need to move.

When I watch people in swim meets on YouTube I cannot quite understand what is the point of this all, if all those lanes tell you every second where you need to swim.

When I watch people build model airplanes on YouTube I cannot quite understand what is the point of this all, if the instructions tell you every step of the way what you need to do.

Etc.

There's a massive difference between knowing what you *want* to do and being able to actually do it. And managing to do it while still using your tanking/healing/damaging abilities well enough to beat the output checks. And managing to do all that a high enough percentage of the time (if you can "only" do it correctly 75% of the time (meaning you succeed 3 out of 4 times) then that's a 0.75^20 = 0.3% chance of a 20 person raid succeeding on any given attempt).

Not to mention the "helper addons" are not helping nearly to the degree you think they are. In the vast majority of cases they're telling you *when* stuff is happening (and you have to figure out how to react)...and the bosses are designed with those in mind.

If it was as easy as you seem to think it wouldn't take the best guilds in the world over 500 tries on the hardest bosses.

There was quality work made by other authors that got similarly buried.


One problem you can have especially in something like the Foundry is that it's part of a larger world. If I spend 20 hours doing a campaign in NWN, I don't care if I wind up at level 10 or 20 or 40. I don't care if I have a +2 sword or a +15 sword. Etc. The point is to play and enjoy the campaign -- it has no impact on other campaigns. But if you're trying to level up in an MMO and one questline is terribly designed but takes 20 minutes and another questline is amazing but takes 5 hours for the exact same reward...people are going to gravitate to the path of least resistance because they're viewing that content as part of a larger whole.

I don't know much about Foundry, but I don't think Foundry is the best example, since NWO is an MMO, and MMOs naturally rarely attract people interested in the story or deep gameplay, they are centered around endless and mindless grind. I have played WoW and SWTOR for a couple of months each for the story (KotoR and Warcraft RTS series are among my all time favorites), but the experience was less than satisfactory.


I can't speak for other MMOs, but if you think WoW is centered around endless and mindless grind then either you were playing in Vanilla or weren't actually looking for the deep gameplay. WoW has some of the deepest, if not the deepest, gameplay I've seen. There's a reason there's sites dedicated to parsing dungeon runs to optimize performance and fan websites dedicated to theorycrafting about *one* class that are more active than the NWN boards.

Besides myself, I think I've seen like...one...example of someone else writing a simulator to theorycraft in NWN. Most people don't even realize how much of a difference 1 AB or 1 AC even makes.

I'm not very hopeful that we'll ever get another community-based game like NWN again. The industry and the market seem to have changed too much for any companies to believe that the NWN kind of gameplay and toolset will be profitable, and the ones that do try to provide toolsets usually have the "toolsets" wind up being half-arsed, not very good add-ons, released half-finished with promises of patches that never come.


Part of the problem is that companies usually want people to keep buying new stuff...not engage in free community made modules. Look at the money EA prints with its sports game -- hey, a new year, update a few things, replace some old names with new names, and voila, instant money! A company wanting to do another NWN like game would have to have some method of monetizing the community stuf -- hosting services, monthly multiplayer access fees, etc. It's possible to do but I worry that many NWN players would reject such a model...even when it's the only hope of another NWN-like game at this point. And I think companies realize that and thus I'm not hopeful we'll ever seen one either.

Where the dungeon layout has a strategical aspect to it when you enter a combat. Something like darnise keep from BG2 was great level design. How they placed the trolls was awesome and difficult to combat. Interesting in a strategic pov '<img'>
Because i noticed in many rush-through dungeons in ARPGs it´s just a fancy looking dungeon, cave whatever with enemys that dont make any sense why they are there or how they are placed. They just are and wait 1000 years for someone to come by to be attacked lol.


What do those two sections have to do with each other? By your definition, if there's a strategic layout and monsters are placed in awesome locations...then what does it matter if it doesn't really make logical sense for those particular enemies to be in that location?

I think it really depends on what map submission system is used and what kind of community is there. What you described with regards to Neverwinter's Foundry is quite typical for popular multiplayer-focused games, and the same problem exists, for example, in Starcraft 2: submitted maps are thrown somewhere into a huge pile, and, unless they are also actively promoted somewhere, the only real chance to dig them out is to use "Fun or not" system constantly, which selects a random map and lets you evaluate it. Of course, since there are hundreds thousands maps, most of them random works of the kind "I grabbed some beer, opened an editor and messed around a bit", most people give up on the system soon after trying it out (I gave up too).


Yes, I saw/had that problem in SC2 as well. Wound up mostly playing Squadron Tower Defense. I'm sure there were dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other good maps...but most of the ones I tried were just garbage.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_KlatchainCoffee

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« Reply #80 on: September 28, 2015, 01:35:35 pm »


               

@ MagicalMaster


 


I have dabbled in WoW. it caters to a -completely- different set of demands to something like NWN. If you are into gear optimization and and honing intricate gameplay tactics for raids, with a fair bit of grind to get there, yes that is the game for you. NOT if you want an in-depth immersive world that you co-create with other players/DMs/builders or just a plying through a well-crafted SP mod.  Yes, WoW has, by now, quite a lot of setting detail with NPCs and quests, but they are largely bypassed in the grind race for better gear, achievements and rare items. Unless you're part of a guild or are in one raid, players would barely acknowledge you're there and any actual RP is non-existent.  Yes some of the scenery is pretty and randomised drops of rare items yanks that gambler/collector chain in people...   Anyway, as I was saying - very different things, which is just fine - some people enjoy the gameplay/gear/levelling aspect more, and for others its world immersion and character story development.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_kamal_

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« Reply #81 on: September 28, 2015, 04:20:47 pm »


               If there's only one way to do a dungeon/boss, and there is a specific mechanic for success like a dps check (or healing power check or tank check), it is a puzzle. Cooperative action puzzle. The rp comes in being the necessary cog x successfully of the clockwork solution of the puzzle.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Alex Mars

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« Reply #82 on: September 29, 2015, 06:38:56 pm »


               

Sword Coast Legends is the latest D&D CRPG to hit the scene.  The game offers a single or multiplayer game play in an official campaign, random dungeon crawls, and a toolset for players to create their own adventures.


 


The last two weekends have been limited preview weekends for those who pre-ordered the game, allowing the players to check out the random dungeon crawls and the module building toolset.  As the developers kept the official campaign under wraps this review will focus on the basic game play and the toolset.


 


http://mmo.catacombs...40509#post40509



               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #83 on: September 30, 2015, 09:21:43 am »


               

NOT if you want an in-depth immersive world that you co-create with other players/DMs/builders or just a plying through a well-crafted SP mod...Anyway, as I was saying - very different things, which is just fine - some people enjoy the gameplay/gear/levelling aspect more, and for others its world immersion and character story development.


You might want to keep in mind the quote I was responding to: "MMOs naturally rarely attract people interested in the story or deep gameplay" (emphasis mine).

If there's only one way to do a dungeon/boss


You'd have to be more specific than that. For example, some people would say that if you have to violently confront and kill the boss then there's only one way to do it (since you can't avoid him or persuade him or whatever).

However, if you're talking about multiple tactics within the fight then those can wildly vary guild to guild for a specific boss. In fact, on the current boss my guild is working on a major problem we had is figuring out *which* set of tactics to follow as (for 3 different phases) we've seen like 3+ strategies per phase (and thus potentially over 20 different unique overall strategies).

That said, the idea of it being a cooperative puzzle is a reasonable analogy overall. The boss has to hit 0% HP (aka the puzzle completed) but the exact order you connect the pieces is very up in the air at times.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_kamal_

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« Reply #84 on: September 30, 2015, 12:10:59 pm »


               


Sword Coast Legends is the latest D&D CRPG to hit the scene.  The game offers a single or multiplayer game play in an official campaign, random dungeon crawls, and a toolset for players to create their own adventures.


 


The last two weekends have been limited preview weekends for those who pre-ordered the game, allowing the players to check out the random dungeon crawls and the module building toolset.  As the developers kept the official campaign under wraps this review will focus on the basic game play and the toolset.


 


http://mmo.catacombs...40509#post40509




Are you "doctor_atomic" on the SCL forums? You have the same avatar.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_kamal_

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« Reply #85 on: September 30, 2015, 12:24:19 pm »


               


You'd have to be more specific than that. For example, some people would say that if you have to violently confront and kill the boss then there's only one way to do it (since you can't avoid him or persuade him or whatever).




If the required tactic is :


boss requires x tanks, y healers, z dps or


players must take specific actions at specific times (stand in certain spots, etc) or in a specific order


things like that. If that's the case then the boss/raid is a puzzle in my thinking. You have to put things together in a given manner to reach success. It makes things a coop action puzzle.


 


I'm not saying that to say it's bad, that it's "only a puzzle" or something, just that that is how I think about it.


               
               

               
            

Legacy_MayCaesar

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« Reply #86 on: September 30, 2015, 10:36:20 pm »


               

To specify, I wasn't talking about gameplay in MMOs itself, but the way progression is designed. You get to kill boss X a few times to get the required gear to kill boss Y, which, in turn, gives you gear necessary to kill boss Z, and so on... Then there are "dailies" (I honestly couldn't believe it when they were first introduced in MMOs; I thought it was someone's April joke) where you have to, say, pick 50 nuts dozens times to get some reward. There are all kinds of "achievements" (another abomination I wish never existed) like "complete 1000 quests", "complete all quests in Outland", "kill 50,000 critters", "win 100 pet battles in a day". Grind of PvP and PvE tokens to get gear. Grind of quests/dungeons to raise your level. Grind inside the quests themselves ("collect 20 tusks of boars that drop them with probability 20%)...


 


I fail to see how a decent percentage of player base in a game like this would be interested in something deep. And this, I think, is why Neverwinter Foundry failed to produce any popular high quality modules. The game is not designed in such a way as to encourage people to create anything beyond all those speed-leveling modules, where you keep killing monsters in a small area for XP and money until you get bored to death with it.


 


There is a chance SCL will avoid this kind of modding fate. Although, so far, I haven't been impressed.



               
               

               
            

Legacy_DrMcCoy

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« Reply #87 on: October 03, 2015, 12:16:15 am »


               

There is at least one open source implementation of Aurora (called Xoreos), but only a single person seems to be working on it


Well, there are a few other people hammering away on various tasks as their free time permits. But yeah, it is mostly just me; we really need more people to work on xoreos. There's a rambly TODO here. Anybody interested, please feel free to contact me! '<img'>

There's also a simple, newbie-friendly feature request here: https://github.com/x...oreos/issues/99, meant to ease first-time FLOSS contributors into the process. I should probably try to add a few more, though.

EDIT: Also, in case anybody's interested in a status update: xoreos currently shows ingame area graphics for all targeted games, and has a working (but way incomplete) script system for all (except the odd one out, the Nintendo DS game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which seems to be mostly hard-coded). More information, including some write-ups of my process, can be found on the xoreos website.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_OldTimeRadio

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« Reply #88 on: October 03, 2015, 03:08:38 am »


               

Hey DrMcCoy!  I caught your Xoreos update a few days ago but I haven't gotten a chance to play with it.  Thank you for keeping up the good work- some of the things you've done are already pretty incredible.  I know your goal is a bit farther down the road but the fact that you've been able to crack open, for instance, the Jade Empire models, or at least some of them, is a something I didn't think possible.  


 


Because you've gotten so far I think you may have actually opened up some areas of new information that could be helpful to custom content makers, mainly for NWN 1 and KotOR.  Are you ever free to just have someone pick your brain?  In both those communities there have been some questions that have just...never been answered.  And I think you might know the answers, or have a pretty good idea.


 


Thanks for doing what you do!



               
               

               
            

Legacy_DrMcCoy

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« Reply #89 on: October 03, 2015, 11:50:12 am »


               

the fact that you've been able to crack open, for instance, the Jade Empire models, or at least some of them, is a something I didn't think possible.


That the original can still load an ASCII representation of the models helped immensely there. Far easier to trace in the disassembly. '<img'>

The geometry of the models is there and correct. What's missing is the materials, which needs shaders to accurately render. xoreos has currently no support for any shaders at all. We needs a rewrite of the graphics system for that (and there's someone working on it, but it'll take some time).

And animations are missing as well. Some of the extra data in vertex arrays we haven't deciphered yet could very well be bone indices and weights for animation system. Such skeletal animations (as opposed to the simpler, whole mesh transformations used by NWN) are easier to handle in a shader than without, too.
 

Are you ever free to just have someone pick your brain?


Sure, feel free to ask me anything you want. Preferable on some kind of open forum (here? the xoreos mailing list?), so that the question & answer isn't immediately lost to the public. And/or I can maybe see if I can create a dev-FAQ in the xoreos-docs repository? And of course, I can't promise that I'll know the answer. '<img'>