Avlis throws its hat into the ring: NWN2

[PlasmaJohn]

The thought of phasing out Avlis to go to NWN2 depresses me.

As long as the NWN1 servers get traffic, we can support them financially (bandwidth and power) and staff them, they'll still be there.
Our own NWN2 won't get a critical mass for at least a year post-launch and realistically two. A lot can happen in two years.

[Faeldridge]

*whew* thank you!

[Lachek]

Please, let me mirror earlier concerns in this thread about Avlis on NWN1 being phased out in favour of NWN2.

Atari/Obsidian have officially announced that NWN2 will not be ported to Linux or Macintosh, like NWN1 was. Worse (for CoPaP), there will also not be a Linux server app.

I do not know how many, if any, CoPaP servers are running Linux, but I do know that if there are any, it will not be pretty to move the installation over to a Windows server - nor will it be cheap. Worse, it limits the possibilities of new or existing servers to join CoPaP.

Also, those of us who prefer to run NWN on Linux or Mac - or perhaps do not even own a Windows PC - will not be able to participate. Again, I'm not sure how large the percentage of people play Avlis on these "alternative" platforms, but I do know that both Linux and Mac people tend to be very creative, tinkering types - exactly the type of people you want to attract to this sort of project.

Finally, it is well known that while the NWN1 toolkit used tilesets for easy-but-simplistic area constructions, NWN2 will be using a much more complex method due to its more advanced graphics engine. This is fine for single-player short user-created modules or premium, commercial modules - but for a PW as large as Avlis/CoPaP, this hardly seems ideal. Switching to NWN2 will increase the time spent on area creation and decrease the time spent on scripting, bug fixing, quest construction etc - the stuff that differentiates Avlis and makes gameplay fun.

Frankly, I'm personally very satisfied with NWN1 despite its aging graphics, and I would much sooner see further improvements into quests, crafting and so on than having to switch platform and buy a new retail box to get some snazzier graphics.

[Fifty]

If you watch the videos showing how the toolset works, you'll see that it will probably take less, not more, time to ctreate exterior areas. Additionally things like bug fixes will be easier due to being able to have multiple coding/property windows etc open at once.

I, personally, am very excited about the new toolset and if the delays to the DM client turn out to be worth the wait, we'll have a marvellous product.

[Krator]

Fifty, you are wrong in there. It is impossible to guess the time it will take to make an area now, with only videos of the toolset available.

My personal opinion, however, is that it'll take longer, as you have more options to choose from.

EDIT: Edited phrasing so my post isn't self-contradicting anymore

[Fifty]

If it is impossible to guess, how can you say I am wrong? I stand by my statement that, based on what I have seen, I think it will be quicker to build comparable areas.

Someone who has learnt how to use the new toolset will be able to create new areas quicker than they could make equivalent areas in the old set, I believe. You simply do not have the evidence to say I am "wrong", only the evidence to say that you disagree with me.

[Heronimous Fox]

VERSION 1 = FIRST VERSION
VERSION 2 = SECOND VERSION

Therefore 2 should be better than 1, which should mean more efficient. Lets see if Biowhere! can messit up before arguing over something we havent played with yet.

[Fifty]

Therefore 2 should be better than 1, which should mean more efficient. Lets see if Biowhere! can messit up before arguing over something we havent played with yet.

Fox, you are wrong in there. It is Obsidian who might mess it up

[Heronimous Fox]

Fox, you are wrong in there.

I frequently am old boy

[Lachek]

If you watch the videos showing how the toolset works, you'll see that it will probably take less, not more, time to ctreate exterior areas. Additionally things like bug fixes will be easier due to being able to have multiple coding/property windows etc open at once.

I, personally, am very excited about the new toolset and if the delays to the DM client turn out to be worth the wait, we'll have a marvellous product.

Watched the videos. Fail to see how it takes less time to create an area, since they're not showing how to create an area - at least the videos I've found. They're showing how apply textures to an area, or how to select and move objects, or how to adjust water levels - all of which took approximately the same amount of time as making, from scratch, a basic but detailed and playable 8x8 forest area in NWN1 with no special features. If you have a link to a video that shows area creation, please do share.

Having said that, it looks like a phenomenal toolkit. The graphics are certainly beautiful, and it seems like a lot of other game-engine related things have improved also - for one, it appears that there are no area transitions, or at least the areas appeared very large. No doubt the effect of leaves blowing in the wind will also be beautiful to look at, considering they bought a canned solution for leaves-blowing-in-the-wind from SpeedTree.
However, with all these new features come associated challenges - how does this work in a MP/PW setting? Do these large, detailed areas require (much) larger ($$$) servers to play the game without insane lag? Is multiplayer optimized for smaller groups (4-8 people) in a peer-to-peer networked setting, with 64+ simultaneous clients impossible to handle without breaking the bandwidth bank? Will Avlis require a team of DMs to "unstuck" people on demand because of new, more dynamic methods for placeables which introduces a new level of complexity in "safe" area building? Any one of these issues - and others - may become a showstopper, at least temporarily (read:months) until patches can be released.

But that's not really the issue. The issue isn't even Avlis opening a NWN2 server. The issue is the planned obsolescence of Avlis-on-NWN1 i favour of this Brave New World.

There are many indicators that NWN2 may not be all it's made out to be. To begin with, the launch in September is rumoured to be a last-ditch resort at getting some cash flowing in to Atari, smelling of a hurried, possibly unfinished and buggy release. Further, there may or may not be a DM client for launch. There will be no multiplatform support, not even a Linux standalone server app which many PWs are built and is dependent upon. In recent days, Atari has showed what it thinks of the unyielding NWN1 community - one we all belong to - by putting an abrupt end to continued Bioware updates and fan-modding groups' efforts to build modules under the Premium program, supposedly in a lame attempt at marginalizing NWN1 to make its unfinished sequel look relatively better.

I'm all for a parallel NWN2-ready Avlis server. I just don't feel that deciding on phasing out the NWN1 versions of the servers - and supposedly, all of CoPaP - is a great idea at this point, given the above.

[Lachek]

The thought of phasing out Avlis to go to NWN2 depresses me.

As long as the NWN1 servers get traffic, we can support them financially (bandwidth and power) and staff them, they'll still be there.
Our own NWN2 won't get a critical mass for at least a year post-launch and realistically two. A lot can happen in two years.

And maybe I should read the rest of the comments before I start spewing my venom.
Anyway, thanks for this PlasmaJohn - this is a lot more heartening than "it will be phased out".

[Sunscream]

http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/news/ar ... oryid=1144

"There will need to be local versions of modules for MP an PW. This has been hinted at - but flat out, that's the case. The walkmeshes and such are just too big otherwise."

If that means what I think it does, not only would everyone need a copy of the PW, but wouldn't everyone also need to redownload it every update?

[SplankNon]

Atari/Obsidian have officially announced that NWN2 will not be ported to Linux or Macintosh, like NWN1 was. Worse (for CoPaP), there will also not be a Linux server app.

On the Macintosh side, new games are now increasingly unlikely to get ported from Windows to Mac, because modern Macs can now also run the Windows OS. So it is not particularly surprising / disappointing - and Mac players who buy new Macs will be able to use NWN 2.

*foresees a coming end to his completely computer-virus-free existence*

[bolo]

http://www.nwn2news.net/modules/news/ar ... oryid=1144

"There will need to be local versions of modules for MP an PW. This has been hinted at - but flat out, that's the case. The walkmeshes and such are just too big otherwise."

If that means what I think it does, not only would everyone need a copy of the PW, but wouldn't everyone also need to redownload it every update?

I saw that too.If we had to do that even for updates and bug fixes..What a pain in the ass.

[Fifty]

Darren Monahan: Hello everyone,

We just wanted to clear up some rumors and/or misconceptions about what a client will need in order to play a multiplayer or persistent world game in NWN2.

We are making every effort to prevent the need for the server(s) to distribute scripts, dialogs, or any other proprietary data to the client so that it can be examined or reverse engineered.

The key thing we need to distribute to the client is the walkmesh for the level, which is data that tells the game how and where people can walk, as well as pathfinding information. This doesn't include scripts or any other text assets.

Hope that clears things up a little bit.

Thanks!

Darren Monahan
Executive Producer
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc.

[Lachek]

The toolset is immensely powerful - and we pay for that with a decrease in ease of use and "pretty" factor. It's well worth it, however.

The learning curve is much steeper. It's not something that gets into the "hard" area, but it's not as easy to deal with as the old toolset. But with the kind of functionality built in, I can scarcely imagine how they would do such a thing. Even so, I was able to start working my way around after just a few minutes of use. In less than an hour I'm sure I could have built a decent area. More time for more nuance.

While Papermonk is pretty positive here, this goes to show my point above - the toolkit allows for much fancier environments, but at the expense of ease-of-use. This will be most obvious in outdoors environments where area creation is done using paint tools rather than premade tilesets. As Papermonk mentions, he's sure he could have built a decent area in less than an hour - in NWN1, that figure is more like 5-10 minutes for someone even moderately knowledgeable with the toolkit. Papermonk is one of the biggest names in NWN custom content around, so he's far from a novice. An hour for him would be more like a day or two for someone like myself.

And as for Windows gaming on newer Macs, that's only (legally) possible if you go and buy yourself a Windows license for $199, at which point you may as well have bought yourself a new computer and save yourself the hassle of BootCamp, installing Windows, and dual-booting. You've always been able to do that, even before Mactel, and it's not a valid excuse for companies to drop Mac support - although I'm sure that's how they will spin it.

[Lachek]

I saw that too.If we had to do that even for updates and bug fixes..What a pain in the ass.

As for this, I'm not too concerned - this doesn't mean you need to distribute "avlis.mod" before can clients connect (like the .hak packs). All it means is that when a character enters a new area, the walkmesh/whatever other CPU-intensive resources are dynamically downloaded to the client's memory and cached there while the character remains in the area. Guild Wars does a similar thing and it works very well, though it tends to fill up large chunks of the hard drive after a while. There will be an initial delay every time the character enters an area for the first time, or enters an area that has changed since last time they were there, which may become a nuisance if multiple characters are travelling together - but it's not much of a problem.

The only real issue here is that resources being downloaded and processed by the clients could potentially be reverse-engineered, so if scripts, monsters and such were cached then the PW's "secret sauce" could come out and be exploited. We have been assured that this will not be required, however.

Of course, while the above scenario is one possibility, that may not be how it's actually implemented in the end. If Atari pulls the same sort of stunts they have been throughout the development of NWN2, maybe dynamic client-side downloading will be a feature to be implemented in a "future patch" and .mod files will have to be distributed as .hak files in their entirety anyway.