Neverwinter Nights 2 Interview

[falcon]

GamingNexus has posted an interview (http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=Article&I=1121) with NWN2 Senior Producer Ryan Rucinski. The interview covers the new interface for the game, the tweaks made to the single player portion of the game, and some of the other changes made to the game.

GamingNexus: I've talked to many fans who really enjoy the interface when playing the game Has the interface changed much for the player and if so what are some of the changes? Will those that played NWN 1 be able to just jump right into the 2nd one? What enhancements have you made to the user interface?

Ryan Rucinski: We did make some improvements to the interface and camera. You will be able to choose which style of play you prefer. Anyone can jump into the game and just start clicking around to move or use their WASD keys if they are familiar with that kind of movement.

I do think that one of our biggest improvements is the streamlining of how the player gets access to their spells and abilities. We got there by taking out the Radial Menu. Instead of potentially having to go through six clicks to cast a spell, at most you only have to do two now.

[Kamalot]

I'm glad this game was delayed. I'd hate for it to suffer from the rushed nature of KOTOR II.

[Kamalot]

Waitasecond!

They took out the radial menu?! That was one of the best things about the original. It offered so many options and you could invoke it anywhere. It is similar to the menus used in Maya.

Sheesh!

[harbo]

The radial menu was awful, it's great they took it out. Like they said, 6 clicks to cast a spell, something I'll probably have to do repeatedly? WTF?

[Wyrm]

Yeah, clicking more than twice to cast something (more than once sucks), is just a glaring design flaw in the gameplay. I remember the combat being extremely clunky and poorly concieved when I played the first one.

[pheriannath]

The radial menu was nice in theory, but as stated, it took a few too many clicks to get anywhere in it.

[Kamalot]

I understand your concerns about the radial menu, but there should have been a comprimise. The radial menu let you do lots of other things. Frequently used spells can be bound to hot-keys.

I'd personally like to see a clickless radial menu that expands and flows based on your mouse movements. One click to open the menu, fly through the choices, another click to select.

[destoo]

Actually, the radial menu was ok if you used the keypad.
On every menu there were at most 8 options, so using 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9, and 5 for back was perfect.
So right click, 9,1 would cast cure light wounds or something..

The thing is.. with D&D, you don't have to be "all powerful" to have a good experience. Most of our characters would level up to 15-16 and then we'd start new ones.
The radial menu wasn't good for casting spells level 7-8-9.. but then again, we never really got there.
There's usually one or two spells in that level range that your character would memorize, or just use, and for those you just dragged them in your quickbar.
Still.. I'd really like to see how they "streamlined" it. Can only be interesting.
Mouse gestures, maybe? XD

At first, I never thought I would run out of slots having F1-12, Ctrl-F1, Alt-F1 and Shift-F1.. (48 quickslots...)
I think wow spoiled us forever with the heavily customizable gui...



A tool that I would like to see is a "quick converter" to take a NWN1 module and play it in NWN2.


Regarding premium content.. that was good, but the fact that every player needed to buy the specific module to play was a bit too much for us to handle. They should have handled authentication on the server side. (but even that solution is not perfect)

[PIPBoy3000]

A tool that I would like to see is a "quick converter" to take a NWN1 module and play it in NWN2.
You'll sort of get this. You can import dialog and scripts, as well as most objects (though you'll have to pick a new appearance for each). What you can't do is import areas, which are done completely differently in NWN2 (especially the outdoor areas).

On the plus side, it means I can prototype my next campaign in NWN (I'm up to module three!) and expect to convert it without too much pain and suffering. That means I can hopefully get a fairly complex and polished module out the door within a few months of the game being released. That's the hope, anyway.

NWN2's GUI is also more customizeable than NWN's, which excites me greatly. Some of this will be available to module builders. For me, I'm hoping that means the ship-to-ship combat areas can have a "Fire cannon" button with a suitable icon.