Neverwinter Nights 2!!!

[Agamon]

Honestly, the look of my PC with her headgear is a little annoying. The skullcap she used to wear made her look bald, now the mask she's wearing makes her look like she's heading to a costume ball. Darn the munchkin in me that wants the nifty powers from the stupid looking headgear.

 

[trancejeremy]

They should have had a toggle on/off. I like how my PC looks with one of those swashbuckling hats on, but a lot of the headgear is kinda dorky looking.

 

[D'karr]

Ill tell you why i call it a cheesey oversight... firstly if i put any weapon or any armor, cloak etc..on an NPC then just like the PC's thier avatar changes to reflect it.. however if i put a helm on them it doesnt on any except my Main PC.. to that extent it shows that they were aware of the issue but either thought it wasnt important enough or there were as the previous poster mentions possibly issues..either way that makes it cheesey because in this day and age having a game correctly display what you hold/wear is almost "standard" as far as all games in this genre go, so why should we the consumer make exceptions on standards for this sequel..when developer aside the supposedly inferior predecessor game managed to provide on this front?

Its not like every thing in the game needs to show them, just those we the player "Play". because those are the ones whose appearance we are constantly aware of.

NWN1 did not offer open faced helms at all. If you had a helmet on, your mug would show a CLOSED face helm. That is significantly less modeling work, since it only requires one helmet model per helmet, regardless of sex or race. BTW, many people complained about this fact in NWN1 too.

Just as an example, let's just say that there are 7 races. Each with 2 sexes. That is 14 heads models, with no variety between characters at all. All human males will look the same and all female half-orcs would be the same.

If you decided to add any variety, let's say 5 different faces for each sex you are now talking about 70 head models. So now you can have 5 different faces for each sex and race.

If there are 20 different helmets you are now talking about 70 models for characters without helms and 1400 models for those with helms. For a whooping total of 1470 head models. I'm not a 3D modeller and my attempts are pathetic at best. But lets just say that it takes 30 minutes to model each head model. It would take approximately 92 man days to complete the modeling work, just for faces. That is 3 months of solid work just on that "cheesy oversight".

I think the developer had higher priority things to concentrate on just to put out a functional game.

 

[Thanee]

I gather that what you wanted to see was a facial system like Oblivion's ...

Oblivion's facial system is utter crap. It's next to impossible to make anything remotely decent-looking with that, unless you spend hours only creating the face (and even then it's far from great).

Such a system must be extremely simple (a couple choices, like body-type, face-type, hair-style, various colors, some extras (tattoos and stuff), etc), highly variable (thousands of different looks) and very effective (they must all look cool in some way and appeal to a wide range of players).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's a little different here, since it gets imported (ordered the english-language version), but I got an E-Mail, that the delivery is delayed three days, so I should get it next week.

Getting original-language games is really silly around here. You have to send in a copy of your passport so they can make sure you are age 18+, because only german titles are rated and the rating does not apply for the original (since it could be different in detail), and therefore the original is always rated the highest (and thus cannot be sold openly in stores and all that stuff). They also can only send it in a way, that it is given *directly* to you, and noone else, not even if they have a legal authorization and are clearly above 18 years.

Protect the children from Neverwinter Nights!

Ok, I can somewhat understand, why it is done that way, but really...

Bye
Thanee

This might be to late, but I bought the game at amazon.de and there were no complications with my ID or other things. The version of the game allows you to choose the language freely (okay, I am only certain about English and German, but who needs more ), and I chose English. (Don't like to guess what the feat, class and creature names mean in english D&D 3.5 terms )

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am currently experiencing a strange problem with the game - when I am saving, Texture data seems to be unloaded - certain parts of the game (like the items in the inventory) because replaced with generic "Texture Missing"-icons and similar effects. In addition, I can't start dialogues. If I exit the game and reload the save game, the problem disappears, until the next save.

I am running the game on a Athlon64 XP 3000+ processor with 1024 MB RAM under Windows XP Professional (32, not 64 Bit), with a ATI Raedon 9600 graphics card (128 MB).

 

[Simplicity]

I am currently experiencing a strange problem with the game - when I am saving, Texture data seems to be unloaded - certain parts of the game (like the items in the inventory) because replaced with generic "Texture Missing"-icons and similar effects. In addition, I can't start dialogues. If I exit the game and reload the save game, the problem disappears, until the next save.

I am running the game on a Athlon64 XP 3000+ processor with 1024 MB RAM under Windows XP Professional (32, not 64 Bit), with a ATI Raedon 9600 graphics card (128 MB).

It really sounds like your graphics card is having a hard time keeping up with all the data. I'm assuming you've tried lowering the shadows. Also try reducing the resolution and the texture sizes.

I got it working on an ATI Radeon 9800 on medium shadows and 1280x1024. But when I went higher, I would start to lose things (like the Save button wouldn't show up on a save). You're definitely going to have to go with lower settings.

 

[trancejeremy]

If there are 20 different helmets you are now talking about 70 models for characters without helms and 1400 models for those with helms. For a whooping total of 1470 head models. I'm not a 3D modeller and my attempts are pathetic at best. But lets just say that it takes 30 minutes to model each head model. It would take approximately 92 man days to complete the modeling work, just for faces. That is 3 months of solid work just on that "cheesy oversight".

I think the developer had higher priority things to concentrate on just to put out a functional game.

Couldn't they just follow the way that the Sims 2 does, and simply merge the model of the helmet over the model of the head? (or replace it, if it's a closed helmet) Yeah, you occasionally get clipping issues, but it's much nicer all around (and less work).

 

[trancejeremy]

Oblivion's facial system is utter crap. It's next to impossible to make anything remotely decent-looking with that, unless you spend hours only creating the face (and even then it's far from great).

Such a system must be extremely simple (a couple choices, like body-type, face-type, hair-style, various colors, some extras (tattoos and stuff), etc), highly variable (thousands of different looks) and very effective (they must all look cool in some way and appeal to a wide range of players).

Yeah, but that's only because by tradition, everyone in an Elder Scrolls game is ugly. Similar facial systems have produced good (and attractive) results in games like The Sims 2 and the Movies.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Couldn't they just follow the way that the Sims 2 does, and simply merge the model of the helmet over the model of the head? (or replace it, if it's a closed helmet) Yeah, you occasionally get clipping issues, but it's much nicer all around (and less work).

Um, that's what they do now, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. If you mean a sort of physics-y draping effect, I have the feeling that while it may be possible out of battle, there is just WAY too much going on in battle CPU wise to make that possible.

Besides, there'd be hell if there were clipping issues too.