12/22/99 - Latest News

News on NWN
Berendir @ 6:43 pm EST

Heres some bits of info from the Neverwinter Nights Vault.

Module Length

I just want to remind everyone that each module is designed to approximate one evening of gaming (roughly 2 to 4 hours of gameplay, depending on module and playstyle). I suspect that in most cases, at least, people will play a module together then go their separate ways to meet again for another gaming session the following evening. In other words, most people will be jumping back to the Neverwinter.net matching service in between modules anyways, so the trouble you describe won't even be a factor.

On the other hand, we are planning on a auto-load function whereby the server can be instructed to automatically load 'the next module' (as the campaign is largely non-linear, the term 'next' is relative and up to whoever's hosting the game session) once the current one is comp leted. This is an advanced feature and one that will be used primarily by our hardcore players. In this case, the thief from your example would be carried forward into the new module with everyone else. If this annoys you, whoever's hosting the game session does have the power to boot the uncooperative player and ban them from the server.

Module Parts

We're aiming for a pretty free system of importing and exporting terrain, creatures, scripts, items, etc, between modules. Each has its own file type that can be extracted from the larger module file with relative ease. So yes, fusing multiple smaller modules into a single large one (especially if they all consist of fully independent areas) should be a relatively painless process.