Development Info Witch's Wake canned!

Saint_Proverbius · Mar 6, 2003

Tags: Neverwinter Nights: Witch's Wake

Per <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=197432&forum=70&sp=0">this post</a> on the <A href="http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/">official forums</a> for <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com">Neverwinter Nights</a>, the <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/module_witchwake.html">Witch's Wake</a> free expansion to the game has been canned.
 
 
<blockquote>I have some breaking news regarding my recent reassignment. My prototyping work on the unannounced project is now drawing to a close and it's gone extremely well. A little *too* well, actually, as it appears I've caught the attention of some of our other internal development teams. I'll be taking this coming week off to attend the Game Developer's Conference and, on my return, I'm being reassigned (re-reassigned?) to yet another project. We don't have a clear end date for this new assignment but it's looking to last a little longer than this past one.
 
 
What does this mean for Witch Wake 2? Well, I certainly enjoy working on Witch Wake. What is more, everyone involved here at BioWare agrees that WW1 was an overwhelming success and that the series is definitely a worthwhile endeavor. With that in mind, the project is by no means dead. Unfortunately, the simple fact of the matter is that these other assignments currently take priority which means development work on Witch's Wake will be suspended until further notice. I'll see if I can release a beta version of the revised WW2 template for those interested in the changes I've made to some of the underlying systems.
 
 
I apologize for the disappointing news. On the bright side, those of you who enjoyed my work on the Witch's Wake will be pleased to know that my contributions will be making their way into a variety of BioWare's upcoming titles.</blockquote>
 
 
For such a worthy endevour, I guess it was just taking too much time cutting and pasting user mods in to a shallow, dialogue driven environment where all you had to do was make sure you clicked every dialogue option, rather than read them, just to level up as much as possible.
 
 
Thanks, Sabotai, for the head's up on this!

Rosh · Mar 6, 2003

Well, who saw that coming?

Wait, who didn't see that coming?

Walks with the Snails · Mar 6, 2003

Don't worry. He said he'll be posting what he can. Some well-meaning fan will finish it for them, as usual.

jvn3t · Mar 6, 2003

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Well, moving on...

Rosh · Mar 6, 2003

Walks with the Snails said:
Some well-meaning fan will finish it for them, as usual.

Yeah, just like for every other thing they've said would take far too long, the fans go and humiliate them by proving just how full of it the developers are.

Jed · Mar 6, 2003

I guess I'm not really surprised, though I'm a little sad. While the first installment obviously wasn't anything ground-breaking (best case scenario: PS:T-lite), it was the best mod I have played for NWN thus far. Looks like I'll never get my $50 worth. Or even $25 worth, considering that I just finished Prelude to Darkness and it blew NWN out of the water in every important regard. NWN is the gift that keeps on taking; meaning that the longer time goes on, the more I feel ripped-off. Fuck you, Bioware.

Rosh · Mar 6, 2003

XJEDX said:
Looks like I'll never get my $50 worth. Or even $25 worth, considering that I just finished Prelude to Darkness and it blew NWN out of the water in every important regard. NWN is the gift that keeps on taking; meaning that the longer time goes on, the more I feel ripped-off. Fuck you, Bioware.

It's like a giant sphincter in space. But instead of blowing out stuff, it just sucks it all in!

POOPERSCOOPER · Mar 7, 2003

hey

I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community, and all they get is Witch's Wake after waiting for months. 2-3 hours of linear gameplay= months to make? Way to show the ease of use of the NWN toolset :lol:

Rosh · Mar 7, 2003

Re: hey

POOPERSCOOPER said:
I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community

Hey, no different from any of their other lies, broken promises, hype, etc.

POOPERSCOOPER · Mar 7, 2003

Re: hey

Rosh said:
POOPERSCOOPER said:

I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community

Click to expand...

Hey, no different from any of their other lies, broken promises, hype, etc.

So true.

Saint_Proverbius · Mar 7, 2003

Re: hey

POOPERSCOOPER said:
I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community, and all they get is Witch's Wake after waiting for months. 2-3 hours of linear gameplay= months to make? Way to show the ease of use of the NWN toolset

It wouldn't be that bad if it were one guy making new assets for the game, like custom models and graphics, coding/scripting, etc. all by himself. We're not talking about that though. We're talking about a module which had a BioWare guy, a supposedly professional developer who had experience with both design and those editors before the public had them, using code from various mods to help build the thing.

The sad thing is, I bet a lot of NWN fans will say something like, "Oh, well, that's okay. At least we'll be able to buy products with that kind of design in them later on!"

Jiles · Mar 7, 2003

Re: hey

Rosh said:
POOPERSCOOPER said:

I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community

Click to expand...

Hey, no different from any of their other lies, broken promises, hype, etc.

There's still hope for the Linux client...

j/k

Sabotai · Mar 7, 2003

What I find incomprehensible in the extreme is the fact that they don't let him finish the second part or even a rough version. It's been almost 3 months since part 1 and he should be in the final stages of completing the second module.

Whats the rush with the reassignment? Give the guy two more weeks in which he can at least produce a rough (playable) version. This way Bioware is kicking a lot of fans in the nuts, again...

They won't hurt me anymore since I started wearing a "Bioware groin protector(TM)" while playing the chapter 1 of NWN OC (found it together with a +4 magic thingy somewhere in a crate in Beggar's Nest).

Jarinor · Mar 7, 2003

Re: hey

POOPERSCOOPER said:
I love how Bioware said they would be consistantly making new mods for the community, and all they get is Witch's Wake after waiting for months. 2-3 hours of linear gameplay= months to make? Way to show the ease of use of the NWN toolset

Pretty standard dev time, considering it took five years or more to make NWN itself.

Section8 · Mar 7, 2003

"Damn this shit needed some thought, while I could be kicking it with the rad motherfuckers in the Star Wars universe. Just thnik, I could be writing 2000 words worth of shit per day as opposed to this thinking caper."

Bioware are cunts. Everything they do is worse than the last thing they've done. Like Magic Johnson said to Homer Simpson - "Oh don't worry, sooner or later, those people get found out for the frauds they really are." I hope everyone related to a Bioware employee gets cancer. Fuck you. Die. Bastards, you think you're so cool.

Sabotai · Mar 7, 2003

And one week to go to a Game Developer Conference??? WTF do they do there? Compare their latest dev. ideas? Don't think so, because somebody else might steal yours. They are probably trying to find new ways in which to augment their customers base (read "dumb down games").

Spazmo · Mar 7, 2003

GDC is a big gaming show. Most devs use this opportunity to show off their upcoming games. Check any major gaming news site, and you'll see headlines with stuff like: "GDC 2003: Homeworld 2 first impressions" and whatnot.

Sabotai · Mar 7, 2003

Is it like the E3 show or is it just a show... uhh conference for developers? Is there an other purpose except to show your game in development to the press and other developers?.

Spazmo · Mar 7, 2003

Presumably, the developers do get together and get drunk or something. I don't know. They do vote on the best games of the year, though, and they have awards and everything.

Sabotai · Mar 7, 2003

Found this bit about GDC 2003 at Gamespy:

"Every year, in the lull after the holidays and before the big Electronic Entertainment Expo, the greatest game developers of the world (and the promising would-be game developers in their shadow) gather together in one place to talk about their art. Welcome to the Game Developers Conference! But the seminars and speeches are only the beginning; every year new technology is demonstrated, new gaming platforms are introduced, and when we mercilessly pin developers against the wall and grill them they sometimes spill the beans about new games and game ideas they're working on. It's a week to look back at past sucesses or failures and to look forward at what's coming next."

Still fuzzy to me what the added value of this conference is with all the other shows around.

Spazmo · Mar 7, 2003

More gaming news is good.

Sabotai · Mar 7, 2003

That's tue, though I'd rather see those developers do an extra week of game developing instead of getting drunk and listen to speeches. Hell, even Which Wake II might have been finished.

Psilon · Mar 7, 2003

Regarding NWN again, it's simply staggering how much they messed up the engine. Completely ludicrous. Five years and almost the entire thing is hard-coded. At least Unreal was extensible when it came out. Diablo II took three years, and it (gasp) actually worked, even after patches!

And you're neglecting the other BioWare modules. Let's see, we have some pointless pseudo-board games (chess, chickens-vs.-penguins, catapults), three horrible hack-and-slash "adventures," and two unbalanced PvP arenas. Chess probably took the longest of any of them, and that's largely because they couldn't be bothered to add arrays to NWScript and so had to code around that lack.

There is absolutely no reason why they had to go forth and create a crappy compiler and IDE when they could have used something like Python and made life easier for all involved. That way, people who don't already know how to program can learn a useful language, and those who do can avoid hypertension caused by lack of useful language features. (It's like being a longtime Perl user who's forced to use Applesoft BASIC.)

Spazmo · Mar 7, 2003

Actually, Diablo II is horribly broken in terms of game balance today, which is an important lesson about overbalancing a game.

On the plus side, it'll be a lot of fun to see the community's reaction when the next patch (which is reportedly going to be a mother of a patch) comes out.

Darkness40k · Mar 7, 2003

erm...

My over all imptression of that statement is that WW2 will be made, just in a couple of months. Seeing as he says its NOT dead.

/me shrugs

If WW1 was the best module that anyone has played on NWN, then you should check out the shadowlords series , dreamcatcher series, Lone wolf series, and Maugeter modulea. Those are soem good modules

WW1 was crap, it was very short, very linear. The only good thing was the cut scenes, and death scripts, but dreamcatcher 1 and 2 all do these much much better.

if anyone on this site even cares:
http://adamandjamie.com/nwn/ - Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher
http://www.warpedproject.com/~maugeter/ - Maugeter
http://people.clemson.edu/~bmcjunk/Magnamund.html - Lone Wolf

NWN the greatest RPG maker of all time... shame about the SP game.

Development Info Witch's Wake canned!

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