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From the Icewind Dale II forums:Josh SawyerArmor
http://feedback.blackisle.com/images/icewind2armor.jpg
Base version of weapons
http://feedback.blackisle.com/images/icewind2weapons.jpg
State of the Build
Hello. Since no one believes we are actually doing any work anymore, I figured I'd fabricate a small list of things that we're tackling at the moment to give the illusion that we're busy.
* 7 Blue Stars -- There are seven quests in the game that currently cannot be completed as written. All but one of these stars are in the last chapter of the game.
* 81 Green Stars -- There are eighty-one quests in the game that need to be soundly throttled to make certain they cannot be broken in any way, including multiplayer. Most of these 81 green stars are in the second half of the game and deal with puzzles or other particularly complicated quests.
* Spell DCs -- There are currently problems with the way saving throw DCs for spells are being calculated. The game is deriving the wrong ability score bonuses. This is a big bug, and is eating much programmer time.
* Item Descriptions and Useable By Flags -- These are being double-checked. The rules for using scrolls and wands in 3E is very wonky, especially with Use Magic Device involved. Also taking a lot of time.
The shot has gone across the division. Absolutely nothing gets added to the game unless it is of critical (read: fix a broken part of the game) importance. Many of the artists working on Jefferson have been asked to play through IWD2 for a few days just to give a fresh perspective on it. Kihan Pak and I have reached the final chapter of the game through more or less legitimate play (had to set a few Global variables now and then when a quest was broken). The Hands of Fury are now level 14, and fights are still challenging without being ridiculous. The final area of the game should be a lot of fun for players, I think. It has a very nice balance of fighting, talking, exploration, ROELEPLAYEINGE, and puzzle-solving.
How about changing the Old Order back to "multiclass freely with rogue" as it's supposed to be?
Rogue is currently the Old Order's "allowed" multiclass.
Amount of deities for clerics
Nine. Ilmater, Lathander, Selune, Helm, Oghma, Tempus, Bane, Mask, and Talos.
What does one have to do to make a new order?
Technically speaking, orders are kits -- that's pretty much it. They should be as easy or difficult to modify as kits.
Again, the delay
You know why the game isn't done yet? It's pretty simple. Right before we made the massive 3E push, I sat down with Darren and the programmers to schedule each of the individual changes and everything that they would entail. When we collectively were done with that, I asked Darren if the amount of time required to implement, test, and bugfix all of those changes, times two, would still fall before our release date. We believed it would.
In fact, the changes took more than four times as long. Every time something seemed to be implemented without error, a bug would appear that required backtracking and revision. Often, these changes required modification of the file formats. When file formats get changed, crying occurs. Designers typically have to spend time double- or triple-checking their files for shifts in data that may have occurred. That's time they aren't spending on fixing their areas themselves. Sometimes, this affects script-folk as well.
The biggest problems were changes to how saving throws worked and how spells were classified and cast. This, combined with the known time-sink of free multiclassing, still haunts us today. So, if you want to blame someone for why the game isn't done, blame me and/or Darren for making poor estimations for implementation. There are no excuses for it. Quite simply, we just believed something could be done in a given amount of time and were incorrect. Three big things were more complicated than we initially thought, and the level of complication was far greater than we initially could have safeguarded against.
As for why there is no release date. Man -- no one in this division can get a release date. Our distributors and their buddy retailers get told so many bizarre final dates from people in development, marketing, public relations, and management that it's no wonder the thing floats around so damned much. Blizzard is a few miles from us, with ex-co-workers a-plenty, and we have no real idea when WC3 is coming out.
Last year at E3, I was demo-ing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. During the course of the show, I saw people who ostensibly work for Interplay (or some satellite Interplay company) give out a variety of release dates for the game that seemed to be pulled out of a hat. Even for people that I know were discussing North American release dates, the dates varied by as much as six months. I see these people once a year at E3. Who knows to what corners of the globe they travel when it all gets packed up? Who knows where/what/why they have the dates they do? The publishing and distribution side of the computer game industry annoys me greatly, because it's so detached from development -- people are basically playing Release Date Tetris between developer, publisher, distributor, and retailer. I can try to give a good estimate of when the game will be finished and mostly bug free, but as for when it will be released -- man, I really have no idea.
Chad Nicolas (Briareus)Weapon combos
I know that for weapons that give other bonuses (+5 fire resistance for example) that switching weapon combos does remove the effects of a weapon that is not 'active.'
You may not have to memorize anything by clicking on it, but you do by resting. For example, you can cast 6 level 1 spells. You wield a staff that adds +2 1st level spells. You can now cast 8 level 1 spells and rest. You can now cast 8 magic missiles. If you take the item off, you'll go down to 6 Magic Missiles.
Some Q&A
Q: In IWD it is possible you kill an unique character and when you return it is again there, Stubbletoes is an example. Are there examples in IWDII.
A: Game critical characters are flagged as such. If you kill them, the game ends and tells you that you've killed a game critical character. If you can kill someone and the game doesn't end, you can consider that person gone forever (unless some other NPC comes along and resurects them, of course).
Q: Spellcasters do get stuck in their cast, they never finish the spell. They can be moved and stop it however. The spell is gone in that case.
A: I haven't seen any of my casters get stuck. If you move a caster during their casting, they do lose the spell.
Q: If characters wear certain hp boosting objects and you do save the game with them on very low hp(below the boost of the objects) and reload that they are actually dead.
A: I'm pretty sure that's been fixed.
Q: Trolls are killable by more than acid and fire. Phase them and they die, freeze them and you smash them apart, etc. Is this still in.
A: No phasing or freezing in the game
Q: Casting touch based spells on a NPC immediatedly leads to that character being attacked by the NPC, which makes almost all touch based spells useless since only high end characters are viable targets and hence are able to hit your cleric, etc.
A: NPCs attack their enemies based on certain criteria. If your tanks are using ranged attacks and your cleric runs up to smack someone in the face with an Inflict spell, prepare to be attacked back. However, I use a Dreadmaster of Bane in my test party and I don't have a problem with being attacked back right away.
Q: Summoned trolls sometimes cannot be killed by the NPC's and hence you can shoot them down with arrows very easily. I took out 13 spectral guards with my ranger while they all tried to hit the troll or get close enough to hit it. This was on HoF mode. After reloading I took them out with spells which is very very hard. Are such thing still in?
A: Players cannot cast any spell that summons a troll.
Q: Is HoF taken in consideration with spells like Power word: kill? Seeing for example Maldurak casting it about 7 times without even affecting the fly squatting my clerics ass was pathetic.
A: Do you mean do they do an HP check before casting it? Not currently. *evil grin*
Q: The turning ability of an evil cleric was less effective than that of a good one. Changed?
A: How so? I really like rebuking the undead and make them punch each other in the face.
Q: Doing statistics on magical blades and the percentages on which they do something special is shocking. A 50% change of doing 2d8 fire-damage for example turns out to be more of a 10%. Are these percentages honest this time?
A: If it says 50% chance, then it's a 50% chance when you actually hit with the weapon. Not when you make a swing animation but no attack roll, or when you make an attack roll but don't actually hit your target.
Q: Objects that can be used for an effect "number" per day. Often don't reset correctly if before sleeping only a part of the options is used hence leading to an useless item.
A: I haven't had any problems with items like that in the game.
Q: My ranger/cleric, doesn't gain the correct number of spell slots, she's always one behind. Same now?
A: Those 2E clases have all been scrapped and recreated from scratch. Consider it fixed now.
Q: The maximum number of available spell slots is not large enough for what is possible to obtain without cheating.
A: I'm not sure I follow you on this one. The number of spells you can cast per day is working as per 3E ROOLZ.
Q: The maximum number of summoned creatures is 6 but the NPC can control alot(almost 40 for Maldurak in my case).
A: Same.
Q: The real problem is that the NPC's you want to inflict touch based spells on always immediatedly focussed on the caster. Is this still so or is there more diversity, depending on the general IQ of the race your fighting?
A: Most NPCs in the game just attack the nearest enemy. If you're cleric runs up to slap someone in the face with an Inflict spell, there is a chance they could become the nearest enemy and be attacked. From my own personal experience, if I just have my melee tanks run up first, my cleric won't get attacked back unless the creature has been scripted to go after clerics.
Q: I cannot guess the HP so so shouldn't they. But is it in that they use it more smartly now. Cast it once, then do some damage before trying again? I know this goes for other spells.
A: No, they'll only cast a spell if it has a chance to affect you. For example, no one will fire a Magic Missile at you if you're in a Globe of Invulernability.
Q: Example: 6 undead attack my cleric(good), she starts turning and turns 4. They walk away. Now I try it with my cleric(evil), she turns 1.5(on average) to her side. Even if I take it the nicest way possible it should be atleast 2 that should be turned. Shouldn't it?
A: I'm not sure how it worked exactly in IwD1. In 2, the number turned will be the same for good and evil clerics (assuming the same level and charisma).
Q: I checked this by looking at the combined hits versus only a normal hit. In my case it should be 2 normal : 1 magical, it is 10 : 1 in this case. Other weapon showed for me almost the same pattern, although it's better at lower hit changes for the magical property.
A: Hmm, sounds like a bug. I know I've used a weapon that does 50% electricity, and it seems to actually 50% of the time it goes off. Yay.
Q: Is there a command that makes the NPC check your status once every how many seconds?(If you have the time could you pm this to me?)
A: We have new fancy-pants script functions that do this when the caster tries to cast the spell. I don't have time to go into detail of how our new casting functions work right now, though. Feel free to ask me again after IwD2 ships.
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Icewind Dale II Forum Update
