Brothers in Arms

A guild in the Gof Federation                                    

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Toolset
The Neverwinter Toolset is the module creation utility included with Neverwinter Nights that will allow Dungeon Masters to either recreate their favorite classic AD&D module or create new ones from scratch.
Description
Intuitive and easy to use as possible, the Neverwinter Toolset will be powerful enough to recreate most home campaigns and classic modules. While you may not be able to faithfully recreate every trap in the Tomb of Horrors and there may not be models for this item or that exact monster or terrain type, the Neverwinter Toolset should be able to create an easily recognizable facsimile of that special tale or imaginary world you've grown to love, whatever it may be.

You will be able to draw from extensive libraries of pre-existing content or create your own. All buildings, terrain, and dungeon spaces, can be painted down using intuitive and context-sensitive tiles. At the same time, the powerful, Neverwinter Scripting Language allows you to weave your stories and create characters that behave in an intelligent fashion (this includes engaging in fully customizable conversations and dialog chains that you create). You will even be able to create new creatures and items based on templates provided for your convenience. And after the initial game ships, additional artwork and content is planned to be added expanding the capability and allowing more and more things possible over the course of time.

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Tilesets
A module will be made up of one or more areas. Each area represents a single location such as grasslands or the main floor of an inn and is constructed using a tileset. Each tileset is comprised of hundreds of individual tiles with dozens of different textures that represent different parts of the area. At this point, the maximum area size of 1024 tiles (32x32).

Tiles are 10m x 10m with a height of either 0m, 4.5m or 9 m. Additionally, tiles can be stacked to create even taller structures. Instead of positioning a particular object on a particular tile, tiles include objects like buildings, trees, walls, rocks etc. Since tiles are ten meters square, the smallest building essentially fills one tile. Larger buildings are groups of multiple tiles, while some structures like castles are sub-tilesets of a larger tileset. By making each floor or level of the building/castle/dungeon a separate area, there is really no limit the the size of a module.

To speed up the module creation process, each building comes with its own default custom interior. There will be a small degree of customizability of these interiors but for the most part it will be limited to swapping in a small number of variant tiles (such as an optional subterranean access). If you so choose, you can take the time to mix and match different exteriors and interiors. This allows custom buildings such as a tavern inside an old manor house or a door in a wizard's tower that leads to a massive illusionary forest.

The list of terrain tilesets includes (but is not limited to):

  • Castle Neverwinter
  • Castle Luskan
  • Dungeon Sewer
  • Dungeon Mines
  • Dungeon Crypt
  • Dungeon Evil
  • Terrain Rural
  • Terrain Cavern
  • Terrain Forest
  • Interior Rural
  • Interior City
  • Interior Neverwinter Castle
  • Interior Luskan Castle
Each terrain tileset includes suitable buildings, streams, waterfalls, coastlines, impassable chasms, forests, and bodies of water on three traversable height levels. Beyond these, Neverwinter Nights will include a wide variety of buildings and structures of both a unique and a generic nature, a number of special tiles, a large number of variations on basic tile models, and, of course, some plot-specific tilesets that will be keep secret.

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Portals
Neverwinter Game Servers can be linked through "Portals." Portals are gateways between two Game Servers, allowing players to travel between worlds simply by stepping through them. When a character comes across a portal, they can examine it much like any other object. The portal description will include all of the target server settings like PvP [player killing] and death options as well as indicating the approximate lag to the server. If the character does not meet the requirements of the target server, the player is not teleported and re-appears beside the original server's Portal. If the server on the other end is currently not operational, the Portal will appear closed. Additionally, when a Vault character passes through a portal, the character is checked back into the vault and then immediately checked back out to the new server.

Two types of portals exist: one-way and two-way. When a character travels through a one-way portal, they appear at the entry point of the module on the target server. This would be same as if the character had logged off the first server and then logged into the second. One-way portals do not require permission from the target server since normal login restrictions apply.

A two-way portal is established when one server requests the link and the other server grants it. Once a Portal is created, it remains until removed by one of the server operators. Once the portal is connected on both servers, characters can step back and forth between the two worlds.

A portal is placed as any object on the terrain is placed, you simply select the location and drop the portal. It will be possible to flag an edge transition as a portal to another server and when the character walks off the edge he/she will be asked if he/she wishes to travel to the new server. For a group of servers sharing a server character database, the yes/no can be disabled.

The implications of this Portal system are pretty mind-boggling. By distributing the different areas and population load over a number of computers with decent Internet connections, the game world can know no boundaries. On a smaller scale, a player guild or adventuring party can link a chapter's worth of BioWare's story-based modules to each other, allowing them to adventure freely through the larger story environment by passing from Portal to Portal. Freewheeling MUDs and MUSHes could also emerge where people cobble their different creations together into a larger, cosmopolitan world of adventure. Neverwinter Nights is all about getting people together and Portals allow that to happen on a grander, even more exciting scale.

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