Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark Wrap Report

Changes and Enhancements Darcy Pajak: I think the biggest changes after the original product was completed were the addition of skyboxes and robes. The original concept was made back in October 2002, and at the time, we knew that the community wanted robes, but we did not think we could do it properly. There were some large technical issues to overcome regarding the way they flowed and hung off a player, and we wanted to make them look realistic. During the year of developing both Hordes and Shadows of Undrentide, Trent investigated the whole robe issue; he spoke to programmers, artists and animators, and finally decided to make the robes himself. It was difficult to keep them a secret from the community for a long time.

The addition of skyboxes was something else that changed halfway through development. A few community members created skyboxes for their modules, and we thought they looked very good. Coupled with that, we had planned to unlock the camera view for Hordes, and we thought that the skyboxes would be a great supplement to the unlocked camera. Unfortunately, Hordes was designed to take place mostly underground, so we could not showcase them as much as we wanted to.

Major Challenges Trent Oster: Our largest challenge had to be making a massive expansion with limited resources. At the same time we were developing the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, most of BioWare was busy finishing off Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. What this meant to us was no access to the rest of the talent pool; we had to make the game with only the people assigned full-time to the expansion. We met the challenge head-on and based all our plans on what we could realistically pull off. Our plans were aggressive and required a great deal of extra work, but it was attainable within our planned timeline.

We also decided to hold some features back from the public until we were sure we could implement them fully. We did not want to disappoint our fans by promising a feature we just couldn't get in, so we didn't talk about robes or the skybox additions until very late in the development of the title. In the end, we met our challenges head-on with hard work and the title was completed.

Best Decisions Trent Oster: Keeping the siege in chapter 2 was the best decision we made. We had a great deal of pressure to complete the game on time, and cutting the siege would have made the ship target much easier. Our decision to keep the siege in and accept the pain that resulted makes the story much more fulfilling. We felt the quality of the gameplay experience would be hit too hard if the siege was removed, and I still think we were correct.

Key Strengths Trent Oster: Our team excelled in a large number of areas, chief of which was discipline. When a person signed off on any component of the game, you could be sure it was well implemented and tested. We worked some long hours and pushed quite hard at a few points, but the discipline to self-test and keep quality high at all times always remained. BioWare has many exceptional people who contribute to our games, and the Hordes team was a top-notch group throughout.

Areas for Improvement Darcy Pajak: There were two things that did not work out exactly as we wanted. The first, I feel, was the cutscene transitions. That is when the game engine takes control away from the player and shows a scene laid out and directed by the designers. While this did add a lot to the overall storytelling aspect of the expansions, there were complications with the game mechanics. We make a copy of the player, turn it invisible, and move it around to position the camera. However, players with enhancement or protection spells would still appear, and it would look nasty. Trying to fix it, we uncovered many other issues involving the players, other AI-controlled party members and summoned monsters or magic-user familiars.

In Shadows of Undrentide, we used them sparingly and strategically so they would not adversely affect the user, and planned to for Hordes. But the response we received was that people loved the cutscenes, so we took the risk and added more for Hordes of the Underdark. We added enough support so 90% of the time, there was not a problem. However, Neverwinter Nights is a very large game with many, many options and pathways, and the possibility of running into a totally freak bug is always there.

The second area that did not work out as well as we wanted was the item crafting system. In most situations, making and upgrading weapons worked well. However, near the end we found some minor issues that made this system not work perfectly. The best example I can give is one people may have already noticed; when a player was upgrading a weapon at the magic forge in chapter two and three, they couldn't change its name. Therefore, a +3 long sword would always be called a +3 long sword, even if the player had upgraded it to a +4 or +10. This did not affect the game much, though it did bother me that my weapon had the wrong name.