Neverwinter Nights 2: Obsidian Entertainment on Developer Chats

Some interesting posts in response to the Dev Chat:

Well, I would have preferred to receive the questions before hand. That away we could have answered ALL of them.

However, this is how it went. We all logged on at various degrees of 'lateness'. Some of us were NOT in the staff channel where we were trying to discuss the questions. There was confusion over that and trying to get everybody together. That could have been handled a LOT better, but alas it was not in the instructions we received for the chat.

Second, the questions were coming in at an ALARMING rate. Many of the questions were very poorly written. Just for the record, if you WANT to get your question skipped, make sure it has 17 parts to it. Sheesh, we only have an hour folks.

Third, considering the questions that were well written and understandable we still had a lot of questions left. RedR (bless him) was trying to keep it organized in the staff channel, but several of us were answering different questions at the same time.

As for the flub at the end, by that time we finally had a system down and we were screening and answering the questions in a timely manner. So when I said 'roll the VFX one' RedR already knew what I was talking about because we had already answered it.

For many of us, this was our first or second chat. I haven't even USED IRC since my days at Netscape/Firefox.

Anyway, I wanna thank everyone who was there, it was a lot of fun in spite of the confusion and I would love to do it again.

I said it in a different thread, but it bears repeating. If you do want a question answered, make it brief, to the point, and clear.

- Anthony Davis

So after a few comments, Pipboy3000 chimed in with this:

I wouldn't mind if the next chat moderator took questions first, passed them along, and gave OE a chance to research questions first.

Then the chat would have the format:
Question
Answer
Discussion

Say pick 10 questions to answer and give the community a few chances to ask clarifying questions about each. They could be passed through RedR or the channel could be opened up.

Personally I thought the pace was a little slow, but then again I'm a fast reader/typist.

Anthony Davis once again tossed his hat in the ring with this:

If they did go with this format, they would need to submit slightly more than the number of questions we want to answer. I.E. if we are going to answer 10, submit 15. We still need to leave wiggle room for things we can't, won't answer.

PIPboy answered with... um... this:

Sound advice.

I know that I wouldn't want to comment on my parents' bedroom behaviors.

To which I shuddered... then noticed that dunniteowl asked these here questions:

1) Can we "copy adjacent area tile edges" and use them in the border to maintain continuity? In the alternative, can the borders be shut off (for PW folks who don't want all that extra footprint?)

2) Is there any way we can use GMax for making placeables or will we have to use something "bigger?" ie: 3DS Max or some other expensive equivalent?

3) How much "room" will the .2da files have for entering CCC without overwriting original OC/SP data?

And BAM! Anthony Davis blows us all away with this answer RIGHT HERE!:

1. I'm not sure if you can copy and paste, and I don't know if the borders can be turned off.

2. I wasn't aware the GMax was still supported. I honestly don't know if GMax will work.

3. Since I am not sure exactly what all these acronyms mean, I will guess...
How much "room" will the .2da files have for entering 'Custom Content Creation' without overwriting original 'Original Campaign'/'Single Player' data? I don't really understand the question since 2DA's are flat files with no real max length to them. Is there a specific 2DA that is a problem?

Sorry I wasn't much help at all with these. See normally I would leave these blank since I do not have a good answer for them.

As you can see very exciting stuff!!

The full thread is located here.