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Nwn eye of the beholder 35/18/2023 ![]() For the most part, this solved the issue but every once in a while someone does something that we haven't accounted for. We had to go in and change how the global effect worked. This happened because the player was doing something or interacted with or attacked an NPC that caused their faction to make another NPC later in the game hostile towards the player. Some of the NPCs could be unexpectedly hostile towards the player. "We have had some real issues earlier on with these behaving unexpectedly. "Faction assignments were also a big challenge," says Francis. But that was hardly the only roadblock to making the Aurora Engine play nice with Westwood's original design. The team's solution was to set up portals in each level where you could leave AI henchmen until you were ready to bring them back into the fold. All I can say is save often when you get to these areas or have a potion of recall ready."įrancis acknowledges that getting companions through those traps can be a hassle Neverwinter Nights' AI and pathing quirks don't always mix well with Eye of the Beholder II's navigation style, which had you advancing one tile at a time. Trust me when I say there will be a few people out there pulling their hair out trying to navigate through them for the first time. "This is where came in and figured it out. ![]() ![]() In fact it can be more difficult at times." "These pit traps open and close randomly and have a specific timing involved with how you navigate them." "I would have to say recreating the timing of the pit traps on the Azure Tower and the Frost Giant Prison levels were the biggest challenge to recreate," Francis told me recently. Francis and his team had a lot of work cut out for them if they wanted to transfer the spirit of the original into a brand-new engine. Fortunately, Neverwinter Nights holds up far better, though you play it from an isometric perspective, not in first-person. By today's standards, navigating through the endless brown corridors is monotonous and clumsy, though at the time, it was easy to lose yourself in the fantasy of mages fighting off untold evils. So a quick Eye of the Beholder primer: in the original games, you moved your party through dungeons in a first-person view, fighting monsters by pointing and clicking. You might never have played either of those games after all, both were released in 1991, and the GameBoy Advance version of the original is more than a decade old. This isn't Francis's first foray into the Dungeons & Dragons universe, however: he also created an extraordinarily well-received Neverwinter Nights mod for the original Eye of the Beholder, so it only seemed right he move on to the sequel. Francis's latest pet project is nearing completion, and it brings to life the classic Westwood D&D role-playing game Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon using the original Neverwinter Nights' Aurora engine. Over the years, Francis has worked with the original Unreal engine, created custom maps for Command & Conquer, and brought cooperative play to Rune. Yet if you've been modifying PC games for any length of time, the appeal of an updated classic comes as no surprise: Modders have been re-creating the classics for years with the tools of their choice. If the recent glut of high-definition remakes and tributes to games of the past are any indication, nostalgia sells.
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