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Instanced dungeons

Every persistent world should have dungeons. These are private instances or "runs" that can be concluded by a group of players inside a limited time. Each dungeon is only available to the one group that created it by using the entrance. Thus they are called instances. It can be that the areas inside the run are randomly created or dependant on happenings on the "surface world", which is the main hub of the persistent world. Some dungeons are not accessible at all times or open up as a result of dialogs and achievements.
Dungeon runs are both exciting and profitable in terms of loot and xp. They can yield unique ways to progress as an adventurer.
Instanced dungeons also increase the effective player limit of a dedicated server and can be used as a means to reduce server lag. Several servers hosting the same module/pw can be interconnected and allow players to distribute themselvers around a whole network or server-cluster.
To allow for instanced dungeons, very few changes would need to be made to the core game. Server transition dialog simply needs to include a configuration option that allows both for seamless transitions and admission protocol security.

Comments

  • BalanorBalanor Member Posts: 176
    Is this a PSA or an announcement that you want the ability to create instanced dungeons in NWN:EE? If it is an announcement that you want to be able to create instanced dungeons in NWN:EE, then yes, you will be able to. In build 8152 they added a number of area scripting functions, including those to CreateArea and CopyArea. While they are currently broken (or at least I haven't been able to get them to work in voice commands to create/copy an area since they crash the client), once operational they should be able to do what you want.
  • HipsterHipster Member Posts: 39
    very cool :blush:
    I don't know what PSA mean but no, not an announcement.
    It's just a suggestion that doesn't seem to fit in any other thread. The main change required seem to be that servers with the flag "allow premade characters" will allow anyone to enter the dungeon just by clicking IP. And the annoying dialog window that seems to pop up when you call it as a function (-immersion). Just really simple to do i think.
    About dynamic content, while this is very likely far beyond my own capabilies as a scripter, it seems liker a good idea to incorporate the "Endless Dungeons" or something similar. Just for the grind of it all :smiley:
    And another thing might be that a nice dialog pops up asking all party or guild members for peerrmission to enter another instance.
  • britishjbritishj Member Posts: 44
    Really great idea! And I had no idea there were already broken functions for this added, can't wait till their implemented correctly :)
  • loudentloudent Member Posts: 40

    While the ability to actually "Instance" dungeons would be welcome, the toolset provides us with a way to create a reasonable facsimile. I had random "instanced" (in that only the player and his party could enter at any given time) dungeons that had end room boss fights and was also tied into a random quest system.

    The toolset is really quite amazing. I regret that it would be near impossible to find any remnants of my old world and the extensive scripting I did for it.


  • voidofopinionvoidofopinion Member, Moderator Posts: 1,248
    loudent said:


    The toolset is really quite amazing. I regret that it would be near impossible to find any remnants of my old world and the extensive scripting I did for it.

    I feel ya there.

    Ive spent the past year working on a new project because my old PW wont open due to missing haks, custom files, and an entire retooling of PRC of which no longer exists.

    A decade later and I have learned far better archival skills.

    ;)
  • rammurrammur Member Posts: 11
    No you got it all wrong pw's are not normally your typical run and grind fests of mmos they are normally done in away to promote actual Roleplay and real roleplay at that how its been for years. sure it could be nice for a few PW's out there but there are alot of stable roleplay focused pw's that have been around for many years and problably wont like their servers turning into a troll havens and just plain ole toxic normal mmo players.
  • Taro94Taro94 Member Posts: 125
    I can confirm that area instancing does not work at the moment. An attempt to transition to an instanced area ended in a crash on the transition loading screen.
  • voidofopinionvoidofopinion Member, Moderator Posts: 1,248
    rammur said:

    No you got it all wrong pw's are not normally your typical run and grind fests of mmos they are normally done in away to promote actual Roleplay and real roleplay at that how its been for years. sure it could be nice for a few PW's out there but there are alot of stable roleplay focused pw's that have been around for many years and problably wont like their servers turning into a troll havens and just plain ole toxic normal mmo players.

    I really don't believe that there is this huge wondering horde of MMO players abandoning their game of choice going "This 15 year old game has all the grind we could ever want! Let's go to this random game and be assholes!!!"

    If there is any cross over... then they are probably playing the actual MMO of Neverwinter available for free on console and PC.

    Or the PC and Console version of Star Trek Online.

    Or Guild Wars 2.

    Or The Secret World.

    Or Final Fantasy IV.

    Or Lord of the Rings Online.

    Or the still giant World of Warcraft.

    And if they just want to be assholes and kill things... They are probably playing:

    League of Legends

    Or Overwatch.

    Or Path of Exile.

    Or Diablo.

    Or PUBG.

    On top of that, Neverwinter Nights already supports instancing via internal function or external tools. So if you were right then we should have thousands and thousands and thousands of people running around all of our PW's being atrocious instead of the handful of people we have now.

    In short.

    Well designed combat areas do not preclude good roleplay. Nor will they attract "The wrong sort of people."

    That is the sort of attitude that only serves to stem the current and future growth of the expanding NWN:EE player community.

    If you don't want someone on your PW then don't hold back the rest of us for fear your walled garden is going to crumble to the hordes of unwashed masses... Just ban them.

    - Jamie

  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    More advanced tools for dynamic area instancing and/or creation have existed with external tools for some time but I agree that it would be better to have it more integrated in to the base game through basic script commands. Area copies meet some needs but not all.
  • HipsterHipster Member Posts: 39

    If roleplaying was nothing more than toxicity, NOBODY would like it. Go ahead and kick everybody out while
    us coopers enjoy a nice rp/h&s elsewhere

    Anyway: There is a simple placeable called Server Portal and the function looks like:
    void ActivatePortal(object oTarget, string sIPaddress="", string sPassword="", string sWaypointTag="", int bSeemless=FALSE)
    My guess is that it works provided you can supply the function with correct ip address and password, if required. I don't currently have access to multiple servers so i can't test anything at all.
    The destination server will only allow transition if module settings are obviously not at "local characters only".
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    @loudent I realise this is a little late to the party. Re. your missing gear. Do you still have the exact web address of the home page to your pw? If so it is just possible that it mat have been saved on the wayback machine. I make no promises about this but you'd be amazed at what has been saved there.

    TR
  • loudentloudent Member Posts: 40

    @loudent I realise this is a little late to the party. Re. your missing gear. Do you still have the exact web address of the home page to your pw? If so it is just possible that it mat have been saved on the wayback machine. I make no promises about this but you'd be amazed at what has been saved there.

    TR

    Thanks for the suggestion but I don't recall anything about the original website. My NWN2 website is still accessible but I also still have the module/haks for it.
  • loudentloudent Member Posts: 40

    @loudent I realise this is a little late to the party. Re. your missing gear. Do you still have the exact web address of the home page to your pw? If so it is just possible that it mat have been saved on the wayback machine. I make no promises about this but you'd be amazed at what has been saved there.

    TR

    @TarotRedhand So I unearthed an ancient external Hard drive that I haven't touched in almost a decade. I found a virtual treasure trove of NWN data. Not just server vault backups but source code/documentation of external tools I built but the actual NWN1 module itself. I'm not quite in a position to run it as it had some significant dependencies and I'm not sure I backed up the environment, but I'm still excited that I found it
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