Modder's heaven
Obsidian have designed Neverwinter Nights 2 to be as moddable as possible, and to this end the level designer gives you near unlimited access to the graphics engine, enabling you to use that alone to create completely different atmospheres to the same area. For example, as we stood in West Harbour, Feargus showed us the three main light sources from the game, and how mucking around with them alone can change how an area feels. The main sources of light, as in real life are the sun, the sky and reflected light from the ground.
Click for larger imageOf course, Neverwinter Nights 2 has the usual time of day effects, but modders can alter the colour of the three light sources, to give perhaps a purple sky, a red sun and a blue reflected light.. all of which interact to give a very odd feeling world… and once he’d finished mucking around, West Harbour felt looked more like some enchanted nightmare than a bog standard village.. and all done through the lighting! Using the toolset, modders can easily change other environmental settings, such as misting, fogging and all that stuff. They can even script in stuff like clouds, density and direction… all from the toolset. By using various textures in combination with each other, you can combine them to give different liquid effects… perhaps mixing red with a rubble texture, then animating it and lighting it with orange to give you lava.
Click for larger imageThose who’d rather use the stuff in the toolset than muck around making their own textures are well catered for but it’s just as easy for the artists amongst us to import and use their own work too. However, if you’re more of the storyteller than artist, you’re well catered for too. All of the menus and information windows in Neverwinter Nights 2 use XML which makes them nearly totally customizable. They’re user positionable and, because they can be called up with a script, you can use them as puzzles too.