Areas and Traversing the Realm

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Flailer
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Areas and Traversing the Realm

Post by Flailer »

Areas in NWN2:
NWN2 is a very different beast than NWN1 when it comes to areas, particularly exteriors.

It's possible with the toolset to generate some very large and very realistic landscapes. However, the drawback of that in comparison with NWN1 is that the file sizes are much larger. Modules in NWN1, like Neversummer 4, could contain close to 1500 areas. In comparison, 300 areas in NWN2 could hit the 1.5 Gig RAM load limit for the NWN2 server that currently exists. Consequently, that has driven several design decisions on our part, which, have some other benefits as well.

Interior vs. Exterior:
Due to the smaller size of interior areas in NWN2, simply put, we've tried to use interior areas wherever possible. The rough guideline we're shooting for is 2/3 of the areas to be interior. Because of this, we've come up with the following system to 'increase' the size of the world...

Random Encounter Maps:
Many of the areas that exist in NS5 are thought to be as distinct destinations that are located across the land. In order to travel from one destination to another, it's assumed that you traverse the countryside and might encounter things along the way. When you do, you'll find yourself on a Random Encounter Map.

These random encounter maps will try to fit the terrain of the region you're travelling in and may contain creatures that are found in that realm, merchants selling unique items, traps set by monsters, quests and more! These random areas will help to keep adventuring fresh and unpredictable and help to keep even low level areas replayable.

Getting Around the Realm:
Aetheria is a unique realm and all is not as it seems...traveling from one land to another may take some additional efforts. But, that will be for you to discover...

As an aside, the World Map feature that was implemented in NWN2 is not used for getting around the realm - we felt that that feature lends itself better to single player campaigns than multiplayer.
Flailer
NS Developer

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