David Gaider Q&A

Dragon’s Breath Forge has conducted an interview with David Gaider of BioWare, discussing Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, and even a little Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Here’s a snippet:

Q: How exactly will the multi dungeon sharing occur? It would be neat to have maybe a central hub(a city, have you) where pc’s can just hang out at taverns, guilds and such… Although I suppose that would make it a massive multiplayer game. Still, t’would be neat.

A: Well, let me try to explain some of the basics:

A ‘module’ in NWN consists of at least one area…it can be as large as numerous city blocks or as small as the interior of a small hut. A module can have numerous areas in it, linked to each other via transitions (the same as BG2, really). So a door to a building could transition to an area which is the interior to that building. Or you could walk down a street at the edge of the map and transition to another city area. Ultimately, there can be as many areas in a single module on a server as that computer can sustain.

Players log onto a server and enter the module as characters…right now the limit we’re working with is 64 at one time, but that could always change (and regardless will relate to the capability of the server’s computer). That’s a lot of players, surely, but not quite massively-multiplayer. The sharing aspect that you mention comes about through the use of ‘portals’, which are a type of transition that allows a player to move from one module to another…which could be on another independent server entirely.

So there’s definitely the possibility of setting up some form of multi-server dungeon, and I’ve seen some people in the community planning to take advantage of just that, which is likely what you’ve been hearing about.