Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate Interview

The guys over at the Thieves’ Guild were able to corner Ossian Studios’ Alan Miranda and Brian Dunn for a quick conversation about Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate.

According to an earlier designer interview, the new sewer tileset is a totally in-house creation from Ossian with a lot of new placeables. Can you tell us and show us more about what all is included and what is available to the modder?

Brian: The sewer tileset is really two tilesets that work well together. The first tileset represents the (classic) sewer, where every tile is a variation of a round tunnel, and a builder can quickly lay out a network of tunnels that would represent the underbelly of any city. I was very motivated to build this tileset as I felt it was a must-have environment for any classic adventure.

Before I had even confirmed for Alan that we could do a custom tileset, I knew its shape: round walls and ceiling, punctured by the occasional drainpipe, with a flat walkable floor. I wanted the texture detailed enough so that the tiling would be hard to detect and I think we pulled it off. We made it tintable too so you can give it the hue of your choice.

The second tileset is characterized by walled areas with floors and without them (we call the latter pits). With it you can build all kinds of open areas or areas with rooms in a variety of shapes. In my mind, this is where the classic sewer tunnels lead to and from. They are the dens of powerful creatures and the hideouts of shadow organizations. The signature wall buttresses really give these tiles a gothic flavor. I believe the number of tiles in this set is close to ninety and it grew way beyond what I ever imagined. I think my favorite tiles are the stone bridges that can cross pit areas (or you can use your own bridges/planks to span the gaps). With all the tile variations, it’s difficult to even show all the possibilities it’s one of those tilesets you’ll want to play with a bit so you can see how all the pieces interact.

The final component to the sewer tileset is a prop set of rusty pipe placeables. We considered salting the tiles with pre-built piping assemblies, but opted to leave them clean to extend their usability and avoid pattern recognition. That way you can use the twenty-eight variations of rusty pipes, connectors, elbows, junctions, valves, and grated openings to build your own custom pipe groupings to salt your area as you see fit.

Alan: We’ve taken a bunch of new screenshots specifically for this article, so you can see what Brian is talking about.

As Alan mentioned, nineteen new screenshots accompany the interview.