Rencontre - Stratovarius (vo)

Chandler : Could you introduce yourself and your team?

Stratovarius : Stratovarius - Team Lead Lockindal - PR, coder Judd - Character Creator, coder WodahsEht - coder, bugfix Oni - coder, combat scripts, documentation Paradox - scripter Primogenitor - NWN-X, Documentation, PvP Arena

Chandler : How do you have known NWN?

Stratovarius : For about 2 years, started playing the Single Player game after being introduced to it by a friend.

Chandler : An important part of your work is the additions of new Prestige Classes, have you met difficulties for this adaptation ? If yes, which one?

Stratovarius : We have dealt with various experiences with each PrC. Some were obviously harder than others --- and some were much easier. One of the most difficult ones so far has been the FoE Hunter. So many things it needed were hardcoded and we could not duplicate easy. Oni, one of our members, had to basically code a combat engine to enable this class to work.

Chandler : Have you adapted each official Prestige Classes from D&D, or have you created your own Prestige Classes?

Stratovarius : So far, we have mostly stuck to Official Prestige Classes; from Dragon Magazine and the core books (and supplements); but we plan to expand further and create many custom prestige classes that are built with NWN in mind, for NWN. The Enforcer of Tyr, Master Scout, Holy Acolyte, Elemental Shaman, Minstrel of the Edge, Brawler, and several others are in the works.

Chandler : You have also made an important work on the spells and the feats, what's this work consists of?

Stratovarius : Much the same as with classes, we've taken feats and spells from the official books and made them for NWN. There are no custom feats yet, while some of the epic spells are custom, made using the rules provided in the Epic Handbook.

Chandler : For your work, use you extra tools from the editor ? Have you to create new of them?

Stratovarius : We have to use extra tools for things like tlk editing and 2da editing.. We also use a modified edition of Torlack's compiler which we may or may not release to the public; two of our members worked hard to make it more efficient as well as making it do what we needed it to do.

Chandler : Your hak is listed in the Hall of Fame from the NWNVault, what bring you this nomination?

Stratovarius : Our fans brought us this nomination. With their support via voting for us we quickly became very popular in the community. It is with their support and gratitude that we are one of the top haks on the vault. I think it also has to do with the content that we produce --- it is unique and exciting. It brings life to a game in a way no other hak does. We basically take the options available in "vanilla" NWN+SoU+HotU and amplify it about 100 times.

Chandler : What do you think of the CEP?

Stratovarius :The CEP is an orthogonal issue. We provide the user community with tools that focus on character development. The CEP focuses on environmental development. There is some overlap, between our products, but mostly the CEP represents a challenge to our development in that we must accomodate it, but rarely does the CEP project accomodate us.

Chandler : What do you think of important projects as Dragon Lance or CODI? Have you consider working specially for one of these projects (or another)? Have you been contacted by one of them (to join the staff or with one of your Prestige Class)?

Stratovarius : We have very positive relationships with both DLA and CODI. We do not work for one another, no; albeit Stratovarius was once a member of DLA before he moved onto the PRC. Our relationship is especially positive with CODI, which has provided us with many things ---- their PrC pack, their AI (which a member plans on expanding to work with our PrCs and abilities), and we recently adopted their CC to modify to work with our added base classes.

Chandler : What do you thing of SoU and HotU? Have these add-on bring something more to NWN?

Stratovarius : HotU & SoU is what made this project possible, period. Without the custom tlk compatibility and the ability to add prestige classes, this project couldn't exist as widespread as it is. HotU also added the epic content, which without it, we would be MUCH more limited.

Chandler : Which advice could you give to someone who want to create his module and work on the script?

Stratovarius : We're working on writing a guide, it will probably premier sometime shortly after the release of 2.2.

Chandler : What do you think of the NWN Community? Do you think that it have evolved since the 2 years of existence of NWN?

Stratovarius :The NWN Community is very unique. Some parts are bad, but most of it is very positive. It has definately evolved --- especially the custom content side. It has evolved into a more experienced community, and a more picky community (in relationship to what content it wants to see). The glory of NWN is this very thing, though --- it constantly evolves, changes, and becomes better overall through its experiences.

Chandler : Atari have just announce an NWN II, what this announce inspire you? What do you expect from NWN II? How do you see the future of NWN?

Stratovarius : We look forward to NWN II, especially if our content is exportable. We also expect that NWN II should be easier for us to mod. Too many things in NWN were hard coded and made it impossible to do things we want to do (like meta magic). We are already an established group in the community --- we don't want to abandon them; so I feel we will definately try to work on NWN II. We have mixed feelings about the future of NWN 1 -- we will wait to see what happens with Digital Distribution. One thing is for sure though, we will definately continue to support this community and bring them more prestige classes, spells, and feats.

Chandler : Bioware seems to renew the experience of NWN (toolset, multiplayers) with Dragon Age. In spite of the less of information given from the game by now, what do you think about that? Do you see a duel between Dragon Age and NWN II?

Stratovarius : We feel that DA may be a really good game, or that it will flop. It is all based on BW's decisions and the game system they come up with. We do think NWN II will be a hard competitor for Dragon Age; but we also feel that Dragon Age may just be the better pick, depending how it is done.