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Neverwinter Nights 2: The Planescape Trilogy - All News

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Saturday - March 14, 2009
Monday - March 02, 2009
Monday - September 08, 2008
Wednesday - June 04, 2008
Monday - April 07, 2008
Monday - March 31, 2008
Box Art

Saturday - March 14, 2009

The Planescape Trilogy - Purgatorio Demo Released

by Dhruin, 12:24

As promised, Rogue Dao's Purgatorio demo has been released.  You can grab it from NW Vault (note: there are a lot of files). Comments from Bill Harper on the official forums:

Allow me to clear up the speculation, and make the official announcement:

I found some bugs last-minute, that needed to be repaired, before I could package. As a result, upload schedule was a few hours behind. File upload started at officially 4:14 am EST, Friday the 13th. Files might not get uploaded for public consumption until Saturday, as a result.

If it means anything to you, I am literally now ending a 44-hour straight work session, with absolutely not a single minute of sleep, in order to get both a couple more nifty features active and a hopefully even smoother playing experience. That, and final packaging of course.

I really gave it my all people, tried my best to keep this promise we made to you and keep this deadline. Missed by a few hours, I think. I've got nothing left to give for the minute, it's all been given to this noble effort. And I'm far beyond exhausted from it. But despite all that, I'm still very happy (and relieved) that we'll get to share the fruit of our long labors with all of you, and soon.

We really hope you enjoy what you you experience. We hope this demo is at least worth some of the long wait. We are certainly proud of what we've got to offer you.

Rest assured, after a much-needed modders' vacation, there is plenty more coming from us at Rogue Dao! Who knows---maybe you'll come and join us this time.

Now pike off, ye barmy spire climbers! Laughing
And let the games begin!

Bill Harper
Co-Lead Designer, Rogue Dao Studios

...if the demo release is confusing, here's a post from earlier in the week on the NWN2 forums:

The purpose of the release is to release something.

Basically, Purg is not done. Development is slow and difficult, and above all we want a quality final product. However, we've been sitting on a massive amount of custom content, interesting areas, and, as you mentioned, amazing music. This release is for people to see what we've done so far, and if there's anything that would be useful to them, use it.

Just to be clear: don't download the module next Friday expecting a full play experience. Instead approach it as us putting out everything we have saying "here's what we've done, isn't it cool?". We think it is, and hopefully you will too.

Keep an eye on our forums for more information, and thanks for your confidence.

Thanks to Prime Junta on our forums.

Monday - March 02, 2009

The Planescape Trilogy - Purgatorio Release Date

by Dhruin, 11:46

Rogue Dao Studios has their forums up and running again and it didn't take long for this post announcing a tentative release date for Purgatorio:

We have a huge amount of content to get uploaded and working. Please be patient. I will announce when it is safe to start downloading the haks. You can get the music now. The module will come out on Friday, March 13th.

Links are provided to some content they've started to upload to NW Vault, although as you can see, only download the music at the moment.

Monday - September 08, 2008

The Planescape Trilogy - Screens & Interview @ NWVault

by Magerette, 17:29

NWVault has posted a nice selection of captioned screenshots for Rogue Dao's NWN2 module, Purgatorio here, as well as an interview with Kevin Chow on the music:

What have you worked on for Purgatorio? What are you most proud of and why?
I wrote a fair few tracks for Purg, but I think that the two that I got the most satisfaction out of finishing were the Hive Ward track and the Mechanus track. It's hard to describe the connection and satisfaction you get when the track that you end up writing coincides almost exactly with where you want it to go - you just *know* that you've done a good job....

How many hours of custom music are composed in Purgatorio?
According to my list, almost three album's-worth of original material has been scored for Purgatorio.

There's also a sample mp3 track here.

Source: Sorcerers Place

Wednesday - June 04, 2008

NWN 2: The Planescape Trilogy - Interview @ NW Vault

by Dhruin, 23:05

NW Vault chats to Mike Dismukes from Rogue Dao Studios about Purgatorio.  Among other things discussed, the current size is 150 areas and 4.5GGb (!) and hopefully the first handful of playtesters will get access in a month.  Here's the intro:

Why Planescape? Certainly there were easier routes to take in creating a module.

Easier? Definitely, but nowhere near as much fun. A lot of gamers consider Planescape to be the best game world ever created. The atmosphere, language, flavor, attitude and mythology of the place are all very unique, very well developed and a whole lot of fun to play.

This city of Sigil is located atop the Spire in the Outer Planes. There is no sky, simply an all-pervasive light that waxes and wanes to create day and night. Sigil cannot be entered or exited save via portals; although this makes it quite safe from any would-be invader, it also makes it a prison of sorts for those not possessing a portal key. For this reason many call Sigil "The Bird Cage" or "The Cage".

Citizens of Sigil call themselves “Cagers” and speak “The Cant”, a dialect loosely based on the Thieves’ Cant spoken in England about 400 years ago.

“Dark”
Anything secret is said to be dark. "Here's the dark of it" is a way of saying "I've got a secret and I'll share it with you."

“Cutter”
A complimentary term that refers to anybody, male or female. It suggests a certain amount of resourcefulness or daring, so it's a lot better than calling someone a berk.

“Cagestruck”
The expression of cluelessness which newcomers to Sigil always exhibit.

Sigil contains innumerable portals: any bounded opening (a doorway, an arch, a barrel hoop, a picture frame) could possibly be a portal to another plane, or to another point in Sigil itself. Thus, the city is a paradox: it touches all planes at once, yet ultimately belongs to none; from these characteristics it draws its other name: "The City of Doors".

When I first joined the project and saw Purgatorio, I was totally cagestruck and couldn’t understand what anybody was saying, but you actually pick up the cant and the lay of the place pretty quickly. We have an in-game Planar Cant Dictionary that can get you over any rough spots in the beginning. Purgatorio will visit eleven of the city hubs and offer a ride to rattle any cutter’s bone-box.

Planescape was a place that we thought we could build within the limits of the Electron Toolset. Another incentive was the flexibility of Sigil. You can go literally anywhere. A good part of the reason that we have been able to attract the people that we have to the team has been because we are going to The City of Doors. The Cant, The Rule-of-Three, The Lady of Pain, the architecture and all the factions struggling against each other, it’s a great metaphor for the modern world and really speaks to people. There are a lot of role-playing-only forums on the internet like “Dark of the Day” that take place in the Planescape Universe. http://darkoftheday.proboards58.com/index.cgi

The point behind doing a project like ours is to create something impressive, unique and cool that can’t be found elsewhere. Mikeland would be easier for us to build, but it would not get the attention of Planescape. Choosing Sigil helped us to recruit the people that we needed to make it. The thing has a tendency to feed itself. You can’t get that with a Mikeland. In this business you always have to learn, adapt and build what you are not comfortable with, and that kind of experience is what we are after at Rogue Dao Studios.

You can also check out 32 new screens here.

Monday - April 07, 2008

NWN2:The Planescape Trilogy - Art Update #2

by Dhruin, 12:53

Rogue Dao Studios sent over their latest art update for Purgatorio, this time showing off a number of critters...

...click the image to head to the gallery (be patient - 4Mb).

Monday - March 31, 2008

NWN2:The Planescape Trilogy - Art Update

by Dhruin, 11:32

The folks from Rogue Dao Studios sent us over their latest art update for The Planescape Trilogy: Purgatorio. Click on the thumbnail below (and be patient - the original is around 5Mb) to view several concept arts and a couple of screens:

 

 

Thanks to maggotmaster from RDS and magerette from our end!

Information about

Neverwinter Nights 2: The Planescape Trilogy

Developer: Rogue Dao Studios

SP/MP: Single + MP
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: RPG
Combat: Pausable Real-time
Play-time: 10-20 hours
Voice-acting: Partially voiced

Regions & platforms
Unknown
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Cancelled
· Publisher: Unknown