NWN Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition - Beamdog's final enhancement - now with new premium modules

[Nerevar]

I'm sure there is a memoryleak or something with NWN: EE, My FPS drops to single frames after a few hours of play. Also I get a crash that deletes my most recent save sometimes....

 

[LESS T_T]

Fixing memory leaks: https://steamcommunity.com/games/704450/announcements/detail/1590258046946137743

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Development Build 8191

Yet another stabilising patch! This one fixes a long-outstanding memleak that manifested when players stuck around for a while with skinmeshes on screen (robes, cloaks, certain monsters). It was framerate-dependent, and for some people, this resulted in memory exhaustion and crashes after anywhere between 30 minutes and a few hours.

We appreciate any and all bug reports and feedback your testing will generate.

Known Issues/Caveats

• Networking relays are still nonfunctional. We will have to address further-reaching changes to the network protocol for the upcoming console release. Any related fixes and features, such as better NAT traversal, have been postponed for now.
  
• Polish and Czech charsets cannot render or type some characters.
  
• Old campaign database files written with patch 8187 or earlier cannot be read, as the underlying format has changed.
  
• The toolset build inside this development patch is currently outdated. You can find the most recent beta toolset here.

Features

• New main menu background art. (Also configurable in settings.tml)

Fixes

• A serious memleak when rendering skinmeshed objects was fixed.
  
• A memleak when calculating tangent space basis was fixed.
  
• An issue where the internal resource manager would needlessly evict recently used files under memory pressure was fixed, which had resulted in disk churn.
  
• NWSync: We now won’t do shard compaction on desktop platforms by default, as this resulted in needless IO and wait time for players (the feature is meant to save storage on certain console platforms).

 

[hexer]

Is this THE patch that fixes CTD's that occur every 5 minutes?
I want to play Tyrants of the Moonsea but it's impossible until they fix the bugs.

 

[Lacrymas]

I want to play Tyrants of the Moonsea but it's impossible until they fix the bugs.

Here you go.

 

[hexer]

I want to play Tyrants of the Moonsea but it's impossible until they fix the bugs.

Here you go.

Thanks but I bought it on Steam.
I can't access my original NWN installation from GOG because they decided to permalock my account after I changed my email and didn't notify them.

 

[Lacrymas]

Bought what on Steam? NWN EE? Doesn't it come with the original as a bonus? The GOG one does.

 

[Infinitron]

Bought what on Steam? NWN EE? Doesn't it come with the original as a bonus? The GOG one does.

Only GOG does that (also with the previous EEs). The original NWN was never available on Steam in the first place so...

 

[Fishy]

Always loved those epic campaigns where you're the ultimate-hero-who-saves-the-world, because there's *always* some dramatic moment where some major NPC, king, god, whatever asks for your name. It brings me back to my pen and paper days, I can totally see the DM facepalm...

 

[Fedora Master]

Paraelemental Plane of Weed

 

[Cael]

Always loved those epic campaigns where you're the ultimate-hero-who-saves-the-world, because there's *always* some dramatic moment where some major NPC, king, god, whatever asks for your name. It brings me back to my pen and paper days, I can totally see the DM facepalm...

He should be expecting it when he allowed you that name in the first place :D

 

[Fishy]

So, after getting into NWN with community modules, I went back to some of the official content.

** SPOILERS FOR OFFICIAL CAMPAIGNS BELOW **

After a disastrous first impression, the OC turned out to be surprisingly serviceable. While the cringeworthy tutorial and premise (let's hire level 1 characters to save the world) are awful, and not helped by being pushed to do the absolutely terrible prison area first, the rest was actually entertaining. Lots of little side stuff to do in each area, some decently sized wilderness, and a decent epic vibe buildup with the creator race, etc. Obvious twists are obvious, of course, but still. Think the only thing I really missed were the underground ruins under Luskan. Didn't manage to find the key to the door in the house leading to them. Oh, and the henchmen quests because they seemed super boring, the AI is shite and I don't like sharing my xp.

SoU started a bit in the same way but soon felt more on rails. In a nice way though, each linear segment not overstaying its welcome, and enough of them to keep things moving. Kobolds were entertaining, and I enjoyed the switch to the desert afterwards. Also, that cult of Ao...

Unofficial here, but I did The Nether Scrolls there as it closes up some story gaps between SoU and HotU. Felt like a good idea, and well, can't complain. Combat-focused, but similar feel as SoU with lots of bite-sized linear sections. Did close the gap and explain that reaper thing which would have been otherwise jarring in HotU.

Then HotU, and I have mixed feelings. For a start, I always found the whole premise of the Yawming Portal a bit stupid, so starting there, well... After that, while I appreciate that it's entirely consistent with what the Undermountain is supposed to be, the whole cliché dungeon that makes no sense apart from being an RPG dungeon was meh. Thankfully it's only floor 1 that goes down that road, and well, it was over soon enough in the end. Retrieving my items from SoU was nice at that point, but it was... so... tedious... to have to sort out inventory once again (more on this later). Chapter 2 surprised me as I generally dislike the underdark. But the various sections were actually ok, and Nathyrra was interesting. Valen (?) seemed like a twat from the start so didn't pick him up. Was a bit annoyed at skipping the Isle of the Maker: I finished the army-weakening part first and got force pushed into the big battle, where I proceeded to ignore the troops to mow down the enemies by myself. Great Cleave is hilarious. Roll on Chapter 3, and we're back in meh territory. Cania started well enough, but then it's boring planeswalking in linear and uninteresting gimmick areas. Had fun exploring the various endings though, so there's that. Surprised by Nathyrra not having some twist, she was... just nice... Expected something more from the Lawful Evil alignment, it just doesn't seem to fit her repented persona. As for Aribeth, sheesh, she's a speed dater isn't she? You barely met her she's already making passes. Have to say I lol'ed at her comments in the mimic section. Some nice conversations providing a bit more context to the OC too.

So overall, I'd put OC/SoU together as rather ok, and HotU as a bit below that due to less open areas and some more tedious linear sections.

For other official stuff, I've also been through Kingmaker, which was ok but ending just when it felt like it was going to open up, and Pirates of the Sword Coast which was genuinely entertaining and rather creative (the shipwreck salvaging, the treasure maps...). Using the OC docks district map was a nice touch too. Only downside is that the Pirates character is hardly reusable due to the various buffs you get shortly before the end. Pity because it's a nice 1-11 option otherwise.


On a more general note: the encumbrance system is a mess. It makes it disproportionately more convenient to have a STR character. While player-made modules mitigate that with generous access to bags of holding, the official campaigns are pretty skint on these (HotU is just awful bag-wise). And even with lots of bags, the old "strip character from all items" trick becomes a massive pain when you find the gear back and have to reorganise everything into bags...

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

The 1.79 "stable" EE patch dropped today and apparently broke a bunch of stuff (according to steam forums).

Crashed twice in 5 minutes and still has worse performance on my machine when compared to the GOG diamond edition.

 

[Fedora Master]

Me when I read about yet another pointless update for NWN.

 

[Zeriel]

They clearly lack the ability to do what they promised to do. I wonder why they don't just abandon it like the rest. I guess because they hired modders from the community who actually care unlike them?

 

[hexer]

I think they also started selling it on consoles today.
What a launch! I just tried running my own 2003. module in it which never crashed over all these years and guess what - it crashed twice in 5 minutes

 

[Jasede]

The worst thing about the patch are those absolutely unfuckable kobolds in the new menu screen, what were they thinking

 

[aweigh]

I still can't stand how EE runs on my 3.8GHz/GTX 1080 system with the constant micro-stutter. It just totally chaps my ass. Occasional stutter... no problem. But microstutter every time I fucking just rotate the camera is unacceptable. And I'm not one of those mentally ill tech-nutters that needs 60 FPS else they simply can't play a game. I can even tolerate 24 FPS... as long as it's consistently 24 FPS with no noticeable stutter. I remember playing Diamond on my very old ATI 9800 video card years ago and it ran like a well-lubed glass cock. Smooth, smooth, smooth.

I would not have believed this if I didn't just experience it myself. I gave EE version of Tyrants of the Moonsea a whirl last night out of curiosity (first time I've fired up anything NWN related in years, and yes this means I installed EE last night just for this); and I was getting frame-drops (what people usually call 'stutters') when moving around the spawn area, the little snowy campsite place. Absolutely unbelievable. Happens when rotating the camera or when I activate some object or NPC, like for example if I'm at one end of the campsite and I zoom far out and I click on the horse, then as my character starts running towards the horse and the camera chases him the frame-rate will "hiccup" and drop randomly.

Obviously this isn't unplayable territory but it is insanely annoying and frankly it's reason enough to not play it at all, just out of sheer principle. I can live with frame-drops/camera hiccup in a modern AAA game that is pushing my battlestation to its limits, but I am definitely not putting up with it on NWN 1.

EDIT: I haven't bothered doing so yet but I'm planning on installing the original version of NWN 1 and I'm gonna download the mod version of Moonsea campaign from the Vault because I want to see how that performs. I heavily suspect it will run completely smoothly, unlike the EE version.

 

[Fishy]

Just finished Part 2 of Aielund Saga a few days ago. Hope the patch didn't break it, I'd like to see it through!

 

[d1nolore]

You can just revert to older versions if necessary.

 

[Grauken]

It's really bothering me that some of these premium modules are only available for the EE edition. This is exactly what people were saying is why the EE editions were a terrible idea in the first place, and now we got this cancer-ridden enhanced edition that can't even run properly

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The worst thing about the patch are those absolutely unfuckable kobolds in the new menu screen, what were they thinking

Pics Please.

 

[Wunderbar]

What does "unfuckable" even means? Were they "fuckable" before?

 

[lefthandblack]

Now you know why Deekin was named Deekin, because you can put your Deekin him.

 

[Cael]

Now you know why Deekin was named Deekin, because you can put your Deekin him.

When you try to talk to him, his initial reply is usually a hopeful "Deekin?" This all puts that in a whole new light, doesn't it?

 

[Lacrymas]

Hahaha, that's terrible ;D

Anyway, I like how people are always surprised when Beamdog shit out yet another patch and it breaks the game even further. One wouls think that's a lesson already learned, but I guess not.