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

[Bad Sector]

I think lighting looks more realistic from a technical perspective, but i do not really like the end result with these assets... they need to tone down the specular reflections in most of the materials (especially skins, which should not have any specular reflections at all) and adjust how the colors affect the surrounding areas because most of the 'after' images look too monochromatic compared to the 'before' images. NWN1 may never have been a visual masterpiece, but all of the games areas were designed with the previous lighting engine in mind and you cannot simply swap in a new lighting model and expect things to work - you also need to rework all the assets and scenes, preferably with an environment artist.

IMO what they should have done instead was to keep the existing lighting engine and made the new one an option in the area environment (where you configure overall area colors, ambience, etc) so that existing areas would look the same but any new areas for mods, etc will be able to use the new engine if they wanted. And for those who wanted to try it out with the existing content (while knowing that this might not work everywhere), an option (by default off) could be provided in the game.

Otherwise, as it is right now, it looks to me like the Tenebrae Quake engine mod - sure, it looks impressive (especially in 2002) but those maps weren't meant to look like that.

 

[Zeriel]

You can turn it off, btw. They even say you may want to do so for performance reasons. Beyond that it's up to taste.

 

[The Avatar]

Did they ever fix the awkward pathfinding in this game? I would say thats more important than rendering. From the rendering perspective, all it really needs is increased brightness and contrast so it doesn't look so muddy.

 

[Gargaune]

IMO what they should have done instead was to keep the existing lighting engine and made the new one an option in the area environment (where you configure overall area colors, ambience, etc) so that existing areas would look the same but any new areas for mods, etc will be able to use the new engine if they wanted. And for those who wanted to try it out with the existing content (while knowing that this might not work everywhere), an option (by default off) could be provided in the game.

I'm actually not a fan of the "for new modules only" approach in general, it was bandied about when they were debating potential companion controls and I think it'd be a mistake. Seeing as the EE hasn't had a stream of new content to rely on, if major new features aren't applicable to NWN's existing content catalogue, they're not much of a selling point, not to players at least. And since modding communities run on props, you need to have a healthy player base to keep builders interested.

As to the particulars, I agree with you that specular values might be a tad high, but overall I thought most of the screenshots with the new lighting model looked better. I guess we'll see when it rolls out to the general public, but if it can be toggled on and off it shouldn't be a point of contention.

Did they ever fix the awkward pathfinding in this game? I would say thats more important than rendering. From the rendering perspective, all it really needs is increased brightness and contrast so it doesn't look so muddy.

No, unfortunately, henchmen still have about the same spatial orientation as you remember.

 

[The Jester]

Bumdog really needs to fix that dragon statue and the metallic dicks around it

That's probably intentional. Advertising for..
NSFW

Spoiler

Nastiness..

Don't a bunch of SJW tranny's run bumdog?

Spoiler

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Indeed.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Did they ever fix the awkward pathfinding in this game? I would say thats more important than rendering. From the rendering perspective, all it really needs is increased brightness and contrast so it doesn't look so muddy.

That would actually require work, so unless they make the engine open-source for some reason, that shit ain't getting fixed.

 

[DalekFlay]

Looks very similar to what the Mafia 2 remaster just did, with new lighting and AO slapped on to an old game. Honestly though I think it works surprisingly well in a lot of the shots provided. Then it looks kinda terrible in others. That's the thing with these kinds of blanket enhancements, official or not... they look good sometimes, then weird and off other times.

NWN is such an ugly fucking game though I'd probably use the new lighting because why not.

 

[Bad Sector]

I'm actually not a fan of the "for new modules only" approach in general, it was bandied about when they were debating potential companion controls and I think it'd be a mistake. Seeing as the EE hasn't had a stream of new content to rely on, if major new features aren't applicable to NWN's existing content catalogue, they're not much of a selling point, not to players at least. And since modding communities run on props, you need to have a healthy player base to keep builders interested.

My main issue is that the existing content wasn't made with new lighting and IMO it looks worse from a visual side (technically it looks better, but the end result is often monochromatic - at least in the comparison images). NWN1's engine is too much of a product of its time and adding new graphical features can easily break how the existing stuff look like.

Ideally they'd also hire an environment artist to update the existing content to work better with the new lighting engine and even make a new expansion/mod that is made from the ground up for it.

 

[Gargaune]

My main issue is that the existing content wasn't made with new lighting and IMO it looks worse from a visual side (technically it looks better, but the end result is often monochromatic - at least in the comparison images). NWN1's engine is too much of a product of its time and adding new graphical features can easily break how the existing stuff look like.

Ideally they'd also hire an environment artist to update the existing content to work better with the new lighting engine and even make a new expansion/mod that is made from the ground up for it.

I get what you're saying, with the new lighting model it almost looks like the source and environment lights are "drowning out" the tileset faux-lighting, this is most easily apparent in the #3 comparison - the wall on the left-hand side of the image has a blue tint in the "before" shot, and that's completely gone in the "after." I suspect that, in practice, areas will still look better on the new model despite that loss most of the time, but I don't know for sure, gotta see it action. I'm quite anxious to see it for myself, since I've spent quite a bit of time on configuring those tile lights in my hobby project, I'd hate for that to be wasted on the new system.

Them getting someone to crack open each area across all their official campaigns and add source lights is probably not viable, Oster's stated before they have no intent to alter the old modules, it's likely gonna be a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

 

[Lilura]

Don't a bunch of SJW tranny's run bumdog?

As far as I know, they've left Bum-mutt.

 

[Eastwood]

So did Beamdog actually add any quality of life features for the UI? Like a nwn2 style quick cast menu, or aoe targeting indicators for spells?
Or did they simply phone it in again like with the rest of their "enhancements"?

 

[Gargaune]

Apparently, the 80.8193.15 patch for NWN EE just dropped today. The aforementioned lighting model overhaul is in, along with the new tilesets from TotM and a variety of scripting features, including arguments in the dialogue interface.

It's not popped up on GOG yet so I can't check it out, but you might have it on Steam. I'll have to download the whole thing again anyway since there's no incremental patch for the previous build on GOG.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Looks nice, just a tad late. Some 15 years late.

 

[Poseidon00]

I just don't get it. My online frens can make new tile sets that look good in NWN, doesn't take long. Why the hell does it take so many years for such a minor update? How does Beamdog continue to exist? It boggles the mind.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I'm somewhat torn on the visual changes. While lighting is improved, it changes the character more than I would have expected. While many of the scenes no longer lit look like a public access studio, much of the color has been drained. The scenes are far moodier, with many of the interior and subterranean tile-sets have an almost sepia quality. Considering that much of the OC attempted to be grim, I don't think that's necessarily bad.

 

[Lacrymas]

The armors look nice in the new engine, but somehow everything has this greenish tint to it? Also, what's up with the penis/semen monsters in that dragon fight?

 

[Gargaune]

Also, what's up with the penis/semen monsters in that dragon fight?

I believe those tentacle things were meant to have the "mirror" texture tint, like the Reaper's face in HotU, but it looks like that didn't translate well to the new renderer.

 

[waken]

lol

Shamelessly trying to win over the Codex!

 

[Joseph Stalin]

Ah, good. Another year of patching and the game MIGHT be playable. Although I must admit it's not Beamdog's fault - every RPG out there need several years of patches to achieve satisfactory levels of completion.

 

[Gargaune]

Okay, the GOG build dropped, here are my first glance observations:

- You might need to do a clean install, depending on what you're updating from. I installed it straight over an old 78.x.x build and I ran into a severe bug that was resetting to an improper resolution and causing cursor alignment issues, and screen edge turning wasn't working.

- At first sight, I do like the new Lighting Model better, and I'm satisfied that it doesn't drown out the static tile lights. Generally, lighting seems a litle more muted but smoother, more uniformly spread. It's not altogether spectacular, but as far just loading up a couple of random saves went, I felt it looked nicer overall.

- You know what is spectacular, though? An RTX 2070 hitting 73°C on a twenty year-old game. And I was baffled, since it did this in the little opening room of Shadows of Undrentide, whereas the larger area at the end of Tyrants of the Moonsea was humming along whisper-quiet. Then I figured to check the framerates and, sure enough, the more complex scene was rendering freely at 90FPS, whereas the little one was going batshit at 300+. This doesn't appear to be caused by using the new LM itself, disabling it doesn't change the behaviour, so I suspect it's related to some other changes under the hood of the renderer, since I don't recall running into this in the old 78 EE build. I do get high FPS on the old Diamond Edition too, 250+ routinely, but the GPU barely notices it's running.

Either way, use the frame limiter in the Graphics options, though I recommend upping the cap to 120 since the camera turning felt a little choppy at 60.

- The Options panels have been expanded consistently, and I also spotted some new individual Difficulty settings, such as HP Rolls and Critical Save Fails, which is a nice touch. I skipped the last major build so I don't know whether this is old news.

- I also dipped into the Toolset for a quick look and can confirm that the Conversation interface now features an arguments table and that there are a few new Area tilesets available, but I haven't had a chance to play with any of that.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

If they're trying to achieve some revival of the game, it's a bit late for that.
If they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they've got one weird idea of running a business.

 

[Bad Sector]

An RTX 2070 hitting 73°C on a twenty year-old game. And I was baffled, since it did this in the little opening room of Shadows of Undrentide, whereas the larger area at the end of Tyrants of the Moonsea was humming along whisper-quiet. Then I figured to check the framerates and, sure enough, the more complex scene was rendering freely at 90FPS, whereas the little one was going batshit at 300+. This doesn't appear to be caused by using the new LM itself, disabling it doesn't change the behaviour, so I suspect it's related to some other changes under the hood of the renderer, since I don't recall running into this in the old 78 EE build.

It is possible that the old renderer wasn't using most of the modern GPU hardware functionality so even at high framerates it didn't utilize that, so the GPU never got a chance to heat up.

In practice this shouldn't be a problem (unless your hardware is faulty, but then you'd have issues with any game), the GPU should throttle itself before it reaches any dangerous levels. The worst that can happen is the fans getting too loud. AMD's drivers have a setting to enable dynamic frame capping (where the cap increases to higher values when you use keyboard/mouse/gamepad/etc but it lowers afterwards) which helps with games that run in high framerates to keep the GPU cool and the fans quiet. I do not remember Nvidia having any option like that in their drivers, but there should be some 3rd party programs that can provide similar functionality.

 

[Gargaune]

It is possible that the old renderer wasn't using most of the modern GPU hardware functionality so even at high framerates it didn't utilize that, so the GPU never got a chance to heat up.

In practice this shouldn't be a problem (unless your hardware is faulty, but then you'd have issues with any game), the GPU should throttle itself before it reaches any dangerous levels. The worst that can happen is the fans getting too loud. AMD's drivers have a setting to enable dynamic frame capping (where the cap increases to higher values when you use keyboard/mouse/gamepad/etc but it lowers afterwards) which helps with games that run in high framerates to keep the GPU cool and the fans quiet. I do not remember Nvidia having any option like that in their drivers, but there should be some 3rd party programs that can provide similar functionality.

Didn't mean to suggest I was worried about the temps, the GPU wasn't even at full fan spin there, thing's meant to go up to 80°C at full tilt. I was just being emphatic about the resource usage on the new build, it's considerable. The old NWN was T&L, right? I haven't checked in detail, but I think the new EE build is a lot more GPU-intensive even without enabling all the new bells and whistles. I suspect that they've overhauled the renderer but weren't able to optimise it to a reasonable baseline across target platforms, so they gave up on the advertised feature and rolled it out as a "supplied as-is" option instead.

Oh, another tangential observation is that there's no Anti-Aliasing option in the EE. I know that some post-processing effects are meant to be incompatible with certain AA techniques but forcing it on through the nVidia Control Panel does work, albeit at even more GPU strain. There are some visual trade-offs between the old and new lighting models, overall I feel like the new one is an improvement but at a massive resource cost.

 

[Horvatii]

Stalking Lilura has made me want to play Swordflight....