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

[Musaab]

I'm against the hide helmet thing because I want to know how heavily armored someone is before I assault them.

 

[Infinitron]

http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/12/december-8-livestream-recap.html

December 8 Livestream Recap


“Multiplayer is a big thing for us. We want to make Neverwinter Nights awesome” ~ Trent Oster

During today’s Twitch stream, Beamdog Studio CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phil Daigle shared details about the next update for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Head Start and the company’s plans regarding NWN:EE. Afterwards, they spoke about the 2.5 patch update open beta for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition.

Missed the stream? It's on YouTube and Twitch!

Here's a quick summary of the highlights from today’s livestream:

• The new build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Head Start is mostly about technical debt, issues with the codebase that needed to be removed and cleaned up
• The biggest thing here is video and audio: we’re moving the audio to OpenAl, and video to WebM, - to play better on more platforms (players will eventually be able to play MP3s instead of BMUs, but not yet)

• Environmental Effects (EAX) are currently non-functional and will be brought back at a later date
• We also fixed a number of bugs and server/multiplayer crashes left over from 1.69, smoothed out the middle-mouse drag-rotation, made the Weapon Focus Description UI scaling properly

• We have implemented a new feature - a console command “Makepano” which generates a set of images that can be stitched into a panoramic. Check out the patch notes of the next build to find out how to use this new feature!

• A Trello board for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is coming next week.
• As we progress, we will be opening the Trello system to the community so that people will be able to see, subscribe to individual cards and thus vote for features they want to be implemented.
• Discussion around features will continue to take place on the Beamdog forums and links will be provided on the Trello cards for ease of navigating between the two.
• Down the road, we’re planning to change the race selection at the character creation from the static options to a dynamic list.
• We absolutely want to create achievements for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Steam, - not immediately, though, - they will progress slowly with our overall progress on NWN:EE.
• We plan to allow modders to add more ranged weapons into the game (like throwing spears, harpoons, guns, custom ammunition and the like).
• New modules and campaigns for NWN:EE - it’s something we’re interested in eventually and something we’ll talk about with Wizards of the Coast
• The message from the loading screens in original Baldur’s Gate II stating that players were able to import their characters to Neverwinter Nights refer to a feature that couldn’t be executed, and there are no plans for implementing this feature into Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
• The original campaign of Neverwinter Nights was what it was. We don’t want to spend time and efforts on revising it, there are better ways and new stories to spend our energy on.
• Back in time of original Neverwinter Nights, we didn’t link consciously the stories of the Hero of Neverwinter and the main protagonist of the Hordes of the Underdark adventure, they didn’t have to reference each other. But any player, if they want, can imagine that it’s the story of the same character.
• Neverwinter Nights is not Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate is a novel about a single character with companions who join her. Neverwinter Nights is a journey for you and your friends. The concept from the very start was, and still is, that you play Neverwinter Nights in multiplayer with your friends. Neverwinter Nights is core multiplayer, bottom to top, you build your content and share it with other players.
• The last thing we want to do is to make Neverwinter Nights into Baldur’s Gate. Instead, we want to make Neverwinter Nights awesome, and let the community decide what they wish to see in it
• Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 are pretty different beasts, we don’t have access to the codebase of NWN 2, and if we theoretically do in NWN:EE anything similar to what is possible in NWN 2 we will have to do it from scratch.
• The open beta of the 2.5 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is available on Google Play, Steam, and Beamdog. Find out how to opt-in here.
• Test the games and let us know what you think on the Beamdog forums.
• The final release of the the 2.5 patch will happen across all stores and platforms.

Excited for what’s next? Come and join the next livestream next Friday!

 

[Anomander Rake]

Releasing notes after notes of new 'features' being added.

Still...
Always releases unplayable alpha mess
None of the developers plays their own enhanced edition single player before releasing it

HEYA
IT'S ME
IMOEN

 

[Dorateen]

Baldur’s Gate is a novel about a single character with companions who join her

What Baldur's Gate did these doorknobs play?

 

[Lilura]

My interview with Beamdog CEO, Trent Oster.

 

[octavius]

My interview with Beamdog CEO, Trent Oster.

Trent Oster said:

"NWN companions can be improved, but we currently have no plans for a BG-style control scheme for companions."

It's a pity Beamdog doesn't enhance the things that really need enhancing.

 

[Lacrymas]

Making companions controllable will unbalance pretty much every module. I guess it can work if every module builder has to manually set party control on.

 

[fantadomat]

It will be a glorious mess.

 

[Brancaleone]

My interview with Beamdog CEO, Trent Oster.

Trent Oster said:

"NWN companions can be improved, but we currently have no plans for a BG-style control scheme for companions."

It's a pity Beamdog doesn't enchance the things that really need enhancing.

Well, if they made companions to be controllable BG-style, who would buy their NWN 2 EE?

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

well if beamdog would fix a lot of nwn2 core problems that would be a nice thing neverwinter 2 always had a lot of potential but failed to express fully because the not user friendly toolset..and the bad optimization and bug.

 

[Fedora Master]

Way too much effort. They'd need to make proper character models, proper textures, proper camera controls, bug and rule fixes... You know, most of which was already done by the community years ago.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Is not like nwn1 has proper character models... i mean... if they plan to enhance nwn1 at least make the models slightly better...

 

[Morkar Left]

Is not like nwn1 has proper character models... i mean... if they plan to enhance nwn1 at least make the models slightly better...

That would require actual work. Why bother when you can keep things easy and cheap?

 

[DavidBVal]

well if beamdog would fix a lot of nwn2 core problems that would be a nice thing neverwinter 2 always had a lot of potential but failed to express fully because the not user friendly toolset..and the bad optimization and bug.

NWN2 had a considerable development effort behind it for many years after release, including the release of several expansions, extensions designed for PWs, patches of all kinds, and even community patches that improved multiplayer experience. They failed to address some of the core issues and limitations of the game engine, so I'm pretty certain the team assigned by Beamdog to work on an EE won't be able to make any signigicant improvement.

 

[Lilura]

Experimental EE shader stuff.

 

[Infinitron]

http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/12/nwnee-head-start-patch-notes-v748151.html

NWN:EE Head Start Patch Notes v74.8151



The next Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Head Start update is here!

These notes are covered in more detail in the README.txt file found in your game install location \lang\en\docs

Build 8151 should now be available through the Beamdog Client.

This update includes the following changes:

• The audio subsystem has been replaced with OpenAL.
• The music player has been replaced with OpenMP3.
• The video player has been replaced with WebM.

Create your own in-game panoramic shots!

• Added the MakePano console command.
• Anti-aliasing is back in the settings, but requires a restart to change for technical reasons.
• Mouse drag/wheel rotation is now smooth no matter the frame rate. Also, it is not speed resolution-dependent anymore.
• UI elements will no longer hide behind scenery or characters.
• Weapon Focus Description UI now scales properly.
• Over a dozen multiplayer crash fixes related to clients sending invalid data, or custom-content data files being corrupt/broken.

Because of the new audio subsystem, we're particularly interested in any cases where players feel like sound and music feels off or different. Please let us know your feedback in the Beamdog forums.

 

[Fedora Master]

Panorama shots of a game that was never meant to have them sure are important.

 

[anvi]

Experimental EE shader stuff.

Some of the dates are wrong on the first poll.

 

[Thorsson]

NWN2 had a considerable development effort behind it for many years after release, including the release of several expansions, extensions designed for PWs, patches of all kinds, and even community patches that improved multiplayer experience. They failed to address some of the core issues and limitations of the game engine, so I'm pretty certain the team assigned by Beamdog to work on an EE won't be able to make any signigicant improvement.

Maybe you'd better tell that to the people that are now enjoying excellent MP experience with NWN2. A lot of stuff has been sorted the last few years. Of course it depends what your core issues were, but mine have largely been resolved.

 

[Malpercio]

The only enhance that would have been worth is NWN1 with NWN2's engine (That still sucks, mind you, but at least it offers an experience more similar to the IE games). Though, I'll admit I always wanted to try NWN1's expansions, since I know they are not actually that bad, so I may give this a try.

And hey, it will be interesting to see if the online scene is revived.

 

[Popiel]

The only enhance that would have been worth is NWN1 with NWN2's engine (That still sucks, mind you, but at least it offers an experience more similar to the IE games).

Pleb detected.

 

[Makabb]

Bought BG EE Bg2 EE and Planescape EE, never looked back. Thank you Trent for bringing back quality classics with improvements This is insta buy for me, finaly i will be able to enjoy NWN like it was meant to be enjoyed, never actualy finished NWN because back in the day the 3d was just horrible compared to the 2d of Infinity engine.
Looking forward to finishing NWN for the first time on EE.

With all the expansions that's over 100 hours of gameplay for 20$ of enhanced content..... Beamdog never stop enhancing ! waiting for that Fallout 1 enhanced !

 

[Makabb]

So the next EE games are supposed to be Arcanum and TOEE

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Makabb you utter nigger.

 

[DeepOcean]

Only enhancement I'm remotely interested is controllable henchmen, Ai controlled henchmen is the single most fucked up idea Bioware had that pretty much turned NWN 1 combat on a snooze fest. They can implement this, their lame excuses sound like they don't wanting to actually work hard on this, you can just have a system where the option isn't activated by default on the OC and old mods with modders deciding to allow it or not on the toolset.