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

[Sykar]

Amazing, an entire post without a single argument. "It is not scummy... because I said so". Meanwhile in reality, people are not even given the option to just buy the original and is forced to buy the shoddily made mod rip off and you dimwit are actually defending these parasites.
How is it not scummy when 80% of your work is based on freely available mods and charging you 20 Euros for that crap which, once you ignore the mods they ripped off, in the end consists of superfluous shittily written NPCs when the game is full of NPCs already and utterly shite arena mode.
Of course you can use the Black Isle logo or at the very least, credit them for original creation during the intro. Nothing of the sort exists, they pretend the made BG which is so laughable it is not even funny.

 

[Parabalus]

ost of the functionality they added was straight up ripped from existing mods or added stuff from BG 2 into the base BG game. For crying out loud they actually hired one of the modders. Then they added their own horrific content, completely superfluous garbage NPCs and even worse "expansion" for whatever reason, as if BG was not already big enough with TotSC already. Also their work in UI graphics was mediocre, at best.

The new modded UI is great, much better than vanilla BG2.

No load screens too - takes like 3 sec from starting the game to playing.

Not like you have to give Beamdog money.

 

[Gargaune]

Amazing, an entire post without a single argument. "It is not scummy... because I said so". Meanwhile in reality, people are not even given the option to just buy the original and is forced to buy the shoddily made mod rip off and you dimwit are actually defending these parasites.
How is it not scummy when 80% of your work is based on freely available mods and charging you 20 Euros for that crap which, once you ignore the mods they ripped off, in the end consists of superfluous shittily written NPCs when the game is full of NPCs already and utterly shite arena mode.

Nobody owes you Baldur's Gate at precisely €8, you illiterate tool. "Durr, but you can mod the old one!" Great, you already have your copy, go mod it. Meanwhile, with the EEs solving the main technical issues on new systems and removing the need for mods, about the only thing that's still "outdated" about BG relative to a modern midmarket cRPG is the character sprites. So why exactly you feel that €8 is the "objectively" correct price for a cRPG that craps all over a €36 Pillars of Eternity in most other respects is anyone's guess.

I don't know where the fuck you people get off with this controlled economy bullshit, prices are dictated by how a product compares to competitors and the ensuing marked demand, and as long as you're not misrepresenting your product to customers, there's nothing "scummy" about it.

Of course you can use the Black Isle logo

You're off your fucking meds, brand use is subject to serious contractual obligations. Baldur's Gate was published by Black Isle, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition was published by Beamdog, there's no cloak and dagger here. Your education might've been a joke, but IP actually is serious business.

 

[Fartov]

If you go around having scummy business practice and try to forcibly insert dogshit in the hobby, I'm going to throw shit back at you and you're certainly not entitled to demand that I keep quiet.

Scummy business practices is a stretch. Beamdog is just an incompetently run game studio with trash community management. Just look at the game being discussed in this thread, a case study could be done on how COVID-19 did 10x more for sales than any of the 'enhancements'.

That said, if I were Canadian and my tax dollars went to pay 1/4 of Beamdog's developer salaries while they can barely sell some of the greatest RPGs of all time (and enhanced!) for 3.99$; I would be as mad as you.

 

[MjKorz]

Any news on more official modules being released? They promised something on Steam a while ago.

 

[Bad Sector]

This is on sale at GOG for 3.19 euros so i decided to check it out. I haven't played much, only just after the intro/tutorial part of the OC, but so far i think it is ok - the biggest feature for me so far is the UI scaling though i think it'd be better if they allowed for more than 1.5x scaling *and* had some option to force the UI and mouse restricted at 4:3 since some functionality (e.g. rotating by hitting the screen edges) and UI placement was made for that aspect ratio. Or at least, as far as the UI placement is concerned, allowed you to move the windows around.

There are some minor changes in the graphics but i haven't noticed anything big - i think the final image is a bit more vivid (most likely some contrast enhancing post-process shader) but that's about it. I haven't installed the HD pack, might try it out of curiosity at some point though i never had issue with NWN1's graphics anyway.

The only thing i disabled was the "keyhole" effect (the one that creates a "hole" between the character and the camera) because while a nice idea in theory, i really disliked the "wobbly" effect around the hole (if it was much thinner perhaps, but TBH i'd prefer it if it had a plain circular shape). Also because of it i (re-) enabled the automatic hiding of second story geometry - so basically it works like in the original game.

 

[Gargaune]

some option to force the UI and mouse restricted at 4:3 since some functionality (e.g. rotating by hitting the screen edges) and UI placement was made for that aspect ratio

Not sure what you mean by this, since you can configure the Camera Turn Speed in Options -> Input for whatever's comfortable. If you mean you're getting choppy camera motion, though, make sure you force V-Sync on from your GPU, the in-game Frame Limiter messes up the input detection.

There are some minor changes in the graphics but i haven't noticed anything big - i think the final image is a bit more vivid (most likely some contrast enhancing post-process shader) but that's about it. I haven't installed the HD pack, might try it out of curiosity at some point though i never had issue with NWN1's graphics anyway.

With Lighting Enhanced, you've got a bunch of a new shaders (Vibrance, Sharpness, Ambient Occlusion etc.) and you can further tweak most of them in their Advanced section. It's worth skimming the options page, at least I find I like the colour grading better. Oh, and wavy water now. The HD Art Pack consists of new, higher fidelity assets for characters and gear, though there's a few mistakes there that might make it hit or miss. I ended up sticking with the old character art.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Since EE came out, you'd think there'd be a shit-ton of new SP user-created modules for it but unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be much at all, or at least certainly not the explosion of content for the original NWN release we saw. Maybe there are more PWs for EE? I don't know since I haven't played NWN seriously for years but it's still among my favorite cRPGs ever. I'm going to try the tip about only enabling v-sync in your GPU CP and not in-game because every time I try EE I fucking hate what happens with camera scrolling/zoom, that micro-stutter. Maybe this will finally fix it.

 

[Bad Sector]

Not sure what you mean by this, since you can configure the Camera Turn Speed in Options -> Input for whatever's comfortable. If you mean you're getting choppy camera motion, though, make sure you force V-Sync on from your GPU, the in-game Frame Limiter messes up the input detection.

No i don't mean the camera turn speed, i mean how the turning happens when you hit the screen edges but with widescreen your mouse has to "travel" a lot more horizontal distance than with a 4:3 aspect ratio before turning starts. What i was thinking was some option to have the effective area for the UI and mouse be centered at that 4:3 aspect ratio area with the extra horizontal space being there just to expand the view range. E.g, in the image below:

The monitor on the left it is how it is done now, you hit the blue lines to rotate the camera and the UI windows are anchored at each side. What i was referring to would be an option like the monitor on the right where the UI is anchored at a 4:3 centered ratio since the UI and anchoring was designed for 4:3 monitors (though perhaps the actual ratio could be configurable) with the mouse rotating the camera when it hits the blue lines themselves being at the edges of that centered 4:3 area as that'd require less horizontal motion (more or less the same as playing the game on a 4:3 monitor/resolution). However you still get to see more of the environment (so it isn't the same as simply running the game on a 4:3 resolution with black bars).

This'd be even more useful for ultrawide monitors as i assume in those monitors the UI elements would be placed way too far from each other (annoying especially for dialogs since they are anchored at the top left corner).

With Lighting Enhanced, you've got a bunch of a new shaders (Vibrance, Sharpness, Ambient Occlusion etc.) and you can further tweak most of them in their Advanced section. It's worth skimming the options page, at least I find I like the colour grading better. Oh, and wavy water now.

Yeah i noticed those and the options are nice, though they do not really make much of a visual difference (which is good IMO) - the shiny wavy water seems to be the most noticeable difference though when i wrote that i hadn't played far enough to see it (as i wrote i had only played the intro area, but i played more later).

 

[Gargaune]

No i don't mean the camera turn speed, i mean how the turning happens when you hit the screen edges but with widescreen your mouse has to "travel" a lot more horizontal distance than with a 4:3 aspect ratio before turning starts.

I get it now, but I gotta say, I don't think I've ever seen a game do that. I suppose you could just force a non-native 4:3 resolution if you don't mind the black sides. Never given it much thought since I tend to use a pretty high mouse acceleration, edge to edge in under 2cm, all in the wrist. You can also use the MMB to turn, but I hate that, wears the damn thing out.

Since EE came out, you'd think there'd be a shit-ton of new SP user-created modules for it but unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be much at all, or at least certainly not the explosion of content for the original NWN release we saw

Well, if you don't mind me cross-quoting myself:

I think it's because Beamdog went the wrong way about re-releasing NWN, they came out too early and frontloaded the builder features instead of player-oriented value. Some of the new toolset functionality is fantastic, but modders need a sizeable active player community before they do their thing, otherwise it's a hard sell to put in so much time in at the prospect of a couple of hundred players. Whereas NWN EE didn't offer much novelty to legacy players at launch, divided opinions hampered adoption, and without old fans generating buzz, I'd imagine new customers weren't pounding on the doors and you didn't get those rekindled feeding grounds to pull new modders in.

Beamdog really should've come out with the new renderer, the HD Art Pack and the integrated Content Browser day-one, with TotM following by Christmas 2018. Instead, there were a lot of great builder improvements even early on, but new player bait trickled in slowly and TotM, the first and only official EE exclusive to date, came in a whooping seventeen months after release. They never got that big splash so now it's still mostly the old guard soldiering on, and it's a shame 'cause NWN's Aurora was very much ahead of its time and I believe the right marketing push could've made it an enduring, moderate success even today.

 

[Volourn]

If something is shit, why would I shut up about it? I am a hero saving others from saving money on shitty projects. Even if I can save 1 out of 100 people from buying Skyrim, that is one soul saved. If Foed fucks up a car, and it blows up, damn straight I gonna warn people.

I bet Oilster has no issue, of course, if someone sucks their cock repeatedly. Pathetic.


Edit: Just saw.. why would Beamshit credit Black Isle for creating BG. BIS did not create Bg. FUKK OFF. Talk about trying to take credit fir something you didn't create. BIS was the publisher. They were not the dev.


Sykar is a hilarious fukkin hypocritical retart scumbag.

Gets mad because Bis/Interplay weren't given credit for 'making BG' but willfully ignores Bio who actually made the fukkin game. Lmfao

Fukkin pathetic.

 

[Bad Sector]

I get it now, but I gotta say, I don't think I've ever seen a game do that. I suppose you could just force a non-native 4:3 resolution if you don't mind the black sides.

I don't think many games do the edge-to-rotate much and it wouldn't be that practical with widescreen and ultrawide monitors anyway.

But the idea was exactly to avoid the 4:3 resolution so i can have the extra visible area at the sides - but otherwise i played Diamond edition using an integer scaled 4:3 resolution. It isn't a big deal but i think it'd be something nice to have (though again it might be more of a necessity for ultrawide).

Never given it much thought since I tend to use a pretty high mouse acceleration, edge to edge in under 2cm, all in the wrist. You can also use the MMB to turn, but I hate that, wears the damn thing out.

Personally I do not like how mouse acceleration feels so i disable it and i prefer to have the mouse using a linear mapping. It still is just a wrist move to move it from edge to edge - it just needs a wider move with 16:9 than 4:3 :-P.

I also do not use MMB for rotating, instead i've mapped the Q/E keys to rotate the camera.

 

[Gargaune]

I don't think many games do the edge-to-rotate much and it wouldn't be that practical with widescreen and ultrawide monitors anyway.

Different strokes and all that, the absence of edge turning is my second biggest gripe with BG3. Fucking thing literally murdered a MMB for me. Other than screen edge and hold-to-rotate, I don't know how you'd better handle camera rotation with that sort of perspective, either rotation keys or locking the mouse and UI to a sub-area of the screen don't seem optimal to me.

Actually, since we're talking NWN EE, you know a lot about graphics, don't you? Does that include DOF? The EE's got some detailed DOF configs under Advanced Frame-Buffer Effects -> Advanced, and DOF Amount is obvious, but I still have no idea what Deadzone and Vignette do. I was trying to configure it so I would keep the PC and centre screen sharp, but apply the tiniest blur to everything else regardless of camera angle and distance, just take the edge off distant landscape. I was curious if you had any insight into those Deadzone and Vignette settings.

 

[Bad Sector]

Different strokes and all that, the absence of edge turning is my second biggest gripe with BG3. Fucking thing literally murdered a MMB for me. Other than screen edge and hold-to-rotate, I don't know how you'd better handle camera rotation with that sort of perspective, either rotation keys or locking the mouse and UI to a sub-area of the screen don't seem optimal to me.

Don't get me wrong, i also consider it the best way to rotate the camera around the player, it is just that all the games i've seen it are games i've played on a 4:3 ratio (usually because they're old :-P). I haven't played BG3 and most games that have a bird's eye view camera like NWN tend to use the edges for panning instead of rotation.

Actually, since we're talking NWN EE, you know a lot about graphics, don't you? Does that include DOF? The EE's got some detailed DOF configs under Advanced Frame-Buffer Effects -> Advanced, and DOF Amount is obvious, but I still have no idea what Deadzone and Vignette do. I was trying to configure it so I would keep the PC and centre screen sharp, but apply the tiniest blur to everything else regardless of camera angle and distance, just take the edge off distant landscape. I was curious if you had any insight into those Deadzone and Vignette settings.

Sorry, depth of field is one of the very few effects (other is motion blur) i tend to dislike (and disable where possible) so i never looked into how it is implemented. AFAIK the basic idea (at least for the common DoF filter) is that you have a "focus point" (which is many cases is just a distance from the camera) and an area around that point that is sharp and everything else gets blurrier. I'd guess deadzone and vignette map to these two, though not sure which is what. And TBH i'm not sure if that'd work well if you play the game from a bird's eye view, this was most likely added for those who like to play NWN with their character close to the camera (i think there is also an option to not blur the character for that) and have the camera aligned mostly horizontally.

 

[Gargaune]

Sorry, depth of field is one of the very few effects (other is motion blur) i tend to dislike (and disable where possible) so i never looked into how it is implemented. AFAIK the basic idea (at least for the common DoF filter) is that you have a "focus point" (which is many cases is just a distance from the camera) and an area around that point that is sharp and everything else gets blurrier. I'd guess deadzone and vignette map to these two, though not sure which is what. And TBH i'm not sure if that'd work well if you play the game from a bird's eye view, this was most likely added for those who like to play NWN with their character close to the camera (i think there is also an option to not blur the character for that) and have the camera aligned mostly horizontally.

No worries, just figured I'd ask. Normally, I always disable DoF and Motion Blur on sight, but recently I'd thought of toying with the former in NWN to soften up edges on distant tiles and the low-res skyboxes. Try and mimic that slight out-of-focus look that PFKM has to gloss over some of the older assets. I'll post back if I figure something out.

 

[Sabotin]

If you really want you can play around with the shaders yourself as they're written in plain text with even some comments. Use nwn explorer to extract the .shd you want from data\base_shaders.bif, make the changes and stick it in override.

 

[Gargaune]

Oh, fuck me running, they broke the POST_ waypoints again. I loaded up my hobby module to kill some time and chip away at something, and bam, it's back, NPCs face east in their posts. I've no idea how long the latest build's been up, it's not like anyone updates GOG's changelog. It's just demoralising at this point.

 

[luj1]

is the Black blade of disaster bug fixed in the EE?

the one not giving it an enhancement bonus

 

[razvedchiki]

is it worth it to get a few rogue lvls for a fighter/weapon master build? mainly for tumble/use magic device.

 

[luj1]

is it worth it to get a few rogue lvls for a fighter/weapon master build? mainly for tumble/use magic device.

You wont have enough skill points

Tumble you can invest in with 5 pt increments but UMD needs to be maxxed

F/WM doesn't really need anything, as you can stomp everybody

 

[Jasede]

You could bank skill points. If for example you don't use all your skill points every level up and then take 1 rogue level at level 7 you can pump Tumble to 10 with your saved skill points.

 

[Cael]

What is the comparison like between Fighter/Bard/RDD vs Fighter/WM? Last I heard, RDD was way too overpowered. Is that true?

 

[Haplo]

Well, WM has neat crits, but Bard/RDD can actually survive the fights with Natural Armor boosts and maybe some Bard defensive spells. And the Str boosts are neat also.

 

[Cael]

Well, WM has neat crits, but Bard/RDD can actually survive the fights with Natural Armor boosts and maybe some Bard defensive spells. And the Str boosts are neat also.

I have never taken more than 1 level of Bard. Ftr9/Brd1/RDD10 is my usual lead-in to epic levels. Then Ftr all the way for the tasty epic feats.

 

[Haplo]

Oh right, RDD did not progress the CL in NWN. Well, the Natural Armor bonuses and Tumble as Class skill still help a lot.