Beamdog have released the latest development updates to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition for everyone, and it comes with some wonderful upgrades.
As we reported on before during the Beta, several noteworthy graphical boosts have been added to it. These can really change and improve the RPG experience found here. Beamdog are absolutely comitted to making it the best it can be, with this update being the biggest since the Enhanced Edition release back in 2018.
What's inside? For starters, a whole new lighting engine with:
- Physically based rendering (PBR), with emulation of specular reflection, surface “roughness”, Fresnel-effects and gamma correction. All in all, this gives a more realistic and “natural” look.
- Tone mapping that prevents color distortion of bright lights and enables overbright.
- Per-pixel lighting rather than per-vertex of the old setup, yielding much more precise light illumination levels relative to distance.
- Full dynamic lighting, supporting up to 32 dynamic lights (previously NWN effectively only supported 6).
Check out a quick example of the difference some of it can make:
Left old / Right new. See a bigger comparison on this dedicated page.
Plus new water rendering, new grass rendering, plenty of other smaller graphical fixes and improvements. There's also some huge pathfinding improvements, getting stuck on random objects should be a thing of the past. Big improvements to modding once again, like access to the full SQLite API to get into campaigns, modules and the player. Loads more to be found in the patch notes.
Really great to see Beamdog continue to make such a great RPG constantly better. Will be very fun to see what else they have cooking up for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.
You can pick up Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition from GOG and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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As usual, sadly, GOG are lagging behind with this for their non-Galaxy standalone installers. I've been itching to try this one. GOG teaches linux gamers patience.
2 Likes, Who?
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Enhanced EditionI'm sure there is a rule against this
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Sep 16, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiqkclCJsZs
Still wish they'd port the tools to Linux... or at least help the open source tool project, though I think that died long ago?
Still wish they'd port the tools to Linux... or at least help the open source tool project, though I think that died long ago?
2 Likes, Who?
I know that work ain't free but I'm not really up to buying NWN for a 3rd time. I have a boxed edition somewhere, I bought Diamond from GoG already and now another version...
1 Likes, Who?
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Enhanced EditionEnhanced Enhanced Edition Edition?
3 Likes, Who?
I don't think I can ever thank Beamdog enough for keep those classic CRPGs alive and bringing them to Linux among other platforms.
It's a real pity Icewind Dale 2 source code is lost. Otherwise, I'd have a complete collection.
It's a real pity Icewind Dale 2 source code is lost. Otherwise, I'd have a complete collection.
0 Likes
or at least help the open source tool project, though I think that died long ago?
If you mean Neveredit, yeah, that one's unfortunately long dead.
Frankly, I wish they'd FLOSS the original toolset, but that's a difficult situation to resolve from a contract/legal standpoint, I guess.
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(Enhanced Edition)²Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Enhanced EditionEnhanced Enhanced Edition Edition?
4 Likes, Who?
*someone* at BD really loves this rather forgettable game. Save for all the fan-made content. *IF* you're up to this thing.
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toolsetimo the only thing it's notable for
even the die-hards acknowledge that the OC (original campaign or whatever the NN nerds call it) rather sucks.
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As usual, sadly, GOG are lagging behind with this for their non-Galaxy standalone installersalready on the tracker nearest to you =P
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The first original campaign is lackluster, yes. It's more of a demo of what's possible with the toolset.
But: the two expansion campaigns, Shadows of Undrentide and Horders of the Underdark, those are great.
And saying the toolset is "the only things it's notable for" sells the vast amount of great community modules awfully short.
Also, look at the "premium modules", they show a lot of promise. If Atari hadn't pulled the plug there, that would have been a great vehicle for continous updates.
But: the two expansion campaigns, Shadows of Undrentide and Horders of the Underdark, those are great.
And saying the toolset is "the only things it's notable for" sells the vast amount of great community modules awfully short.
Also, look at the "premium modules", they show a lot of promise. If Atari hadn't pulled the plug there, that would have been a great vehicle for continous updates.
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the amount of effort BD are putting into a (for all intents and purposes) dead dog, puts the (already slim) chances to see NWN2: EE into even more awkward situation.
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And saying the toolset is "the only things it's notable for" sells the vast amount of great community modules awfully short.not really - that same fan made content is what I meant.
but even if I'm willing to buy a game, complete a boring single player campaign and then play the expansions / sift through the online-published amateur content... it's just quite a bit of a stretch innit? Especially if one doesn't have a particular liking for D&D system at least in its CRPG incarnation and positively hate the bioware's darling "active pause" - sadly it just won't compensate for that anyway. I mean it won't turn the original into Fallout, PST, or even say Arcanum. Neither (if I wanted a bit of action) into Diablo 2.
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I think it is fair to say that if you don't like D&D mechanics and real time with pause combat, you're not going to like a game employing D&D mechanics and real time with pause combat. I'm not so sure why you feel so compelled to rain on everyone else, though.
I'm a latecomer to this game and have now become slightly obsessed. Both the official DLCs and the community content have been awesome, despite the creaky old engine. Hopefully some of the polish in this patch will round off the edges.
I'm a latecomer to this game and have now become slightly obsessed. Both the official DLCs and the community content have been awesome, despite the creaky old engine. Hopefully some of the polish in this patch will round off the edges.
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Sep 17, 2020
I thought the original campaign was fine, the problem was most people compare it to Baldur's Gate, which is a decent story, though I always hate it when games (even tabletop ones) go from being that you are fighting for your life to 'oh by the way, you're the son of a god'. That kind of ruined it.toolsetimo the only thing it's notable for
even the die-hards acknowledge that the OC (original campaign or whatever the NN nerds call it) rather sucks.
I got stuck on NWN's initial campaign many years ago, then lost my save game...
NWN is what I term as the first game to DLC and they did DLC right. It wasn't even called DLC back then, and doing 5-25 dollar modules was a brilliant idea to keep things interesting, and Bioware really could have kept that going had it not been killed.
Also, now on that subject, the term DLC is dumb anyhow, as Downloadable is one stinking word.... I guess they didn't want people to start pronouncing it as DICK if it were just DC.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Sep 17, 2020
I thought there was a newer one, and found this. https://sourceforge.net/projects/openknights/or at least help the open source tool project, though I think that died long ago?
If you mean Neveredit, yeah, that one's unfortunately long dead.
Frankly, I wish they'd FLOSS the original toolset, but that's a difficult situation to resolve from a contract/legal standpoint, I guess.
Hey... you resemble this remark!
https://github.com/DrMcCoy/NWNTools
Last edited by slaapliedje on 17 September 2020 at 2:47 pm UTC
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