Showing some big continued dedication to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Beamdog have put up another huge Beta version with some pretty major additions. Development Build 8193.21 is available to try out on Steam (other platforms when stable), and it can be used along with any servers for multiplayer with the .20.1 release as normal so it's easy to test out in your favourites.
What's new? A lot!
Some of the highlights include:
- A new game launcher UI that also includes a curated content repository, free for everyone (see below)
- Full TTF font support throughout the game, for clearer and more adaptive text rendering
- Fractional/floating-point UI scaling
- Better UI skinning
- Game/renderer performance improvements
- Renderer: soft particle support, blending with fog
- Water: Screen-space refractions and reflections
- Pathfinding improvements
- Visual Object Transform Lerping (smooth transitions)
- New advanced script commands
- Three new portraits sourced from the community portrait contest
- Hundreds of fixes and smaller features
Pictured - the new single-player launcher on Linux
This new launcher should make getting into new stories a lot easier, and a bit fancier than before. Beamdog mentioned they're reaching out to creators of popular modules to get them integrated into Beamdog's curated repository. However, to keep things open anyone can host a third-party repository.
Really great work from Beamdog all around here, especially the fractional scaling options enabling players to tweak the UI and text to their liking. I wish more games had that.
Full Beta patch notes are here.
You can pick up Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition from GOG and Steam.
Another nice and unexpected benefit has been that I can load the game and be playing within seconds. This is great when I just want to jump in for a short session and get back out. This is in contrast to something like 7DTD or Valheim which feel like they need more of a commitment due to the long load times, by comparison. Not that those games take an unreasonable amount of time to load, it's just that NWN is so dang fast.
Last edited by foobrew on 15 March 2021 at 7:28 pm UTC
Quoting: PangaeaWhat happens when these useless hacks run out of classic games to ruin?
WTF are you talking about? The guy who runs beamdog came from bioware and was a big part of making OG NWN. Go deify your past somewhere else.
Quoting: PangaeaAnd yet they have fuckscrewed every single of those game they have 'released'. They should be deeply ashamed of themselves. I look forward to the day they go out of business. If there is any talent in that shack, they'll find other jobs. Maybe they'll make something worth a damn too then.
You're either a complete troll or have zero clue what you're talking about. Probably both. I played all these games when they were a new thing. I played all these games now. The enhanced editions do about as good a job as possible in capturing what these games were about and making it possible to play them on newer machines. Some people really need to shut up and get a clue before spitting rude nonsense into the world.
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