NWN:EE thread
 

From the latest stream… If you're part of the headstart you can/soon will get a key so can start messing around and testing it on Steam. As well as usual steam friends etc they've got it working with the steam workshop - so one click mod installing.

They talked about adding normal and spec mapping to the engine and from that unveiled that they've started doing stuff with character models which is a bit of a surprise…

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U8qhxazhI…-feb-9-028.jpg

New premium content was also mentioned as being planned/in the works.

Here's a recap if you're interested.

http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/02/febr…eam-recap.html

Yep yep. They mentioned that a lot of modders are already very busy creating new stuff. Should be interesting.

Every iteration of this project simply gets better and better. Good times!

This is quite impressive for a geezer of a game.

Thanks for posting this, KaosWarMonk. Yeah that new character model looks great, and the other screenshots look really nice as well.

Latest stream recap

There was also talk last week of auto downloading requirements when connecting to online worlds but it's not mentioned, I must have read it on the forums.

Not NWN related…

Bloody Beamdog, are they going to remaster Tetris? :P

( But it seems the cubicle heads are improved, NWN models always reminded me of

http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/about/images/kryten.jpg

I've been playing the 2.5 update for a few solid weeks now, playing through BG -> SoD -> and now in BG2, and it's been quality. I couldn't tell you what's new or anything, but I noticed since the last time I played BG (closer to when the EE first released) some cool things have been added, like the inventory section that shows you clearly how your THAC0 or AC will change when equipping gear. Little stuff like that I noticed that is pretty cool, and the UI overall is a lot better now (I guess they updated that with SoD. I use the old-school skin for it, though, not really a fan of the SoD black version.) Love the Combat Stats section, which clearly breaks down what is affecting your AC and stuff like that.

Haven't played on tablets yet, though, mainly because this playthrough uses a ton of mods and I'm not sure how I'd access those on the tablet version. I *could* use Nvidia streaming or Moonlight to stream from PC, but that's not really testing the tablet version at that point. So I'd have to look into A) saving to the cloud between devices and B) getting all the mods to work flawlessly on tablet as the PC version does. Not even sure where to start there, would be super dope if it was possible, though.

So apparently BD said in the stream that they want to release NWN:EE on March 27…

http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/03/marc…eam-recap.html

I'm a fan but unless they have a whole ton of stuff they haven't shown yet I can't see this being received very well. Way too soon to make a good impression me thinks.

Bunch of Smeg Heads.

I think they mean early access release on Steam. Right now you can only have a Steam key form buying the version on Beamdog.

Yes, that would make far more sense.

Seems I missed a lot of gaming news and released games. As for this game I'm intrigued as I still play NWN mods, and would love to see the game get a graphic update.

Nope - looks like it will officially be the full version

After being pressed a couple of times

As long as you are willing to accept that there will be significant patches after the release, I'd say they will hit the date. After what I've seen so far, I would be quite amazed if it is a flawless, pain-free launch though, I think quite a few updates will be necessary.

Will the new mods (that is, modules created in NWN: EE) actually require the EE or will you still be able to run them with the original GOG version?

While the visual improvements look better than I was expecting, that alone won't be reason enough for me to fork over however much money Beamdog will be asking for the EE. But if Fester Pot or Andarian release the next installment in their series and I need the EE to play them… I may be compelled to get it.

Also, do older modules run fine in the EE or will the creators or someone need to update them to get them working? (I think I read something awhile back about backwards compatibility awhile back but wondering if that's still accurate)..

From my experience with the head start this is still the case. At one stage to try it out I updated the NWN:EE ini file to point everything at my old NWN folders and everything I tried ran ok - opening modules and saves, running around a bit, having a few fights. I didn't do exhaustive testing but I had no obvious issues (edit for a further caveat - this was a number of versions ago and not using the Steam release). The only roadblock I've seen was trying to connect the EE client to an online persistent world which was still running the older NWN server version. From this I guess if you play online you need to run a client of the same version as the server and therefore might be compelled to get EE if the server admin updates their world. Just hold off for a bit and check the comments on Steam, if the EE version breaks older modules it'll probably become evident pretty quickly.

I'm not sure re new content requiring EE. Besides internal workings of a module I suppose that if the creator only puts it on the Steam workshop then you'll need NWN:EE to play it as regular NWN isn't integrated with Steam.

If the new modules use things from the EE, it will require the EE. They added a lots of stuff in the backend for module makers and are planning to add new tilesets and models.

Ugh, that's another issue I hadn't even thought about. I assume Beamdog plans to sell a Drm-free version on GOG too? If I were to buy the EE that's definitely where I'd get it. And I hope anybody putting the work into making modules would release both on / off the Steam workshop… (I'm assuming this would require minimal effort & not be akin to releasing two separate builds of a game).

Ah, OK that's precisely what I was wondering. I wasn't sure whether they actually added new things yet beyond updating the character models, supporting higher resolutions, etc.

There was an early tool put out by Bio after SotU where you could unlflag your module requiring SotU.

What they should have done, of course, is had that flag in the toolset itself so you wouldn't accidentally add SotU assets to it and shut the users out.

Don't tell Beamdog, but you could probably use the same tool to unflag one of their modules to play it on the old system. You'd just have to put up with the odd script not working or being attacked by an invisible asset.