Little Disappointed - Ideas For EE
Trinital
Member Posts: 59
Hello all, I am an avid NWN / NWN2 modder who has a strong passion for those games and the power they give players to construct sprawling worlds and universes.
I was absolutely ecstatic to hear that this game might be given an overhaul from Beamdog. As I understand Trent is one of the original developers and they have full access to the source code.
I was sorely disappointed. Reading just off the original article:
Going point by point.
All that said, I feel this was a huge missed opportunity. NWN has such a storied history with you guys, having many Bioware alumni in your company. This could of been your chance to break open the code, add more hooks into NW-Script, Work on internal premium modules or even bring back the premium module platform that was largely abandoned by Atari. Really make the game shine graphically, extend out the poly limits and phenotypes, Add normal mapping to the game ect..
You could even offer expansion packs with high quality assets / models, or server hosting services that were streamlined for running the server client in some way.. (Maybe this would work better for NWN2)
I would be overjoyed if this game sold like hot cakes and injected more players into our community. I am really worried this won't be enough just talking to other modders.
I was absolutely ecstatic to hear that this game might be given an overhaul from Beamdog. As I understand Trent is one of the original developers and they have full access to the source code.
I was sorely disappointed. Reading just off the original article:
- Improved Display: Your portrait, combat bar, inventory, and other UI elements adjust in size based on your chosen resolution including 1080p and 4k.
- Advanced Graphics Options: Pixel shaders and post-processing effects make for crisper, cleaner visuals. Enable contrast, vibrance, and depth of field options as preferred.
- Community Endorsed: Original developers have teamed with key members of the Neverwinter Nights community to curate important fan-requested improvements to support players, storytellers, and modders.
- Backwards Compatibility: Works with save games, modules, and mods from the original Neverwinter Nights. A galaxy of community created content awaits.
Going point by point.
- Improved Display / Advanced Graphics Options are well and good but I was really hoping for something more.. exciting. The video really just looked like vanilla NWN1.
- Community Endorsed was confusing for me. Are you working with NeverwinterVault in some capacity? What does this mean? Do you mean the developers behind NWNX / Client Extender?
- Backward Compatibility is very important, this is good to hear.
All that said, I feel this was a huge missed opportunity. NWN has such a storied history with you guys, having many Bioware alumni in your company. This could of been your chance to break open the code, add more hooks into NW-Script, Work on internal premium modules or even bring back the premium module platform that was largely abandoned by Atari. Really make the game shine graphically, extend out the poly limits and phenotypes, Add normal mapping to the game ect..
You could even offer expansion packs with high quality assets / models, or server hosting services that were streamlined for running the server client in some way.. (Maybe this would work better for NWN2)
I would be overjoyed if this game sold like hot cakes and injected more players into our community. I am really worried this won't be enough just talking to other modders.
9
Comments
If I don't care about the multiplayer or the graphical tuning, then there is no reason to buy.
Anyone who interacts with custom content should be immensely excited because the guts of the game is being enhanced with bug fixes, 64-bit (this is huge), and perhaps the most important--on-going development.
Imagine a world where Beamdog (I have no inside knowledge, this is all hypothetical):
-Removes hardcoding on stuff we currently bang our head against (or use NWNX to get around) like new base classes, weapon types, feats, skills, etc.
-Extends the graphics engine to allow higher poly models and higher resolution textures.
-Removes hardcoding on the UI so that you can design your own custom DM interface or re-implement the Radial menu. Think of all the fun things people have done with NWN2 using XML (boss health bars, timers, Guitar Hero, etc)
In that sense, this is earth shattering for those of us who have played, loved, and modded NWN for the better part of 15 years.
Enhancing the game is all well and good, but a good selling point would have been to see some extra things within the game. Weapons? A new expansion would be excellent. Of course, this is all an afterthought right now. The game's main focus needs to be completed and released first.
1. NWN creators were (as you pointed out during twich view) experimenting with vendor extensions of OpenGL standard. One such functionality already implemented (but disabled by default) was gl_ati_pn_triangles which basically is ATI Truform extension to OpenGL. Please keep in mind that it had it's own issues in plenty of games but was flawed attempt to implement n-patches. DX11/OpenGL4+ tessellation is much better, much faster. Many in-game models should be quite compatible. Why not implement it in place of Truform? This way you'd be able to use better character/object textures with more details and nice, curvy surfaces.
2. shaders - I believe I played a long time ago with nwshader 0.3 which was unofficial graphic mod introducing additional shaders. It was kind of similar to enbseries and so on for other games. Author tried to create more universal "shader inject" framework called VooDoo Shader but progress has stopped as he didn't find anyone helping him out. Maybe it would be good to contact him anyway? I mean implementing new Fullscreen shaders and material shaders might improve graphics quality greatly. DoF is just not enough.
3. crafting and enhancing system in NWN is basically non-existent. Temple of Elemental Evil was much closer to PnP (at least cost of gold and experience plus requirements of the caster). I believe implementing better crafting would benefit EE greatly.
4. Initiatives like NWNCQ ... why not talk with authors and include improvements from those in EE? Same with CEP and PRCpack?
"Ensure that the module’s desired HAK and TLK files are loaded before we attempt to start character
creation within a multiplayer module (allows servers to specify their own set of additional base classes, races, et cetera)"
NWN: EE with The Witcher 1 level graphics would be quite enough to replay until end of time.
I doubt they will be able to implement (or even should implement) every recommendation that will be made, but selecting a focused set of these proposed features will make for a far richer platform.
Hopefully they can investigate simple SSAO solutions, though my guess is that the world geometry is so limited it may just hurt more than it helps. Modern AA techniques as well. Jade Empire too.
Someone asked a great question "Will you support a downloader for haks". I think Trent totally misunderstood the question. He was talking about how Haks are optional and we need to think a long time before doing something so complex.
The question was about auto downloading for Persistent Worlds. A feature NWN2 has had since launch, where it runs a checksum of what haks you have and what you need then feeds you an autodownload from a web URL (The Haks are packed into a lzmba compression).
In fact a lot of the features that were "Maybe" or "No" are already fully featured in NWN2.
As a player who plays both NWN1 and NWN2 almost weekly. I don't know what 19 dollars buys me. There is no question a ton of work went into the EE's but I guess - I expected development to be focused more on content we really need.. As Well As to see more explanation / ground work laid for the future.
(The features already added were definitely good - I just expected more)
I want to give you guys my money. So sell me something please. Not Premium Modules I already own as "DLC". That was brutal.. (Also you mentioned Infinite Dungeons twice.. and didn't mention Kingmaker / Pirates of Sword Coast)
Before that we had to rely more on manual downloads, PWC files and also that World Gate tool.
Having an actual autodownloader like NWN2 would be a big asset.
The real hope would be that Beamdog focus more of their effort and resources on a brand new modern game, that brings PW capability. Preferably Forgotten Realms.
As far as my hopes/expectations - this better just be the start. I don't care about the single player campaigns or the premium modules (I've yet to play through any of them). Support the community, persistent worlds, custom content and so forth and I'll be happy.
One concern I have though is the current 'feature' list might leave a lot of current players wondering why they're paying $20 for a game and content they already have. All the back end fixes are amazing but they aren't likely to excite a lot of people into paying for NWN:EE. That could end up hurting a lot of servers or making major servers reluctant to switch which would end up splitting the community and that would be a terrible thing. If someone from Beamdog is listening - maybe consider offering a discount for existing NWN owners, or reach out to the owners of various servers and offer bulk buy deals or something where if a community can bring X number of sales, they can all get a discount.
That's something you would probably need from the developers working on the source code.
1) NWNX, CEP and Project Q contents incorporated in the game core
2) 3.5 ruleset (3.0 is so lame that had a short life)
3) Sub-races
4) Easy ways for a DM to alter an NPC name, stats, faction and description in-game (same for items where applicable)
5) Psionics!
6) Better AI
7) Full manageable NPCs
8) More options for heads at character creation
9) A more friendly level-up wizard for NPCs creation at the Aurora Toolset
Realistically, as far as EE, my hopes aren't that they'll add a ton of flashy features. I'd rather see them open up the engine in ways that'll allow the community to better implement those features.
Building is like putting several pieces together. To create a new piece is an entirely different challenge.
The pipeline used now should be using the core profile, so we shouldn't be seeing vendor specific issues (unless bugs in the actual drivers or HW). Many kudos to Jason for this change. The change is not visible in old content, because they were fully emulating the FFP, but as soon as you sit down and play with new content, things get much more interesting.
Agreed, and while this might have some drawbacks, adding it into the pipeline (if supported) would be wonderful. A nice part of functionality can be done with what they call material shaders, which is just a per-texture VS/FS, but not everything. I really want tessellation support for grass. Guess we'll just have to make enough noise.
Sean has moved on to the Wine project, not sure how interested he would be. NWN:EE now supports most things that you could do in NWShader. Notable exception is scriptable shader parameters, but I believe that is something that's being considered.
The FBO fragment shaders they demoed are just a small tech demo. I wish they'd picked something nicer. But doing something like this is pretty easy now: https://i.imgur.com/fVqtX7m.mp4
I have high hopes for the future improvements as well. If you're interested in messing around with these features, there's a bit of documentation in a readme file, or you can just send me a PM.
That video does pretty much exactly what you explained, in old 1.69 NWN. So, you needed custom OGL code to run on the client to redirect rendering to an FBO, then apply shaders to the FBO. Now, you just pack your shaders in a .hak file and you're good to go.
And now you do have geometry info, and control over the vertex shader. You can implement custom scaling, or you could force the game to be 2D. It doesn't currently use a geometry shader, but hopefully that will come in a future build.
I feel they demoed the wrong things. The under-the-hood changes are MASSIVE, they just haven't been used yet.
My biggest problem with this is this is supposed to be an enhanced addition of the game with additional features but a new feature as small as this is set aside as dlc instead of being within the enhanced addition of the game that so far has very little visible changes to it.
The portrait pack is on steam now:
Neverwinter Nights: Heroes of Neverwinter
To link this game more with the Infinity Engine games, I already posted the following wish (unrealistic, I know) in the "feature proposals/requests" thread:
I'd like a "Retro-View" option with a "camera" angle (and camera distance) that resembles that of BG:EE (and the other infinity engine games). Perhaps even switching to a "stoney" BG:EE like interface/icon bar in that mode.
I know that this request is very gimmickey but I would die for that