NWNEE looks great with new shader effects!

Ancarion

Sorry, no screenshots... Any time I take one, it shows up without the shaders displayed. If anyone has a solution for what I'm doing wrong, I'd appeciate it. Anyway, I've been playing with ReShade, and after adding a bit of HDR, Bloom, and MXAO it really does look almost like a new game. Even things like the blocky, segmented body parts look vastly improved (to me) with the addition of a few shader effects to smooth things over. I really think people will be pleased when they see what this game can look like even now, now that Beamdog has gotten these things working properly. Again, I really wish I could figure out how to get screenshots of it.

Savant1974

That sounds fantastic, I'm really eager to see nwn with bloom and other modern effects! Also, does it run smoother in general? Say, in an area with lots of objects, polygons etc.

BelgarathMTH

@Savant1974 , I haven't experienced any lag yet, but I've only played a bit of the OC. I'm tempted to download and start playing your Aielund Saga again so I could tell you, but the first place I ever started to encounter crippling lag in your mod was a few chapters in where there was an attack on a keep where you programmed waves of enemies and a very complicated script. So, it would be a big time demand for me to try to test your entire epic on NWN:EE Head Start.

I occasionally got very minor lag during my last run on the GoG version, (about 2 or 3 months ago), during the battle in Chapter One with Robert Black and his army. I can't remember if I got any lag during any of Chapter Two, but I probably didn't since I don't remember any. I stopped playing that particular run right at the beginning of Chapter Three.

I can tell you that on the GoG version, on my particular machine, there was a bug where, at random intervals, the interface would all of a sudden start displaying white blocks where there should be something, and that if that happened, the save game would be corrupted at that point. So, I got into the habit of keeping multiple rotating save files against that possibility, especially since the G quicksave file would also be corrupted if that particular bug hit it.

Also, upon any death, there was a chance that Dante and Nelise would be pulled into the gold dragon's dimension with me, and if that happened, they would be permanently lost when I returned to the prime material plane. So, again, I learned to keep multiple saves against that eventuality. Also, on my last computer, any death and subsequent script to travel to the gold dragon's plane would result in an instant crash and corruption of save file.

Whether NWN:EE will somehow remove these stability dangers from Aielund, I don't know.

I love your work so much, I am tempted to offer to start playing Aielund just to let you know stuff that might happen on NWN:EE Head Start. Let me know if you want me to do that. I would have to download the CEP and all the haks again into the new game folder, so the undertaking to test for you is not a small deal for me.

One more thing - years and years ago, when I first played Aielund, I got very, very frustrated by the scarce placement of Heal potions in the final chapter, since you decided to create one and exactly ONE place to get them, and I wound up in the final battle without enough of them. Since I was sadly drunk at the time, I made a very disrespectful post to you on the Vault, and Magic Master has never forgiven me for it. I have always regretted that. If you remember it at all, I beg you to forgive me. Your Aielund is qualitatively better than any OC Bioware has ever released, and it has a permanent rotation in my gaming cycle. You pretty much created a separate game in its own right, that is superior to just about any other D&D game.

My druid characters who cannot wear any metal grudgingly agree, , although the fact that they can simultaneously cast buffs on both themselves and their animal companions thanks to your custom spell hak are an enormous compensation for that. I've often searched in vain for a way to put your druid implementation into the OC.

Ancarion

I realized that the screenshots were being saved in the bin/win32 folder. Here are a couple as an example. Keep in mind that the visual impact is much greater in the game, and screenshots just barely do it any justice.

Ancarion

To address your performance question, I just quickly set up a 32x32 TNO area with fog set to 200 and burned out buildings everywhere. Then I set up a nested encounter that spawned 32 nightmares. They all spawned and attacked instantly, and I never dropped below 180 fps. This was with a core i5 6600, 8 gig ram, and a gtx 980ti card.

Raduziel

That looks better, indeed.

Ok, Beamdog, you'll have my money.

Soon.

Savant1974

@Ancarion The screenshot looks really nice - are those new lighting effects on the windows, or is it the mod you're playing? (I want them for my mods!)

I don't think I ever read your drunken post @BelgarathMTH (I've been out of the loop for a long time) so don't even worry about it. I'm always happy to hear suggestions for improvements, so I'll make sure there are more healing potions available in the final mod.

I've done some bug fixes and tweaks for the next update to aielund, fixing most things except for the act 3 battle which, yes, I'll have to play through to test properly. I think I know how to fix it though, it's all coming back to me If you want to run through it and make notes about things you'd like to see improved or fixed, go right ahead - I plan to spend a couple of months working on dialog for the most part. I'd also like to add any new effects/content that will improve the experience. Currently, I've revised 'The Dockmaster Mystery' from act 1 and improved the way you can get access to the royal chambers in stonegaard, in act 2.

Oh, a good location to test for choppy play is Culdeny, in act 1. I've been working in there quite a bit this week and it's very choppy indeed (on my quad-core 64 bit machine with 8gb of ram), and I'd love to know how it runs on EE. It'd be a good test for it!

Edit: Just noticed there's a whole lot more CEP hakpacks to add to my modules, probably a whole lot of stuff I can include!

Ancarion

Those are emitter placeable models I made that are all lined up on whatever interior windows seem to be appropriate. I use an area OnEnter script to check if it's day or night, and play their activated/deactivated animations as needed. Ingame, they do a pretty good job of simulating dust and smoke moving through the sunbeams. Not perfect, but passable... And you are more than welcome to use any models or tilesets I've made, of course - about 98% of the things in that shot are original creations. My things are very much in a "builder's" state though, so not currently released, but I'd be happy to accommodate whatever you'd like.

WarChiefZeke

Ancarion said:

Those are emitter placeable models I made that are all lined up on whatever interior windows seem to be appropriate. I use an area OnEnter script to check if it's day or night, and play their activated/deactivated animations as needed. Ingame, they do a pretty good job of simulating dust and smoke moving through the sunbeams. Not perfect, but passable... And you are more than welcome to use any models or tilesets I've made, of course - about 98% of the things in that shot are original creations. My things are very much in a "builder's" state though, so not currently released, but I'd be happy to accommodate whatever you'd like.

It's very well done and something that should be part of the EE's as is. You wouldn't mind if I used such things in my own module when you have it in a more complete state?

Ancarion

WarChiefZeke said:

You wouldn't mind if I used such things in my own module when you have it in a more complete state?

Absolutely. I've always felt that one of the great things about this game is the sheer amount of free, open to use content that's been made for it by many people over the years. Check out the Neverwinter Vault, if you haven't already - there's a lot of great quality stuff free to download already. Modules, tilesets, portraits, anything you can think of. And if you want to try your hand at adding to the pile, this community has many good people who are more than happy to help get you started.

Savant1974

@Ancarion You made them? Very nice work, and I totally didn't just spend half an hour looking through the CEP for them! I'll agree with @WarChiefZeke that if you were to finish them off, I'd pop them into my series, but no pressure mate

scriver

Okay, that just looks absolutely fantastic.

Ancarion said:

WarChiefZeke said:

Check out the Neverwinter Vault, if you haven't already - there's a lot of great quality stuff free to download already. Modules, tilesets, portraits, anything you can think of.

Where would I even start though