2005 vs 2017 (from Reddit) by The_Capulet

JuliusBorisov

A user called The_Capulet has published images at https://www.reddit.com/r/neverwinternights/comments/7j8vi2/2005_vs_2017/ - a comparison between the look of areas created in 2005 and their look in EE without haks or overrides.

https://imgur.com/a/MftQJ#eCa0xSC

TheBarbarian

That's a somewhat misleading thing to post, unless the EE team is meaning to rebuild areas. TTR(Rural) and TNO(Castle Exterior, Rural) are separate tilesets. TNO isn't an override for TTR; areas built using TTR are not going to magically morph into TNO areas with the EE. I don't think they have the right tiles to make that even theoretically possible, since TNO has grassy slopes at different heights.

So in case anyone's getting excited thinking the Rural areas will change as seen in the pictures there, that's extremely unlikely. This is an example of a PW reworking one of their areas using a newer tileset. It's theoretically possible to do the same with other areas in other modules, including the original campaigns, but it's a lot of work that takes a lot of time. Using tileset overrides to automatically alter all areas using the tileset would be much faster.

But, yes. NWN already has decent-looking tilesets, and even outright great-looking community-made ones. Advertising it solely using the worst-looking content would be doing it injustice.

More new tilesets by Beamdog would be a pretty exciting prospect, IMO.

JuliusBorisov

A quick note - I have just highlighted a post from Reddit which shows what people can do in the EEs.

TheBarbarian

To be fair, people could already do that before, and can do it without the EE. TNO's been around for a while now. :-) If you'd like some prettyish screenshots comparing the visuals of EE and non-EE areas (like TNO in the EE, and TNO without the EE) for everybody's entertainment, I could go take some. It's not going to have quite the "Wow! Huge improvement!"-effect of comparing TTR to TNO, though. Most of the cool stuff at this point is just under the hood, no helping that.

But the cool stuff under the hood stands to attract new and returning builders, which means more modules for everybody, which means you buy one game and get thousands of stories to play. It'd be shortsighted to disregard the value of the under-the-hood work. Graphics are important, but they're not the only important thing. And if a RPG has nothing to offer but good graphics, it's doing something wrong (this also goes for relationships, or buying cars or houses).

I'm very much looking forward to the next patch, in any case. Maybe blogposts by modulebuilders with ongoing projects could be something to generate more EE hype; those'll have lovingly-chosen screenshots using good tilesets, for sure. Savant1974's recent announcement of Aielund Saga: Enhanced Edition was certainly a very well-liked post. I might have let out something of a squeal of glee at hearing (well, reading) that the EE made Andarian at least take another look at the third part of Sanctum of the Archmage, too.

ps: give me bumpmaps and transparency for hair and also slots for extra head-aligned models :-D and a pony and a cactus wait we already have those don't we wait in that case give me FLYING! Vertical-position-adjusting FLYING! oh there is so much cool stuff that could be added to NWN. All of the hype for under-the-hood work over here.