NWN2 Enhanced Edition (dear Beamdog!)
ComeAndSee
Member Posts: 8
Hello, I am the admin of the Kingdom of Haven NWN2 persistent server: https://kingdomofhaven.com/
Firstly. I would like to say thank you to Beamdog for bringing back NWN into the spotlight with the articles on PCgamer and the general advertisements going around. NWNEE has been quite the talk of the NWN2 community as of late as we share a parallel community with NWN1 (although NWN1 has 2-3 times as many players). See http://www.nwnlist.com to see.
The admins of the major NWN2 servers like Baldurs Gate, Kingdom of Haven, Sigil, Aeris, Skullport, Realms of Trinity, etc. are all interested to see if there are any plans for a future EE for NWN2. The game client in particular is newer than NWN1, but has performance issues primarily around how bad the graphics pipeline and being limited to single thread performance. We have a plugin that Skywing made called NWN2 Client Extensions that clients can install that improves the game clients performance.
Aspect of Sorrow (one of the head devs at Baldurs Gate) recently got the symbols for the NWN2 server client from Rich Taylor of Obsidian to start his own side-work of creating a new NWN2 server client that can submit multi-threading, a higher player cap, and 64-bit. This is kind of our "EE" right now which would be beefing up the servers to support more players. However, it's questionable if he'll be able to finish this anytime soon due to him being a complete volunteer on it and working and stuff (kudos to him).
Really for a NWN2 EE all we would need is the multiplayer servers restored, an updated server client, a less crashy toolset (its really crashy), and a client updated (with same stuff above) to not make a 2017 high-end machine cry worse than Crysis did on a 2008 machine on high settings. I'd be more than happy to throw money into some crowdfunding just to see this happen.
So from all the admins of NWN2 servers, I'd be very pleased to see an official response from Beamdog on this! Let's not forget that NWN is a shared community of roleplayers and there's no other game that replaces NWN1/NWN2.
Firstly. I would like to say thank you to Beamdog for bringing back NWN into the spotlight with the articles on PCgamer and the general advertisements going around. NWNEE has been quite the talk of the NWN2 community as of late as we share a parallel community with NWN1 (although NWN1 has 2-3 times as many players). See http://www.nwnlist.com to see.
The admins of the major NWN2 servers like Baldurs Gate, Kingdom of Haven, Sigil, Aeris, Skullport, Realms of Trinity, etc. are all interested to see if there are any plans for a future EE for NWN2. The game client in particular is newer than NWN1, but has performance issues primarily around how bad the graphics pipeline and being limited to single thread performance. We have a plugin that Skywing made called NWN2 Client Extensions that clients can install that improves the game clients performance.
Aspect of Sorrow (one of the head devs at Baldurs Gate) recently got the symbols for the NWN2 server client from Rich Taylor of Obsidian to start his own side-work of creating a new NWN2 server client that can submit multi-threading, a higher player cap, and 64-bit. This is kind of our "EE" right now which would be beefing up the servers to support more players. However, it's questionable if he'll be able to finish this anytime soon due to him being a complete volunteer on it and working and stuff (kudos to him).
Really for a NWN2 EE all we would need is the multiplayer servers restored, an updated server client, a less crashy toolset (its really crashy), and a client updated (with same stuff above) to not make a 2017 high-end machine cry worse than Crysis did on a 2008 machine on high settings. I'd be more than happy to throw money into some crowdfunding just to see this happen.
So from all the admins of NWN2 servers, I'd be very pleased to see an official response from Beamdog on this! Let's not forget that NWN is a shared community of roleplayers and there's no other game that replaces NWN1/NWN2.
8
Comments
We just don't want to feel like we're being buried under a rock if you know what I mean.
There are some lessons NWN EE can learn from NWN2 such as in several of the interesting 2da columns added which simplifies modding, and a handful of NWscript commands. Other than that you know yourself that the game has so many issues especially with graphics and animations. They also saw fit to add in a lot more limitations to modding NWN2 for every small thing they opened up. Those are some of the most significant reasons many more ppl still play NWN over NWN2, you can just do so much more with NWN than you can with NWN2.
Anyway I think you'll have much more luck taking the request to the Obsidian Entertainment boards.
He also said in the streams, I'll paraphrase here "NWN2 went in it's own direction different to the spirit of NWN and I wouldn't have gone in that direction but it was their game not mine"
In the latest interview posted he also says "this will be my NWN2, my NWN3, NWN4, and NWN5..."
So I'm going to guess that means it wont be done by Beamdog if it does get made.
The important thing is to just not forget that NWN2 still exists and people play it. My server in particular has 200 people that connect in a 24/7 period. We don't have the option of going to NWNEE because it would be a significant downgrade for us in terms of many functionalities. I'm not ragging on EE by any means. Just explaining that you can't carry over NWN2 characters/etc over to NWNEE due to how everything is so different.
NWN2EE (as explained above) doesn't need as much hard polishing as a NWNEE does and Beamdog does historically never announce they're working on something until they're actually working on it.
Just some food for thought.
He said he wanted to do NWN, but that it didn't look likely at the time for legal reasons.
He has said he doesn't want to do NWN2.
Quickfire list on some common issues with NWN2:
So I think NWN2 would actually take a lot more work if the goal is also that it appeals to a broader NWN audience. On the other hand if you just want a more simple update like 4k resolution without any bigger changes and fixes then you probably should be asking Obsidian.
I think you'll have a better chance asking them for a rerelease since NWN2 was Obsidian's game. I think Josh Sawyer was the lead designer on it and he's still there working on Deadfire right now. His tumblr is frog helm fan club or something if you want to shoot him a question about it. Hope that helps.
Though honestly I think they’re too busy with their PoE series to bother.
It's clear that in NWN2 Obsidian where more intererested in creating a BG type game than improving the toolset.
If you like NWN2, Deadfire is the game you should be following.
Meawhile, Obsidian is focused on new party based single player rpgs using the far more suitable isometric viewpoint, and have no-reason to revistit a half-baked abortion that still works as well as it ever did.
Exteriors are limited to 32x32 and there are plugins for the NWN2 toolset that let you take a terrain and import it ingame into how many maps you want. https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/tool/terracoppa-v18
A 32x32 exterior is rather large and you can do more things in NWN2 with exteriors like creating vertical terrain.
The textures are limited, but you can do more natural blending of textures together in exterior areas to make more realistic look exteriors. If you need more then 6 textures in a single tile you're not doing it right.
Shadows are an issue.
poor quality animations
no smooth animation transitions
Not sure if you've played NWN2, but most NWN2 servers use KEMO animations. On our server we have over 100 custom animations for players to use. The animations aren't jerky and are standard quality for the age.
Don't know what this means.
You have to download an older version of 3ds MAX to modify stuff and there's been numerous tutorials released lately on how to import and export stuff with Blender. I know people who still make animations for NWN2 and there's still custom creatures showing up on the vault every month that people are importing from other games.
People have also been importing outfits from Skyrim.
This is incorrect. NWN2 has a system called xp_craft which allows you to take items and modify them inside of a tailor shop. You can change the appearance of an item, the coloration, add accessories, etc. Myself and another scripter even made a system that lets people change their hair styles/hair colors and even their skin choices ingame.
Not sure what "less dependable" means. I've made my own XML UIs in NWN2 and have found them to be rather reliable and easy to script with. I even made an ingame instant messenger system.
Not even sure how this is a thing. Chat window is easy to follow and you can resize it. The buttons are user friendly.
Camera spasming around corners sounds like a performance issue on the PC. I have been playing NWN2 for 5 years and have never had that happen to me.
These customization aren't present in NWN2, nope. We have other customizations available like wings/tails/etc.
Not sure how this is an issue. For outfits you only need 3 tint colors.
This comes down entirely to the modeler making their outfit. There's different base skins that people make with heads + outfits at times and the skintones don't match up. It's not a NWN2 issue, but an issue with mispaired base skins being used.
Icons are not small. You can resize your UI.
In NWN2, walkmesh .trx files are stored locally on the clients machine. In order for you to update the walkmesh of the area you have to push an update on the autodownloader and make sure the updated .trx is on the server. If you're not updating walkmesh you can copy over any other map changes.
This is hardly an inconvenience in NWN2 as server admins usually push their content in weekly or once a month.
Not sure what this means. There's a visual things in NWN2 that don't show on your character sheet like Insightful Strike, but 95% of the other stuff displays on the character sheet.
All of these are fixed in a NWNX4 plugin as stated amongst other things.
What?
Believe me, NWN2 DOES NOT need 40 levels. There are NWNX4 plugins to unlock level 40, but it would lead to hugely unbalanced PCs.
What?
Not sure what you mean by hardcoded. I've made over 30 custom classes and edits so far and you can edit the base classes and expand on them.
Not sure what you mean by "tiny". In terms of map sizes? This is incorrect. Some of the servers like Baldurs Gate have over 200+ player maps. My server has roughly around 150~ excluding instanced areas.
The reason I don't have a "long" list of things because the amount of things that are broken are the level of inconveniences more so then anything game breaking. You can't play NWN2 in ultra graphics, but its not an issue since people are primarily playing the multiplayer for roleplaying.
The community of NWN2 has been doing a good job fixing its own issue, primarily with Skywing's client extensions: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/nwn2-client-extension
Exteriors are limited to 32x32 and there are plugins for the NWN2 toolset that let you take a terrain map and import it ingame into how many maps you want. https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/tool/terracoppa-v18
A 32x32 exterior is rather large and are rarely used unless you're just wanting to make a ridiculously huge city map or something. You'd basically be a dot on the map unable to find other people.
The textures are limited, but you can do more natural blending of textures together in exterior areas to make more realistic look exteriors. If you need more then 6 textures in a single tile you're not doing it right.
Shadows are an issue.
poor quality animations
no smooth animation transitions
Not sure if you've played NWN2, but most NWN2 servers use KEMO animations. On our server we have over 100 custom animations for players to use. The animations aren't jerky and are standard quality for the age.
Don't know what this means.
You have to download an older version of 3ds MAX to modify stuff and there's been numerous tutorials released lately on how to import and export stuff with Blender. I know people who still make animations for NWN2 and there's still custom creatures showing up on the vault every month that people are importing from other games.
People have also been importing outfits from Skyrim.
This is incorrect. NWN2 has a system called xp_craft which allows you to take items and modify them inside of a tailor shop. You can change the appearance of an item, the coloration, add accessories, etc. Myself and another scripter even made a system that lets people change their hair styles/hair colors and even their skin choices ingame.
Not sure what "less dependable" means. I've made my own XML UIs in NWN2 and have found them to be rather reliable and easy to script with.
Not even sure how this is a thing. Chat window is easy to follow and you can resize it. The buttons are user friendly.
Camera spasming around corners sounds like a performance issue on the PC. I have been playing NWN2 for 5 years and have never had that happen to me.
These customization aren't present in NWN2, nope. We have other customizations available like wings/tails/etc.
Not sure how this is an issue. For outfits you only need 3 tint color categories. NWN2 supports 65536 colors.
This comes down entirely to the modeler making their outfit. There's different base skins that people make with heads + outfits at times and the skintones don't match up. It's not a NWN2 issue, but an issue with mispaired base skins being used.
Icons are not small. You can resize your UI.
In NWN2, walkmesh .trx files are stored locally on the clients machine. In order for you to update the walkmesh of the area you have to push an update on the autodownloader and make sure the updated .trx is on the server. If you're not updating walkmesh you can copy over any other map changes.
This is hardly an inconvenience in NWN2 as server admins usually push their content in weekly or once a month.
Not sure what this means. There's a visual things in NWN2 that don't show on your character sheet like Insightful Strike, but 95% of the other stuff displays on the character sheet.
All of these are fixed in a NWNX4 plugin as stated amongst other things.
What?
Believe me, NWN2 DOES NOT need 40 levels. There are NWNX4 plugins to unlock level 40, but it would lead to hugely unbalanced classes.
What?
Not sure what you mean by hardcoded. I've made over 30 custom classes and edits so far and you can edit the base classes and expand on them.
Not sure what you mean by "tiny". In terms of map sizes? This is incorrect. Some of the servers like Baldurs Gate have over 200+ player maps. My server has roughly around 150~ excluding instanced areas.
The reason I don't have a "long" list of things because the amount of things that are broken are the level of inconveniences more so then anything game breaking. You can't play NWN2 in ultra graphics, but its not an issue since people are primarily playing the multiplayer for roleplaying.
The community of NWN2 has been doing a good job fixing its own issue, primarily with Skywing's client extensions: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/nwn2-client-extension
I rather Beamdog take Lionheart into account. It's the last Black Isle game.
I tried to address that a long time ago. Nudity works (
https://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter2/mods/9 (should also be on the vault somewhere if the whole archive from IGN was secured)
If it wasn't for a mod called Path of Evil my CDs would be in the thrash.
It is ugly now and was ugly back in its release date. The way the character moves are lame, positioning the camera was a hellish task, the main campaign was poor written and I could stay here all the day stating how much I hate it.
A point of proof that you missed the point, take the first refutation, you incorrectly did not observe that each metatile is in fact a mesh composed of 72 triangles or faces and that this is an irrefutable limitation. You can extol the benefits of NWN2's terrain over NWN but only within the confines of a mesh composed of 72 triangles. The competition in this case is not NWN2 vs NWN, it is NWN2 vs 3DSMAX and clearly the later always wins. The terrain tool is nothing more than an extremely primitive 3D mesh generator, if a tile mesh exceeds 72 faces it has already surpassed NWN2's limits.
Your other refutations similarly ignore the issues with NWN2 and in some cases even inflates the quality of poorly made mods. I'm sure most lingering NWN2 players don't consider NWN2 issues as problems at all, but preaching to the choir isn't a good strategy when you want to change opposing views and observations.
In other news you can't make ppl like your favorite food if they don't like it.
Then I bought Witcher 3.
NWN2 is an ugly game, irrespective of anything technical.