Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition News

Hello everyone!

This development patch brings in a features that lay the groundwork for a followup patch to the stable branch.

We are releasing this to the dev branch now so that you can help us test it and provide feedback on the direction things are taking. Thus, this patch contains a lot of experimental features with moderate chance for breakage.

Please report any issues you might face on our bug tracker - https://support.baldursgate.com/projects/nwn-ee-public-bugs.

We're aware it's been a long wait since our last patch. Thank you for your patience! We assure you, we are still hard at work on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

Please note that this patch does not represent the full set of features we are working on. Instead, we have split away partial changes so that the community could test and evaluate them while we’re working on other features including the new graphics rendering engine, improved NWSync capabilities, and softening up more parts of the ruleset.

This patch introduces backwards-breaking changes to save games and character files (specifically, the Red Dragon Disciple). Please read the patch notes carefully and make backups of your saves and characters.

• Networking relays are still nonfunctional. We will have to address further-reaching changes to the network protocol for the upcoming console release. Any related fixes and features, such as better NAT traversal, have been postponed for now.
  
• Rendering console text (the yellow debug console) sometimes renders white squares instead.
  
• Old CampaignDB files ("CodeBase", "Bioware DB", "FoxPro", etc) remain unreadable (for now, see below).
  

Hello, friends!

We’ve been substantially updating the Neverwinter Nights Toolset, and want you to test our newest build which adds tons of fixes, optimizations, & new features!

Grab the new Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Toolset build at this link, test it out, and share your feedback!

We've uploaded an out-of-band update for the Toolset so that content creators could test it without having to wait for a patch (which will take a while with the work on the renderer and 64-bit integration).



Check out a small video illustrating new features: https://www.facebook.com/Beamdog/videos/2319128681662635/

We're shipping a quick pre-holidays development patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. We're at 8187 now!

• We ported keyholing from Android. It is turned ON by default, but can be turned off with a console command (KeyholeToggle) or the setting in nwn.ini. A UI setting will be added before the next stable patch ships.
  
• Shaders now support #include. Use with care: It's not a real preprocessor, just a verbatim string replace.
  
• We're changing how networking is done in NWN:EE, with the following benefits: Cryptographic server and client identity authentication; full network encryption to prevent traffic snooping - and in the case of public servers via the master, connection hijacking; floating connections (you might be able to IP/port-hop and retain your connection); better use of compression; and no more host/port confusion when connecting multiple times from behind the same LAN.
  
• NWSync now cleans up downloaded manifest mappings when getting updates from known servers. It will not remove unreferenced data yet (as desktop users might not want to lose it), but that will come next.
  
• NWSync will automatically reconnect you to the server if you are still around after the download finishes (based on keyboard/mouse input detection).
  

• Performance and memory usage improvements at NWSync startup.
  
• History/Favorites have been fixed to once again show what has been saved to the .ini.
  
• We fixed the SetName and SetHiddenWhenEquipped script commands not reliably updating all clients.
  
• We fixed some doors becoming unclickable after having been destroyed, despite having a scripted transition present.
  
• We fixed the script compiler sometimes confusing functions where the full name of one is a prefix of the other ("Action" "ActionTwo").
  
• We fixed module content (hak, tlk, nwsync) not properly unloading when disconnecting from a server.
  
• We fixed a bug where resources were indexed twice when loading a module, resulting in prolonged load/connect times.
  
• We fixed an issue where sending visual transforms or material updates for creatures only seen on the party bar, but not yet in an area, crashed clients.
  

• Relay network functionality is not yet functional for this new patch. This will not impact connectivity, unless both server and client are behind very restrictive NAT.
  

We'd like to wish you all a very happy new year! Level up responsibly!

Today’s the day for Android Neverwinter Nights fans! Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition has just launched on Google Play and it's cross-play compatible with desktop versions!

NWN:EE on Google Play introduces true type font, new main menu art, achievements, bug fixes, features, and more which Steam and other desktop players will be seeing in future patches.

Check out the Google Play trailer here: https://youtu.be/5qAYBJ-boEE

Find out more on the Beamdog blog: http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/12/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition.html

Check out NWN:EE on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beamdog.nwnandroid&hl=en

Today, we are shipping Development Build 8186 to the stable branch of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition as 1.78!

This is the very same build that was recently updated on the development branch and contains no changes since then.

The previous build (8181) is available as a Steam branch, so you can switch back if your favorite persistent world needs more time to update. To do so, select 'oldstable' under the beta dropdown list in the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Steam properties.



This update contains a major new feature called NWSync, which will allow players to easily download required content data as they join servers, without having to manually manage HAK and TLK files. In this first iteration, this will mostly benefit persistent worlds, as it requires special setup on the server owner's part.

For details on this feature, please see the source repository that contains all the needed tooling and links to the most up-to-date documentation, here: https://github.com/Beamdog/nwsync.



Features:

• We added a new console variable that enables a over-time FPS display. Type "fpstrace 1" into the game console to enable.
  
• You can type `Gamma x` in the console, where x is a floating point value larger than 0. The default is 2.2. This value is persisted to nwn.ini (under a new configuration key). Gamma only affects the rendered ingame scenery, not menus or UI, as it is applied through a FBO shader, not GL/system-wide gamma correction.
  
• The game now supports normal DDS textures without having to mangle the header.
  
• The game now supports KTX texture containers.
  
• The game now writes out all Aliases to nwn.ini even if the file already existed.
  
• We bumped the default maximum texture memory to 256MB. Previous settings of 64MB are rewritten to this value. The new minimum is 96MB. The bigger-by-default texture memory should improve stability in some situations.
  

Fixes:

• We fixed lighting uniforms not assigning properly on some GPU drivers. This should address some flickering and maybe improve stability.
  
• Premium Modules don't show in "Other Modules" anymore.
  
• Yet another crash for creature appearances with PERSPACE=0 has been addressed.
  
• The multiplayer server browser now shows a progress window when downloading the server list. It also switched over to libcurl, which should prove to be much more reliable than the previous solution.
  
• The chat window will not capture mouse clicks anymore, only scroll events. This means you can once again click through it to action the game world.
  

Fixes:

• Greater Sanctuary interacting incorrectly with True Seeing has been fixed.
  
• A rare server hang when a relayed player suddenly regains direct connectivity has been fixed.
  
• A bug in RetrieveCampaignObject has been fixed that resulted in a double free issue, crashing the game. This was another 1.69 issue that was unearthed by us switching to VS2017 for the Windows build.