Arelith

https://gifsound.com/?gifv=vrjQ5aE&v=-bbrWmlX9Lk&s=37
courtesy my buddy Xemoro

Takes me back

One Two Three Five wrote:
Looking at making druids/shifters not polymorphs for things like a Natural Spell feat, apparently

HOLY FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

All of this is fantastic news (druid changes just get me the most excited). There seems to be no demonstrable reason to not be excited about the EE, unless you're concerned about actually being able to run it.

For 20$, you can't even unlock Darth Vader.

Wytchee wrote:https://gifsound.com/?gifv=vrjQ5aE&v=-bbrWmlX9Lk&s=37
courtesy my buddy Xemoro

For long time UDers...

All I can think when I see this is how even more horribly dressed Chana Tum'dugl will be...

Has anyone read anything about them improving the pathfinding?

Lorkas wrote:Has anyone read anything about them improving the pathfinding?

One can always hope

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:

One Two Three Five wrote:
Looking at making druids/shifters not polymorphs for things like a Natural Spell feat, apparently

HOLY FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

All of this is fantastic news (druid changes just get me the most excited). There seems to be no demonstrable reason to not be excited about the EE, unless you're concerned about actually being able to run it.

For 20$, you can't even unlock Darth Vader.

you don't need to pay 20$ to unlock Darth Vader... may the force be with you!
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... arth-vader

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:

One Two Three Five wrote:
Looking at making druids/shifters not polymorphs for things like a Natural Spell feat, apparently

HOLY FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

All of this is fantastic news (druid changes just get me the most excited).

Pretty sure what they actually said, when asked about that, is that the person should ask that question on their forums, where one of their devs might respond and say they can't/won't do it or that they might/will do it.

More thoughts after having tried the EE Edition

-Things like the individual coloring of body parts are not new, they've been available on hak servers for several years, as has character scaling and a webclient to speak/type from a browser.

-Mavrixio from Sinfar has proven that it is possible to access a 1.69 server played by people with NWN original as an EE player with his own fixes. For whatever reason, adult content or not wanting backwards compatibility, he has offered them on Beamdogs forum and they have not been accepted . That suggests to me two things, that very very little has changed coding wise in the game, and wanting everyone to rebuy the game seems a big thing too.

- Nothing has changed gameplay wise sans an assortment of random buffs and nerfs which again, creators in many cases have fixed the majority of them with haks and overrides themselves already.

Maybe it will make it easier to install on newer systems, gameplay/coding wise however nothing has been offered as of yet that high hak content servers haven't had for about four years. Even little things like the metamagic glitch have had fixes for years.

I'll see what else happens, as of yet I'm unimpressed. The only reason to switch at the moment might be if you have a driver issue, but I keep an old laptop for NWN separate from my main rig for that reason anyway.

Konni wrote:-Things like the individual coloring of body parts are not new, they've been available on hak servers for several years, as has character scaling and a webclient to speak/type from a browser.

No, this is wrong - these things were available on one server, Sinfar, which used custom client-side NWNCX code - not all servers. Nothing to do with haks. You could remake the same piece of armour and duplicate it hundreds of times to get different combinations of colours, but you couldn't have per-part colouring on one item.

Konni wrote:-Mavrixio from Sinfar has proven that it is possible to access a 1.69 server played by people with NWN original as an EE player with his own fixes. For whatever reason, adult content or not wanting backwards compatibility, he has offered them on Beamdogs forum and they have not been accepted . That suggests to me two things, that very very little has changed coding wise in the game, and wanting everyone to rebuy the game seems a big thing too.

Of course it's technically possible to enable cross play, but it's not technically feasible; it would add a significant burden to every change we make. It's unrealistic to expect cross play. This is not how any of the patches or expansions in the past have worked, and this is not how any patches or expansions in most games work.

This statement is misleading. Mavrixio managed to fudge the 1.69 netcode to accept connections from 1.74 clients, but that doesn't mean that the 1.69 server sends all of the required information to the 1.74 client - it just means that a connection was made successfully.

It's doubly misleading because a 1.74 client would receive a significantly degraded experience on Sinfar because 1.74 clients don't have access to Sinfar's NWNCX plugin which is responsible for allowing all of the things you wrote about in your first paragraph - therefore, 1.74 clients connecting to a 1.69-hosted Sinfar would see everything in a very broken way.

RedGiant wrote:

Wytchee wrote:https://gifsound.com/?gifv=vrjQ5aE&v=-bbrWmlX9Lk&s=37
courtesy my buddy Xemoro

For long time UDers...

All I can think when I see this is how even more fabulously dressed Chana Tum'dugl will be...

Corrected...

Liareth wrote:
No, this is wrong - these things were available on one server, Sinfar, which used custom client-side NWNCX code - not all servers. Nothing to do with haks. You could remake the same piece of armour and duplicate it hundreds of times to get different combinations of colours, but you couldn't have per-part colouring on one item.

Where it has been available for several years. Sinfar was the innovator, but other less long lived servers such as Thessir and Arch had also used the coding the Sinfar devs created. I used hak in this instance to denote a server with additional features or custom changes not found in default NWN.

There's nothing stopping you doing the same to Arelith with 1.69 aside from the old and now defunct policy of plug-n'-play. This is something a dev could already do without paying Beamdog.

Liareth wrote:
Of course it's technically possible to enable cross play, but it's not technically feasible; it would add a significant burden to every change we make. It's unrealistic to expect cross play. This is not how any of the patches or expansions in the past have worked, and this is not how any patches or expansions in most games work.

Beamdog claimed it wasn't possible, and difficult or not one man did what a team of devs claimed could not be done in less than a couple of days. I think better of them than to assume hobbyists like Mavrixio are more skilled than they are, rather more likely they would prefer us to buy their version. Which is fine, but I bit more honesty wouldn't have gone amiss.

Liareth wrote: This statement is misleading. Mavrixio managed to fudge the 1.69 netcode to accept connections from 1.74 clients, but that doesn't mean that the 1.69 server sends all of the required information to the 1.74 client - it just means that a connection was made successfully.

It works enough to access the server and do atypical IG actions. Searching for incompatibilities and rectifying them is something that would need to be done anyway.

Priority can be given to the script of the host, and most online worlds have their own changes and files needed to play anyway. Changing connections and using overrides is fairly normal of a NWN online experience.

Liareth wrote: It's doubly misleading because a 1.74 client would receive a significantly degraded experience on Sinfar because 1.74 clients don't have access to Sinfar's NWNCX plugin which is responsible for allowing all of the things you wrote about in your first paragraph - therefore, 1.74 clients connecting to a 1.69-hosted Sinfar would see everything in a very broken way.

Mav has said he's more than happy to share the stuff in his plugin with Beamdog and he has said he could make a version for 1.74 if there was good cause for moving Sinfar to EE. I don't see much reason to doubt this since he has done so in the past.

As I said earlier, if it gets new players that will be a good thing as will more comparability with new drivers. However as of yet that's literally all we, and I can include me because I have got EE head start, seem to be getting.

I think as time goes on people are more tech savvy, and especially in this area of older games people do tent to realize or even desire to download extra content to soup up the game. So additional features like plug ins etc aren't really as big an issue as is made out. Using Sinfar as the example again, it takes pressing go on a self-installer to set up their stuff; that's hardly a cumbersome process for the end user. It took more effort on my part to buy/install NWN and EE originally.

Konni wrote:

Liareth wrote:
Of course it's technically possible to enable cross play, but it's not technically feasible; it would add a significant burden to every change we make. It's unrealistic to expect cross play. This is not how any of the patches or expansions in the past have worked, and this is not how any patches or expansions in most games work.

Beamdog claimed it wasn't possible, and difficult or not one man did what a team of devs claimed could not be done in less than a couple of days. I think better of them than to assume hobbyists like Mavrixio are more skilled than they are, rather more likely they would prefer us to buy their version. Which is fine, but I bit more honesty wouldn't have gone amiss.

No, BD didn't claim it wasn't possible. We claimed it wasn't feasible.

The forum post is here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/6 ... servers/p1 and another post here, where we (me!) explained it was technically possible: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/c ... ent_920395

Nothing is impossible. We could change a few lines of code and enable connections to old servers. That doesn't mean that things will work properly when we did (they wouldn't), and even if we fixed all of the new and modified protocols to work for both versions, we would be stuck with that legacy support, which would cost us valuable time that we could put towards more important features.

Here's an example: the new per-part armour option requires a significantly modified network protocol. The new hidden items option requires a brand new network protocol. If you don't send that data to the new client, it will crash. Sure, we could change the new client to ignore that data when connecting to old servers and fill it in with sensible defaults. But that's a big chunk of time and work - which just grows at time passes and new features get implemented.

It's simply not a reasonable thing to expect, and it's the reason the previous patches and expansions had no cross play support.

At the end of the day, it's just a balance of time investment and complexity. It's easy to scream conspiracy / cash grab from an observer's point of view, but there are good technical reasons for the decisions we've made. I understand that it can be frustrating, but spreading a false narrative is not the way to go here.

Liareth wrote:

No, this is wrong - these things were available on one server, Sinfar, which used custom client-side NWNCX code - not all servers. Nothing to do with haks. You could remake the same piece of armour and duplicate it hundreds of times to get different combinations of colours, but you couldn't have per-part colouring on one item.



Where it has been available for several years. Sinfar was the innovator, but other less long lived servers such as Thessir and Arch had also used the coding the Sinfar devs created. I used hak in this instance to denote a server with additional features or custom changes not found in default NWN.

Sounds like it's two deferent ways to reach the same result. am i understanding it right when i think your saying that Sinfar did it by making tons of full body clothing copies were some body parts are invisible and others not... while NWN EE did it by only looking at each part with no invisible parts?

Seekeepeek wrote:

Liareth wrote:

.

Sounds like it's two deferent ways to reach the same result. am i understanding it right when i think your saying that Sinfar did it by making tons of full body clothing copies were some body parts are invisible and others not... while NWN EE did it by only looking at each part with no invisible parts?

Not really

Sinfar's approach was to have a dynamic setting to alter which color type each part was. So say I wanted to have one pink thigh with blue trim and the other the inverse, each leg is already a separate dynamic model part by default. Each body part by default has six colors; cloth 1 & 2, leather 1 & 2 and metal 1 & 2 with 0 for each category being not visible (skin, hair & Tattoo being another variation of this six part scheme), all they did was change which part was set to which category. Skin 0, hair 0, tattoo 1, metal 0 process to decide if you like.

TL;DR: They've got one version of each part, but they have scripts to decide which color should fill sections of it and what palette should be used (cloth colors can be applied in place of metal etc).

Sinfar does have custom content made since with more than six color slots, most of the body vfx such as hairpieces and eyes for instance have twelve, but base NWN has at least six even if every part doesn't utilize all of them such as the 1 bare skin arm.

NWN was a slowly-dying game, kept alive only by the cult-like devotion of a community of hobbyists. Every incompatible windows update and graphics driver update was a nail in the coffin, increasing the barrier of entry for anyone remotely interested in persistent world RP in 3rd ed. D&D.

We could produce all the nifty custom classes, console commands, and scripted mechanics you could imagine, but none of that would defy the gravity of a client fading into obsolescence. Making a sales pitch to a potential new player was hard enough without having to guide them through a critical rebuild patch, OS compatibility troubleshooting, and graphics driver rollbacks. Telling that potential player to have a dedicated NWN laptop separated from their main gaming rig, and expecting them to take you seriously? Right.

You're better off inviting them to click-and-play multiplayer in Divinity Original Sins, or a moba, or Overwatch, or whatever.

It might be difficult to appreciate the slow decline of NWN's playing population while in Arelith, which is something of a survivor among servers. NWNScry is a graveyard of dead or near-dead PWs. Recent upticks in Arelith's population can often be ascribed to other servers going belly-up. The writing has been on the wall for some time.

Now, I'm not saying that Beamdog's rollout was perfect. Or that you shouldn't hold a company accountable for having a product worth the price they're asking. I think a lot of players' criticisms involving NWNEE's features-to-price ratio are valid. And I also think it's quite understandable to be miffed about having to buy a game you already own, to continue playing content you were already enjoying.

But I do think that we need to take a gamble in order to keep NWN alive. Bringing the client into the modern age with click-and-play accessibility, continued support, OS and driver compatibility, and ready availability via Steam - that alone, to me, is worth making the transition to NWNEE.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Beamdog holds true to its promises.

Did they say when the new shaders etc would be added to the game? Is it once it’s launched or will we be getting weekly patches?

yellowcateyes wrote:NWN was a slowly-dying game, kept alive only by the cult-like devotion of a community of hobbyists. Every incompatible windows update and graphics driver update was a nail in the coffin, increasing the barrier of entry for anyone remotely interested in persistent world RP in 3rd ed. D&D.

And that reason is one good aspect of a re-release. I've agreed that is an upside on it if it delivers as promised.

yellowcateyes wrote: We could produce all the nifty custom classes, console commands, and scripted mechanics you could imagine, but none of that would defy the gravity of a client fading into obsolescence. Making a sales pitch to a potential new player was hard enough without having to guide them through a critical rebuild patch, OS compatibility troubleshooting, and graphics driver rollbacks. Telling that potential player to have a dedicated NWN laptop separated from their main gaming rig, and expecting them to take you seriously? Right.

I'm not suggesting that at all, It's merely something I do and isn't entirely unusual for people interested in retro gaming.

The critical rebuild etc is a pain, but no greater strain than adding custom content for the Sims, Tamariel Rebuilt or any number of add-ons people manage to wade through to play games.

The ones stumped by this and who go for more casual plug n' play are generally ones who if interested in gaming are more likely to go for Candy Crush than D&D anyway. Not to besmirch them in the slightest, it's an entirely different interest in genre or depth.

You're better off inviting them to click-and-play multiplayer in Divinity Original Sins, or a moba, or Overwatch, or whatever.

yellowcateyes wrote: It might be difficult to appreciate the slow decline of NWN's playing population while in Arelith, which is something of a survivor among servers. NWNScry is a graveyard of dead or near-dead PWs. Recent upticks in Arelith's population can often be ascribed to other servers going belly-up. The writing has been on the wall for some time.

Of course it's dying. I think everyone knows that, but while trying to remain positive I think expecting many, many new players for a fifteen year old game may be rather too optimistic.

Scry isn't very reliable that said as well, there are servers that are blacklisted from inclusion.

yellowcateyes wrote: Now, I'm not saying that Beamdog's rollout was perfect. Or that you shouldn't hold a company accountable for having a product worth the price they're asking. I think a lot of players' criticisms involving NWNEE's features-to-price ratio are valid. And I also think it's quite understandable to be miffed about having to buy a game you already own, to continue playing content you were already enjoying.

I've already bought EE. I don't object to upgrading in the slightest, what I find questionable is all they've done as of yet is select a random assortment of community fixes and applied them to the base installer. There's nothing new as of yet one couldn't obtain for free online. The driver compatibility doesn't benefit me either because as highlighted I've my own methods of avoiding the problem (separate compatible hardware, there are other approaches, that is merely mine).

yellowcateyes wrote: But I do think that we need to take a gamble in order to keep NWN alive. Bringing the client into the modern age with click-and-play accessibility, continued support, OS and driver compatibility, and ready availability via Steam - that alone, to me, is worth making the transition to NWNEE.

I'm looking forward to seeing if Beamdog holds true to its promises.

Which is handy for certain, but people who play games like this generally do go hunting for improvements or additional content anyway; so picking up an unofficial patch or overrides isn't a huge bar from joining a game.

Being on steam as well is...Well, there is such a thing as too much choice. It's debateable how many new players would pick it up. I certainly hope they do, but I don't expect it to get a Call of Duty like reception or anything remotley close. Even in the indi/niche market this game is going to be rather dated compared to new faces on the market.

Konni wrote:The critical rebuild etc is a pain, but no greater strain than adding custom content for the Sims, Tamariel Rebuilt or any number of add-ons people manage to wade through to play games.

The ones stumped by this and who go for more casual plug n' play are generally ones who if interested in gaming are more likely to go for Candy Crush than D&D anyway. Not to besmirch them in the slightest, it's an entirely different interest in genre or depth.

You're better off inviting them to click-and-play multiplayer in Divinity Original Sins, or a moba, or Overwatch, or whatever.

I think you're conflating willingness to make questionable OS and driver rollbacks, thus exposing yourself to security risks, to appreciation of genre or 'depth.'

There are players who are quite willing to heavily mod games and jump through hoops to improve something they know they will enjoy, but are unwilling to do so for something they're unsure they'll enjoy. That's perfectly understandable.

And right now you have to make people jump through hoops just to try NWN. That's not sustainable.

The ones stumped by this and who go for more casual plug n' play are generally ones who if interested in gaming are more likely to go for Candy Crush than D&D anyway. Not to besmirch them in the slightest, it's an entirely different interest in genre or depth.

This is just flat out wrong. I've got several friends whom I play D&D with who don't want to go through the hassle of getting NWN to work just so they can RP online, they'd rather go do it in an MMO or other such similar place where it's just a matter of installing and playing.

I'll get back to the other posts in a moment, but something that has surprised me about the other servers response to this.

With Liareth being a Beamdog employee it shouldn't be any great surprise that this one would be the first to make the jump across to EE.

That said, none of the other servers appear to be preparing to make that transition. Sinfar has said they would if needed but would prefer not to, PoTM seems indifferent. Amia is most openly hostile, while expected it was to a degree I didn't anticipate, slamming beamdog for giving Arelith a "head start" on moving over and basing data/research on Liareth's own interest in the server.

TL;DR: If there's new players Arelith will be best placed to cash in, because the "old NWN" community outside Arelith isn't planning to move to EE, in Amia's case claiming direct exclusion from it.

Which does make me wonder if the NWN community will split between the two games.

Thain will certainly be moving at some point depending on the time I can invest to make it happen. This has nothing to do with anything other than insuring the long term stability of the PW. It may not be fore a while, but it’s something we have to do.

Konni wrote:That said, none of the other servers appear to be preparing to make that transition. Sinfar has said they would if needed but would prefer not to, PoTM seems indifferent. Amia is most openly hostile, while expected it was to a degree I didn't anticipate, slamming beamdog for giving Arelith a "head start" on moving over and basing data/research on Liareth's own interest in the server.

This is another misleading post.

I've been in direct contact with the owner of Ravenloft since long before the announcement and he's just as excited about the project as I am. In fact, Ravenloft runs the new (1.69) NWNX which I coded, and has done for over a year, including the same performance optimizations that Arelith enjoys. This means that the transition will be easier for them than most.

I just read the thread on the Amia forums, and yes, there are a few people upset that Arelith got a 'head start', but it isn't nearly as extreme as you've painted it here. And really, Arelith didn't get much of a head start at all.

There are two development efforts required to port over a module: 1) update NWNX, and 2) change your hosting configuration. There are no code or asset changes needed to run a module on 1.74 compared to 1.69 if you don't use NWNX. It's fully backwards compatible.

Arelith, as with every other server out there, is bottle necked by 1), and I'm unable to release the NWNX update that I have ready and waiting until certain aspects of it are vetted by BD leadership - this extends to Arelith. This is why the Arelith test server is crippled by a lack of database connectivity at the moment.

In fact, I'd say Amia has a better chance than Arelith of getting a working module up and running ASAP, because it's certain that they rely less heavily on NWNX than Arelith does.

Konni wrote: That said, none of the other servers appear to be preparing to make that transition. Sinfar has said they would if needed but would prefer not to, PoTM seems indifferent. Amia is most openly hostile, while expected it was to a degree I didn't anticipate, slamming beamdog for giving Arelith a "head start" on moving over and basing data/research on Liareth's own interest in the server.

There's a lot of people playing on these Sinfar servers. Did their whole playerbase really already buy the game or did they find a way to make crossplay possible?

CragOrion wrote: There's a lot of people playing on these Sinfar servers. Did their whole playerbase really already buy the game or did they find a way to make crossplay possible?

Neither. Crossplay is possible with Mavrixio's modifications but most of the players are still using 1.69. The server list on EE does pick up 1.69 players on there.