Beamdog Announces NWN Enhanced Edition

[Blizzow]

I'll gift it to you myself via Steam or whatever if you are really in such a place that you can't afford it (within reason).

You have my axe.

I can offer keys through Steam, Beamdog, or GOG (if/when they offer it there) on a bi-weekly basis for people that need them.

And my vuvuzela.

Seriously. If picking up a copy of NWN:EE is the only thing holding some of us back (and keeping an upgraded Avlis player base afloat), I will gladly donate some keys.

[mhogar]

*pokes head in*

And there is the whole of COPAP to consider. Thankfully I am a code wizard

[Nighthawk4]

Not sure if this was my mistake but I installed the Head Start version on my MacBook yesterday and when I tried to install it on my Windows laptop I had to purchase it again. Not a huge problem at $20 a go but the original NWN allowed me to install over and over again.

Needless to say I would not be able to login on more than one device at a time

Unfortunately, the first installation was so slow it took all morning to download, so not much chance of playing tonight on this machine


Just a thought - I assume I have two unique keys now?


Edit - Mhog, I miss your Avatar

[Zerub]

Be glad we don't have to use THAC0 anymore.

What!!! I could you miss THAC0?? In my opinion, that was the best change in DnD with the newer versions. That being said, if I were to get together and DM some with friends, I'd still be using 1st Edition since that is mostly what I am use to and have done for years other than NWN.

If all the new stuff is, are graphical enchancements, then I am not too excited about that anyways. Graphics never really did it for me on the DnD stuff. I'd be fine with stick people made of ASCII as long as the game play was fine and there were people to talk with. That is probalby jsut me though. I guess a lot of folks like it to look good.

Scott

[Sarmanos]

Be glad we don't have to use THAC0 anymore.

What!!! I could you miss THAC0?? In my opinion, that was the best change in DnD with the newer versions. That being said, if I were to get together and DM some with friends, I'd still be using 1st Edition since that is mostly what I am use to and have done for years other than NWN.

If all the new stuff is, are graphical enchancements, then I am not too excited about that anyways. Graphics never really did it for me on the DnD stuff. I'd be fine with stick people made of ASCII as long as the game play was fine and there were people to talk with. That is probalby jsut me though. I guess a lot of folks like it to look good.

Scott

The graphical enhancements are nice, but there's also a lot of under the hood bug fixes and stability improvements going in for both game clients and servers that will keep NWN from falling apart slowly but steadily as it has been for some of us. That's actually a bigger deal to me since I can override graphics to my heart's content already. I can't fix engine bugs or video card driver bugs though.

[Gorgon]

Not sure if this was my mistake but I installed the Head Start version on my MacBook yesterday and when I tried to install it on my Windows laptop I had to purchase it again. Not a huge problem at $20 a go but the original NWN allowed me to install over and over again.

Needless to say I would not be able to login on more than one device at a time

I've been able to copy it to several devices/machines/VMs, but the new EE stuff keeps most info in user directories now, like other games, including the nwn.ini, nwnplayer.ini, nwtoolset.ini and most importantly the cdkey.ini (new version of your nwncdkey.ini for EE). Those files, plus all the hak/tlk/vault folders, are now in a Windows and other OS writeable folder.

Wherever you downloaded NWN EE to, there should be a few numbered folders (keeps the alpha/beta/live version numbering unique). That stuff is important to run the games, with the "bin" directory executing stuff for whatever OS you use, but you also need to have the user files. I guess insert your lang prefix here if they add more, but for now, look at ~install location~\en\docs\Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition (v74).txt and find the "This user folder can be found in:" section.

Mine has:

Code: Select all

[My Documents]\Neverwinter Nights (Windows)
~/Documents/Neverwinter Nights (macOS)
~/.local/share/Neverwinter Nights (Linux)

My Documents for Windows 10 usually is "~OS Drive~:\Users\~Username~\Documents"
So say in my case:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\Gorgon\Documents\Neverwinter Nights

This keeps the annoying UAC checks and other things from caring about your .ini changes every time, and and other stuff in the program files folders. It also means you need to copy (or symlink) the hak/tlk/vault folders from that, to any other stuff you try to run. If it is on Linux, use the ~user home directory~/.local/share/Neverwinter Nights, and for NH4 and other Macs, ~user home directory~/Documents/Neverwinter Nights

Documentation is still barely existent for the new stuff, but that is a start. More soon!

*P.S.* Like old school, you need to change the client port when using it on multiple copies at home. Don't keep buying new ones. <-- save the cdkey.ini number though, to share with some new person.
Find the nwnplayer.ini in the user folder, then change under [Profile] the Client Port=5120 to 5122 or higher. You really should set 5122 even if you don't have any other copies running, but they all should be unique numbers higher than 5120 or 5121 (both of those had issues in the past here, so just don't test them at all). Every "client" from the same IP (house or other location sharing an internet connection) needs to use a unique port, and never the same cd key ini file between them, with the Beamdog "Master Server" running alive and well now. You can play on any machine if another is not playing though (just never at the same time... yeah, they check it again).

[downsystem]

I many years back to see what happened to Avlis and basically only found video using google search. I thought it gone from the face of the internet. So today I did another search on Ecosia and all sorts of Avlis websites showed up, and I was surprised. Shockingly I still had a password to this forum that work from like 2005 lol I the day when websites die after 7 years. Some people just never give up.

I stop playing back in the day when the effort was being considered to basically recreate Avlis for NWN2. Did NWN2 Avlis ever happen, or did they give up on it?

Now I see potential efforts to revamp Avlis NWN1 for the current PC hardware and the Youtube video thread someone mentioned it was going to be on Playstation4 as well. This is an Interesting turn of events for this old game.

[Plethora]

Hey there! We did do Avlis 2 for a while, but it didnt last. We will be heading to EE eventually, but yes, we are still here

[downsystem]

I don't really recall where the information is kept for character for the game. I'm assume it was kept on your own PC and not any avlis server, is this correct?

[Gorgon]

Avlis uses a servervault to store your character file. You can export a copy (save character) whenever you want, but all of it is stored/accessed server-side. Also, the Avlis database contains all sorts of other things, like your crafting skills and so on.

*edit* The only exception to this is your personal IG log. That is stored as a text file with the same name as your character in your localvault folder. If you save recipes or anything else in your log, remember to back that up if you ever reinstall the game.

[downsystem]

Character that hasn't been played since 2006?

[Gorgon]

It should be there. If you haven't already, you will probably need to contact the Player Registration folks about getting it and your account restored, but once you do, it will be there.

[downsystem]

Ok thanks for the information.

[downsystem]

Hey there! We did do Avlis 2 for a while, but it didnt last. We will be heading to EE eventually, but yes, we are still here

What was the issue with why Avlis 2 didn't last?

I had issues finding my NWN Platinum CD and only found one disk, and am missing the others, but did find the CD Key and game book. I had to instead had to get a version from the net, but the I couldn't see the mouse, and finally figured out that I needed to turn off hardware acceleration lol. Thank you internet for the solutions.

[Darkfire]

Hey there! We did do Avlis 2 for a while, but it didnt last. We will be heading to EE eventually, but yes, we are still here

What was the issue with why Avlis 2 didn't last?

NWN2 sucked.

[downsystem]

Obviously that must of been the case since it didn't last.

[Darkfire]

Obviously that must of been the case since it didn't last.

I mean that was literally the main reason Avlis 2 didn't last - NWN2 sucked. That wasn't just a random troll comment. I didn't see anything wrong really with Avlis2 at the time. Had a great world, experienced staff launching it and DMing, etc. Player activity still favors NWN1 over NWN2, and of course NWN EE according to Steam's figures are still really strong.

NWN2 killed Avlis 2.

[downsystem]

I just had a thought the small number of people that visited Avlis wouldn't be enough to support both. I wonder if they would of been better off just recreating Avlis 1 server lands, then picking a day and switch over. I guess it is old news now just wondering how things failed. Thanks for the elaborating on your suck.

[Darkfire]

I just had a thought the small number of people that visited Avlis wouldn't be enough to support both. I wonder if they would of been better off just recreating Avlis 1 server lands, then picking a day and switch over. I guess it is old news now just wondering how things failed. Thanks for the elaborating on your suck.

At the time of NWN2 release, Avlis / NWN1 had quite a bit of players. According to some old statistics I could dig up 2006 - 2007 did see a reasonable drop (speculating that NWN2's release attributed to that).

At the time of the NWN1 master server going down and looking into alternative authentication methods, we'd have 1000s of unique monthly logins.

For context, in 2011 I believe we still saw 400+ unique logins of players which was a continued decrease from the 06/07 era.

I suppose you could also suggest that Avlis 2 waiting almost 2 years to launch until late 2007 (closed beta) to early 2008 (open beta) could have contributed to its downfall as well. It went offline 2010. An early launch may have bought it an extra year or two of activity. I think there were plenty of players to support Avlis1 and Avlis2, as well as Avlis 2 pulling in brand new players from NWN2 (late start could = less new players, of course, but still) but I still think it was simply NWN2 being a poor game that killed it.

Avlis 2 stuff - https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Avlis_2
Statistics from 2007 - http://www.avlis.org/viewtopic.php?p=983287
Statistics from 2011 - http://www.avlis.org/viewtopic.php?p=1285380

[downsystem]

Interesting, thanks for the info.

I took a look at some Youtube video's of NWN 2 and thought the graphics didn't look much better than version 1. I'm not sure that is the case, since I don't have it. Lol

Will the expanded edition make it easier to get Avlis set up for new players to join and the game setup. It took my quite a bit of time getting my PC and the game configured properly for NWN Avlis. If they had a quicker and easier setup it might help get more players to join.