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The game runs in 64bit allowing more memory to be used by the game to load high quality assets, and allows more than the NWN default of 64MB texture memory.

UI Improvements, Upscaling and

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Quality of Life

  • Keyholing to see through tiles is included
  • Improved UI for some parts of the GUI (such as debugmodule selection, options menu, debug menus)
  • You can select a scaling multiplier for the games default UI. This is available in increments of 0.1 up to x4. Necessary for good 2K and 4K monitors usage.
  • AOE targeting indicators added to show where spell will affect things on the ground

Enhanced Visual Shaders/Settings

The options menu lists these enhanced visual shaders included for personal taste on most platforms;

  • High Contrast
  • Vibrance
  • Depth of Field (disabled by default - but good for photos)
  • SSAO - Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
  • Toon Shader

Additionally there are a number of texture improvements available for modders

Lighting and Water Improvements

  • Various Quality of Life client updates; such as new fonts so no blocky tiny fonts, sorting classes, spellbooks, combat sticky modes, some colour selections for highlighting, unlocked camera limits,

Lighting, Water and Rendering Improvements

The game now uses OpenGL 3.3, and alongside this there There is now a new lighting engine enabled by default and new water shader; the comparison of the old and new lighting engine is available here, which can be toggled on/off and have various options set for performance reasons:   https://nwn.beamdog.net/web/8193.14-comparison-shots/

Rendering now supports the enhanced lighting and uses physically based rendering, although the default game content doesn't use a lot of this it is used by modders.

Enhanced Visual Options

The game includes more visual options including:

  • Better resolution support
  • Anti aliasing up to x4
  • Anisotropic filtering up to x16
  • V-Sync support including adaptive mode
  • Max light sources up to 128 (which can be quite a performance hit, 32 max recommended)
  • HDR Bloom
  • Ambient Occlusion
  • High Contrast
  • Vibrance
  • Sharpen

Optionally these are also available:

  • Depth of Field (mainly good for screenshots)
  • Toon shader (outlines around models)

Beamdog HD Pack

Beamdog released a set of HD models for the player phenotypes which the community has added fixes and improvements to.

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  • Master Server list is now being maintained by Beamdog
  • You can import old vaults to the EE CD-key style; see here for information.
  • nwsync allows the client to retrieve the files needed to play on a server, and if altered only obtain the different files if some are updated, all without exiting the game.
  • Various new server-specific options in settings.tml
  • Ability to set/get limits to various bonuses the game usually hardcodes (eg; Get/SetAttackBonusLimit)
  • Players can now enter DM mode dynamically - on persistent worlds also locked behind a password - and therefore shift temporarily into DM mode without reconnecting
  • BootPC() allows an optional parameter for the reason you're booted (eg; BootPC(oPC, "Server reboot!"); ) which shows up in the client.
  • Various security and hacking fixes (but don't turn off ELC, client still generate the character the server then validates for creation and levelup!)

Gameplay Changes and Fixes

There's a number of fixes and small changes to gameplay issues (this needs another page by itself), as well as optional changes, primarily:

  • Sticky modes for combat abilities as an option - recommended to turn this on, really useful to stop power attack constantly disabling
  • Improvements to pathfinding which should make combat and moving around the game world easier
  • Fixes to a lot of issues around Polymorph and some hardcoded abilities such as Smite Good/Evil, Death Attack, Uncanny Dodge, Dispel Magic, and other little oddities
  • Area of Effects keep up with the creature they're applied to properly
  • Spell targeting showing where spells will affect has been added
  • Faster area load times especially in singleplayer
  • Crash fixes for a variety of rare and not-so-rare issues

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  • Full fast sqlite database support built in (sqlquery type and lots of functions)
  • A full ability to generate new User Interface panels native to the client (Nui panels)
  • General Json support plus ability to convert objects/areas to Json, manipulate the Json for advanced changes, and convert back to objects/areas.
  • Creation, copying and deletion of areas (CreateArea, CopyArea, DestroyArea) and setting area transitions (SetTransitionTarget)
  • CopyObject works with additional objects (Placeables, waypoints, stores, doors, triggers) as does storing or retrieving them from the database
  • Setting the tag of any object dynamically (SetTag)
  • Setting the event of any object, or clearing it (Get/SetEventScript)
  • UUID Support allowing for easy uniqueness compared to tags (GetObjectUUID)
  • Dynamic object and VFX visual transforms (shrink/grow/rotate/translocate), including interpolation between states (Get/SetObjectVisualTransform new parameters for EffectVisualEffect/EffectBeam)
  • Dynamic texture overrides for one or more players (SetTextureOverride)
  • Material (texture property) control (Set//ResetMaterialXXX)
  • Dynamic hilite (mouseover colour "aura") on any object (SetObjectHiliteColor)
  • PostString support - output text to the debug console for a player or replace a font file to show images (PostString)
  • Tagging item properties and effects you can later check (TagEffect, TagItemProperty)
  • More information from item properties (Get/SetItemPropertyUsesPerDayRemaining)
  • Ability to retrieve more information from effects and item properties (GetEffectCasterLevel, GetItemPropertyDurationRemaining, GetEffectInteger etc.)
  • Can hide equipment when equipped (Get/SetHiddenWhenEquipped) so for instance helmets don't have to replace the head model
  • Map exploration control tile-by-tile and set if the minimap works at all (Get/SetTileExplored, Get/SetCreatureExploresMinimap)
  • Information about tiles/locations (GetSurfaceMaterial/GetGroundHeight)
  • More information from creatures (GetDomain, GetSpecialization)
  • More actions to use items (ActionUseItemOnObject/AtLocation)
  • More effects (EffectBonusFeat, EffectForcedWalk, EffectPacified) and additions to existing effects (eg EffectPolymorph, EffectDamageReduction)
  • More information from players, useful in multiplayer (GetPlayerBuildVersionMajor, GetPlayerBuildVersionMinor, GetIsPlayerConnectionRelayed plus various ways to see client options)
  • Wind control to go along with unhardcoded weather (SetAreaWind)
  • Set an objects hitpoints without EffectHeal/EffectDamage (SetCurrentHitPoints)
  • ...plus loads more in 1.87.8193.35

New events:

  • OnNuiEvent - modder generated User Interface interactions
  • OnPlayerGuiEvent - GUI events can be surpressed or detected
  • OnPlayerTarget event - can call to have a players mouse change icon and able to select something
  • ...plus loads more in 1.87.8193.35OnPlayerTileAction - tile actions

Game functionality:

  • A nwscript window in game to run code and specific scripts on any object in the game world (when in Debug Mode or as a DM)
  • PostString allows much easier on-screen debugging
  • NUI functions for clientside user interfaces and GUI overrides
  • You can set a Higher TMI limit for those lengthier script runs in the game optionsDon't need to cache scripts anymore - the game now effectively caches them all automatically due to modern amounts of memory rather than awful 2002 amounts of memory.
  • Improved compiler - now also standalone and open sourced
  • Improved under the hood VM (script virtual machine) performance

Toolset functionality:

  • The toolset compiler has been improved, increasing the identifier limit to 16K up from 8K, and actually reporting all errors rather than failing silently (such as too many include files) even if the error message isn't always clear (although using an external compiler is a good recommendation)
  • You can now link an external script editor to the game to, for instance, edit scripts in VScode instead of the internal editor

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  • You can open more than one area at a time in tabs, and even copy between them
  • Script parameters built into conversations hugely lowering the amount of scripts needed for conversation scripts
  • Double clicking an object can open the properties of it, and undo/redo supports moving objects not just placing/deleting them
  • Visual transformations of object can be baked into placed objects in the game (and done dynamically with script commands)
  • Support for ambient/battle music not having TLK entry references, can be now done with strings (various 2da Files now have this)
  • Additional Ossian Studios content from Darkness over Daggerford (models, creatures, etc), Tyrants over Moonsea and new and revamped tilesets
  • ERF files (.HAK and .MOD usually) can now contain near unlimited items compared to ~16K in 1.69. A 2GB filesize per-ERF is still in place but it allows modules to keep all blueprints, area files and scripts in one module now.

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  • Unhardcoded various hardcoded set values the engine uses for hardcoded class and abilities; see new 2da ruleset.2da
  • Maximum classes allowed raised optionally to 8 (set in ruleset.2da)
  • Maximum 2da rows increased in several instances, see
  • Unhardcoded spellcasting classes - new spellcasters can be added to the game (by mirroring what base spell casters can do); see classes.2da and Custom Spellbooks using classes.2da and spells.2da
  • Unhardcoded (most) stat gains that Red Dragon Disciple and Pale Master have, see classes.2da
  • Unhardcoded weather - new weather can be added, see: Weather
  • Unhardcoded "Programmed FX" - ie you can now add new beams and magic missiles and other things, see new 2da: progfx.2da
  • Unhardcoded most of the racial type modifiers such as skill points multipliers, or bonus feats, as well as Favoured Enemy per-race, see: racialtypes.2da
  • Unhardcoded weapon feats, such as Improved Critical (ie new melee weapons can be added) and unhardcoded modifiers like "Is a monk weapon", see: baseitems.2da
  • Allowed the various default clothing available at character generation to be restricted to gender, alignments, races or classes.
  • Improvements to available model bones/quality so higher quality animations/models can be done, see: Models
  • Additional Custom Animation slots 21 through 70 for a huge number of custom animations on custom models
  • Engine now uses OpenAL for sound and WebM for video files, meaning easier and higher quality Movies and Sounds and Music can be used.
  • Game console has a few more commands for:
    • Panoramic shots with MakePano
    • Aforementioned model compiling

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