...
You now have a proper \My Documents\Neverwinter Nights (Windows) ~/Documents/Neverwinter Nights (macOS) or ~/.local/share/Neverwinter Nights (Linux) folder for all the custom content and settings files, no need to edit the game folder anymore.
You can now have more than 64MB of texture memory. It is recommended to increase this (possibly up to the maximum of 2047) to improve performance. The game also 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 and Upscaling
...
- High Contrast
- Vibrance
- Depth of Field (disabled by default - but good for photos)
- SSAO - Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
Additionally there are a number of texture improvements available for modders
Lighting and Water Improvements
There is now a new lighting engine and 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/
Beamdog HD Pack
Beamdog released a set of HD models for the player phenotypes which the community has added fixes and improvements to.
Server Changes
Some changes more applicable to multiplayer servers; additionally NWNX is being developed by the community to extend the server features which runs on Linux and is highly recommended.
...
- You can open more than one area at a time in tabs, and even copy between them
- Script parameters built into conversations lowering the amount of scripts needed
- 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 as above)
- Support for ambient/battle music not having TLK entry references, can be now done with strings
- Additional Ossian Studios content from Darkness over Daggerford (models, creatures, etc) and new and revamped tilesets
- Hakpack files ERF files (.HAK and .MOD usually) can now contain near unlimited items compared to ~16K in 1.69. Only one hakpack is neededA 2GB filesize per-ERF is still in place but it allows modules to keep all blueprints, area files and scripts in one module now.
Custom Content Changes
Improvements include a lot of unhardcoding of various things and new things you can do:
- Unhardcoded various hardcoded set values the engine uses for hardcoded class and abilities; see new 2da ruleset.2da
- 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 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, 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
...