May 04 Livestream Recap

Object Visual Transforms allow scripters to scale, rotate and move nearly all ingame objects.

Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle shared the latest on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and Infinity Engine patch news during today’s livestream.

Missed the stream? It's on Youtube and Twitch! Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

• The 2.5 patch for Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition has been released this week and is now available in the Beamdog Client and on Steam. The patch brings over 300 fixes and features to IWD:EE. Players from GOG, Google Play, App Store and Mac App Store - please be patient as it takes time for the update to populate through the various stores! Check out the full patch notes here.
• The team is focused on pushing a new beta build for Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition next, which will include new translations and restored V/O!
• We’re hiring! Apply for your dream job and start working on beloved D&D games. We’re looking for designers, producers, programmers, and more. People who are interested developing the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS4 - take note!

The new material shader overrides being added in 8170 allow scripters to send new uniforms to shaders on specific objects, and specific materials on those objects.

• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition development build 8170 is out in the Beamdog Client and on Steam. It focuses on bug-fixing and brings a few exciting new features. We’ve made it so that when looking up translated strings (for example, in object descriptions), we first consider the opposite gender before falling back to English. We’ve also added script calls that allow overriding shader uniforms on materials. This is still work in progress: more flexibility, the ability to swap materials and other components on materials, gff serialisation, and toolset support is still to come.
• We’re working with Intel on crashes and performance issues within the  Intel HD GPU drivers. The Intel driver team have managed to repro the issue. We really appreciate your help, Intel programmers!
• We are aware of the bug with the Whirlwind attack in NWN:EE, which dates back to original Neverwinter Nights. It will be addressed soon.
• A new stable build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is coming. Now that we’ve added several major features we’re going to stabilize the existing development branch over the next week.
• The issue currently happening with multiplayer saves loading in the premium modules is reported and being looked at for the next stable release.

We keep adding new items to the Steam Workshop.

• Check out 96 new sample Long Swords models recently uploaded to the Steam Workshop. They now support normal and spec information. All of these pieces are modular and can be mixed and matched!
• We plan to move forward with a new lighting system in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition but in the same time we have to balance it considering the backwards compatibility. We’re thinking about possible solutions. According to Phil, there might be an option for module creators to choose between original NWN shaders and new lighting shaders for advanced or complex content.
• Unhardcoding the rules, classes and abilities in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is a long-term goal. Our plan is to open up everything for modding but because these are fundamental engine changes we will need to roll them out slowly and carefully.
• Achievements and trading cards for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Steam will be a part of a substantial update in the future.
• Adding a brightness slider back into Neverwinter Nights is a little bit challenging task now, but we want to do it.
• There’s a rumor we’ll be present at the Stream of Many Eyes - a 3 day D&D event starting June 1 at 4PM PT on twitch.tv/dnd. There’s another rumor that Phil will be dressed as Rasaad yn Bashir!

Excited for what’s next? Come and join the next livestream next Friday!