September 28 Livestream Recap

Luke plays Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on NVidia Shield and Samsung S8.

Today Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout and Marketing & PR Manager Lee Guille shared the latest studio news, updates and plans on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and the Infinity Engine EEs. Luke showed the current state of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android (everything showcased is still work in progress).

Missed the stream? It's on YouTube (yay!) and Twitch! Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

• It was so exciting to meet local fans during the Edmonton Expo. Trent dressed up as Minsc and Luke worked on his best Winthrop lines!
• Local fans at the Edmonton Expo got some hands-on time with Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition for Android. We’re already working through the feedback you provided.
• Siege of Dragonspear for Android and iOS is on its biggest sale yet! Save 60% on an exciting adventure through new regions of the Sword Coast!
• Weekend Sale at the Beamdog Store:
• 20% off Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
• 25% off Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition: Digital Deluxe
• 30% off the Saga of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition games and Soundtracks! Saga Bundle includes:
• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
• Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear
• All three soundtracks!
• Sign up for our newsletter, and be the first to know about our sales, news, contests, and more!
• We’re hiring! If you’re a web developer, programmer, or technical artist - apply!

Shy about creating a Phil Killah module? How about a Nuke Lukem forever one?!

• The 2.5 builds for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for the Mac App Store are out! Check out the full announcement here.
• Bringing the 3.1.4 build for Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition to other platforms is something we’re working towards! Just like the 2.5 builds for the Mac App Store, it does need a fair amount of testing. We don’t have any specific ETA, but Luke hopes to get it into your hands pretty soon, especially for GOG players!
• The Dice, Camera, Action! voice and portrait pack is back on track! The portraits from the pack are almost complete, and we’ll soon start working on our contest winners portraits.
• The 2.6 patch for BG:EE, BGII:EE, IWD:EE, and Siege of Dragonspear will come at the same time the Dice, Camera, Action! Enhanced Edition pack is released. We want to get the 2.6 patch out on all the platforms simultaneously, including the Mac App Store.
• We’ve done a lot of bug-fixing for the 2.6 patch. There are 65 (!) spells now fixed to correctly follow the rules.
• The 2.6 patch isn’t the last for the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions! These games might be 20 years of old soon, but we love them, and plan to continue polishing them up!
• If you encounter a bug, or another issue while playing our games, reach out to our support. Charles is doing a fantastic work there, so don’t be shy, and share your problem!

Saving games and whispering in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android is very easy!

• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Development Build 8181 is available in the Beamdog Client and on Steam! It addresses a few community-found issues from the previous development build. Check out the full list of fixes here.
• We have a gold candidate of the NWN:EE GoG build. It’s something we’ve been working on with GOG for some time. We’re coordinating with them on the release date.
• Ossian Studios continue to work on overhauling models and textures for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. They’re fantastic at what they do, and we’re happy to work with them.
• We’re making progress on creating achievements for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Elysse is playing the Original Campaign, and making notes. We’re also thinking about adding achievements for Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark.
• We don’t have plans to port the Neverwinter Nights Toolset to mobile, as the Toolset and the game are two different beasts.
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android will come with much more flexible UI scaling (like x1.4, for example). All improvements will be then ported to the PC version.
• We’ll make sure Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on mobile runs on the most modern devices. During the livestreams, we showed off the game on NVidia Shield and Samsung S8. Luke used the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 at the Edmonton Expo.
• Better optimisation, and a broader spectrum of bug fixes, will be coming to NWN:EE after all the major features are done: the 64bit support, the “NWSync”, the mobile version.
• While recording professional V/O into different languages is pretty expensive, we’re open to including fan-made V/O into the Enhanced Editions!
• Although Phil is no longer at Beamdog, send your Kill Phil modules to us, and we’ll continue our tradition to kill Phil! There’s only one person who’s got a shiny forum badge for the Phil Killah module, you can get it too!

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

The 2.5 patches come to the Mac App Store!

The long-awaited 2.5 patches come to the Mac App Store!

[Read it in Sarevok’s voice] The 2.5 patches for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition are live in the Mac App Store! Flesh and blood and bone! They are alive! Ha-ha! We swore the patches would scratch and crawl their way back into the Mac App Store... and we have done it!

The 2.5 updates for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition are coming your way. Now you can play your favourite games fully updated to the 2.5 version, with over 1 600 bug fixes and new features! If updates aren’t immediately available, please be patient as the patches are populating through the Mac App Store.

If you run into any issues, please let us know via our customer support team and the Beamdog forum.

The 2.5 Update patch notes for each title can be found through these links:

- the full list of general 2.5 Infinity Engine fixes and features;

- the full list of 2.5 Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition fixes and features;

- the full list of 2.5 Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition fixes and features;

- the list of 2.5 Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition fixes and features, the list of additional updates for Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition.

September 21 Livestream Recap

“Go grab the new dev build, play with it for a while, report anything you find bizarre!” ~ Trent

During today’s livestream Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Producer Luke Rideout shared the latest news on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions, and the upcoming Edmonton Expo. They called Bernhard Stöckner (@niv), the Technical Director on the NWN:EE core team to talk about the game’s future development.

Missed the stream? It's on Twitch (sorry, we’re still working with Google to resolve an issue with our YouTube account)! Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

• Beamdog is now at the Edmonton Expo! Stop by our booth to say hello, playtest Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, pick up our games on super sale, and win prizes!
• All our Infinity Engine games and soundtracks are 50% off as part of the Edmonton Expo Sale at Beamdog.com! The amazing Siege of Dragonspear: Collector's Edition is 38% off, and our limited supply is going fast!
• September 24th will mark the 18th anniversary of Baldur’s Gate: Shadows of Amn. To celebrate, we're offering you the chance to win your very own boxed version of Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition! The box contains Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition and a special poster! Watch out on Monday for chances to be a lucky winner on our Twitter, Facebook, and Forums!
• Sign up for our newsletter for yet another chance to win the boxed version of Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition! Already signed up? Great - you’re already entered to win!
• We’re hiring! We’re moving to a new office in Edmonton, and we’re looking for a web developer, programmer, technical artist and HR Generalist!

“Congratulations to inXile Entertainment! Everybody should go buy the Bard’s Tale IV!” ~ Trent

• The 2.5 builds for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for the Mac App Store are in Apple’s hands now. We expect the patch to go live next week.
• The Dice, Camera, Action! Enhanced Edition voice and portrait pack is delayed due to artist injury. Get well soon, Thea!
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Development Build 8180 is now available in the Beamdog Client and on Steam. It brings new fixes, features, and fix-tures, including 3 new player-selectable portraits: Heavyline, Skandii, and Lanteri! Check out the full notes here.
• The new Development Build is a potential release candidate for 1.77. If you can, please test it! We know it’s not easy to test the non-stable version of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition in Multiplayer, but we’d really appreciate it!
• According to Trent, the GOG build will be released “soonish”, as we’re finishing it up!
• The 64bit update for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is underway. It’s not a part of this week’s Development Build, but we already have it working internally. After NWN:EE is released on GOG, we’ll merge our internal 64bit build with the Development Branch.

NWN:EE will be available not only on tablets, but phones as well!

• The plan for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android is to launch with a beta period first to get players’ feedback. We’ll continue improving the mobile version as we go forward.
• Custom content for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will work on the mobile version. The upcoming feature “NWSync” will help greatly, and the file structure on Android is open enough, so it’ll let you have override folders.
• We plan to provide players with options to customize different features in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android.

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

Beamdog's Beamtastic Beambooth at Edmonton Expo 2018

Beamdog is headed to the Edmonton Expo September 21 - 23! Of all the exciting celebrities, panels, and exhibits, here’s why you’ll want to hit up the Beambooth this year: 

Hands-On Playtesting

We’re offering first playtests of the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android at Edmonton Expo! 

Try the game on tablet, then fill out a short survey for a chance to win a Siege of Dragonspear: Collector’s Edition!

Minsc & Boo Sightings

Head to the Expo on Saturday to catch a glimpse of the elusive Minsc and Boo! Trent will be in full cosplay, wandering the floor and hanging out at the Beamdog booth between 11am - 3pm - Come say hi and get a photo!

Awesome Deals

Folks on the expo floor can grab some major discounts on Beamdog Steam Keys, and the Siege of Dragonspear: Collector’s Edition. Catch these deals - only at the Beamdog booth!

Win Prizes* (*Luck Required)

Sign up to our newsletter at the booth for a d20 chance to win a Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition T-Shirt! Take the playtest survey for an extra roll!

Meet the Team

We love meeting folks in the community, so we hope you’ll stop by and say hello to the fantastic Beamdog Team! 

Catch you this weekend at the Edmonton Expo!


          - Grab your tickets here!

September 14 Livestream Recap

“We love the Waffle Crew, especially Holly!” ~ Trent

Today Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Community Manager Sarah Dawson spoke about the upcoming Edmonton Expo, shared the latest progress on the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition build for GOG, and discussed plans for the future of Infinity Engine games and NWN:EE.

Missed the stream? It's on Twitch (we’re working with Google to resolve an issue with our YouTube account)! Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

• There’s a Not-Yet-Winter sale at Beamdog.com! Act quick, and get up to 40% off Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Digital Deluxe, Darkness over Daggerford, and the Darkness over Daggerford Official Soundtrack!
• Edmonton Expo starts next week (September, 21 - 23)! Come by our booth to say hello! You’ll be able to get the first hands-on playtest Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android, grab awesome deals on Steam Keys, pick up the Siege of Dragonspear: Collector's Edition on super sale, win prizes, and maybe even spot Trent dressed as a famous Forgotten Realms character!
• Our hiring is continuing at high speed! If you’re a web developer, programmer, technical artist or HR Generalist looking for a new adventure, get in touch!
• Congratulations to Elizabeth - you won our newsletter signup contest! We'll be creating a new Baldur's Gate style portrait of Elizabeth to be released to the community in a future patch! Sign up for the latest news and to be entered in future contests!

“Lee, I, and Cam will engage in a mortal combat to define the price for the Dice, Camera, Action! voice and portrait pack!” ~ Trent

• The 2.5 builds for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for the Mac App Store are still with QA.
• The Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition build for GOG is getting closer! Provided everything is OK, the release will happen next week!
• We’re working on adding Japanese, Korean and simplified Chinese localizations to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.
• The next development build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will be released after NWN:EE comes to GOG.
• We’re interested in looking into the combat side-stepping issue in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Share your feedback in the Beamdog forum!
• Updating Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition to 64bit opens up many opportunities. It’s a step towards future-proofing. It makes the Aurora Engine more capable to handle memory-intensive tasks, eg. rendering a lot on the screen at once, which should help a lot with the graphical improvements we’re working on.
• We know the community wants to see more enhanced weapons, armor, and characters in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. We’re working with Ossian Studios on it, but not ready to share the results yet.
• It’ll be at least 3-6 months before we can allow UI control in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition via scripting. The first iteration of the Android UI won’t be its final form, but it’ll already allow more control of UI size and shape.

“Ultimately we’ll throw some of the weapons I’ve made into NWN:EE. Like an elvish dagger, or this longshank.” ~ Trent

• Making new gameplay content for the Infinity Engine is hard and expensive. We might add content to Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition one day, but we don’t have any current plans for it. Our focus right now is on bug-fixing.
• We have plans for new Premium Modules for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, but don’t have details to share right now.
• If you have a feature request for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, share it on our forums, and it may get to the Input Trello board!

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

September 07 Livestream Recap

“We’ve got a big list of feature requests. Keep telling us what you want to see in our games!” ~ Luke

During last week’s livestream Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout and Marketing & PR Manager Lee Guille shared the latest studio news and updates on the Dice, Camera, Action! Portrait & Voice pack, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, and Infinity Engine games.

Missed the stream? It's on Twitch (we’re investigating a problem with our YouTube channel)! Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

• The Dice, Camera, Action! Voice and Portrait pack is shaping up greatly! The idea behind it is that you, as a player, can play as Strix (Holly Conrad), Diath Woodrow (Jared Knabenbauer), Paultin Seppa (Anna Prosser Robinson), Evelyn Marthain (Nathan Sharp), or even lead the whole Waffle Crew party together!
• The voice and portrait pack won't include inter-party banter for technical reasons, and will be English-only.
• International Dungeons & Dragons group interested in creating a voice pack in their native language are more than welcome to reach out to us!
• There will be unique lines for each character across Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, and Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.
• The voice and portrait pack will have to be purchased for each of game separately.
• We’re currently figuring out how the pack will work in multiplayer. The plan is to allow players playing with voice and portrait pack owners to see and hear these portraits and voicesets.
• Jared Knabenbauer (ProJared) is super excited about the pack. He’s been playing Baldur’s Gate since it originally released. Diath Woodrow was his first character. We’ll ask if he can create a Let’s Play!

“We’re hoping to pass modders the tools to make visual updates to Infinity Engine games!” ~ Luke

• Come say hi to our booth at Edmonton Expo (September, 21 - 23)!
• Beamdog is moving to a new office, and hiring! If you’re a programmer, technical artist, web developer, or human resources generalist - apply!
• There was a cancelled announcement planned for the PAX West panel. When we can, we’ll announce it, so stay tuned!
• Congratulations to Kevin- you won a Baldur’s Gate style portrait during the PAX West panel! Frith5 won another portrait as a viewer on Beamdog’s Twitch livestream, congratulations to you too!
• An email has been sent to a winner of a Baldur’s Gate style portrait as a result of signing up for the Beamdog newsletter! Watch out for more contests soon!
• We plan to release updates for our Infinity Engine games more often.
• The 2.5 builds for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for the Mac App Store are in QA’s hands.
• Future patches for the Mac App Store will have the same cadence as our patches for other platforms. We understand we’ve made our Mac App Store fans wait long for the 2.5 update, and we’re going to do better!

“Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Collector’s Edition is still in the queue!” ~ Luke

• A new development build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is very close. It will contain the Road to 2.0 portraits, bug fixes, small toolset updates, and GOG features.
• We know a GOG build is taking a long time. If it turns out Rich Presence support requires more work, we’ll release the first build without it. We want to bring Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition to GOG as soon as possible.
• Desktop and Android versions of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will be separate products and will have to be bought separately. We’re looking into ways to let you put your desktop CDKey on mobile if you choose to do so.
• Updating Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition to 64bit and improving the Toolset are completely different tasks. A 64bit version of the Toolset won’t be available immediately, but the current Toolset will be able to create content for the 64bit version of NWN:EE.
• We’re working to update Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition 64bit before creating mobile versions.
• The Android and iOS versions will be 64bit apps. They won’t be released simultaneously, as they need more time to work on individually.
• New enhanced models for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition are coming, but we don’t have any specific timelines to share.
• Adding more tile path nodes to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is possible, but we’d like to hear your suggestions about how you want them implemented on our forums.

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

PAX West Panel and August 31 Livestream Recap

Trent, Alyssa, John and Sarah were joined by Holly Conrad and Jared Knabenbauer for our PAX West panel!

During a special announcement panel at PAX West on September, 1 Beamdog CEO Trent Oster, Art Director Alyssa Duguay, Community Manager Sarah Dawson and Wizards of the Coast, Senior Producer, Digital Licensing John Feil talked about the history of Beamdog and Neverwinter Nights, and showed footage of NWN:EE on mobile. Special guests Holly Conrad and Jared Knabenbauer announced the Dice, Camera, Action! Portrait & Voice pack DLC for the Beamdog Enhanced Edition Family of games.

A day earlier, Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout and QA lead on Infinity Engine games Kristin Warren shared the latest gaming updates and plans for the Enhanced Editions.

Missed the streams? Check out the Twitch video from our Panel (starts at 03:03:10)! Watch the August 31 Livestream here (sorry about the sound quality, we’ll make sure to fix audio-related issues this week)! Below is a quick summary of the highlights:

• The Dice, Camera, Action! voice and portrait pack DLC is coming to the Beamdog Enhanced Edition Family of games later this year! Waffle Crew cast members Holly Conrad, Jared Knabenbauer, Anna Prosser Robinson, and Nathan Sharp are recording player character voice-over for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition and Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Portraits and voices of Strix, Diath Woodrow, Paultin Seppa, Evelyn Marthain, and a special portrait for DM Chris Perkins will be available as DLC on Steam, Beamdog, GOG, Google Play, and App Store.

• If you’re local to Edmonton, we’ll see you at Edmonton Expo (September, 21 - 23)!
• We’re hiring! If you’re a programmer, technical artist, web developer, or human resources generalist - apply!
• We’ve seen requests to update Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition to the 2.5.17 build (to make the version in line with other games), and are working on it.
• The 2.5 builds for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition for the Mac App Store are with QA.
• A colossal amount of work has been put into the 2.5 patches, but we’re interested in making continued improvements for our Infinity Engine games. If you run into bugs, please use the public bug tracker - we have people checking them on a daily basis.

• We’re sorting out last steps on Rich Presence support for the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition GOG build. It’ll let players click and join friends, render your friends list in the in-game view, and get information about what server they’re playing on. We also need to make a change to our builds to deploy multi-language on GOG, since they support custom per-language installers.
• We’re working on a variety of visual improvements for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. We’re cautious about how we’ll be implementing new models into the game, considering old machines and mobile devices.
• During our PAX West panel we showed footage of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Android (it’s still Work in Progress). A lot of work is being put into UI and supporting different aspect ratios.

• We’re actively looking into improving the maximum number of bones per skinmesh. Some progress has been made, but we don’t have any specific ETA for this feature.
• If you’re interested in seeing scripting functions that add DoMeleeAttack / DoRangedAttack functions, share your suggestions about how you want them implemented on our forums.
• We’ll be bringing people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

Excited for what’s next? Have questions about the Dice, Camera, Action! voice and portrait pack DLC and NWN:EE on mobile? Come and join the next livestream this Friday!