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!

August 17 Livestream Recap

“The 2.5 update is done, it is out! Go play it!” ~ Phil

Last week Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle talked about studio news and updates on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. They were joined by Symphony, a prolific Neverwinter Nights modder, for a Skype interview.

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

• Beamdog is going to PAX West in less than 2 weeks! Visit our panel at September, 1 at 1pm PT. Not going to PAX? We’ll be streaming the panel live on the Beamdog Twitch and on twitch.tv/PAX2! RSVP to the livestream on the Eventbrite or Facebook events!
• If you’re local to Edmonton, visit our booth at Edmonton Expo in September! Watch out for a special Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Collector’s Edition sale there!
• Sign up for our newsletter! If you sign up before August 28, 2018, you’ll enter a draw to win a fantasy portrait of a photo by your choosing! Your Baldur’s Gate style portrait might make it into the Enhanced Edition family of games!
• We’re still hiring! Come work with us on D&D titles and more!

“The 2.5 update resolved around 1640 issues!” ~ Trent

• The much-anticipated 2.5 updates for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear are out! Check out the full patch notes, enjoy the new features, and share your feedback on our forums!
• The final 2.5 patch for Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is released as well! It contains an optional setting which lets you to see an area-of-effect of the spell you’re going to cast! Try it and let us know your thoughts in the forums!
• The 2.5 updates for BG:EE, BGII:EE, and IWD:EE should come to the Mac App Store this week!
• We want to give a shout-out to Pete Camagna, our Technical Designer on Infinity Engine games. Thanks for all the work, Pete, you’re an incredible source of energy and positivity!
• The Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition build for GOG is being tested. Watch out for more news on that front soon!
• We’ve added Enhanced Greatsword models to the NWN:EE Steam Workshop!
• Our live team on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is looking at the graphics engine and next-gen features. All our graphics programmers will be sitting down together soon to decide on what we can and cannot do in this regard. The current goal for NWN:EE going forward is to upgrade the graphics engine and update the lighting model.
• After adding 64-bit support for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition we plan to continue supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit.
• We have an internal ticket for adding achievements to Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Our technical artists are looking into what these achievements will be like.
• The team at Beamdog is continuing to grow! There’re 44 of us at the moment, and will be 45 in September!

“Making music for a persistent world didn’t work, so I started modding” ~ Symphony

• Symphony is one of the most prominent members of the Neverwinter Nights community, a programmer, a modder, and a member of the Advisory Board on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Check out his blog about making skyboxes in NWN:EE better.
• Symphony is trying to encourage other people doing modding, and according to him creating content for Neverwinter Nights is fairly easy. The NWN Toolset can be a little scary at the first look, but actually playing the game can help players to become experienced on how to work on the Toolset.
• Symphony agrees that “NWSync” is going to be the biggest change in Neverwinter Nights since Hordes of the Underdark. Everyone will get the same version of files needed to play on a server of your choice.
• We’ll be bringing more people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

“Good luck, Phil! It’s been great 8 years!” ~ Trent

• We’re saying farewell to our beloved Studio Director Phil Daigle. He's been with us for 8 incredible years, and has been instrumental in our game development and the Beamdog journey. We’re so grateful for all you gave to us, Phil! We wish you every success on your new adventure!

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

July 27 Livestream Recap

“New character models in NWN:EE are going to look really good, players will love them!” ~ Alan Miranda

During last week’s livestream Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle talked about studio news and plans on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Alan Miranda, CEO of Ossian Studios, joined the stream to share stories about the original Neverwinter Nights, creating Darkness Over Daggerford, and enhancing DoD as a Premium Module for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

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

• July, 27 was the birthday of Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Your legacy will stay forever, Gary!
• Beamdog is going to PAX West! During a special announcement panel on September, 1 we’ll be talking about some D&D stuff, but the main focus will be on a new game - something we haven’t announced yet. We’ll also be answering your questions, so come by if you’re at PAX West, or tune on Twitch!
• We’ll also be at Edmonton Expo in September, so if you’re in Edmonton, come say hi!
• Sign up for the Beamdog newsletter! If 500 people sign up for our newsletter this week, Phil will write the next newsletter himself!
• We’re still hiring! If you’re a programmer, a technical artist, or a web developer - apply!

“Neverwinter Nights was all about the democratization of game design” ~ Trent

• We’re actively working on bringing Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition to GOG. We want to upgrade the old CD Key system to make it work with GOG Galaxy and manually downloaded NWN:EE versions.
• We continue to work on the tablet version of NWN:EE. “NWSync”- an upcoming feature for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition which will provide an auto hak and tlk's downloader once you connect to a server in the game - will help not only PC players, but also tablet players.
• Dynamic UI scaling for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is currently in code review. We’re looking into additional fun things like a font size slider, or allowing players to drag windows.
• We’ve had a lot of discussions about making our own persistent world. We haven't ruled it out but we don't have any plans to make something like that soon.
• We’re trying to find a good partner to help us build the Collector’s Edition of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Once we do that, we’ll discuss with them ideas the community is sharing on our forums. Let us know about what you want to see in the Collector’s Edition here!

“It was a nice thing for Darkness Over Daggerford to finally become a Premium module after all these years” ~ Alan Miranda

• Alan Miranda worked on the original Neverwinter Nights as both an audio producer and localization producer. Before starting on Neverwinter Nights, he was a producer on Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. After leaving BioWare Alan formed his own company, Ossian Studios.
• At GDC 2005 Alan approached BioWare joint CEO Greg Zeschuk to discuss the possibility of Ossian Studios developing a premium module for Neverwinter Nights. BioWare approved that proposal, but later in 2006, Atari, Neverwinter Nights’, publisher cancelled the premium module program. Alan and his team decided to finish Darkness Over Daggerford anyway, and it was released free of charge on Neverwinter Nights Vault.
• In 2018 Ossian Studios was finally able to complete Darkness Over Daggerford as the Premium Module they originally envisioned. This enhanced version has more than 500 gameplay improvements over the original Darkness Over Daggerford. You can find the full of changes in the Enhanced Edition of Darkness Over Daggerford here.
• According to Alan, the real strength of Darkness Over Daggerford is the world exploration, a feature inspired by Baldur’s Gate.
• Among other prominent features are dynamic level scaling and random encounters which happen during the world map travelling.
• Right now Ossian Studios is working on new character models for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. According to Alan, they’re preserving the style of original Neverwinter Nights outfits and looks.
• We’ll be bringing more people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

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

July 20 Livestream Recap

“Making haks and tlk's easier to download will probably be the biggest change in NWN since Hordes of the Underdark” ~ Trent

During today’s livestream Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle shared the latest studio news and updates on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and Infinity Engine games. Bernhard Stöckner (niv), Technical Director on the NWN:EE core team at Beamdog, joined the stream to review the latest changes on the Roadmap Trello board for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

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

• On September, 1 Beamdog will do a special announcement panel at PAX West. Tune on Twitch in for news about a game we haven’t announced yet! More news soon!
• Sign up for the Beamdog newsletter! No spam, we promise, - only the most important news and updates! One of our next newsletters will feature details about the Android version of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition!
• Come meet us at Edmonton Expo in September!
• Start adventuring in the Forgotten Realms with the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Digital Deluxe bundle and Baldur’s Gate: The Complete Saga! Both collections are on a fantastic sale at Fanatical for the next few days!
• If you’re a programmer, a technical artist, or a web developer, come work at Beamdog! Check out our current openings.

“NWN:EE plays smoothly on Android, and we want to make the buttons bigger” ~ Phil

• The smoke test (a broad spectrum of quick tests by our QA team) for the 2.5 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is finished, the 2.5 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear will go through the same testing next week. Both patches will be released at the same time.
• After Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear are patched, we’ll do one final update for Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, bringing more bug and localization fixes, and adding a new test feature.
• The next development build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will be huge! Among other features, it will bring "NWSync” - an auto hak and tlk's downloader, and 64-bit compatibility.
• The “NWSync” feature will let you go to the server list in Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, choose a server, and it will download automatically required files needed to connect to the server.
• We have rewritten a lot of code for the 64-bit compatibility, so we expect there will be bugs. We’ll start with a development branch to introduce this compatibility, and will work on improving it based on community feedback.

“Weather is one of the most important things in the game. Take advantage of new graphics and new shaders - what do you want to do with weather? Snow? Hurricanes?” ~ niv

• There were a few important changes on the Roadmap Trello board for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition this week, go check them out!
• RFC builtin database replacement, more scalable NWN:EE UI, GOG Galaxy support are now in development.
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on GOG is getting closer. We have to work out how CD Keys will be handled.
• There are 3 features we want to get community feedback on: full party control in NWN:EE, improving weather effects, and new emote animations. If you have suggestions about these features, share them on our forums.
• What Phil means by the full party control is that we want to control henchmen better. We don’t want a free camera, it will be more like KotOR than like Neverwinter Nights II. Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is a single person game, it’s about you being the character on the character sheet. We want to make henchmen more responsible, which will let you continue being the character you play.
• We’ll be bringing more people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

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

July 13 Livestream Recap

“New shaders, tons of bug fixes, fixes for Intel crashes – go try the new stable build of NWN:EE!” ~ Phil

Today Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle shared the latest Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and Infinity Engine Enhanced Edition news. Soren, a community developer who's been working on NWN:EE shaders, joined the stream to talk about building shaders and Ravenloft - Prisoners of the Mist, a NWN:EE persistent world.

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

• Meet Beamdog at Pax West (Seattle, WA - August 31 - September 3, 2018)! We’re going to have a fairly big room for a special announcement panel. Come by and ask your questions!
• If you’re local to Edmonton, we’ll see you at Edmonton Expo in September!
• The next few months are going to be pretty exciting! Sign up for our newsletter to get exclusives on our future projects, patch news, sales, giveaways, and more!
• Make sure you’re following our Steam Developer page!
• Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition is currently on sale on Google Play and the App Store. Spend your vacation in Sigil, the city of doors!
• We’re hiring! If you’re a Web Developer, Programer, or Technical Artist looking for a new adventure, get in touch!

What are those secrets and things Trent can’t talk about yet?

• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Patch 1.76 was released this week. It focuses on stabilisation, fixes the majority of Intel-GPU related crashes, and addresses issues found since the previous update shipped. Check out the full patch notes here.
• We’re investigating the remaining Intel issues and are in touch with Intel programmers.
• We’re exploring plans for a Collector’s Edition of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition further down the road. We want to make it truly fantastic! Share your ideas in the NWN:EE forum.
• We’d like to add Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford portraits and soundsets to the base game, but have to get permission from Ossian Studios first.
• We’re looking into new soundsets for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. More news soon!
• We have a lot of work to do on dynamic UI for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. To bring NWN:EE to Android, we have to support all kinds of dimensions. Eventually, you’ll be able to scale UI into different resolutions.
• Phil says a custom module contest for NWN:EE is coming soon. If you’re building a team to create a module, let’s have a chat!

“You can’t have other games like Neverwinter Nights” ~ Soren on persistent worlds

• We’re working on the 2.5 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Siege of Dragonspear. Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition will also get one additional update at the end of the 2.5 patch cycle.
• The 2.5 update for BG:EE, SoD, BGII:EE and IWD:EE will come to the Mac App store after all the patches are completed.
• The Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition 3.1.4 build, which includes the Czech localization (currently available from Steam), will roll out to all platforms after our work on the 2.5 patches is done.
• Soren has worked on shaders for us - SSAO, Sharpen, and DoF, and according to him shaders are something that players can notice in the game quickly. Go check the new shaders in NWN:EE!
• According to Soren, NWN:EE provides lots of opportunities for modders and custom content creators. Now with the new shaders it’s possible to create amazing things.
• Soren runs Ravenloft - Prisoners of the Mist, a Neverwinter Nights roleplay persistent world set in Ravenloft, a gothic horror Dungeons & Dragons setting. It features more than a thousand unique areas, with a huge selection of sites to visit, people to meet, creatures to fight, treasure and dark secrets to uncover. If this caught your interest, download all the needed files from Steam Workshop and join the server!
• We’ll be bringing more guests to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

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

June 29 Livestream Recap

“A great thing about a NWN persistent world is that you move it forward as a group; it’s a community, not a single person” ~ Trent

Today Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Studio Director Phillip Daigle shared the latest news on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and Infinity Engine Enhanced Edition patches. Clint aka “deltaTime” joined the stream to talk about Netheril: Age of Magic, a NWN:EE persistent world.

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

• Beamdog is going to PAX West this August to do a special announcement panel. Stay tuned for more details!
• Sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive information on our upcoming games, patches and promotions! We don’t like spam in our own inboxes, so we promise not to spam yours.
• We’re looking for programmers, technical artists, web developers, and more! Apply on our job page now!
• All our titles are on sale on Beamdog.com! Save up to 80% on Infinity Engine products and up to 15% on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition titles!
• Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition is currently on a huge sale on Google Play and the App Store. Act quick to pick it up for your mobile device!
• Subscribe to our Steam Developer/Publisher page to see all our new stuff first!

“I’ve looked at KotOR on a tablet. For NWN:EE, I’d like to do a step beyond” ~ Phil

• The much-anticipated 2.5 update for Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition is out! This patch brings Simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian and Polish localizations, German, Italian and Polish V/O, as well as over 500 bug fixes and new features! Check out the full patch notes here. Updates can take a while to distribute, especially on Google Play and the App Store, so we appreciate your patience as the update populates throughout. Stay tuned for more information about the Mac App Store release.
• We want to give a shout-out to our technical designers on Infinity Engine games. We really appreciate your work. Without these fine folk, BG:EE and BGII:EE would have been impossible to create.
• There’s no new development build for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition this week as we are working hard on the next stable patch.
• We continue to work on the Intel GPU-related crashes and performance issues. We will continue integrating workarounds for this issue in the next NWN:EE public update.
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on GOG will happen. More news soon!
• Work on updating textures in NWN:EE continues. The tricky part here is the backwards compatibility. We want to make a new lighting model as quick and easy to use as possible.
• According to Trent, a plan for the Witch’s Wake module was actually finished, but it was never approved. Rob Bartel isn’t currently in the place where he can make it. At this time we’re not going to add anything to the Witch’s Wake.
• We’ve been patching the Premium modules as a part of our Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition patches. If you run into bugs while playing the Premium modules, please report them, and we’ll get them fixed. But big changes, such as rebuilding the horse system in Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, for example, are not likely to happen.

Clint called his arctic fox “Kit”.

• Netheril: Age of Magic Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition persistent world is a RP-heavy server based around what the humans known as the Netherese called "The Golden Age", when the nation was at the very pinnacle of its power. Its setting is focused mainly on the Floating Enclave dubbed "Valstiir". The server boasts a beautiful world, with rich lore and different factions.
• According to Clint, the coolest thing in Netheril: Age of Magic is the world exploration.
• The persistent world is in active development, and there’re a lot of exciting features to come, such as a custom familiar system.
• Curious about the Netheril: Age of Magic Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition persistent world? Grab the files from Steam Workshop and join the server!
• We’ll be bringing more people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

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

June 22 Livestream Recap

Trent first started work on Neverwinter Nights nearly 20 years ago.

During today’s livestream, Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Marketing & PR Manager Lee Guille shared the latest Beamdog, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, and Infinity Engine news. Bernhard Stöckner (niv), Technical Director on the NWN:EE core team at Beamdog, joined the stream to chat about NWN:EE technical challenges.

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

• Beamdog will do a special announcement panel at PAX West this August. We’ll be talking about a number of things there, but the big announcement will be not D&D-related.
• Sign up for the Beamdog newsletter to hear more about our future games, news, promotions and giveaways!
• Our titles, soundtracks, and DLC are on the Steam and Beamdog summer sales. Save up to 80% on your favourite classics!
• Neverwinter Nights: Darkness Over Daggerford is 15% off on Beamdog.com for a very short time!
• Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is currently on sale on Google Play with a huge discount! Act quick!
• We’re actively hiring! Check out our job listings and apply!
• Stay in touch! We now have a Steam Developer/Publisher page.
• We updated the Beamdog Client last week. It now supports DLC. See the full patch notes here.

“We’ll attempt our newsletter emails to be at least humorous” ~ Trent

• The 2.5 patch for Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition has been pushed to next week due to Multiplayer crashes and Linux issues.
• A new Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition development build is available on Steam and in the Beamdog Client. Check out the full patch notes for the build 8178 here.
• Let us know about your desired time gaps between stable patches for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on our forums.
• If you can reproduce Intel GPU-related crashes in NWN:EE regularly and reliably on your laptop, contact us, and we may buy it (on the condition it's a local 100% crash repro, the "click here to crash"-type of crash)! It’ll help us understand what part of content in the game is causing crashes and performance issues on Intel laptops.
• We’re working on a new storyline for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

Bernhard Stöckner (niv) describes a few features planned for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.

• According to niv, after we ship the next stable patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, we plan to focus on feature development. The biggest thing on the list is probably a multiplayer-compatible content downloader (for such files as HAKs and TLKs).
• The 64-bit transition is a huge undertaking, and after it’s done, a lot of other features will be possible.
• If you have suggestions about ways to improve the Neverwinter Vault, share them on our forums.
• We’ll be bringing more people from the community to talk to during our livestreams. Stay tuned!

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