Patch 8193.23 Launches for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition

Greetings friends!

We’re launching a new patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition with some of the biggest feature sets yet! Today’s update brings a new game launcher with featured community content, performance improvements, plus hundreds of fixes.

Check out full details on Patch 8193.23 below...

Patch Highlights

New Game Launcher | A new game launcher highlights some amazing community content that’s free for everyone!
New Portraits | Added three new character portraits (sourced from the community portrait contest)
TrueType Font | Added full TrueType font (TTF) support throughout the game, for clearer and more adaptive text (as well as fractional/decimal point UI scaling)
Pathfinding Improvements | Smoother movement and navigation
Performance Improvements | Enjoy smoother gameplay with significant performance improvements
Bug Fixes | Hundreds of bug fixes and polish features added
New Scripts | Added dozens of new script commands for use in custom servers, including improved scaling and transformation (lerping)
Water Graphics | Added realistic water reflections and refractions

New Game Launcher with Community Highlights

This patch ships with a new (singleplayer) game launcher. It showcases all campaigns and premium modules with header images, descriptions, screenshots, and more.

We’ve also added a repository of community content, hosted by Beamdog. This gives all players easier access to some amazing (and free) community adventures. For example, we are honoured to offer both the full Aielund Saga by Savant, and the Auren Saga (Almraiven / Shadewood) by Fester Pot. Now all you need to do to play them is click Download (...and wait a bit).

Aielund Saga

By Savant

Embark on a journey through the Kingdom of Aielund, a realm weakened by war and beset by enemies from without and within. Defend the people of Aielund against monsters from mythology, and ones that clothe themselves in a more human form. Uncover evidence of foul play, delve into the deepest caves, travel the breadth of the land and even the planes of reality. Secure the kingdom from foes more powerful than you can imagine, while you rise from simple mercenaries into the mightiest of heroic legends.

Auren Saga

By PJH

The Auren Society of Weavers draw their power from a Weave that spans into the Land of the Dead. It allows such members to grasp a better understanding of the spirits that roam that realm and use it to their advantage. It is this very Weave one will use to scour murderous scenes and unravel the mysterious deaths that surround the region of Calimshan.

TrueType Fonts and UI scaling

The game now supports TrueType fonts (and fractional/decimal point UI scaling). This means when you adjust the User Interface the text scales much more clearly for readability.

Note: Currently, fonts cannot be overridden by custom content, but we are looking at options for a future release.

Water Visuals

We’ve added brand new water visuals! Water now has realistic reflections and refractions to make your adventures more beautiful.

Art Changes

• Added three contest winner portraits to base game (Aragnosh: human male, Seafaref: half-elf female, Seafarem: half-elf male)
• Fixed torch model flicker
• Fixed forest facelift tileset (ttf02) referring to missing envmap, resulting in transparent metal textures

Pathfinding Improvements

We have been carefully making some changes to pathfinding to improve efficiency and reliability. Here are some of the technical details of the changes:

• Pathfinding on Windows, macOS and Linux no longer uses simplified pathfinding at certain distances.
• Fixed inaccurate calculation of grid step tolerance when using grid pathfinding.
• Fixed potential endless loops with ActionMoveAwayFromLocation.
• Fixed inconsistencies between when to use Z when comparing distances, which would result in certain actions failing when they shouldn't
• Added lacking safety checks which was causing pathfinding to floor performance if trying to interact with a door that was unreachable
• Server settings: Removed experimental enhanced pathfinding toggle (now always on).
• Fixed some minor errors related to collision resulting in imprecisions
• Fixed interacting with objects when Z-offset was implied (e.g. stairs). This should alleviate some troubles where having to manually force the PC near the object before it would interact
• Fixed a case where creatures failed to pathfind to a near point in a straight line

New Scripting

Visual Object Transform Lerping

Script commands can now transform objects smoothly over time.

All existing visual transform types (translate, rotate, scale) can be applied this way, and there is a built in selection of algorithms available.

New Script Commands

This release adds a set of new script commands:

// Returns the currently executing event (EVENT_SCRIPT_*) or 0 if not determinable.
// Note: Will return 0 in DelayCommand/AssignCommand. ExecuteScript(Chunk) will inherit their event ID from their parent event.
int GetCurrentlyRunningEvent();
// Get the integer parameter of eEffect at nIndex.
// * nIndex bounds: 0 >= nIndex < 8.
// * Some experimentation will be needed to find the right index for the value you wish to determine.
// Returns: the value or 0 on error/when not set.
int GetEffectInteger(effect eEffect, int nIndex);
// Get the float parameter of eEffect at nIndex.
// * nIndex bounds: 0 >= nIndex < 4.
// * Some experimentation will be needed to find the right index for the value you wish to determine.
// Returns: the value or 0.0f on error/when not set.
float GetEffectFloat(effect eEffect, int nIndex);
// Get the string parameter of eEffect at nIndex.
// * nIndex bounds: 0 >= nIndex < 6.
// * Some experimentation will be needed to find the right index for the value you wish to determine.
// Returns: the value or "" on error/when not set.
string GetEffectString(effect eEffect, int nIndex);
// Get the object parameter of eEffect at nIndex.
// * nIndex bounds: 0 >= nIndex < 4.
// * Some experimentation will be needed to find the right index for the value you wish to determine.
// Returns: the value or OBJECT_INVALID on error/when not set.
object GetEffectObject(effect eEffect, int nIndex);
// Get the vector parameter of eEffect at nIndex.
// * nIndex bounds: 0 >= nIndex < 2.
// * Some experimentation will be needed to find the right index for the value you wish to determine.
// Returns: the value or {0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f} on error/when not set.
vector GetEffectVector(effect eEffect, int nIndex);
// Check if nBaseItemType fits in oTarget's inventory.
// Note: Does not check inside any container items possessed by oTarget.
// * nBaseItemType: a BASE_ITEM_* constant.
// * oTarget: a valid creature, placeable or item.
// Returns: TRUE if the baseitem type fits, FALSE if not or on error.
int GetBaseItemFitsInInventory(int nBaseItemType, object oTarget);
// Get oObject's local cassowary variable reference sVarName
// * Return value on error: empty solver
// * NB: cassowary types are references, same as objects.
// Unlike scalars such as int and string, solver references share the same data.
// Modifications made to one reference are reflected on others.
cassowary GetLocalCassowary(object oObject, string sVarName);
// Set a reference to the given solver on oObject.
// * NB: cassowary types are references, same as objects.
// Unlike scalars such as int and string, solver references share the same data.
// Modifications made to one reference are reflected on others.
void SetLocalCassowary(object oObject, string sVarName, cassowary cSolver);
// Delete local solver reference.
// * NB: cassowary types are references, same as objects.
// Unlike scalars such as int and string, solver references share the same data.
// Modifications made to one reference are reflected on others.
void DeleteLocalCassowary(object oObject, string sVarName);
// Clear out this solver, removing all state, constraints and suggestions.
// This is provided as a convenience if you wish to reuse a cassowary variable.
// It is not necessary to call this for solvers you simply want to let go out of scope.
void CassowaryReset(cassowary cSolver);
// Add a constraint to the system.
// * The constraint needs to be a valid comparison equation, one of: >=, ==, <=.
// * This implementation is a linear constraint solver.
// * You cannot multiply or divide variables and expressions with each other.
// Doing so will result in a error when attempting to add the constraint.
// (You can, of course, multiply or divide by constants).
// * fStrength must be >= CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_WEAK && <= CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_REQUIRED.
// * Any referenced variables can be retrieved with CassowaryGetValue().
// * Returns "" on success, or the parser/constraint system error message.
string CassowaryConstrain(cassowary cSolver, string sConstraint, float fStrength = CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_REQUIRED);
// Suggest a value to the solver.
// * Edit variables are soft constraints and exist as an optimisation for complex systems.
// You can do the same with Constrain("v == 5", CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_xxx); but edit variables
// allow you to suggest values without having to rebuild the solver.
// * fStrength must be >= CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_WEAK && < CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_REQUIRED
// Suggested values cannot be required, as suggesting a value must not invalidate the solver.
void CassowarySuggestValue(cassowary cSolver, string sVarName, float fValue, float fStrength = CASSOWARY_STRENGTH_STRONG);
// Get the value for the given variable, or 0.0 on error.
float CassowaryGetValue(cassowary cSolver, string sVarName);
// Gets a printable debug state of the given solver, which may help you debug
// complex systems.
string CassowaryDebug(cassowary cSolver);
// Overrides a given strref to always return sValue instead of what is in the TLK file.
// Setting sValue to "" will delete the override
void SetTlkOverride(int nStrRef, string sValue="");
// Constructs a custom itemproperty given all the parameters explicitly.
// This function can be used in place of all the other ItemPropertyXxx constructors
// Use GetItemProperty{Type,SubType,CostTableValue,Param1Value} to see the values for a given itemproperty.
itemproperty ItemPropertyCustom(int nType, int nSubType=-1, int nCostTableValue=-1, int nParam1Value=-1);

NWScript Debugger

We’ve revived the script debugger with several improvements:

• Added back script debugger binary into bin/win32/.
• Added configuration keys to UI.
• Fixed incorrect address parsing resulting in it not connecting. Also fixes setting debugger addresses other than localhost.
• Fixed heap overflow parsing NDB files resulting in crashes.
• Now renders all internal fields of CGameEffect.
• Now renders all internal state of CScriptEvent.
• Now renders cswysolver and sqlquery types instead of crashing in pitiful confusion.
• Will no longer attempt to launch from within nwmain, you now need to run the binary by hand. On the plus side, it should now work on Linux and Mac (via wine/wine32to64).

Other Feature Changes

In addition to the major features listed above, we’ve added dozens of minor polish features to improve the game:

• GUI/NUI: Implemented floating point UI scaling.
• UI: Allow exceeding safe UI scale if needed for accessibility reasons. There is a toggle under Config->UI->Accessibility->Advanced.
• GUI/NUI: Implemented TTF font rendering.
• Input: Added new manual config key game.language.codepage that can be used to force a different codepage (e.g. cp1251 for cyrillic). Together with a TTF override, this should allow modding in compatibility for russian language overrides.
• NUI: Implemented 9-slice gui skinning.
• NUI: Now using a cassowary constraint solver system to layout widgets
• Floating damage numbers are now colourised based on the damage type taken.
• Add config toggle that allows showing damage numbers as totals or split
• NUI: Redesigned the Options UI.
• NUI: Redesigned the NWSync Storage Management UI. (Now called Storage in the menu, and also accessible via the new game launcher).
• NUI: Fixed up some other UI panels to layout properly even when scaled.
• NUI: Added a panel to show Open Source Licences to config UI.
• NUI: Made sound effects more immersive/in line with base UI usage (different click noises depending on widget).
• GUI: Added a windowed/fullscreen/borderless dropdown to the Config UI and fixed the mode sometimes not initialising correctly.
• Async loading of files and images via http streaming. (Backend system work)
• ResMan: Movies can now be stored and played from override, ERF (hak, mod) and NWSync.
• SQLite: Added a configurable busy timeout, so that just externally running something on a campaign/nwsync database doesn’t immediately abort queries running in the game. (3s default)
• SQLite: Added builtin functions for NWCompressedBuf compression, base64 de/encode, and hashing. See SQLITE_Readme.md in data.
• NWSync: Client now downloads wbm movie files if part of the manifest.
• HTTP: Added a disk caching service to avoid repeated requests; added alias CACHE: (USERDIR/cache) by default. Configurable in settings, default max size is 100MB.
• Base: Game windowed size is now 1024x768 by default, because some UI just got too big.
• Base: TLK files now have a local cache, improving repeated lookup performance.
• Base: API cleanup for NWNX support
• Server: Removed some superfluous service updates (very minor perf).
• Renderer: Tweaks to palettes for PLTs to prevent metallic looks. Tweaks to PLTs for armour to prevent alpha dithering. Check out the comparison here
• Renderer: Added unique shader for particles, with soft particle rendering and enabled particle blending with fog. Check out soft particle shader here and fog rendering here
• Renderer: Improved colour overflow for transparent objects. Check out the comparison here
• Renderer: Implemented proper OpenGL buffer orphaning
• Renderer: Unified and simplified the shader setup, allowing the default vs/fslit_nm/sm shaders to be used for all standard PBR setups
• Renderer: Made displacement offset a uniform that can be passed from materials to set a base level. To use it, add parameter float DisplacementOffset in a material. By default, the shaders assume the base (zero) level of the heightmap is 1 (white), so if base level is 0.6, the value needs to be -0.4, etc
• Renderer: Made alpha level adhere to Fresnel effects at high shader quality.
• Renderer/Debug UI: Added a dropdown to select various rendering modes helpful for debugging (Material modes, Lighting channels, ..)
• Renderer: Improvements to FBO, grant all shaders access to color and depth buffer textures
• Renderer: Quickbar icons can now reload via SetTextureOverride.
• Renderer: Fixed broken normal and tangent generation for skinmeshes due to invalidated render hints. Improved shader picking based on tangets/handedness.
• Renderer: Shader compilation errors are now printed to the game log file.
• Renderer: Separated out area wide lighting from area point lights. (Small perf improvement)
• Renderer/OVT: WALKDIST and RUNDIST now scales properly with visual transforms for you, in order to keep footsteps in sync
• Renderer: Added material files for icy tileset so that ice no longer appears metallic
• Renderer: Added material files for male and female old human heads so their hair no longer appears metallic

Fixes

In addition to feature changes, this patch release also contains a sizeable selection of bug fixes:

• Fixed main menu music not playing when intro movies are skipped.
• Renderer: Fixed a bad hashing algo for PLT textures resulting in excessive cache misses.
• Renderer: Fixed incorrectly initialised null textures in some cases, resulting in incorrect textures and unnecessary texture binds.
• Renderer: Removed redundant skinmesh bone remapping. Slight performance improvement, especially for models with many nodes.
• Renderer: Made texture management more efficient, streamline for future changes to PBR.
• Renderer/ResMan: Disabled the async model loader. Addresses the bodyparts missing issue. #145
• Renderer: Maximum number of bones of a single skinmesh is now 64, to match mobile. This should fix the case where the game runs with 1-2fps on some GPUs.
• Renderer: Fixed crashes due to NULL textures.
• Renderer: Fixed crashing due to broken skinmesh models.
• Renderer: Regression: Fixed compiled light models having issues due to memory misalignment/struct packing.
• Renderer: Fixed an issue that would potentially cause scenes using custom shaders to malfunction in the event that a user changes video options in game.
• Renderer: Fix text input caret pulsing when paused. Fix caret colouring following text in some situations
• Renderer: Safeguard against crashes when an animation was missing
• Renderer: Optimised animesh buffer uploading; reduce time spent on GUI rendering.
• Renderer: Make the `decal` property actually disable lighting, rather than just self-illuminating brightly. Fixed some GUI scenes by adding decal to txis.
• Renderer: Fixed issue with darkness and similar negative light effects always being pushed to the end of the light priority list.
• Renderer: Fixed tile lights being added to the BSP before having their radii set (causing minor imprecisions)
• Renderer: Fixed an issue with setting custom shaders when objects were using just one material for all parts while having more than one part
• Renderer: Fixed a minor regression with the high contrast shader
• Renderer: Removed a good chunk of dead/redundant code
• Nuklear: Fixed a memleak that would degrade long play sessions
• VM: Fixed crash when calling DestroyArea() on a invalid object.
• VM: Stopped ExecuteScriptChunk from writing “!chunk.ndb” to override.
• VM: sqlite commands: Added missing newline in log output.
• VM: Fixed issue in string handling (also: VM: SubString()) that would have resulted in memory leaks or crashes.
• Game: Don’t use weapon AB for ranged touch attacks anymore.
• Fixes to passive attack target selection. This should address Cleave etc. sometimes failing to find a followup target. #172
• Game: Effect Miss Chance/Blind Fighting: Fix erroneous re-roll against target concealment, fix effect being ignored against blind fighting. #15
• Game: Fixed error in levelup validation related to SkillpointModifierAbility being starred out #180
• Game: Fixed ResistSpell() when called from AOE spell scripts.
• Game: Fixed classstat modifiers applying incorrectly to polymorph. #185
• Fixed the DM flag being set incorrectly on player characters when copying files around. #216
• Fixed a rare crash in game object update netcode when writing out the party state of a player that just exited
• Fixed a loop wraparound overflow game hang/crash when removing effect icons
• Game: Fixed a crash when the game tried to write a log entry as it was shutting down
• Emitters: fixed them not interpolating if not both size_y start and end were set (correct behaviour is to do if either is non-zero)
• Game: Never allow the window size to shrink below (100, 100). This works around the case where the window was too small to spot or resize back up
• Fixed a crash when clicking the Recommended button on chargen package selection with no packages available
• Fixed a string type conversion error resulting in some empty strings in UI
• http: Made http errors more verbose. Verbosity is Friend
• Fixed nwsync-enabled savegames not loading due to missing TLK error
• Input: Character input is now correctly converted from the language charset. This should address broken polish text input
• NUI: Fixed codepage glyphs cutting text off due to incorrectly-set codepage.
• NUI: Fix window flickering from (0,0) to center pos on first frame after opening.
• NUI: Fix window sometimes scaling down to (0,0).
• NUI: Pressing Escape now closes the currently focused window.
• NUI: Fixed UI not properly hiding when pressing Alt-F4/X to close the game.
• NUI Skinning: Made font white in all widgets, instead of grey.
• NUI Skinning: Skinned text input box.
• NUI Skinning: Title bars now look like native windows.
• NUI Skinning: Close/Minimise buttons match native style.
• NUI Skinning: Fixed combo box style.
• NUI Skinning: Window and group borders are now rendered 9-sliced.
• NUI Skinning: Fixed scrollbars not aligning properly.
• NUI: Fixed windows not properly auto-centering when ui-scaled.
• NUI: Fixed line fitting code to no longer repeat words when word-wrapping; improved performance to only do line flowing once.
• NUI/GUI: Fixed TTF font rendering for Polish. #191 #235
• GUI: Fixed input caret; now back with extra cyan and more blinkage.
• GUI: Fixed password input box not accepting your passwords, no matter how good they were.
• Movie player: Optimised so it doesn’t create the movie texture as often.
• Toolset: Fixed floating point drifting for X/YOrientation
• Toolset: Now reads DEVELOPMENT: (but it might not live-reload the same as the game would).
• Toolset: Fixed some backgrounds not filling the full icon pane. #240
• Linux: Fixed exclusive(fullscreen) and borderless window modes.
• ResMan: Fixed crash that could happen when exiting the game, especially seen after failing to load a savegame.
• Renderer: Restore the check for bumpshinytexture, fixing regression where meshes appeared transparent or invisible #298
• Renderer: Fixed static lights not updating properly. #290
• Config UI: Don’t show horizontal scrollbar when UI scaled.
• VM: Fixed SetColor() not updating in some cases (such as heads/hair)
• Savegames: When loading a savegame with a missing manifest, attempt to load the newest manifest of the same UUID instead (upgrade path for New Game UI modules). Emit a message to the client log indicating such - no UI support for showing this yet.

Known Issues

Steam Workshop | Modules in the Steam Workshop do not show in the game launcher