Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition

[Ronan]

Greetings Avlis players,

As noted in other areas of the forum, Beamdog has announced an Enhanced Edition of Neverwinter Nights that will include some additional functionality, fix some old bugs with the game, and be more stable on modern computers. We're excited to see this release. Beamdog is currently working on this edition, and has not yet announced an official release date.

The Avlis team is currently looking at the pros and cons of this edition and seeing if it makes sense for us to switch over. Key components of our choice will include accessibility of the servers to our playerbase and examining if we have the staff necessary to make a switch.

If you have questions, comments or concerns that you would like us to take into account, please PM the Dungeon Masters.

As well, we expect any changes made to the engine may require some changes on our end to make everything work. If you would like to help with any implementation, PM the Avlis Staff and apply today to join us.

Thanks and Game On,
R-Wilsash for the Avlis Team

[Xaila]

Any update here?

I've been casually following the EE buzz since it was announced. I recall there was a lot of enthusiasm from this end initially but it seems to have fizzled. I don't think I've seen Avlis mentioned once over on the beamdog forums or on any of the NWN hub discords and whatnot. The only person from here I've seen out there is Gorgon.

Maybe it's time to crack things open a bit and let the rest of us know what's up behind the mysterious curtain. From the outside it's looking awfully dead.

[Ronan]

For those curious:

EE is still actively making changes, which will probably break some of our custom processes. It won't be possible for us to fully evaluate what changes we'd have to do until they're closer to their own final version.

Hey Xaila, were you asking about EE in general, or Avlis and EE, in your post?
<Gorgon> EE keeps adding/changing (and breaking) stuff with each weekly update, which you can follow on their forum, or with the release notes for each build.
<Gorgon> They are on break for the holidays now, so nothing new really.
<Gorgon> NWNX also gets updated, and some of it is more frequent than the releases, with the stuff people are trying. That means anything that changes has to be redone with any test stuff too (especially if it hasn't even been merged yet).
<Xaila> Avlis EE, I've followed NWN EE in general for a bit (though slacked for the holidays)
<Gorgon> Well if Avlis commits to any EE plans as far as converting existing stuff, it is mostly going to be about NWNX and our tweaks with that here.

[Merago Jert]

Is NWN EE still being looked at by the team or does it look like a non-starter?

[tizmo]

First of all, yes, the team is very interested in NWN EE and NWNX for EE.

Before Avlis can switch to NWN EE there are some important things that need to be resolved.

If/when we switch, all old NWN 1.69 clients will no longer be usable and all connections to other persistent worlds that use the old NWN/NWNX will have to be closed. This is because once you access a PW with the NWN EE, your character bic has to be converted and thus your old bic is no longer available for use. This in turn means that we need to coordinate with all of CoPAP to switch at the same time, or disable portals (temporarily/permanently).

All of the nifty things you like about Avlis probably have some relationship with NWNX (the back-end code). So, we need to make sure that NWNX for EE supports all of the functionality that our existing modules require. We are watching the development very closely, but right now, there are still a few things that are missing.

We definitely need to make sure that all current players are comfortable buying the NWN EE client and switching to it. The low cost and bug fixes are probably enough to encourage most people to do it.

Once we determine that NWNX for EE provides the support we require and have made the necessary coordination/agreements with the rest of CoPAP, then it's time to actually convert all of our code to work with NWNX EE and then test it. This code conversion and testing is realistically a 6 month process, because we have so much code and want to make sure not to break anything.

Gorgon was our CCC team member responsible for testing NWN EE and NWNX for EE, but nobody has heard from him in a couple of months now. So, we really need to bring at least one more person into CCC who can keep on top of the NWN EE and NWNX for EE status and the same or another person who can do some coding to test out the NWNX for EE code and get a clear understanding of what all we need them to add.

So, what can you the reader do?
0. Avlis Needs You
1. If you have C/C++ coding skills, PM me (tizmo) and request an application for CCC.
2. If you know your away around a linux server, PM me (tizmo) and request an application for CCC.
3. If you have large piles of spare cash, donate to Avlis and we can use it to hire a paid developer.

Continue your questions and conversation about NWN EE in the Discussion Forum

Thank you for your support and understanding!

tizmo - CCC Lead for the Avlis Team

[Xaila]

I can't help you with any of those skillsets unfortunately. However, it does seem like a lot of those sorts of people hang around the NWN Vault Discord server. It may be of interest to check it out and send out feelers? There are 1-2 other NWN related discord hubs but NWNVault seems to have a lot of techy folks. There may have been an NWNX one too. Gorgon was in a lot of those but as you said, he's gone at this point. Vault discord link is here - https://neverwintervault.org/chat

[Themicles]

I would like to make it known that the other CoPaP worlds are intending to update to NWN: EE as well. In fact, we were already working as a small team with an appointed member from Avlis for this task.

It seems that the above post was written without knowledge of the findings. So here they are:

Updating to NWN: EE right this second is actually not possible without trashing or rewriting a bunch of systems. The "NWNX EE" that exists is not an update. It is a freshly written program without the majority of the plugins we, including Avlis, use.

That said, virusman, the last major maintainer and someone who works with or for Beamdog is intending to get old NWNX plugins either updated to, adapted to, or rewritten for this new NWNX: EE. It will be a few months though. Please see this thread on the NWNX forums for more information: http://www.nwnx.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2530

[Themicles]

It seems I managed to miss Tizmo's post, and he already explained much of what I had. Apologies. I will leave my post stand though just in case it fills any gaps.

[tizmo]

Thanks Themicles, it does add helpful info!

[Merago Jert]

I would like to make it known that the other CoPaP worlds are intending to update to NWN: EE as well. In fact, we were already working as a small team with an appointed member from Avlis for this task.

It seems that the above post was written without knowledge of the findings. So here they are:

Updating to NWN: EE right this second is actually not possible without trashing or rewriting a bunch of systems. The "NWNX EE" that exists is not an update. It is a freshly written program without the majority of the plugins we, including Avlis, use.

That said, virusman, the last major maintainer and someone who works with or for Beamdog is intending to get old NWNX plugins either updated to, adapted to, or rewritten for this new NWNX: EE. It will be a few months though. Please see this thread on the NWNX forums for more information: http://www.nwnx.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2530

As a recent purchaser of EE, I have to say this is great news Themi, even if it's still a few months off. Thanks for the update. I wish I had the coding skills to help out, but alas, unless there is some urgent requirement for "Hello World" to be displayed on screen multiple times (coded in PASCAL), I am somewhat lacking in that area.

[Gumble Tinkertumble]

Is there any news on the Avlis NWN EE integration?

[tizmo]

Is there any news on the Avlis NWN EE integration?

There has been some progress, but we still have a ways to go.

We now have a pretty good understanding of the work that needs to be done, but we are in need of more people to do the work. Most of the work is nwscripting to make some of our cool systems work in EE.

If anyone has a bunch of time and solid nwscript skills, hit me up for a CCC application.