visual improvements for nwn?

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frightnight
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visual improvements for nwn?

Post by frightnight » Sat May 21, 2016 8:02 am

after a long hiatus ive returned to playing nwn and was wondering if there were any haks/overrides whatnot that makes any SIGNIFICANT different to making nwn more visually appealing?

I have an asus rog with 960m NVidia GeForce card so....aside from that..

anything I can do?
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Rattus_norvegicus99
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by Rattus_norvegicus99 » Tue Oct 18, 2016 1:54 pm

I'm following this - I'd like to add some over rides myself as my PC is different from the one I used ages past - hence, no over rides.
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by triaddraykin » Tue Oct 18, 2016 9:27 pm

There is, I'm dropping this here to make sure I don't forget to let you know once I've gotten off of work.
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by Durvayas » Wed Oct 19, 2016 12:42 am

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gntoh9zinp5jn ... e.zip?dl=0

Here is my folder of overrides. They include prettier, better weapons, actual hands(instead of the fists of doom) and, unless I took it out and forgot that I did, ceilings that you can see if you pan the camera low enough and are indoors or underground.
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by Fidelkoven » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:05 am

That may be common sense now, but I mention it regardless:

I like the NWNCQ Mod (https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... cq-project) since it gives more detail to the world. I turned off the vanilla nwn grass though.

And NWNShader (https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... h/nwshader) of course for the DOF and that there is no fog.

But while NWNCQ is just an override and simple to install, NWNShader is a bit more time consuming an can have issues.

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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by DM Symphony » Sun Aug 20, 2017 3:47 am

The newest version of NWShader (Chronepsis) should not work, since I've discovered issues with the configuration GUI's ability to write XML to the preferences file. You can make it work somewhat manually if you go through the source code and hand type in the specific values you want, I'd advise against it unless you were some sort of super NWShader fanatic, which I don't think exists exactly.

Bahamut has a lot more functionality, but, again, had some serious issues and exists as a framework for content creators to make their own effects. NWShader is not itself a "Visual Improvement", it is a "Visual Improvement Engine: [Work in Progress] (With some proof of concept examples included to give you an idea of how to make your own for your server or module)"

I've been talking to it's designer recently, and if you're not someone who used to use it (You said long hiatus, but NWShader is 2010 news), I wouldn't recommend using it. No I won't help you set it up if you're reading this.

NWNCQ is a lot of stuff, some of it is some really cool stuff. Though it's super famous, I don't enjoy most of it.

Henesua's compilation of tileset and texture overrides, found here, https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... al-content is a pretty well rounded set of reasonably dependable overrides, installed as patch-haks, which is a much better way to go than the sloppiness that occurs in the override folder. However, along with any override or reskin package, a lot of it is also not quite "graphics improvement" and more "graphics new shampoo flavor I've never tried before"

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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by cornelius_4 » Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:40 pm

While not in the form of shaders, colorized feats, spells and scrolls makes it's much easier to differentiate between abilities.

The link below also includes a download for a transparent gui, which I do use, but I've had issues with the typing area flickering at times when using intel graphics. It works fine with amd or nvidia graphics.

Some of them come with both a hak and override version, I just picked the override versions and put the files in the override folder inside the neverwinter nights folder. Highly recommend the colored icons.

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... -colorized

Example of what the quickbar with transparancy and colored spells can look like:
Image

Spellbook with transparancy and colored icons:
Image
Last edited by cornelius_4 on Sun Mar 04, 2018 7:51 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by cornelius_4 » Sun Mar 04, 2018 7:25 pm

Graphics drivers also tend to allow forcing anisotropic filtering, which controls how far away textures are sharply rendered. In the images below, the first one is without anisotropic filtering and the bottom one has it on. You'll note that in the upper image, the ground between the character and the chest is rather blurry whereas in bottom image it is much sharper.

Anisotropic off (standard nwn)
Image

Anisotropic x8
Image

This can be changed using game profiles for both nvidia and ati, but unfortunately the default ones don't really work (they use nwn.exe, but that is just a launcher, the game is really run using nwmain.exe), so we need to make a new profile.

I have an amd card, so I'll use that as an example, but it should be similar for nvidia. To memory, you can enable anisotropic filtering on intel cards as well.

1: Right click the desktop and open the amd control panel or find it in programs
2: Select gaming and you should see a list of all the games amd has profiles for. There might be one for nwn already, but unfortunately the default one won't work.
3: Add a new profile (browse rather than scan here.)
4: Navigate to your nwn folder and select nwmain.exe (not nwn.exe!)
5: Click on your new profile and switch anisotropic filtering to "override application settings"
6: Change the anisotropic filtering amount to 8x (x16 is too much for me, less is not enough I find)
7: Play the game :)

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Maladus
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by Maladus » Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:00 am

Fidelkoven wrote:That may be common sense now, but I mention it regardless:

I like the NWNCQ Mod (https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... cq-project) since it gives more detail to the world. I turned off the vanilla nwn grass though.

And NWNShader (https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... h/nwshader) of course for the DOF and that there is no fog.

But while NWNCQ is just an override and simple to install, NWNShader is a bit more time consuming an can have issues.
I've used NWNCQ before, but I didn't like the GIANT lens flares from the lights.

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telmarael
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Re: visual improvements for nwn?

Post by telmarael » Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:54 am

Could you please make this thread sticky? It holds quite a good collection of links, very handy. Took me an hour to find last time here, in the forums
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