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Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:19 pm
by Liareth
Dalek Caan wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:06 pm
Liareth wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:55 pm
Dalek Caan wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:26 pm
@Liareth, doesn't a 64-bit structure massively help the servers since they can access more data blocks at once? Maybe I misunderstood the concept ^^
That you think it will help servers is proof that the marketing is working! :)

64-bit support allows the client to use more than 2GB of RAM. The client doesn't even use a third of that right now so the change won't make any difference. There are a few technical details about the switch - 64-bit has more registers available so complex things can be computed more efficiently, but the pointer size doubles from 4 bytes to 8 which can hurt the cache and inflate memory usage. On a tightly optimized mathematical application I might expect to see a 15% performance increase. A 64-bit Neverwinter Nights will probably use more memory and have the same performance.
Got it, thanks :-) I was wondering, could the graphics engine of NWN:EE be rebuilt or replaced, theoretically?

Because... pretty graphics and good fps. <3
[snip: here was information claiming that the renderer had been completely rewritten, but that might not be completely factually correct after all, so I've removed it as not to misinform people!)

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:54 pm
by Emotionaloverload
I have nothing good to say about EE. I crash often, which never used to happen. Some areas are so laggy that I avoid them altogether. And, at least on my end, it doesn't look any prettier or cleaner in terms of graphics. But! That's largely irrelevant to me since if EE is good for making content and doing cool stuff that the staff feels they can do, then awesome.

We seem to have had a lot of updates since the move. I don't know if this has anything to do with EE or if EE was just a morale booster but either way *Thumbs up*

-S

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 2:02 pm
by Aerlinthe
I'm happy with it for the potential it brings, but going by the other Beamdog EE it might take a while to reach a lot of that potential. I can hardly blame them for that, though. With how often their games are on sale I can't believe they're raking in the cash. I imagine the update to 64 bit is mainly for iOS support since I think it no longer allows 32 bit applications. I don't care about that, but it'll be another small revenue stream for them.

Hopefully they'll make enough money for it to make sense to keep working on NWN. I'd really like to see some of the things on their Trello board come through, like full party control, customizable UI, and all the de-hardcoding of things. So, potential.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 2:19 pm
by Joheshua
Never played 1.69 so I can not say if it is better either way.

One thing is for sure that if the EE edition never came out I would never have even played Arileth.

I am 150+ hours in and the biggest problem I have had is maybe 1 or 2 disconnects, game seems to run great and I like playing at 1920 resolution which I do not think was possible with 1.69.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 2:53 pm
by Tryn Dralar
Voted I like it and want to stay with EE. For me I do not notice any more problems than pre EE. I do not own a top of the line laptop, it's a $500 machine than does me just fine .

The way I see it is, it's a free game, free server which I DO donate to from time to time. It's my choice. Admins work their butts off for us so no big deal in dealing with the small issues. And yes, for me freezing up and having to hold down my power button to reboot my computer once or twice a game play is not a big deal. Arelith will be there when I get back.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 2:55 pm
by Ork
I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said. I just want to reiterate the adoration I have for the Devs for their tireless effort in making EE work for Arelith.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:17 pm
by Cuchilla
I think that the few dollars I spend on EE, is one of the best investments I made what concerns amusement: I got quite a lot for a small amount of money. The world isn't perfect, neither is EE. That's the game.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:02 pm
by Dovesong
I absolutely hate EE. Playerside I have seen absolutely no benefit and my game crashes SOOOO much more. Realistically it'd be dumb to go back, but I can promise any money I might spend with BD in the future is going elsewhere.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:20 pm
by kiljaedon
Blaming everything on Beamdog without knowing the full story is a bit foolhardly. I do know some of the issues with updates for the client did not happen because of situation with gog and steam. They have some say on updates and from what I am hearing the gog side of things did not want to push the update with the sale going on for whatever reason but to just blame Beamdog outright is pushing it.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:46 pm
by Regionals
Just one thing, Beamdog is also still tweaking and updating Baldur's Gate games they released six years ago. Updates might not be coming as fast as we like but I don't think there's any reason to accuse them of abandoning the game or worrying about that happening any time soon. Their history indicates they are in it for the long term.

If they do eventually release it on iOS it will probably do pretty well, I imagine that's their goal after Android. Like I said I wonder what that means for new players here (if multiplayer would even be an option) but it would probably keep the game afloat for some time to come. I think the Baldurs/Icewind games sold in pretty big numbers on the mobile platforms.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:38 pm
by Ebonstar
Dovesong wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:02 pm
I absolutely hate EE. Playerside I have seen absolutely no benefit and my game crashes SOOOO much more. Realistically it'd be dumb to go back, but I can promise any money I might spend with BD in the future is going elsewhere.
because much of whats been released and enhanced is under the hood for the devs and mods player content is yet to be released in major fashion

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:11 pm
by Irongron
In light of our efforts to address what have been the major criticisms of EE on this thread (The intel crashes and FPS drops) I am eagerly awaiting reports from our players on how our update has improved things. If it is anything like its looking thus far we've made significant progress.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21248

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:43 pm
by Dovesong
Irongron wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:11 pm
In light of our efforts to address what have been the major criticisms of EE on this thread (The intel crashes and FPS drops) I am eagerly awaiting reports from our players on how our update has improved things. If it is anything like its looking thus far we've made significant progress.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21248
Worth noting I crash all the time and I don't have Intel.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:56 pm
by Irongron
Dovesong wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:43 pm
Irongron wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:11 pm
In light of our efforts to address what have been the major criticisms of EE on this thread (The intel crashes and FPS drops) I am eagerly awaiting reports from our players on how our update has improved things. If it is anything like its looking thus far we've made significant progress.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=21248
Worth noting I crash all the time and I don't have Intel.
I'd be interested to know if today's updates have helped mitigate your problems.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:14 am
by Cybernet21
On my end EE is actually more stable than 1.69,it sucks some people are having problems but seeing as EE is new i believe Beamdog will fix them.

I also think that even though EE might not bring many benefits for players with potato computers (like mine) it brings a lot of benefits for the Arelith devs since working with NWN is much easier now so i say it's worth it,plus a the whole playerbase(of the server) only bought EE because of Arelith (or at least most of it) so i say keep with it.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:37 am
by Ironsoul
EE runs flawlessly for me, no crashes or lag or anything other then a tiny bit of frame drop in the shadowplane.

1.69 however would take me 2-6 minutes to get running every time I wanted to play and ~would~ crash frequently meaning that it would take me minutes to get back into the game if I was in a group or participating in RP.

I am disappointed that none of the features I was looking forward to are implemented yet they were announced a year ago now almost. (Namely the HAK autodownloader.) And I'm bummed that Disguise is no longer a thing.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 5:11 am
by Cuchilla
Ironsoul wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:37 am
EE runs flawlessly for me, no crashes or lag or anything other then a tiny bit of frame drop in the shadowplane.

1.69 however would take me 2-6 minutes to get running every time I wanted to play and ~would~ crash frequently meaning that it would take me minutes to get back into the game if I was in a group or participating in RP.

I am disappointed that none of the features I was looking forward to are implemented yet they were announced a year ago now almost. (Namely the HAK autodownloader.) And I'm bummed that Disguise is no longer a thing.
Same here: When it comes to crashes, EE seems WAY better than 1.69. Yes, there are crashes and lag, lag spikes etc sometimes, but nothing compared to before. And when it comes to downtime after a crash, I haven't noticed anything like the hours the server could be offline before EE.

I agree, I miss a few things like disguise, and a few other minor things. But nothing that ruins my fun.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:24 am
by MissEvelyn
I have to echo Cuchilla's post here. I'm actually able to play and enjoy the game now without crashes and massive stuttering. And I can alt-tab too!

Plus: Windowed mode. That's enough of a win-win for me.
My biggest loss (even bigger than -disguise, to me) was not being able to do line-breaks in the chat bar. But that has since been fixed with a revamp of the letter system and I'm loving the new and improved even more than the old one. You don't actually see that mentioned a lot on the forums - I feel the improvements have largely gone unnoticed. But there are those of us who truly do appreciate this quality of life enhancement =)

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:43 pm
by Durvayas
Personally, I think that EE's implementation has been nothing short of an abysmal train-wreck. The game was indeed 'enhanced' in only such a way that calling something 'enhanced' is now memespeak for busted as hell.
Is there potential that the game might eventually be worked on to actually be enhanced later for us, the average player, who have suffered no end to issues that have made EE for all intents and purposes a direct downgrade from 1.69 for our experience on the game? Sure, it should be improved eventually. Do I see it happening in what can be considered a reasonable timeframe? No, a great many of these issues should have been resolved well before launch.

Moreover... do I see EE reaching 1.69 levels of polish (I could play 1.69 10 hours a day for a week straight and never run into a crashbug on my end) before Beamdog tosses the project to the side like a sultan tosses aside an old concubine? No.

Should Arelith have gone to EE? Not this early, I don't think. I think we should have waited, but now that we have, I don't think we can go back, so we're stuck staying the course, and should begin building around broken aspects of the game without waiting on bugfixes that we have no guarantee are coming.
Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:23 pm
Certainly they have done some good - they are trying to do the right thing, and have expressed an unmatched level of loyalty to the modding community, trusting a number of community developers - myself included - with access to the game's source code
The takeaway here, in my cynical view, is that if the community has the source code, the community can attempt to unhardcode aspects of the game we've wanted unhardcoded for ages, and attempt bugfixes on our own once Beamdog inevitably abandons the project.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:21 pm
by Dalek Caan
Durvayas wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:43 pm
Liareth wrote:
Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:23 pm
Certainly they have done some good - they are trying to do the right thing, and have expressed an unmatched level of loyalty to the modding community, trusting a number of community developers - myself included - with access to the game's source code
The takeaway here, in my cynical view, is that if the community has the source code, the community can attempt to unhardcode aspects of the game we've wanted unhardcoded for ages, and attempt bugfixes on our own once Beamdog inevitably abandons the project.
How often do you see the source code of games being released? From the top of my head, I can only think of one instance and that is Jedi Knights: Jedi Academy, not too long ago.

Of course it would be nice, but hoping for that is... utopian?

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 12:31 pm
by magistrasa
EE is cool. I've been trying to convince friends to play NWN for a while, but unfortunately, none of them know how to follow more than a 2-step process. So playing with me on Arelith on 1.69 was out of the picture. The ease of activation and the server master list is a huge plus to me, because it makes the game so much more accessible to new players.

Buuuuut, I'm still not suggesting Arelith to any of my friends, for the time being. Not until disguises come back to functionality. I don't think you need to be a shady criminal underdark player to realize the significance of doing things without people knowing for sure that you're the one who did them - that's a big part of my roleplay at least, and for anyone who likes to sneak around or spy or create mysterious alter egos. Not having some form of anonymity really stifles the possibilities for roleplayers that like to instill a sense of intrigue, and I count it as the greatest tragedy of the switch to EE. Having to "remind" people you're in disguise might not break any server rules, but it breaks a core server expectation that's been here since before I started playing - "What you see is what you get." Disguises were great towards that end, really making roleplay more immersive.

Soliloquy for disguises aside, I am totally psyched at all the positivity coming from the devs that disguises are coming back Soon™. With that being my primary complaint (aside from the Intel crashes, which have already been fixed!) I'm very happy with EE so far, and once disguises are back online, my life outside of Arelith will be OVER

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 3:03 pm
by Undulat
Is there any hope that those of us with migrated accounts will ever experience not being sent to the character vault when changing server?

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 4:50 pm
by Dalek Caan
Undulat wrote:
Fri Oct 12, 2018 3:03 pm
Is there any hope that those of us with migrated accounts will ever experience not being sent to the character vault when changing server?
That's my biggest pet-peeve ^^

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 6:33 pm
by Undulat
Irongron wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:03 am
Merge Arelith into a single server (perhaps 2)
This would be great if it doesn't create too much lag.

Concerning performance; I rarely crashed on 1.69 and I rarely crash now but I have a lot of FPS problems that didn't exist pre-EE. Generally, it gets increasingly worse the longer I play, or the more areas I load.

Re: EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:06 pm
by dysmetria
Undulat wrote:
Fri Oct 12, 2018 3:03 pm
Is there any hope that those of us with migrated accounts will ever experience not being sent to the character vault when changing server?
I don't think I have a migrated account, I didn't start playing until EE. And while I occasionally I do experience not being sent to the character vault when changing servers, more often than not I get sent to the vault as well. So I am not sure if this is a migration only issue.