Neverwinter Nights 2!!!

[Banshee16]

How do you measure FPS in the game? It seems to run fine for me, though my NVidia drivers are a few months old....maybe I should upgrade to the new ones..

In any case, is there any way to tell what speed I'm getting?

Banshee

 

[trancejeremy]

I believe it's like the original. Open the console with ~

then enter

showfps


Edit: Anyway, I don't mean that all nvidia users seem to run it poorly, but that does seem a common thread among those that do. Those ATI users that have trouble seem to have really old cards. (And I know the game is sponsored by Nvidia, but that's just an ad)

As an example, here's a thread by a guy who had a 7800 GT (not a wussy or old card by any means). He was getting 10 FPS.

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=922154&topic=31545936

He was able to fix it with some tweaking, though.

 

[Matchstick]

Played about 15 hours worth of multiplayer over the weekend. I'm going to try and get another quick review up about that this morning. It will be a positive review.

- It seems to me that you should be able to tell in this game whether villains were almost gone, or not even touched. They don't seem to have that any more in NWN2, and it makes it really tough to fightplan. Maybe I could turn that back on in options or something.

One of the things I'm slowly learning is the targetting system. There's a keyboard key for "target enemy" and one for "target nearest enemy" and I really think those are the best ways to fight. I have a heck of a time clicking on someone while I'm moving, and it's even worse when they are moving as well. Using those keys just gets me a target I can beat on. Also, when you do it that way they show up in the target icon just left of center at the top of the screen, and on that target icon you can see their HP.

Is anyone else really shocked at how ugly the character avatars are in the game? I mean none of the elves have a sense of lithe form or supernal beauty about them.. they universally look bad - male and female - its actually really disappointing to me.

Honestly, I think the elven Druid is extremely attractive. I think she moves well, but her face is just exquisite. You might be talking about PC's though, and I can't comment on that.

Quick Question: I've heard that some of the prestige classes require that you complete specific quests to gain access to them. Do you know if the Eldritch Knight requires this? Last night, I got my Sun Elf to level 2, so she's now F1/W1. Hopefully I can get her into Eldritch Knight pretty quickly.

I'm pretty sure the Eldritch Knight doesn't have a quest prereq. Not positive, but pretty darn sure.

I believe it's like the original. Open the console with ~

then enter

showfps

There's another step. Open the console with the tilde key and then type

DebugMode 1

Capitals count here I believe. You should see something in the chat window indicating you're in debug mode. Now you can type

showfps

and you'll see the FPS (I've gotten mine up to about 30 outdoors by turning off pretty much everything, indoors is another matter though). To turn it off just type "showfps" again, and then you can turn off Debug Mode with "DebugMode 0".

On a different note, another complaint I'm finding with the game is that the AI for casters is pretty awful. Druids aren't so bad, but Wizards tend to blow their wad too early, even on the tiered casting mode. Also, Bards (my main char, aiming for Duelist) are rediculous under the AI. Don't use Inspire Competance in the middle of a battle! Even with Ability Use turned off, they still use it. Most casters are an easy fix, if you don't mind a little micromanagement - turn off casting and manually cast spells when you need them (Quick Cast rocks). Bards (IMO) are a lost cause though, and really need to put on Puppet Mode to be used effectively.

Also, does anyone know how to put the commands like "Follow Me" on the quickbar? It would be great if there was something like the mode bar for them. Also, is there a way to display (I know about Shift-1 etc) more than one quickbar? It's not really a problem for any class (thanks to Quick Cast) I've run into except for... you guessed it, Bards. Between weapons, bard songs, and healing, I don't have room for much else, so a lot of the "toys" get neglected.

I agree about the casters, at least from what I've seen. The sorcerer just UNLOADS on foes (it's actually pretty entertaining). Doesn't matter if it's one guy or seven guys, she's got the volume set to 11 and is going all out. Awesomely hilarious! Of course with it costing all of five seconds to rest and recharge her (not counting re-buffing) we haven't found it to be that big of a deal. Objectively though, it should be much better.

I'm not a big fan of the quickbars. I much preferred the old way even if it did have fewer hotkeys. Right now I'm just running with one quickbar because it feels too clumsy to me to Shift-# through them. Probably because I would push Ctrl and then click on my option. I wish they'd have done the old method, just with more options:

Shift - Quickbar #1
Ctrl - Quickbar #2
Alt - Quickbar #3
Shift, Ctrl - Quickbar #4
Alt, Ctrl - Quickbar #5
etc.

I think I read that you can't put group commands on the quickbar. Not positive though.

 

[LrdApoc]

One thing that I'm not sure i like about the new interface is the quickspell bar - I also don;t like having to use the mouse to click and convert to Spont. Casting. Maybe I missed a shortcut key along the way but the old keyboard shortcut to convert memorized spells to heals was nice - playing a cleric I always found it especially nice.

 

[Banshee16]

I'm really enjoying the game so far.....the single player is far, far better than NWN1. The graphics are far superior as well. For all I know, I'm getting 10 FPS....still seems pretty smooth to me. I followed instructions earlier in the thread, and pumped up the scroll speed for the camera, and it seems to work fine now.

I can't figure out how to highlight clickable items and treasure bags like in NWN1 though. I know the tutorial mentioned it, but I can't remember what it said, and there's no indicator of what key to use in the instruction manual.

Does the game manual mention how many classes you can have? In NWN1, you could have a max of 3 classes, including any prestige classes. I want to move to Eldritch Knight, but the 8 ranks of Diplomacy mean that I'm going to have to wait until lvl 13, as it's a crossclass skill. I'm wondering if I could do something like F1/Rog1/Wizard5, and focus my Rogue skill points on Diplomacy, which would let me into the class for lvl 8. But this would only work if NWN2 allows me to have 3 classes + prestige class. Does anyone know?

I'm not confident I like the menu system as much, but the NPC companion system is like 10x better than what it was in NWN1, so that's pretty good. And it's got a somewhat true magic item crafting system, with the correct feats and such. Cool!

Banshee

 

[LightPhoenix]

There's another step. Open the console with the tilde key and then type

DebugMode 1

Capitals count here I believe. You should see something in the chat window indicating you're in debug mode. Now you can type

showfps

Actually, you don't need to do that for showfps.

I think I read that you can't put group commands on the quickbar. Not positive though.

Gragh.

Does the game manual mention how many classes you can have?

Surprisingly, no. However, I believe you can have four different classes in NWN2. I'm not positive on this though.

 

[Matchstick]

You know, I didn't think so either, but then when I tried it without DebugMode I couldn't get it to work. Now I'm wondering if I just didn't mis-type it! I think I only tried it once and then went to DebugMode, so I probably did.

But this would only work if NWN2 allows me to have 3 classes + prestige class. Does anyone know?

Figures the first day I don't bring the manual to work is the first day I really want it. I'm 99.9% certain that you can have 3 classes and 1 prestige class. I'm also pretty dang sure it's in the manual somewhere, as I don't remember reading it online.

I can't figure out how to highlight clickable items and treasure bags like in NWN1 though. I know the tutorial mentioned it, but I can't remember what it said, and there's no indicator of what key to use in the instruction manual.

It's the letter "Z" on the keyboard. Intuitive, no? It used to be Tab, but now Tab targets. This might be in the manual on the very last pair of pages where the hotkeys are listed. Not sure though.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

You can have up to four classes.

So far, I'm enjoying it, as the single player game is much improved over NWN1's OC. The graphics are much better -- no more boring cubes! -- and the systems runs fine if a tad slowly on my relatively low-end machine (Radeon X600, 1 Gig RAM). I don't particularly fine the avatars to be ugly, in spite of all of the complaints.

I do think that NWN1's user interface was generally better, though the WNWN2 inventory screen is much improved -- I hated Tetris inventory -- and the quick spell option that shows all of your spells at once is better. I dislike the right click-and-hold requirements, and it is damnably hard to target enemies at the beginning. AI is OK, though after the druid dropped an Ice Storm on a target next to her I'm thinking about jst putting all NPCs in Puppet Mode.

 

[Banshee16]

Hmm...just measured it. I'm apparently getting 14.95 FPS with an Athlon 3500, 1 gig RAM, and NVidia 7600GT. That's with all the details on max. Apparently 14.95 isn't great, but I didn't really notice until I went into the console and played around a bit.

It's perfectly playable at that speed.

Banshee

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

Hmm...just measured it. I'm apparently getting 14.95 FPS with an Athlon 3500, 1 gig RAM, and NVidia 7600GT. That's with all the details on max. Apparently 14.95 isn't great, but I didn't really notice until I went into the console and played around a bit.

It's perfectly playable at that speed.

Banshee

Seems a lot of people will turn off the various shadow options but keep evrything else on high for decent frame rates.