New renderer, when?

[Captainchicken]

Hi, when is the new renderer finally done, i'm waiting so long for this to come out.

[Rorque]

Still, the only reason why most people buy this AGAIN, is promised new visuals. I buy it because of it,and then I thought this update would be in a month, two, three maximum. It's been a year and a half since then, and the beamdog is not even able to show new screens. I'm sure it was abandoned.

[Space Dog]

Originally posted by FireGryph:

The great thing about this game isnt the original content or the graphics, but its the freedom for users to create what they want.

Yeah I don't know if I'm in a small minority here, but I can't enjoy the greatness as long as the game looks so awful.

Especially outdoor areas that look barren and inorganic, but also the low poly character models and crayon colors with flat lighting. Having played NWN2 into Dragon Age: Origins and on, there really is no going to back to 1st gen 3D games for me.

[FireGryph]

Originally posted by Space Dog:

Originally posted by FireGryph:

The great thing about this game isnt the original content or the graphics, but its the freedom for users to create what they want.

Yeah I don't know if I'm in a small minority here, but I can't enjoy the greatness as long as the game looks so awful.

Especially outdoor areas that look barren and inorganic, but also the low poly character models and crayon colors with flat lighting. Having played NWN2 into Dragon Age: Origins and on, there really is no going to back to 1st gen 3D games for me.

If this is the case, then alas, perhaps it does mean its time to move on to more modern games. Which is okay.
The new renderer isnt going to magically make the game look better. Some things will look good out of the box with it, but 90% of the content will have to be completely redone, not just the backend system but every model, every texture, asset.
If you take a look at the updated Aribeth and HD weapon models, and the showcase Hall of Justice, in the workshop, you can see some of the 'new' stuff coming in regards to that. Those are better than whats in the game right now, mostly, and the new renderer will help more, but it's not going to suddenly be 2020 AAA-game quality.

[Julius Borisov]

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

https://twitter.com/TrentOster/status/1222938557943185408

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way.

[elvendualwielder]

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

https://twitter.com/TrentOster/status/1222938557943185408

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way.

Ouch, man! That's disappointing to hear, but was seemingly inevitable. Still, thanks for the transparency, you're a model for the higher ups to look up to.
Hope this finds you well, and stay healthy!

[Rifle Leeroy]

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

https://twitter.com/TrentOster/status/1222938557943185408

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way.

2 years of amazing promises about new renderer, postponements, justifications,and now finally the truth.

The truth is that you are INADEQUATE for this type of work, and not because you are not "big" enough. Beamdog can't manage the remaster of one of the greatest game ever created. I had already understood this after the first patches; each of these introduced more problems than it solved.

And now i can already foresee what will happen in the future: beamdog will keep the support for nwn_ee for a couple of years, but this will not avoid leaving a broken game behind you.


EDIT
forgot to say...for two years Beamdog minions flooded the steam forums and the beamdog forum where they asked users to buy the game to finance beamdog so that it could make the new renderer.
One of the many lies.
Unfortunately I fell into this trap and bought the game both here on steam and on gog. Don't do my same mistake please. Avoid to finance this kind of peoples.

[Bluddy]

Wow. That's quite a whopper. Since almost all the anticipation has been about the renderer and getting new graphics in the game, I don't really know what's left now. I guess this was always outside of your ability, and releasing the game without apparent improvements doomed it to low sales, which didn't really help.

[Pumpkin]

gg

[D666]

"If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing" - Napolean Bonaparte

If your heart is heavy, maybe you should go see a doctor?

I'm so glad I checked the forum before hitting purchase today. I've been waiting since this came out to see the new renderer in action, because I've become used to the current trend of bait and switch tactics these days. Only ever buy completed games. I guess I'll boot up my old CD version instead.

There are so many used car salesman in the game dev and IT businesses. How it is possible for anyone with ever a cursory knowledge of graphics programming to not be able to write a renderer that simply throws some old low poly models down (with a simple and well defined (posted 2002) .plt material system) with a new physically based rendering approach and some lighting system that doesn't look horrible?

What the did you do all day for that 1.5 years that prevented you from rendering some simple low polygon models, and a few world tiles with simple lighting options with some off the shelf modern techniques?

[elvendualwielder]

Originally posted by DM_PSX:

What the did you do all day for that 1.5 years that prevented you from rendering some simple low polygon models, and a few world tiles with simple lighting options with some off the shelf modern techniques?

More or less, to implement a new renderer would be to essentially make the game from scratch, which a company of BD's size isn't capable of doing. For comparison's sake, Bioware, when they made NWN, had roughly 200 employees (on their payroll according to public tax records) while Beamdog (same source) has roughly 50. And they're attempting active development of most Infinity Engine games people know about.
Hubris comes to mind, or avarice. Whichever you prefer. I'd consider it blind ambition and incompetence as opposed to outright malice, if only that I like to think that of people.

[Azoun]

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

https://twitter.com/TrentOster/status/1222938557943185408

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way.

Wow this is disappointing news!

Well there is the Neverwinter Nights development to go from here? You had already showed off an enhanced Aribeth ect. Will you do more updates like this, even without a "new renderer".

I have tried to have some patience with Beamdog, but man you guys are disappointing.

Reselling old classics with out very minor updates, and calling it Enhanced. Telling us that there new features are coming, but asking us to but early to support development.

What if I were to ask for a refund based on this bad news?

[Bluddy]

> More or less, to implement a new renderer would be to essentially make the game from scratch, which a company of BD's size isn't capable of doing.

I disagree. There are many more components to a game engine, and a game includes assets and content. I'm guessing they just did the math and realized that at the snail's pace they're going at, they're not bound to finish in the next 2 years, and that it's just not economical for them. Also, the graphics part of 3d games generally require serious expertise, and expertise is expensive.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hi, all!

With heavy heart, I have to share that we've made a decision not to continue the work on the NWN Renderer.

For more than 1.5 years, we've been tearing down the renderer, we had a vision of what we wanted to accomplish with it. The technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cameron Tofer.

Unfortunately, the renderer from the ~2000 era turned out to be a too tough nut to crack. We tried everything and even in February Trent wrote it was still being worked on.

https://twitter.com/TrentOster/status/1222938557943185408

With the renderer re-write work stopping, we're not stopping our support for NWN:EE. You might have noticed a few regular updates released in recent months, and more are on the way.

You should opensource it, if you can't do it yourself.

People had no problem updating renderers from the 1990s before. id tech engines, for example.

[Captainchicken]

This sucks, now i'm really mad! X(

[Tesseract]

Wow, really? That's disappointing to say the least.

So wait, what did you ship in the console version? People said that it looks noticeably different to the PC version.