I have a pretty damn good machine, but I have to turn down a lot of settings to get it to run at an acceptable framerate, especially if the area has water. In the interest of analysis here are my system specs. I think it would be helpful if the rest of you would post yours as well.
processor: Intel Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz
video: nVidia GeForce 7600 GS, AGP 8x, 512 MB onboard RAM
memory: 2 GB DDR 400
motherboard: Intel 865 PBZ
sound: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
OS: Win XP Pro SP2
running at 1280 x 1024 (I suppose I could run it at lower resolution, but that’s the native resolution of my flat screen monitor)
It’s not a top of the line computer, but it’s certainly high end and well beyond the recommended requirements. For comparison, Company of Heroes looks freakin’ awesome on my computer, and I can turn most of the options all the way up. I hope they release an optimization patch, because this is really annoying.
Single player is OK so far, but I’ve only just started. It’s too soon to tell if there are any cool plot developments. I have a guess about the significance of the silver shard you find at the beginning:
It’s a piece of a githyanki silver sword. If you’re not familiar with D&D, it’s a very powerful magic sword made by an evil race from another dimension.
What’s the bonus feat in the collector’s edition, anyway?
It should be noted that the game has quite a few bugs. If you’ve waited this long, I highly recommend waiting another two or three weeks for them to do some major patching. The bugs range from frequent crashes and freezes of various kinds, to errors in the execution of the 3.5 rules, to things that just weren’t finished. Lots of people have gotten game-stopping bugs. I’ve lost two or three saves to corrupted files and had to go back and redo stuff.
I finished NWN2 last night, and I enjoyed most of it - gets kind of weak and rushed toward the end, though.
I wish I’d known about setting “CameraFollowAlways” to 1. That would have saved a lot of grief. There are a few other things I would have done differently (no spoilers):
I should have acted my alignment, if that makes any sense. I was shocked that I couldn’t advance as a barbarian because I was being too ‘lawful’. Hmph.
The prestige classes are pretty cool, and I should have planned earlier to choose one.
I used up a lot of feats so that I could be Mr. Incredible with my katana. Not smart.
There you go. I only encountered one terrible bug, but the NWN2 forum explained the problem and how to get around it.
I’ve had NWN2 about a week and I’m finally starting to tinker with the builder but I’ve got to say I’m initially disappointed by the lack of models included with the game. The creature list is painfully thin with the most notable exception being no beholders. There is only a black dragon and a red dragon and the colors are uneditable in the toolset. Stone golems are another annoying omission but at least there you can edit an elemental or humanoid into them depending on what you want. I don’t expect them to include every monster ever published in there but covering the most popular half of the third edition monster manual would have been nice.
For those having trouble running things, my video card was choking desperately on it. I had a GForce 5200 with 256MB onboard and I’d say I was getting under 5 frames per second with all the graphics options turned down and some ugly lag in issuing commands. $100 later and I’ve got a GForce 6800 and I’ve cranked things back up and I’m still getting a good enough for me 30fps. If the commands you enter are lagging or it takes multiple clicks to get things to respond then it is likely your video card as well. Remember that NWN2 runs as an online game so your computer is acting as both a server and a client even when you’re playing on your own. In this case the PC is running the server components fine but not the client which points to problems with the video.
I was surprised too at the set of creatures and tiles. It looks like they just included the ones that they used in the main campaign. I didn’t get NWN1 until HotU, so maybe the first version was the same way. The toolset simplifies a few things, like building rooms and attaching doors, but it doesn’t address other things like stores. I guess the plug-ins are starting to fill this role.
I am enjoying the game, but the frame rate has got me down. In the fort, I get between 7 and 20 fps depending on the resolution. 10 is playable, but as soon as the scene gets complicated (e.g. a battle), it really drops off. I’d love to just upgrade my video card, but I’m using a laptop (HP Pavilion zd8000) so I am stuck. The thing is, I am not at the bottom of the specs, so I didn’t expect to compromise so much.
You might check the forums to see if you can find some fixes for that, CaveMike. Others with top-of-the-line machines have had even worse FPS problems.
For me, I’m setting the game aside. This latest “patch” has caused repeated crashes when I try to play multiplayer with my husband. I’m going back to Oblivion until they actually get this fucker working. (I’m thoroughly pissed, can you tell?)
Huh, my computer is about average and I haven’t had many bugs. A couple of crashes to the desktop, and an occasional weird thing where my character will suddenly warp about 20 feet away, but that’s it.
I don’t think this was a sticking point for anyone, but I need to correct this statement. After a bit of fiddling and working through the documentation I found that the coloring of the monsters is much more controllable than I thought, it’s just counterintuitive. The tinting is controlled by adjusting lighting for the individual character rather than the shading the character. So a red dragon colored white is red (I said it was counterintuitive) but you can tint it green. The downside to this is that you can’t do white and some shades don’t look as nice as others.
There’s still some very large holes in the number of models available, but the existing ones are somewhat flexible…
Thanks for the forum suggestion, DeadlyAccurate. I found a ton of information (actually a bit too much info – I think a wiki would be better than a message board). I’ve tried most of the stuff, but looking at the hierarchy of video cards, I think my problem is that my card is the top card of the “low quality” section. It definitlely sounds like the lag problem is wide-spread and one post indicated that the developers acknowledged the issue. My hope is that after a few patches the performance will be much better.
Also, thanks for the coloring tips Just Some Guy. I was having the same problem, but did realize there were other options.