BioWare’s game may have been released in June 2002, but that doesn’t bother the fans who haven’t left the RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) IP behind!

Beamdog has recently released a new official update for Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition 2018. This update was not created by Beamdog, but by a fan community that the team has rallied behind. This is not the first time that a fan-created update has been picked up. According to the announcement, this update is a personal fun and goodwill update created by players, fans, and software engineers who are not paid for their work. These software engineers go by the names of clippy, Daz, Jasperre, niv, shadguy, Soren, tinygiant, and virusman.

Highlights of the update include built-in support for multisample anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, a built-in analysis tool for players and multiplayer server admins, significant networking code and performance improvements, new scripting features and improvements, and quality of life enhancements to the Neverwinter Nights Aurora toolbar map editor.

Most of these seem to be aimed at those still running multiplayer servers or building custom campaigns for Neverwinter Nights, although some will be experienced players as well. The new graphical options are nice, and we’re curious to see how much of a significant performance improvement this is. This may seem like an absurd change for a 2002 RPG, but Neverwinter Nights was built on single-core CPUs (there were no Core 2 Duo’s back then), which means it can’t take full advantage of today’s multi-core CPUs. So a more powerful processor can be better utilized by the game.

Neverwinter Night’s persistent worlds still have an audience, as they are essentially miniature, player-driven MMOs built with Aurora’s toolset (such as Arelith). Some fan adventures are stand-alone modules, such as Darkness Over Daggerford or Crimson Tides of Tethyr, while others are sprawling, multi-part RPG epics (e.g. Aielund Saga, Swordflight).

That’s why it’s such a pleasure to see such a persistent community.

Source: PCGamer