Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ginoledesma · Apr 23, 2008, 03:42 PM

I couldn't find any recent threads on this game (except for this), so I thought I'd start one. I just got my copy of NWN2 yesterday. I've been eagerly waiting for this game to come out on the Mac, despite it being late and not coming with the campaign builder.

I'm running it on a MBP 2.2GHz/2GB RAM/GeForce 8600M GT 128MB VRAM (MacBookPro 3,1). The game is playable in medium graphics quality (auto-detect works fine). The gameplay controls and interface significantly differs from NWN, so that takes a little getting used to. The camera controls require a little bit of babysitting at first as well.

I've only played it for 2 hours getting past the tutorial and starting on the main quest, and the story and gameplay looks promising. My primary gripes with the game right now:

1. Load screens. that. take. forever. I haven't played a game recently that has had such long load screens. There are points in the game where I think the game's crashed already, but is apparently still in the middle of "unpacking module". It doesn't help that the background music loops during this time.

2. Somewhat unstable/buggy. There are times when the game will freeze when you issue it several commands. This is especially annoying in long dungeon crawling sessions when you have to restart the game, load from a save game, and you face issue #1: long load screens. The latest version is 1.11.1153 -- I don't know when the next release is.

Fortunately, though, unlike other games that (when in full screen mode) prevent you from going back to the Finder and quitting the app (thereby avoiding a reboot), sending Command-Option-Escape (force quit) causes the game to exit right away.

I'm trying hard to enjoy the game -- but the stability and performance issues are just ruining it. I'm hoping Aspyr does something about it. Other reports of running it under BootCamp seem to be much more favorable, but I'm hoping to avoid that as I do want to continue support the mac gaming landscape.

voodoo · Apr 28, 2008, 09:46 PM

Hm this is a bit discouraging as I wanted to support the Mac community by buying NWN2, like I have bought every BioWare and BioWare related game ever published on the Mac since 1998.

I do hope Aspyr can optimize loading times and make the game more stable. I remember the first Baldur's Gate game was really unstable, but at least the load times were fairly fast.

Rumor · May 1, 2008, 03:16 PM

You need to make sure that you have the latest version, with is 1.12 something. Try turning some things off like moving grass, etc., that will help with performance and possibly load times. I play on a MBP 2.4, 2g, 512mb vram (advertised as 256mb, detected as 512), and it runs fine. Granted, I run in Windows via Bootcamp.

Sadly, you will have a hard time playing on any servers since the majority of them require Mask of the Betrayer.

Does the OSX version of NWN2 include the toolset? The port of NWN1 didn't.

I was surprised to see it in the Apple Store the other day since Obsidian used the DirectX API and .NET framework to build the game.

wolfen · May 2, 2008, 01:36 AM

WoW.

zaghahzag · May 9, 2008, 11:22 AM

does anyone know if its possible to disable more of the graphic effects? my FPS doubles if i turn off the GUI for example, which means that it's really badly coded.

The game is pretty good (feels more like an expansion for NWN1) but the performance is really awful. (on a mbp 2.16 128meg video card).

zaghahzag · May 9, 2008, 12:08 PM

some poking around and i found this site

tweakguide for nwn2

there is a lot of info about hte INI files for nwn2. I haven't had a chance to see if they improve the performance, but it lets you turn up various caches, turn off 3d sounds and a number of other things. I'll post back if it helps.

my experience with gaming on macs is that sound (especially with ports) is a huge performance hit - I'm suspecting that turning off the 3-d channels will drastically improve fps.

also i cranked up these two:
SEFCacheTimeout=50000

SEFCacheSize=200

because i have 3 gigs of ram. the worst slowdowns are when a lot of stuff starts to happen and its obviously loading up stuff (right when combat gets hot and heavy).

I really wonder how this game got developed. Considering it came out on the PC two years ago the developers must have not cared at all about performance.

also if you stick this into the ini file, it will disable the startup movies:
Disable Intro Movies=1

zaghahzag · May 12, 2008, 11:33 AM

ok, my little bit of tweaking seems to have improved the game a little bit. the settings that cache more of the effects and sounds in particular seem to help - since i have 3 gigs of ram, i don't need to worry about using up too much cache.

the biggest difference came from lowering the res to 1024x768, which is kind of sad. Actually, the whole state of this game is rather sad - by the time you lower everything enough to get it playable, it looks like nwn1 and has crappier fps.

The devs on this game really should be taken out back and shot for the incredibly shoddy performance this game has, which is really a shame, because the game itself is pretty good.

to devs: Gameplay and playability are more important than eye candy. Learn it, love it, live it.

Rumor · May 12, 2008, 01:49 PM

That is too bad the port doesn't work out so well. Though, it was similar with NWN2 for PC. The release of Mask of the Betrayer fixed quite a few graphical issues. Though, the game is still full of bugs.

dimmer · May 13, 2008, 12:49 AM

NWN v1 was a cross-platform development from the start: Windows, Mac, Linux: OpenGL. NWN v2 was an all-Windows, Direct X app, so Aspyr had to either x-platform it or write a wrapper that Cider couldn't mess up too badly with, and do Intel Mac only. Net: net it sucks.

That all said, the original PC game sucked badly as well. Just a really nasty attempt to take a genre and a 3D engine and force them together.

NWN v1 rockered. NWN 2 sucks.

zaghahzag · May 14, 2008, 10:05 AM

Originally Posted by dimmer

NWN v1 was a cross-platform development from the start: Windows, Mac, Linux: OpenGL. NWN v2 was an all-Windows, Direct X app, so Aspyr had to either x-platform it or write a wrapper that Cider couldn't mess up too badly with, and do Intel Mac only. Net: net it sucks.

That all said, the original PC game sucked badly as well. Just a really nasty attempt to take a genre and a 3D engine and force them together.

NWN v1 rockered. NWN 2 sucks.

well, the game has pretty much the same feel as nwn1. all the tweaks i made especially with the caches, seem to have improved the choppiness to the point tht it's playable.

But yeah, it's not a great game to start with - it certainly would have had little fanfare if it wasn't for d20 and the neverwinter name.

ginoledesma · May 21, 2008, 12:22 AM

Thanks for the tip on the cache adjustment. I'll try them out. So far later in the game it holds out pretty well. There are times, though, that during battles the game animation stalls somewhat while actions are carried out. It can get annoying to find out one of your characters died after a series of actions without knowing when/why.

Johnny_B · May 29, 2008, 07:51 AM

I feels sloppy on my Mac Pro to (see signature). I'm waiting for a patch. Are there other good rpgs for Intel Macs?

Mac User #001 · May 29, 2008, 08:34 AM

Heroes of Might and Magic V? Pretty sure thats an RPG...

Johnny_B · May 29, 2008, 08:45 AM

Heroes of Might and Magic, kan hardly be called a rpg. Played them all I think. And didn't like any of them.

olePigeon · May 29, 2008, 01:50 PM

Just FYI: NWN 2 isn't much better on the PC. The system requirements are ridiculous. Supposedly it's such a resource hog (and why it took so long to come out in the first place) is because it was originally designed as an XBox exclusive release, and was optimized for XBox hardware.

olePigeon · May 29, 2008, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by wolfen

WoW.

... is less exciting than watching grass grow.

Arkham_c · Jun 2, 2008, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

... is less exciting than watching grass grow.

I played WoW for 2+ years, and finally broke the habit last month. I've been looking for a very casual game I can play, and saw NWN2 in Frys the other day. It sounds like I made a good decision in passing on it for now. I do need to find something fun to play though. I enjoyed the first NWN quite a bit.

Johnny_B · Jun 2, 2008, 10:11 AM

Has NWN got better with 10.5.3?

zaghahzag · Jun 7, 2008, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by Johnny_B

Has NWN got better with 10.5.3?

why would it? did osx magically get 5x faster or something? And apple isn't going to spend a lot of time trying to make such a poorly written game go faster.

the simple fact that you can improve performance so much by jacking up the cache sizes manually (on machines with shitloads of memory) tells you a lot about how badly done it is.

zaghahzag · Jun 7, 2008, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Just FYI: NWN 2 isn't much better on the PC. The system requirements are ridiculous. Supposedly it's such a resource hog (and why it took so long to come out in the first place) is because it was originally designed as an XBox exclusive release, and was optimized for XBox hardware.

was it supposed to be xbox 360? the original xbox has pretty weak hardware compared to any modern PC.

ginoledesma · Jun 24, 2008, 03:46 PM

Originally Posted by Johnny_B

Has NWN got better with 10.5.3?

I can't say I've noticed any difference. The 1.12.1295 patch has a couple of bugfixes, but none that boost performance overall.

Rumor · Jun 24, 2008, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by Arkham_c

I played WoW for 2+ years, and finally broke the habit last month. I've been looking for a very casual game I can play, and saw NWN2 in Frys the other day. It sounds like I made a good decision in passing on it for now. I do need to find something fun to play though. I enjoyed the first NWN quite a bit.

The story for NWN2 and MotB is very good.

Rumor · May 30, 2009, 01:58 PM

Does anyone play this for the PC? If so, do you have Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir?

voodoo · Jun 16, 2009, 10:08 PM

Originally Posted by Rumor

Does anyone play this for the PC? If so, do you have Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir?

Yeah I just installed the expansions on the PC side on the iMac. Still haven't finished the original campaign. The plot isn't all that interesting.

Gameplay a bit frustrating as well.

P · Jun 17, 2009, 04:05 AM

MotB is quite annoying. The Spirit Eater mechanism makes the game feel very stressed, and the entire storyline feels out of place with the setting. I haven't played SoZ, but I understand that it will be better.