224 replies to this topic

[jgwdoc]

digt, on February 4th 2008, 01:10 AM, said:

Just checked Aspyr's site on Sunday and it's now listed as "In Stores". What a nice surprise!

Well then, where's my IMG pre-order?  I wants it.

[GlendaAdams]

Not sure how it popped over to "in stores" on our site, but it's not quite there yet.  We have submitted the final build to Atari for approval, so it shouldn't be much longer!

Glenda

[jgwdoc]

GlendaAdams, on February 4th 2008, 11:02 AM, said:

Not sure how it popped over to "in stores" on our site, but it's not quite there yet.  We have submitted the final build to Atari for approval, so it shouldn't be much longer!

Glenda

Well, thank you Ms. Adams. Nice to get such an authoritative reply so quickly.

[DavidM]

Macworld is reporting February 26

[Tacohead]

DavidM, on February 19th 2008, 11:45 AM, said:

Macworld is reporting February 26

Nvidia GeForce 7600 or better?  Are you kidding me? What about the 7300 GT? Not a great card I know but The Aspry Game Agent said that would be fine. Bummer.

-PN

[Kaoro]

Hmmm so my early-2006 Core Duo iMac w/ the x1600 256mb upgrade fits the minimum specs... I don't understand though - this computer ran WoW excellently with almost every setting to max, and NWN 2, from what I've seen so far, looks like it's using a pretty outdated graphics engine, yet its requirements are so steep.

I just hope minimum requirements don't mean "Game will start, but good luck playing a slideshow"...

[Tesseract]

Tacohead, on February 20th 2008, 07:50 AM, said:

What about the 7300 GT? Not a great card I know but The Aspry Game Agent said that would be fine.

Game Agent was just guessing, since the system requirements aren't finalised until very shortly before a game ships.

Kaoro, on February 20th 2008, 09:46 AM, said:

I don't understand though - this computer ran WoW excellently with almost every setting to max, and NWN 2, from what I've seen so far, looks like it's using a pretty outdated graphics engine, yet its requirements are so steep.

The Windows version of NWN 2 seems to have just been poorly optimised. There's only so much Aspyr can do about that while still turning a profit and shipping the game before everyone has forgotten about it.

[teflon]

yeah, NWN2 performance has sucked all the way up to the recent expansion pack where the devs apparently fixed a lot of problems with the engine (which could, I believe, manage to make a slideshow of walking down a busy street for no reason)...

as for dropping the 7300, I doubt that that is a particularly large percentage of mac gamers, or in fact mac users over all. Its more important that they support all the current hardware and make ATI specific optimisations for the X1600 and 2400 HD than accommodate to a very much minority configuration in their potential market. If youre serious about gaming and have a Mac Pro, then chances are you wouldve got the X1900 or be looking to get a 8800GT.

but again, if the original game had been well optimised, this wouldnt really have been an issue.

[GlendaAdams]

We really didn't want to drop the 7300, and that was part of the reason we delayed for several months.  But unfortunately the 7300 drivers have some serious issues with NWN2 on the Mac, and until they are updated we just couldn't support the game on that card (stability and performance were well below our standards).  

Glenda

[BenRoethig]

I feel sorry for those with 24" iMacs and firs generation Mac Pros.  Apple's graphics drivers seem to have gone from mediocre, but passable to complete crap over the last two years.

[Sargiel]

Luckily for me my "24 has the 7600GT 256MB

It is true that the PC version had performance issues - the game was/is a lot more taxing on systems than you'd expect. The expansion did make a big difference though. I ran the PC version of my iMac without any real issues except being shocked at having to turn down shadows to get decent performance at a good resolution.

Fingers crossed we get MotB ported ASAP

[txa1265]

Sargiel, on February 20th 2008, 04:15 PM, said:

Fingers crossed we get MotB ported ASAP

I'm hoping a 'manual install' will work like it did with SoU and HotU on NWN until the ports happen ...

[msykes]

txa1265, on February 25th 2008, 08:51 PM, said:

I'm hoping a 'manual install' will work like it did with SoU and HotU on NWN until the ports happen ...

Indeed, here's hoping.  I just pre-ordered NWN2 from Amazon, and I've already got MotB, so I'm anxious to find out.  Almost as anxious as I am to wipe Boot Camp from my machine, since NWN2 is the only thing I use it for.  MotB appears to be mostly just data files, but who knows...

msykes

[choiceweb0pen0]

I pre-ordered NWN2 from Amazon and just got an e-mail that they just shipped it today. Graphics look great on Apple's page for the game. Can't wait to take it for a spin!  

[Cain]

So, have the bugs that were in the PC version of the game when it was first released been cleared up in the Mac port? Also, from what I've seen of the game it seems very similar to the KOTOR series in terms of gameplay. Am I far off in that assumption? I played the original NWN (never finished it) and prefer the group based gameplay found in the KOTOR series. Can I look forward to more of it in NWN2?

[msykes]

Cain, on March 1st 2008, 11:17 AM, said:

So, have the bugs that were in the PC version of the game when it was first released been cleared up in the Mac port? Also, from what I've seen of the game it seems very similar to the KOTOR series in terms of gameplay. Am I far off in that assumption? I played the original NWN (never finished it) and prefer the group based gameplay found in the KOTOR series. Can I look forward to more of it in NWN2?

I've been playing the PC version since it was released, and it's now up to v1.11 with v1.12 and more on the way.  Lots of bugs have been fixed, and while I wouldn't say the game is now flawless, things are much improved and people are generally having a much better experience than with the 1.0 release.  I believe that those improvements should be making it into the Mac version as well.

That said, the game is still a performance hog, and we can expect that with the Mac version - I think Aspyr has said as much.

Amazon finally shipped my copy, should be here this week!

msykes

[Thad]

Got my copy from Amazon on Saturday.

Performance is, I'm afraid, abysmal. I wasn't expecting much, being aware of the issues that plagued the PC version, but even so, I figured that there would be some way to make the game basically playable on a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 256 MB ATI X1600 (which meets, BTW, the "recommended" system requirements).

No such luck. Even at 1024x768 with all the visual settings at their lowest, I can't get much more than 13-14 fps outdoors no matter what I do, and the frame rate frequently drops below 10 fps. It is unplayably bad.

[jgwdoc]

Macgamestore just shipped. I'm a bit shocked by the framerates  Thad posted on his rig. Will post when I see what it does on my MacPro. It'll be a change to game outside my Windows partition.

[Tetsuya]

the game runs like a pig on Windows, too, for no particularly good reason.  i'd have to say its just poor coding.  The game isnt nearly as graphically good as even half of the other games in its generation, and it ran 3x as poorly as all of them.

Too much per-pixel lighting and crap.  Shiny textures = epic fail.

i dont want to see a shiny gravel road with shiny green grass next to shiny brown dirt and shiny grey rocks.  But that's what you get (and what sucks up so much power)

it reminded me of the way Oblivion looked (shiny rubber everything) and it made me want to gag.

i'm not at all suprised that it runs like crap, and i cant say as i really blame Aspyr.  They got handed a piece of garbage, to expect them to make it into something other than a slightly better and not as badly smelling piece of garbage was unrealistic.

It saddens me that NWN 1 is still a far superior game.

[Cain]

Wow, I'm starting to wonder if I should just purchase the PC version? Can anyone from Aspyr tell us which version the Mac port is patched up to? If anyone has both versions please post how well the Mac version plays in comparison to the PC version. Also, with the Mac version is it possible to play online with people playing in Windows?