Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Message Board  

Well i've purchased this one to make my NWN collection complete, even though i hate Atari for delaying everything unnecessarily.
For an example they have also delayed the Mysteries of Westgate adventure pack from Ossian Studios for about 2 years for no particular reason. They were also part of the reason why Ossian couldn't officially sell Darkness Over Daggerford for the first NWN as a premium module.

But enough of that. Now in the SoZ campaign you start on the ship where you can set up your party of exported characters from the vault folder. After you enter the door to the lower decks, a cutscene appears and then you arrive at the beach... The ship is wrecked etc.

Does anyone suffer from unexplainable lag during this cut scene and at the beach if you turn the camera during the conversations? I just can't figure out why the hell it's happening as everything else in the game runs smooth in the highest detail level. My PC is more than capable of running the game at maximum settings.

The lagging makes the speech sound weird. Like if you have ever tried talking into a fan, your voice gets all messed up.

NWN2 has framerate issues in the OC and MOTB, so I have no doubt that SOZ is riddled with it as well. Obsidian have shown themselves to be hopeless when it comes to the technical side of their games. KOTOR2, NWN2, MOTB - all have been riddled with technical faults that were never fixed (despite a number of patches in NWN2's case). You'll just have to live with it I'm afraid. Doesn't matter what sort of PC you have, the game just runs like crap.

Yes i am aware of the many flaws in Obsidian games, but i was just curious since i never encountered such lag before in NWN2. I do remember loads of bugs in KotOR 2 though.

Anyway thanks for replying

NWN2 had horrible framerate issues, even on top-end machines. It's a flaw in the engine that they've never fixed and will affect all subsequent expansions. I suspect it is partly related to the use of OGL, as well as hold-overs from NWN1 and Obsidian's general ineptitude.

Im using a Nvidia 280 GTX OCX and this game lags hard for me at times.. especially on the world map its almost like a rubberbanding server lag effect (but since im offline it must be all graphic lag)

The fact that this game my card get very heated up to me is an indicator this game engine has issues.

I use rivatuner to crank my fan speed up to 100% on my video card if it gets over 80 degrees C ....and 80% speed at 70 C... there is only 2 games in universe that push my latest card up that high and one is Eve Online.. the other is this game NWN2.... not even farcry 2 and crysis warhead (with maximum settings and 1920x1200 res) get my card that hot. In crysis/farcry2 my card is around 60-65C tops. With a 220mm side case fan over the card and 6 120mm case fans I rarely get issues on any games.

Since i picked up this 280 card (its been so cool in most games inside my case) that it has become a good indicator to me that something isn't quite right with a game engine if it makes it hotter then 80 degrees C.

I'm having a small, almost unnoticeable amount of lag on the northern world map (Neverwinter, Crossroad Keep etc). The first world map is just fine. So i'm guessing that DarthParametric is right about the frame rate issues. It seems most likely. I do as well believe that it's one of the bugs that Obsidian will never fix. I'll still play it over a few times since it's not insane lag except at the first cut scene, and the beach/wreckage.

Honestly, I think we can count our blessings if framerate is our main issue. It least it's not always there. Even if there are a few key places where there has been some inefficiency (I say this because the issue probably has something to do with too many effects or unseen polys) at least the game doesn't crash ever-so-often. In fact, I'm rather proud of the fact that my ****ty laptop can handle this game with no crashes whatsoever.

I do understand what you're saying, though. I, too, get a framerate issue there on an Nvidia 9800 GX2. Perhaps, if someone can confirm the issue with an ATI card, we can break this down. The new Radeon architecture is pretty superb, so perhaps those cards are better suited to this game.

Edit: Oh, and Ice, the reason Mysteries of Westgate is delayed is because the copy protection used does not meet Obsidian's standards. It appears as if no middle ground can be found as of yet. As with all Obsidian games, perhaps it's best not to trust the official release date. =]

[Edited by xxApolloxx, 11/30/2008 1:01:42 AM]

The game runs like crap on my Radeon HD 4850. As I said, NWN2 has had framerate issues on even the best machines since release. It's a well-known and widely acknowledged problem.

Obsidian have nothing to do with Mysteries of Westgate being delayed. It's the publisher, Atari, that is to blame. They are the ones enforcing copy protection. I don't understand why they bother wasting the money to be honest. The only people that get screwed over by DRM are legit users.

[Edited by DarthParametric, 11/30/2008 1:30:14 AM]