23 year-old D&D RPG Neverwinter Nights just got a new update thanks to the ‘unpaid software engineers’ of its unkillable community

I am an absolute freak for BioWare’s 2002 D&D RPG Neverwinter Nights, and somehow this unkillable game just keeps chugging along: Beamdog just put out a new, official update for its 2018 enhanced edition re-release that was assembled by members of Neverwinter Nights’ still-active mod scene⁠—if that sounds familiar to you, this isn’t the first community update that’s been officially christened by Beamdog.

“This release was developed for personal enjoyment and out of goodwill for our fellow players and creators by unpaid software engineers from the NWN community,” the update reads, with the “unpaid software engineers” in question going by the handles clippy, Daz, Jasperre, niv, shadguy, Soren, tinygiant, and virusman. The topline features of the new patch include:

• Built-in support for multisample anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
• A built-in analysis tool for players and multiplayer server admins.
• “Major” networking code and performance improvements.
• New scripting functions and improvements.
• QoL adjustments to NWN’s Aurora toolset level editor.

Most of these seem targeted at those still running multiplayer servers or building custom campaigns for Neverwinter Nights, though a few of them will be felt player-side. The new graphics options are nice, and I’m curious about the update’s “major” performance improvements. That may seem like an absurd change for an RPG from 2002, but NWN was built for single-core CPUs, meaning it fails to take full advantage of modern multi-core processors, and I’ve had it really chug even on an Alder Lake i5 when certain mods get involved.

As for why this matters, there’s still an audience for NWN’s persistent worlds⁠—essentially miniature, player-run MMOs built with the Aurora toolset like Arelith. Meanwhile, I’m more of a singleplayer guy: I’ve got a big soft spot for NWN’s official campaigns, and there’s also a huge back catalogue of player-made adventures for it. Some are self-contained “modules” like Darkness Over Daggerford or Crimson Tides of Tethyr, while others are sprawling, multipart RPG epics like The Aielund Saga or Swordflight.