I’ve been playing NWN2 recently and for the most part it’s a great game. But I am having a hell of a time trying to find a camera view I am comfortable with or be able to configure the way I want it.
Maybe I have been spoilt by WoW’s great mouselook interface. Has anyone else settled on a decent method for setting the camera views in NWN2 ?
When I was playing it, I wanted to use the “from behind” camera that KOTOR used but the camera just spazzed out indoors. I ended up using the over head view zoomed out as far as possible.
For starters, don’t even try to play it like WoW. I know the new “see to the horizon” game engine makes it seem like more of a WoW-like first/third-person game, but the game (and especially the camera) is essentially still a 3/4-view overhead game at heart. It’s best not to fight it. Here are the camera tips I sent our weekly gaming group after ourfirst NWN session:
The camera and UI, in general, blows. It’s really annoying when I try to click on an NPC or something and rather than interacting with it my character runs 20 yards past it. I shouldn’t have to pause the game just to successfully talk to an NPC.
I generally like the game, but there have been so many times when I’ve thought “Why can’t this work like WoW?”
I like the game too, but reading the beta patch bug fix list- I’m waiting for the next patch to continue. the middle mouse camera move is so spazzy it makes me sick. And yeah the click run past person 20 yards just suck- esp when you are playing a mage and are clicking something to cast at.
My guys are hanging out in the outpost by the starting town, waiting on the fixes until then.
Try the beta patch. Improves the camera and overall performance. After using it, I really don’t have any issues with the camera anymore.
People in my group asked the same thing. I agree that the camera could be better (particularly indoors), but I think it’s sort of weird to compare the interface to WoW, which is a first-person (or third-person over-the-shoulder, which is effectively the same thing as far as camera control goes) game. You might as well ask why the cameras in Titan Quest or Civ 4 don’t work like WoW’s.
Obsidian are mostly to blame for the confusion, I think. They went to a lot of effort to design a game engine that lets you zoom all the way in and tilt up to see to the horizon, like a WoW-style game. That was an unfortunate choice, because it doesn’t really add anything useful to the game, and people are so used to playing WoW that they are going to latch on to anything that feels familiar. But NWN still controls, first and foremost, like a Diablo-style 3/4 overhead view game. It’s best to just treat it that way, instead of trying to make it into a poor-man’s WoW interface.
Are they going to fix the party AI anytime soon? My biggest gripe is my healers don’t heal anyone unless I take direct control over them.
I use the 3/4 view. I’m generally good while outdoors, and only adjust to swing the camera around right or left. Sometimes when entering indoors, I need to increase the verticle angle. But other than that I’m mostly good.
It does do wierd things though when exiting buildings. They do need the camera to treat buildings in the foreground as transparent the same way trees in the foreground are ignored by the camera.
To be fair, Bioware added a lot of this stuff first in Hordes of the Underdark which was the first “official” module that used skyboxes IIRC.
They wont even fucking comment on the issue, so I doubt it.
In the meantime this guy’s scripts are 100% better than the default, at least
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/myviewtopic.html?topic=523902&forum=109&sp=0
Must have download for anyone playing the game. Make sure to put them in the right place.
I agree. That’s my biggest remaining gripe with the camera after the beta patch fixed the rotation issues. When I exit a building I usually stare at my PC’s back at maximum zoom level, I can’t rotate the camera to a better view, and I’m barely able to click on a free spot on the ground so that the PC walks away from the doorway and the camera swings back into normal position.
Worst game I ever liked. Absolutely useless pig of an engine. I’m left wondering how much better a game this would be if some other engine was used to convey the story because the engine is so user-hostile.
And that happens so often it was one of the most glaring things that shouted lower production value than Bioware right from the get-go. Surely that’s an easy fix for them?
I dunno, I kind of got used to it fairly quickly. I used the standard free-form camera, zoomed out pretty far, and just used the middle button to move it. Of course I had to pause it to select enemies now and then, but geez it could’ve been worse. At least it didn’t have huge slabs of concrete occluding the view like in Dungeon Siege 2.
Easiest thing to do there is just use WSAD to move your character forward a few feet so the camera goes back to normal.
Good tip, thanks. I forgot about the WASD movement keys.
I played around with the free-form camera a bit. The big problem I ran into with it, was I couldn’t figure out how to get it to recenter on the current character. Is there any easy way to do that, that I just missed?
That link only works for people with a forum account. Here’s the same link that works for everyone:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=523902&forum=109
So happy you linked that thread. I installed this the other night but I put it into the Override folder in the main directory and not the Documents and Settings dir.