I recently became aware of an extraordinary new hak for Neverwinter Nights: NWNCQ by Chico400. It revamps virtually the entirety of Bioware’s default tileset assets, giving them a whole new look with stunningly higher quality.
Most of my first module, Sanctum of the Archmage 1, The Sight, was built using the standard Bioware tilesets. It took me all of a thirty seconds to open that module and add NWNCQ to the bottom of the hak list. After another few minutes to do a rebuild, the look of the module had been dramatically transformed. I’ve been playing it this afternoon, and it gives the module a whole new visual experience. Aside from needing a few relatively minor tweaks to get the look just right, it was very easy to do.
NWNCQ increases the quality of the default tilesets by replacing them with higher definition (higher-poly-count) models and better textures. The replacements are well thought out with often original designs that are built to still be compatible with areas made using the original versions. Among other very welcome things, it finally adds ceilings to many of the Bioware tilesets that needed them (City Interior, Ruins, Caverns, etc.). It makes Blackwing Lodge actually look more like a lodge now, to say nothing of the Ancient Ruins. 😉
Because of all this I’m thinking of taking a short break from working on Sanctum 3 to release another update to my first two modules, mainly to enable using NWNCQ. The update would mostly affect Sanctum 1, although while I’m at it I’d also make a few additional updates to go along with it — such as adding skyboxes to Sanctum 1 and some additional high-quality head models to give players a better selection.
Here are some screenshots to show what I mean:
City Interior (Bioware Default)
City Interior (NWNCQ)
Blackwing Lodge (NWNCQ)
A Picnic by the Lake (NWNCQ + Skybox)
Wow, today I’ve just been thinking about replaying your mods again, and wham! So this is great news to me! And what I can see from the screenshots has a lot of promise in them too!
Andarian, you’ve totally made my day now! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
(By the way, how is the Sanctum 3 going now? Please update soon!)
Thank you for all your work – it looks fantastic
Aderyn, Halfelf : thanks for the feedback! I finished testing Sanctum 1 and it played through with no significant hitches. The only thing that really needs to be addressed is that Chico’s rework of the “Ruins” tileset actually adds plants growing in it (which is more realistic), and particularly in corner areas. That caused a certain individual that I’d placed in one of those corners to move a little because the spot I’d put him in had a big plant there now and wasn’t walkable anymore. That’s easily fixed, and I was really impressed that that seemed to be the worst of the problems I ran into.
NWNCQ isn’t 100% perfect. I did spot a couple of minor artifacts, but they’re subtle and the kind of thing that you’d have to be an obsessive perfectionist like me to even notice. And they’re nothing compared to the fantastic facelift that they give to the entire module.
Aderyn: since you’re thinking of replaying, would you be interested in giving it a run-through for me once I’ve finished fixing it up? There’s very little left to do, and the only reason I haven’t finished it yet is because of a bunch of work I’m doing on Sanctum 3. More on that in post coming up shortly… 😉
Hey all — I’ve been busy for a few weeks but I do plan to get to this shortly. 🙂