Speeding up NWN, and improving stability

[Adelor]

Hi everyone!

Just posting this to share some tips on optimizing NWN and improving the game speed, things I've tried and that work nicely, things that don't make a difference.

Part 1 : Stability
(If I crashed my car as much as I crashed my computer… well... ow.)

First off, crashes. The only crashes I've seen in the NWN engine in its current version (1.69) are from these things;
Crashes during install without error message! : If there's nothing wrong with your hardware and it seems specific to NWN, then this is most likely because you've got an old set of disks (pre diamond) and you're installing on a 64 bit version of XP. The disks don't contain the .NET 2.0 64 bit drivers, only the 32 bit ones, and XP 64 bit didn't come with the .NET 2.0 drivers included like Vista and later did. Get the update you need here and it'll work fine. You could just do yourself a favour and upgrade from XP 64, though.

Shiny Water : Turn this off in your graphics settings, period. It's especially bad on ATI cards. Some nVidia based systems will never show a problem with this, other than GeForce 4 Ti being a good card for it (as NWN was designed on them) I never worked out what triggers it. Maybe give it a spin if you're an nVidia user, but turn off at the first sign of problems.

Sound Hardware Acceleration : A problem I've found on XP only, turn the hardware acceleration slider down one notch from the top and the problems disappear. This is a problem with your sound drivers, and most manufacturers don't have this issue with NWN anymore. If you do, and you're running XP with an odd or onboard soundcard, try this.

Lag : If latency occurs and the NWN engine fails to load something that should be there (a person, a transition) and you try to interact with it (by walking through the transition, or if the person say, attacks you) the game will crash. This seems to be as a result of the in game logs, though I never pinned it down completely. So far as I know there's nothing that helps this.

Sound Middleware : This means the 'driver' you choose to allow the game to interface with the operating system driver. Set this to "Miles 2d Positional Audio" to alleviate a few crashes. More info in part 2 on what to do if this crashes before you get into the game.

Intro Movies : Some machines, usually laptops and netbooks, can have issues displaying the intro movies (it tries to set an invalid resolution). The easiest way to solve this is to just turn them off. Go into NWN.ini and under [Display Options] add a new line;
Disable Intro Movies=1

Multicore Rendering: Ensure that in NWPLAYER.INI you have set Client CPU Affinity=0 or picked another core, just so long as it's away from -1 or -2. This can cause crashes if one thread completes before another unexpectedly, which happens because the engine was never meant to do multiple core processing.

Linux Users : You've done it wrong and can help yourselves just fine - you shouldn't be getting many crashes. :)

I'll add more stuff in here as to tweaking and that kind of thing when I get time. Anyone else please feel free to add what you like underneath so I can work it in!

[This post is to list crashes and potential fixes in NWN]

[Adelor]

Part 2: NWN Runs Slowly on my Computer
(I'm on a netbook, or I found this computer in a dustbin)

Seriously? You're CPU or GPU limited? Getting 10-12 frames per second? Ok then, first thing to do is to try these generic tweaks;

1: Go into NWN.ini, change this line under [Sound Options] to match mine;
3D Provider=Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio
The Miles 2d Audio system is a very low powered (and relatively not very accurate) rendering method for handling 2D/3D sound conversion. It's more than adequate for the sound files in NWN, though, and I doubt even with the most expensive studio monitors you'd be able to tell the difference by ear. Setting this can also help reduce crashes for some people. This should also be available in the game, unless you're changing to get past a crash.
To get to this within the game menus, go to Options, then Sound Options, then Advanced Sound Options. The option to set the miles audio system should be in there. Click it, it'll go yellow, then OK. Done.

2: Almost everything else performance related should be accessible from within the game menus. In video options, make sure that all the settings are down. The only sliders you don't want to drop to the bottom are these;
Texture Quality - set to 16 meg, not 16 meg (compatibility).
The compatibility option forces full software rendering - even on a netbook this'll offload the graphics processor a bit but overload the CPU a lot. You can still get a bit of benefit from the GPU with a modern machine, even on a netbook, so don't use the compatibility mode.
Gamma Slider - Set to taste, no impact on performance.
If I don't mention this, someone will. Slide it down to the bottom if you want things to be dark.

3: Go into Advanced Video Options. Slide everything down here if you need more speed, though the main things are actually the checkboxes. I'll explain those here.
Enable Texture Animations - Usually off
This causes the engine to render the animated surface texture of things like water. It causes crashes for some people, but has quite a heavy impact on performance with a low-power GPU.
Environment Mapping on Creatures - Usually off
This should be off if speed is a concern, it probably has the largest impact on performance of all these options (unless you count crashes from shiny water as being a bigger performance hit).
Visual Effects High Enabled - Depends…
Big impact on performance with spells and battles (tanglefoot bags or the entangle spell being the obvious one), but if you're using this as a machine for RP only and questing on another machine, I'd leave it on. If you're going to quest, then off - no question about it.
Enable Shiny Water - Always off for just about everyone
Unfortunately, nice as it looks, the reflection detail maps for water cause crashes in what must be several different ways. It's worse with ATI based cards than any other, but it can cause problems for anyone, apparently randomly.
Enable VSync - Off.
Unless you're getting a steady framerate, or the framerate is very high (this isn't the guide you should be reading!) leave this off. You'll get a little tearing when a frame isn't completely finished and the next one comes along from time to time, but it'll only really be noticable when rotating the camera around your character.
Use High Resolution Font - Off.
You should have the resolution at some tiny value, probably 800x600 to maximise your framerate - if you turn this on, then the text will be huge. This also messes up the menus and dialog windows for a lot of people.

4: Netbook specific. Go on, admit you're on a netbook for some reason. You've got two options to further boost speed a little if this didn't help. First, switch to Linux for about a 10% boost in speed. If you're reading this, then I'm guessing you don't feel confident with that, which leads to the other option. If you're on a netbook and NWN is below 20 FPS, then odds are good you're running on an intel GMA GPU. Go here to download GMABooster, a program which is designed to speed the processor in the chip up to the speed it's rated at (400Mhz instead of 133/166MHz). Why is it slowed down in the first place? Two reasons - Firstly, Gaming is rare on a netbook or a laptop cheap enough to use one of these, and they thought they could get away with it. Secondly, this will negatively effect battery life (not by much though, even less if you're running NWN on it while it's clocked up). It's all handled in software, though, so after a reboot it'll go back to normal.

Now, if you've got one of the 7" netbooks with a vertical resolution of 480 and you'd like to play NWN, but you can't, PM me and I'll go through the painful process of trying to explain what to do to get around it (NWN requires a minimum vertical resolution of 600 pixels, any less and it messes up dialog boxes and windows, unless you trick it). If no-one's interested in that then I won't waste my time explaining what to do.

5: Final checks in NWN.ini. First, under [Display Options] make sure the following line is the same as this;
BitsPerPixels=16
Also double check the windows desktop colour depth is set to "16-bit (High Colour)".
Get there in XP by right clicking on the desktop, choosing "Properties" from the dropdown list, then choosing the settings tab.
If you're on Windows 7, then it's a little more complicated; choose "Screen Resolution" from the dropdown menu after right-clicking the desktop, then in the bottom right of the new window you'll see an "Advanced Settings" option. Clicking that will bring information on your display adapter up - click the "List All Modes" button in the bottom left, and find the one that matches your resolution (the first two numbers of the one that's highlighted when you enter that page) but has the "High Colour (16 Bit)" at the end instead of the "True Colour (32 Bit)" that it's probably set to.

6: Final checks in NWPLAYER.INI. There's a couple more things you can change still if it's still not fast enough.
Under Game Options make the following changes;
Hide SecondStoryTiles=1
Visible Cloaks=0

[This post is for speed tweaks on low power systems]

Blaming Deadlock for this unless someone else owns up :)
           ↓
srsly guyz i need hlp plz bugs bugs bugs

[Adelor]

Part 3 : NWN Runs Fast on my Computer
(But I'm greedy)

Processor Effect on Performance
Negligible. So long as you have more than approximately a 2GHz P4 generation intel processor, or a 1.6GHz Athlon processor, you'll not notice much here. Obviously, going to faster cores is better than more cores, as the game is single threaded. Set the CPU affinity to your second or third processor so NWN can have it all to itself, but that's about all you can do.
Intel Turbo-Boost works well here. Remember though that a processor 10 times the speed of that 2GHz P4 is only going to be about 2 times as fast in NWN. Don't break the bank for a few more MHz if it's for NWN.

Graphics Card Effect on Performance
Again, provided you spent as much on a graphics card as you would on a date (Maybe I should've used another analogy…) you should be fine. Anything newer than or including the Geforce 6 series or ATI X and HD series is fine for standard NWN.

Sound Card Effect on Performance
Hah. Right. Turn it onto Miles positional audio anyway, even if you do have a good card (unless you like the EAX echo, and don't have any problems).

RAM Effect on Performance
So long as you have more than 2GB, you won't get much improvement here. Speed seems to be a non-issue. I've only seen NWN take up a little over 2GB total on its own, so there is a little benefit to going up to 3GB (limited by XP) or 4GB, even if that's EXCEEDINGLY rare.

Disk Speed on Performance
Ah, you thought like I did that this would be the place to speed up your NWN, huh? Well, no. Areas are pulled from the server to be loaded, and there appears to be a hard-coded minimum time for transitions, anyway. I couldn't measure the difference between a modern HDD (~80MB/s) an expensive SSD (~250MB/s) and just getting irritated and dropping the whole of NWN in a RAMDisk (~8000MB/s). Nothing to gain there but minor (immeasurable) speed increases loading tiny textures and models from disk into RAM.

Dedicated Physics Cards, Processor Expansion Cards
You have too much money. Send the processor expansion card back and donate to Arabel's server fund, instead.

[This post is for speed tweaks on high power systems]

[Adelor]

Part 4 : NWN.ini
(Q: I can't use sliders, but I can edit .ini files, what am I?) Highlight Text Below for answer
A: I am a Linux Gamer

OK, this section will be a breakdown of the NWN.ini file, what I've included in my NWN.ini, what you can include, what each line does and what they can be set to. Seeing as I've now taken two stabs at linux users over the course of these guides, I feel obliged to warn you that a lot of these settings are 'unofficially supported' have 'no effect' or 'unknown effect' when changed in Linux, so change them one at a time if you're using the Linux client.

**NWN.INI

[Alias]
HD0=.
CD0=D:
OVERRIDE=.\override
TEMP=.\temp
MODULES=.\modules
LOGS=.\logs
LOCALVAULT=.\localvault
DMVAULT=.\dmvault
SERVERVAULT=.\servervault
TEMPCLIENT=.\tempclient
SAVES=.\saves
CURRENTGAME=.\currentgame
HAK=.\hak
PATCH=.\patch
NWMFiles=.\nwm
AMBIENT=.\ambient
MOVIES=.\movies
MUSIC=.\music**
SUMMARY: This section tells NWN where to find the resources it needs to run the game. Useful if you intend to do something like copy more files into the main directory after not doing a full install, or if you'd like to put the temp folder on a RAM disk.

[Game Options]
Memory Level=1
(Special setting, choose 1 or 2)
Memory Access=1
(Special setting, choose 1 or 2)
SUMMARY: When I first played with this, I was expecting something completely different to what I thought it would do. Set both of these to 2 instead of 1, and set the Violence options in Game settings to the far right (special). Critical hits will send chunks of monster flying around, and there'll be a lot more blood. Be aware more gore will slow down a slower machine.

[Sound Options]
Music Volume=0.00
(Volume, ranges from 0.00 to 1.00)
Voice Volume=0.25
(Volume, range from 0.00 to 1.00)
SoundFX Volume=0.55
(Volume, range from 0.00 to 1.00)
DisableSound=0
(Whether or not it runs the next line - 0 for sound on, 1 for sound off)
3D Provider=Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio
(Sound Middleware Driver. Easiest to set in game)
Environment Effects Level=0.60
(EAX modifier, range from 0.00 to 1.00. Modifies sound depending on an environment, more echoey in a cave, for example)
Environment Effects=0
(EAX Toggle, 0 for off or 1 for on. Only available with the creative middleware driver)
Number 2D Voices=32
(Number of simultaneous sounds the game will try to process - voicesets, footsteps, weapon and spell effects)
Number 3D Voices=32
(How many of the previous section a machine will try to apply 3D spatial correction to)
2D3D Bias=1.60
(Ranges from 0.00 (Everything more or less in front of you) to 2.00 (Every noise echoes almost completely around you). Apparently I like my environment echoey.)
Speaker Type=-1
(Again, not available with the miles system, you only get standard stereo (-1, but don't set that unless you have also set something like Miles that doesn't support other speaker outputs). Valid options for when this is enabled are: 0 = 2 speaker stereo, 1 = Headphone Stereo, 2 = Surround (Yay for Quadraphonic!), 3 = 4 Speaker Stereo (Quadraphonic wannabe), 4 = 5.1 Surround, 5 = 7.1 Surround.)
SUMMARY: Mostly, this is volume settings. The notable exceptions are the 3D Provider= and Speaker Type=. Speaker Type is not available with the Miles 2d Audio driver, and if you'd like to use something else it's easier to set in game.

[Config]
NWLoaderDisplayTime=3
(How long the little eye of tyr shows up in seconds if you run from the NWN.EXE loader instead of through NWMAIN.EXE like me. Be aware that 0 is infinite, not off.)
FirstRun=0
(Is this the first time you've run the game or not? 0 if you've run it before, 1 if you haven't run it since the install - or if you just changed it in NWN.ini. Setting 1 will force it to redetect directories and run the configuration wizard, so it can be useful sometimes if things go funny)
Connection=0
(This one I have no idea about.. Maybe it switches to 1 if you've done an update through the NWN.EXE menu? I've seen it set at 0 and 1. Please PM Me if you know what this does)
SUMMARY: This is all stuff to do with the NWN.EXE preloader, so far as I can tell.

[Display Options]
Disable Intro Movies=1
(This is a line I've added in, in this case to disable the Intro cutscene that starts when you run NWN. You can also use Disble Movies=1 instead, to disable the campaign movies too, if you have problems with them crashing and want to play the campaigns for some reason)
AllowWindowedMode=1
(Another line I've added in, this one lets you use alt-enter to go into a windowed mode for the client. You MUST set FullScreen=0 for this to work properly, then alt-tab to go fullscreen the first time. The game will remember you were in fullscreen after the first time, so you won't have to do it every time you run)
Width=1680
Height=1050
(These are pretty self-explanatory, width and height of your screen resolution, in pixels. If you need to set an odd resolution that NWN doesn't see then this is where you do it)
BitsPerPixels=32
(Colour Depth. NWN uses up to 24 bits of colour, with the final 8 bits being reserved for blending colours together (anything transparent, in practice). 16 bit will be fast, especially for in situations with a lot of transparency like the entangle effect, but look grainy - 24 bit if supported by your graphics card will be the same, but less so (it'll default to 32 if you can't support it). 32 will allow the full range of colour and transparency)
RefreshRate=60
(Monitor refresh rate in number of times refreshed per second (Hertz, like my puns))
TexturePack=3
(Which texture file you use for NWN. 0 = 16MB compatibility mode, 1 = 16MB pack, 2 = 32MB pack, 3 = 64MB pack. Should be 3, unless you have a shared-memory graphics card, in which case it should be set at whatever amount of RAM your card takes/"has")
SafeMovie=0
(Forces a resolution change before running the movies. If you don't want to turn them off, but get crashes, try this. 0 for don't force resolution, 1 to force the change)
FullScreen=0
(Whether or not the game forces fullscreen mode. When you change this to 0 the first time, the game will start in windowed mode, but after that will just remember how you had it set when you quit previously. 0 for don't force fullscreen, 1 for forced fullscreen)
UseLargeFont=0
(Whether or not to use the larger text available in NWN for very high resolutions. Messes up dialog boxes, so unless you need to have it larger to simply read it, leave it off. 0 for off, 1 for the large font)
Width=1024
(Like me, you probably thought "that's odd, this is in here twice". Don't worry about that, though, as this entry will appear when you set resolution in the windowed mode the first time. It calculates height automatically with a 4:3 ratio. Don't go lower than 800 unless you like to suffer problems.)

**VideoQualitySetting=3
(Where the slider sits for image quality, doesn't actually do anything other than jump to a preset configuration when you move the slider. 0 = Fast, 1 = Low, 2 = Good, 3 = Best)
Enable HardwareMouse=1
(Enable 2D video acceleration for the mouse, and indeed all hud elements, inventory windows and menus. If the main menu takes forever when you click a button, or the mouse jumps around jerkily when you move it, turn this off to force drawing to be handled by the CPU rather than in an overlay layer)
EnableEnvironmentShadows=1
(This lets the game know whether or not to render shadows that pass through doodads - if this is on, then if you walk past a door with a torch out, the doorframe will cast a shadow. If off, the environment will not cast shadows, only objects and characters. 0 for off, 1 for on)
CreatureShadowDetail=2
(What things from the object category get full shadow rendering, 'objects' include things like tables, chairs, other characters and the player character, 0 means everything gets a dull blob, 1 means everything except the PC gets a dull blob, and 2 means everything gets full shadow projection. Slow machines want this on 0)
EnableGrass=1
(Whether or not the game draws grass, 0 for not drawn, 1 for drawn. Slow machines want this on 0)
EnableFastGrass=0
(Another method for drawing the grass, it's more sparse than usual and has less transparency. If you have a slow computer but still want grass, set this to 1. 0 means standard grass engine, 1 means quick grass rendering)
NumDynamicLights=8
(How many light sources can emit light in an area simultaneously, the game will render outwards from the player until it reaches this number, then stop doing any more light sources. Range from 0 to 8. Slow machines want this off, or low, like 1 or 2.)
NumShadowCastingLights=3
(How many of those previous light-sources will cast shadows at the same time. Range from 0 to 3. Brightest sources, not the closest, will cast shadows first, so a lower number of dynamic lights sometimes looks better as the player character is more likely to be effected by close sources. I just turned these both up anyway because I couldn't be bothered fiddling. Slow machines want this on 0 or 1)
ShinyWater=0
(Ah, the shiny water, tries to reflect the skybox on the surface of the animated water texture. Turning this on causes crashes, and although it's less likely if animated textures are off, I never did manage to pin this one down completely.)
CreatureWindSetting=2
(A Grass setting which affects which objects can move the grass around with their movement or attacks. 0 means the grass doesn't interact with anything, 1 means the player moves the grass, and 2 means every player and creature effects the grass. Probably should be 2 unless you're on a slow computer with fast grass on, in which case it should be 0)
EnableVisualEffectsHigh=1
(This alters VFX which in means spells, in practice. 0 means simple particles, and 1 means full effects. Machines with slow graphics cards should have this on 0)
EnableSkyboxes=1
(Whether or not NWN draws the fancy skyboxes - you'll hardly see this even if it's on, as you rarely look up in NWN unless you're using the driving camera. Slow machines should set this to 0 as it has a reasonable impact on performance especially for something you can't see)
AntiAliasing Mode=0
(Just a postprocessing setting - 'rounds' pixels by blending colour into its neighbouring pixels. Options are; 0 = Off, no antialiasing, 1 = 2 samples antialiasing, 2 = Quincunx Antialiasing (bad for detail, and buggy in NWN except for nVidia GeForce 2-4 series cards), 3 = 4 sample antialiasing, 4 = "Nice 4 sample antialiasing", which means 4 sample antialiasing with 3D edge filtering)
Enable VSync=1
(Enables or disables synchronising your graphics card to monitor refresh rate. 0 for split, 1 for synchronised. Turn this off on a slow computer or on an HDTV (HDTV refresh rate is bad), though with it off you may experience fluctuating FPS or horizontal 'tearing' across the screen when a new frame is started before the old one is finished)
Enable Truform=1
(Got an ATI card that can't do shiny water without crashing, huh? That's okay, this setting that you can only get to in NWN.INI is your consolation prize. TRUFORM basically renders a whole bunch of extra polygons using interpolation, it's like the 'new' tessellation technology on DirectX 11. Slow machines obviously 0 for off, fast machines with ATI cards definitely 1 for on) - Addendum: Completely forgot ATI took the TruForm drivers out of Catalyst in version 5.9, so this doesn't work fully on modern machines (it just doesn't activate, doesn't cause problems). Shadows on characters and objects seem to improve quite a bit, though - can I get a second opinion on this? It's possible there's a secondary shadow engine intended for the higher-poly truform models, though I'd have expected them to simply need the truform models for that.
Enable AnisotropicFiltering=1
(Another NWN.INI only feature, I'll post a screenshot showing this a bit better in the next post, as it's hard to explain. Postprocessing only, so off with 0 on slow GPU machines)
Enable TextureAnimations=0
(This tells NWN whether or not to animate the surface of water and lava. Looks nice when it's on, but it can cause crashes, unfortunately, so I leave it off. 0 for no motion, 1 for wobbly movement)
Enable CreatureEnvironmentMapping=1
(This option chooses whether or not light sources effect a creature beyond simply adjusting the glow, but through shadows as well. When it's on, some peoples faces look a bit funny at times, but overall things look a lot better. I like it on, but it has a huge impact on performance on slow machines, perhaps the biggest of anything except antialiasing or truform, so on those machines you'll want this off. 0 for no environment mapping on creatures, 1 for having environment mapping on creatures)
Gamma=0.600000
(How bright the game is. Gamma, as opposed to brightness or contrast, bends the colour curve in the middle, so there's less difference between levels of darkness. If set too high, you can wash out the colour as if you'd turned contrast down, while still having very dark areas. Easiest to manage this in game (go somewhere like the guildhall, so you can see its impact on a wood surface))

Grass Far Render Distance=1800.0
(New to 1.69! This setting tells the game how far to draw the grass out from the player, with 900.0 being standard, and a maximum of 30000.0 (!!!). If you have a fast computer and wanted to feel like you were playing NWN on a Geforce 2, you'd use this setting)**

[Adelor]

Part 5 : NWPLAYER.INI
(My chatbox text is every colour of the rainbow, and I see traps as either pink or purple)

This section will be a breakdown of the NWPLAYER.ini file, much the same as the previous section. This time around most of the settings work the same in Linux, or are just completely ignored.

[Chat Colors]
PartyColor=255,51,255
WhisperColor=255,102,51
These are the colours used by the Party-chat, and the Whisper text in game. They're a standard RGB code, Red first, Green second and Blue third. To pick some colours to use if that makes no sense to you, use this online colour schemer application. As you can see, I have my party-chat Purple, and my whisper text Orange so I can read it more easily. All of the options you could add and their defaults are; TalkColor=240,240,240 ShoutColor=255,239,80 WhisperColor=128,128,128 TellColor=32,255,32 ServerColor=176,176,176 PartyColor=255,102,1 DMColor=16,223,255

[Game Options]
Single Player ItemLevelRestrictions=0
Single Player Enforce Legal Characters=0
These two options will prevent you from playing HotU, or as a red dragon disciple in turn, by checking your attributes vs. your level or by requiring a certain level for a given item ala Diablo.
Client CPU Affinity=2
This specifies the core the game will attempt to use for NWN, 0 is the first core, 1 the second, 2 the third and 3 the fourth - it continues like that with the core you intend to use being the number here, plus one (if you want the 7th core used, you'll type 6 here). Other options are -2 which allows the operating system to define the CPU affinity (for me it seems to load mainly the 4th core, and a bit on the second core), and -1 should now in theory be the same as 0, but still seems to put some load on the second core for me, in spite of the release notes in 1.69 saying it shouldn't. Avoid the special negative values for this, as performance improvement from multithreading is small in NWN and it causes stability issues.
Memory Level=1
Memory Access=1
We've seen these guys before in NWN.ini, this isn't used in here anymore by NWN, and must mean I had quite an old version installed to even have it in here at all.
Max Memory Usage=512
How much memory is used by the game for resources. Set it to whatever you like, the official Bioware line is that performance increases stopped when going past 32 megs on the original campaigns though, and it now defaults to 64, which should be fine. I've set it to 512 to see what it did, and forgot I turned it up, it seems. It can stay like that.
TooltipDelay uSec=100000
How long you have to hold a mouse over an interactive surface to get the popup info in microseconds. The default of 100,000 microseconds is 0.1 of a second.
Enable FloatyTextFeedback=1
This enables or disables the floaty text above creatures and players. 0 for no text, 1 for text.
Hide SecondStoryTiles=0
The game will always 'chop' buildings down as if your camera was near to them, and never try to draw anything above the bottom layer of a map. Good performance boosts can be had by turning this to 1 on a slow machine.
ClientEntireChatWindowLogging=1
This means you'll log everything in the chatwindow including attack and skill rolls. Use ClientChatLogging=1 if you just want the actual chat, and none of the mechanical details.
LogMyEmoteUsage=0
This means that when you use an emote through the radial menu, it'll get dropped in the logfile.
Heartbeat Logging=0
This simply logs when heartbeats are sent/received from the server, not too useful except for debugging a server connection if you're having trouble.
Difficulty Level=1
The difficulty setting I had it on when playing single player. Apparently I felt like hurling fireballs near myself and not taking much damage last time I played alone. Rambowizard!
Log Model Errors=0
This will be better set to on if you've just been messing with a model pack, otherwise off.
MouseoverFeedback=0
This enables or disables the big glow around things and floaty-text showing up when you mouse-over things. You still get the floaty text if you press TAB - I prefer to play this way because it feels like you're having to pay attention to something to get the floaty text (point at it and press tab) so it doesn't feel so much like cheating. Greatly reduces the use of the TAB key, though, as a side-effect, the glows don't happen and the floaty text doesn't pop up, and that's about all it did otherwise.
TextBubbleMode=1
How text appears in game - 0 for chatbox only, 1 for a little writing over a persons head when they speak, and 2 for their portrait and text in a little bubble over their heads. 2 looks too busy for me, but it's a matter of taste.
CODEWORD=notzesty
How far I got through the singleplayer campaign - there maybe three of these, one for each original campaign, and it looks like I didn't get far. It's worth noting that the code for having completed the prelude but getting no further is "rangersandhamsters"
TargetingFeedbackMode=1
Whether or not the game draws little blue circles to indicate what your character is currently attacking. O for no circles, 1 for circles only when paused (so effectively no circles) and 2 for always draw the circles. Might be useful to tell if your character is about to attack another player when confused, but only for RP in that case.
DisablePartyInvitePopup=0
Whether you play a cleric or not. Wait - I mean, whether or not you ignore party requests from other players. You probably don't want this on unless you play as a noble on Arabel and other people join -your- party.
In-game Text Swear Filter=0
Whether or not the game tries to obscure swear-words.
Visible Cloaks=1
Whether or not the game draws the cloaks that were added to NWN. I like them, so I have this on - slow machines benefit from having it off (unless people expect you to recognise them by a cloak)
Death Logging=1
Added in 1.69, for logging creature deaths (player characters included).

[Server Options]
I've cut this section out, because it doesn't apply to a PW.

[Profile]
ShowMessageOfTheDay=0
Whether the game tries to retrieve the MOTD from the master server. Doesn't matter anymore, this never gets used.
Client Port=5124
The port the client tries to connect through - useful if you need to get through a firewall.
Player Name=l33ty mcl33t
Password=Password
This is where my logon name and password would be if I hadn't changed it. Useful if you forget your password and need to reinstall NWN, for example if you're upgrading to a new computer.
Remember Password=1
Whether or not the login screen in multiplayer remembers the password, 0 for don't remember, 1 for remember.
ShowPregenChars=0
This sets if you see the premade characters in the character list. I can't see a good reason for having this on.
JournalPage=1
Current Page=2
I don't know what these do. Please PM me if you do know, I'd imagine it's something to do with the character journal.
ServerList Hide Passworded=0
ServerList Hide Local Vault=0
ServerList Hide Server Vault=0
What things you chose to obscure from the serverlist in gamespy.
Group Room=367
The number of the default chatroom in NWNs server browser.
Email Address=lol@spambots.com
My email address would be here if I hadn't changed it.
Direct Connect IP:5121=arabel.ender.com
The IP address saved in the NWN direct connect section.
ServerList Show All Versions=0
This will toggle between showing only the same version that you're running and showing all servers of every version of the game that's advertising online.

[Banned Ips]
0=
Server setting, self explanatory.

[Banned Players]
0=
Server setting, self explanatory.

[Banned CD Keys]
0=
Server setting, self explanatory.

[Keymapping]
This is a long section which I've cut out - it contains the information you set in the controls menu for opening inventory pages, using the arrow keys to spin around, that kind of thing.

[Favorites Page]
Server0=72.36.215.60:5121
Server1=
Server2=
Server3=
etc…
This goes up to a much higher number, but the only thing on here is the Arabel server IP.

[History Page]
SNIP
This is a list of the places I've logged on. Apparently I've logged into places other than Arabel - I can't remember any of these places. Some of them are past Arabel IPs though.

[Trap Colors]
FriendlyColor=0,255,0
HostileColor=255,0,0
This is another section of RGB codes, this time for traps. Seeing as bad traps are red, having a red emitting ring might mean you want to change this, as it'll be really hard to see them compared to say, yellow.

[Script Options]
Enable Profiling=0
This setting slows down the game a fair bit, but it's a good tool for seeing which scripts the module spends a long time in, and lets you check which ones need to be more optimized.
Enable Logging=0
This logs each script as it runs, heavily degrades game performance, but a great tool if you have a script that causes a module to lock up. [Reserved for NWNPLAYER.INI]

[Adelor]

Part 6 : Screenshots
(If you didn't get a screenshot, it didn't happen)

The purpose of this section is to show how the different settings effect image quality. Not all screenshots here are from NWN (the antialiasing ones are from quake 3) but they're the best I could find to demonstrate the different options available in NWN.

The best way to use this section is to resize your browser so it fits just the descriptive text above the picture and the picture itself within the frame, then using page up/page down to see the next one in roughly the same place to make comparing easier.

Find the actual images separated into this post

I've not included Anisotropic/Ansitropic filtering images, as I've never seen that working in NWN unless forced always on in the driver… not really an NWN setting. You can also get higher quality anti-aliasing through your graphics card driver than you can get in NWN.

[Reserved for Screenshots to show different settings in action]

[DiaboSatan]

This "walkthrough" is to inform you guys that there is a way to set "WALKING" animation without having to activate detect mode. Step by step to configure is.

1. Hit "Options", while in game.
2. Choose "Controls".
3. Click at "Change Key Settings"
4. Scroll down at the "Move/Cam" tab until you find the option "Drive Mode Forward".
5. Click "Drive Mode Forward" then press which key you wish to use as walking key. I suggest you use the key "X".

Important: If you assign a key that already has a function, it will lose its previous function. For example, if you assign the key "I", which before used to open inventory, it will stop doing it and it will represent walking.

Cheers