A Land Far Away

Hello All:

Sorry if this has been discussed, but I am new to NWN2 and struggling with the camera.

1) I enjoy more of a roof top view (but low and behold the roof tops get in the way). I like a bird's eye view because I am constantly worried about the ghosts of Shadowdale chickens haunting my sorry ass LVL 1 PC. He had a premonition.
2) With my current settings, in explore mode, in the city, the camera depth auto adjusts and makes it difficult to see the world around my PC (other players, bandits, doors, stores, chickens). Not to mention the roofs...
3) In strategy mode, I am happy with the view but I cant figure out how to rotate the camera with my mouse (or even a key) which would help with the building roofs.

If anyone has a good game mode setup and they are willing to share, could you please send a pic of the game setup screens for explore or strategy mode or both?

Also, how do you close doors? After last nights walk through town, my PC could be tracked like Hansel and Gretel but instead of following the bread crumbs, you would follow the open doors. I tried to right click on the door, but being tech not-savy I couldn't figure it out.

Thanks,

Stephen

PS. Those who remember Selgaunt/Alfa/NWN, I played Ando for a while... as well as a few PCs in Shadowdale. My log was BalvinSlice. I hope it is as fun as it was then...

Right click on doors to see the drop down menu that includes the close door option.

As for the camera mode that works best, I use the exploration mode from relatively far away and I rotate the POV very frequently to see what is going on around me. Some terrains, cities included, still make it difficult, however.

Welcome back. I forget if you sort of have to hold the right "click" for a bit til a dropdown menu appears, to like, bash things or lock/unlock things and whatnot. Just re: doors.

I mostly use Exploration mode camera. All the cameras kind of suck, what can you do?

Exploration. As far as it goes. Rotate with holding left mouse key and moving the mouse.
Thats what works for me at least.

Just sent you a message, welcome back!!

I prefer Character mode when playing - I think it helps my immersion, but that's just me. YMMV. Take your time and look around - there's lots to see. Look up at the sky, too (left-click and drag in Character mode).

Activate the options that allow objects and ceilings to disappear.

Exploration mode is better when DMing.

DMing with the Client Extension is best.

Exploration mode, as others have suggested, is imo really the least headache free, but you'll still get crazy jumps to odd angles, end up staring through your PC's butt at the sky, etc once in a while depending on how the builder did things. It's especially prone to happen where there are crowded buildings, though not exclusively.

If you want a really birds eye view, the Exploration camera mode can actually be zoomed out far, far further than what the game naturally let's you with the standard zoom out functions, but it takes some fiddling and you ideally need a two story building to make it happen.

Will post a screenshot of what I mean when I get home from work unless someone beats me to it.

Right, examples. Here is the standard zoom in Exploration mode:



And here is what you can get after some generous assistance from the taller buildings and Silverymoons walls:



If you zoom in even slightly, the camera will snap back to its usual limit. I do not remember if ATing to another area resets it (not enough time before work this morning to test)

Wow I wish we could break that zoom limit for all Alfa somehow.

AFAIK, zoom limit is hard coded. Why you can break the zoom limit in explorer mode with creative use of tall structures I do not know. Quite possibly a bug that they never bothered to fix.

It has limits, though. Perception range remains the same, so you cannot use it to spot mobs across the other side of the map and while it is not shown in that example, you can run up against the maximum view distance for an area at which point things will disappear into fog (depending how it is set up).

I have actually managed to have all of the Silvy South area viewable with a greatly extended zoom and it does not look as good as one might expect.

We have to work with what we've got; it's mostly tolerable unless combat is involved in one of the areas where the camera angles start going haywire.