[Balanor]

Hello everyone. Over the last few days, those of you who have logged in have probably noticed that the white aura/glow that surrounds various NPCs when you press the TAB key or hover over them has been changed. Now instead of that bright white glow, they instead turn a slight shade of black and there is no glow above them at all. With today's server reset, this has now been expanded to the vast majority of ALL selectable objects; creatures, doors, and (most) placeable objects (like treasure containers, lampposts, signs, and so on).

I have done this because I, personally, like the look of the game better when you press down the TAB key and your screen does not light up like a Christmas tree in areas with many creatures and/or useable objects. I feel the dark glow around these objects makes the world more immersive and akin to a world like Skyrim where you literally have to hover over an object to see if it is selectable/useable/lootable. That's not to say the NWN glow is removed entirely though. It is still possible, for the discerning eye, to locate these types of objects by pressing down the TAB key, but they won't be screaming out at you to click on them anymore, and may still take a little looking to discover since they now glow black.

While I've given my reasons for implementing the black glow aura above, now is your chance to provide feedback if you feel strongly about either returning to the white glow aura, or you feel strongly about keeping the black glow aura. These changes took all of three lines of code, in three scripts, so they are easy to remove (or revise) if needed - like if you would prefer some type of hybrid where some objects glow white, and others glow black, feel free to provide "exceptions," and your rationale for them. For example; Tailor/Body/Tattooist models were just exempted so you can hover over them and they will still glow white, to make it easier to see details on them.

What do you think?

[OldBear]

So far the only issue I have had is trying to locate a particular NPC at times.  This is especially noticed in the Waukeen Temple looking for the High Priestess.  She moves around a lot and usually a high number of npc's in the temple.  But I can't say it is a major issue.

[WilliamDraco]

Firstly: I have opinions that I'm about to state like a lawyer trying to win a case. No intention to sound harsh - Love your work as you know <3

I'm not a fan of this as default. I feel like Hilites are the games way of passing information that would otherwise be readily available in-character, and default-removing them is forcing a player-perception hard mode based on whether a person has a nice big monitor resolution, or a high contrast display, or has good enough eyesight/attention to pixel-details on a rendered image.

My case for a reversion as follows:

1) It helps make clear what is just scenery vs a useable thing. In a dragons treasure trove, a person doesn't need to carefully scan the gold pile to determine which 'bit' of it they can loot from, and nor is it difficult to determine whether a particular column has some runes on it that are worth 'inspecting'. This is 'game-y' information being displayed in a game-y way, because the normal tools to know are missing.

2) It helps me tell at a glance whether any of a potentially vast number of creatures on-screen is friendly or hostile. This might not be exactly 'realistic' but nothing about nwn combat stands up to realism and we shouldn't start here.

3) Any genuinely 'hidden' object should be hidden from the character, not the player. We have access via nwnx to lots of visibility based code that can hide placeables or other interactables from specific players or all players or etc. until an appropriate perception is called for and, while it's clearly a lot more work to implement on those specific basis rather than this blanket approach, I feel like it more appropriately captures the intent of a hidden thing - That it is character based and not player based.

4) Players who seek this level of immersion or a reduced-christmas-tree-effect can enable their own preferences to the default Hilite colours in the game options menu. If overriden by script, the game-options can't do the inverse (override the script-override) to restore it for players that do want it.

5) NWN's been around 18 years now and I've been playing almost that long - I've got long-trained expectations about what a thing "not-glowing" means to me, and it means "this is just for decoration". Turning off the glow won't make me search for things painstakingly by sweeping my eyes/mouse carefully across everything - it just makes me disengage and stop interacting.


That said, I do generally encourage the use of some Hilite to show meaningful information. Maybe important NPCs can be gold (Zulkirs, tharchions, high priestesses), or particularly important placeables get idk purple or something. nwnx gives us access to per-player hilite too, so a player's own familiars/companions could be hilite'd just for them to be yellow or something.

[Miscr3ant]

William Draco's response is by far much more eloquent than I could ever hope to explain. I can only say that I agree with him, and would prefer it to be player adjustable. I for one agree; I've been with NWN since 2005, and I'm old. My expectations are much the same; if it is meant to be interactable vs scenery, that blue highlight is what I identify with. One effect I've noticed is that even mundane things like chairs in a well lit caravan turn almost black. Try to identify a loot placeable in a dark crypt without Darkvision and...well, you get the idea.

And honestly bud, thanks for asking our opinion. :D

[Bela]

I personally like this new feature. That being said, it is more difficult in dungeons/dark areas when you don't have the darkvision/ultravision, but it makes you take your time and look. But I am liking this 'less glow' a lot, it doesn't pull you away from what you're doing at that time. Whether it be RP or delving. I'm giving a thumbs up to this.