NWN2 - Patch 1.03 & Live Team Updates

Darren Monahan has posted an update on the NWN2 forums on the status of the 1.03 patch and some changes with the Live Team personnel:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you guys a few updates on things going on here at Obsidian:

Patch 1.03 News: First off, we're hard at work putting the finishing touches on the v1.03 patch. This is a big patch in terms of bug fixes, optimizations, and additional features such as the return of database support, and more DM Client additions. We're going to release a public 1.03 BETA this coming week (of course including a revert patch ), and then wrap up the public 1.03 release early the following week. In my next post below is a preview of what's coming in the patch.

Personnel Changes: Secondly, I'm sadly going to be moving to one of Obsidian's new projects, but I would like to announce a few of the members of our Live Team - the folks here at Obsidian who will be carrying the torch for all things NWN2:

Nathaniel Chapman - Assistant Producer. He's going to be taking over the work I was doing in forums, specifically the technical support forums, as well as getting issues posted here into our tracking database and into the developers hands.

Tony Evans - Senior Designer. Tony was the designer of Crossroad Keep and the lead for Act 3. He's going to be working on some very special projects in the coming months, so you'll be hearing from him as well.

There are also some other team members (programmers, etc.) whom we'll announce in the future.

Thanks,

Darren Monahan
Executive Producer
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc.

His next post then proceeds with some lengthy patch notes - here's the General section:

General
• Weapon combos in hotbar: Added the ability to set up dual weapon, weapon & shield, or weapon & torch combos in the hotbar. Clicking the hotbar button for a weapon you already have equipped will unequip it.

• Camera Changes: We’ve made a series of camera changes to this version:
o New options for adjusting sensitivity for controlling the camera by keyboard, mouse, and edge of screen.
o Chase Cam adjusted to work more like NWN1.
o In free cam mode, the arrow keys now pan the camera, and holding down CTRL will zoom and yaw the camera.
o Added bindable keyboard key for mouse look / camera control. This mimics functionality of pressing down the middle mouse button for those without a middle mouse button.

• Graphics Optimizations: A number of new graphics optimizations have been added:
o Anti-Aliasing Support: Anti-aliasing is now supported and can be enabled in the Options Menu. Please note: This could significantly affect frame rate, depending on your hardware.
o Shadow Rendering: Shadow rendering speed has been improved.
o Tree Rendering: Speed improvements to the rendering of trees.
o Water Rendering: Speed improvements to how water is rendered by the engine.

• New Options:
o Buy/Sell Confirmation: You can now turn off the buy/sell confirmation dialog.
o Options menu has been reorganized to support many new camera control options.
o You can now change keybindings in game.

• Database Support:
o The database script functions from NWN1 have been re-enabled. They are now significantly faster in many cases.