Hey all! Very nice to finally have NWN in the GOG catalogue, however i already own the game (platinum edition + kingmaker) and thus i have a question:

When i play my edition on Win7, fully patched to 1.69 of course, the background music randomly stops and stutters (sometimes every few minutes, sometimes only after an hour of play or more). Plus, in the sound options i cannot choose any speaker and hardware sound options, everything is greyed out. And whatever sound system and 2D/3D-Bias i choose, my choice is set back to standard as soon as i leave the options window. Any other options (graphics/gameplay) work as normal, though.

I already spent hours to try to fix the problem, tried different sound driver versions (i have an onboard Realtek HD Audio) and ini-file modifications, but nothing worked. This is the only game where i have such problems and it doesn't oficially support Vista or Win7 so i'm convinced that this problem has to do with the game and not my PC.

So my question is, is the GOG version altered in some way that it recognizes your sound hardware correctly and so prevents any sound-related errors or sound-hangups?

Best would be if someone with Realtek HD Audio could say if he is able to choose any sound options and if audio (especially background sounds/music) works flawlessly after some hours of gameplay.

Thanks for your help!
I really hope this version fully works with Win7, because i'm really sad that my disc version has this broken sound issue. It's such a wonderful game and i would instantly re-buy it from GOG if the issues are fixed...

I do not know if GOG did anything to the NWN version they have, but on the regular old game, even in 1.69 (which is probably what GOG is offering), if you have problems with the sound you should change the sound device at NWN configuration utility and select Miles 2D positional audio. That solved the issue for all the guys with W7 I have talked to, me included

Not for me... :(
It's the standard setting and even with it activated the background sound stutters and hangs...

Don't take this the wrong way but Windows 7 support does not mean that game supports all modern and future hardware and driver configurations. Windows 7 support means just that GOG testers ran the game without problem on their Windows 7 test machines, period. And mostly to make the old games run on Win7 only requires the removal of DRM (heck, that solves problems with WinXP as well and some of these games were developed for XP in the first place!). Just saying. (Edit: just so you know there are couple game here on GOG that have issues with my Radeon X1950 Pro graphic card (actually affects the whole X1000 series). I don't blame GOG for these as even the Devs back in the day did not manage to fix it. I blame ATI as they actually fixed the bug in their next gen cards but never provided a fix for legacy devices.)

As for your Hardware broblem, I can't debug it due to HW and OS differences but you could try turning off sound hardware acceleration from dxdiag (works for me on some games that I've had sound issues). I'm not 100% sure how thats done on Win7 but on XP you:
1. go to start menu
2. select run
3. type dxdiag
4. choose sound
5. drag the slider to right to 'no acceleration'
6. close the program

OP:

Best advice I can give is to go to IGN Vault and go to the NWN page, then download and install the latest CEP (Community Expansion Pack).

I installed it immediately after installing the disc-based NWN:D on Win 7, and have had none of the issues you describe.

Hope this helps!
-Cym

You can't do that on Vista and Win7.

Here is the link to the main page for NWN's CEP

Hope this helps.
-Cym

Unfortunately there seems to be no sound slider in dxdiag... but i remember what you mean from my old machine.

It would still be most helpful to me if anyone with a Realtek HD Audio soundchip would post if he has sound options working right (so they don't reset themselves after leaving the sound options screen) and if he can select speaker type and hardware acceleration or if it's all greyed out, too. And of course if they experience (background-)sound problems while playing...

Any further tipps on how i can maybe fix this whole thing by myself are still welcome, of course! :)

If you're unwilling to install the CEP there is no further advice I can give you. All I can say is my PC has realtek onboard audio and due to issues with Ventrilo I bought a Sound Blaster Audigy for 25 bucks and disabled the realtek.

Let us know if you can fix your issue, I would be interested to see how to do so.

EDIT: Man, you posted quick... ;)

Okay, i will try the CEP thing next time. And maybe i'm gonna buy the GOG version anyway... there should be some way to get it to work i hope...

Before I bought the Audigy I did not have NWN installed on my system. I have no base of reference for you, unfortunately. By the time I reinstalled NWN: DIamond I had already upgraded the sound card.

Upgrading the sound card isn't an option btw because i play on a notebook... ;)

In that case I would recommend at least backing up your saved games and testing it with the CEP. Can't hurt to try. If it doesn't work let me know.

I don't have it installed at the moment. But i will test it as soon as i can.

GL, as it's only 11am on the west coast of the US expect more answers within the next few hours. Obviously I can only offer so much for resolution.

You may want to try updating your Realtek drivers and seeing if that fixes the issue, as well, if you haven't already.