David Gaider Leaves Beamdog

Two years ago, David Gaider left BioWare and joined Beamdog as Creative Director. And now, that chapter of his life is also behind him, according to this Beamblog post that informs us of David’s departure from the Edmonton studio known for its Enhanced Editions of cRPG classics. At this moment, it’s still unclear what’s next for the man who gave us such fan-favorite characters like Knights of the Old Republic’s HK-47 and Dragon Age: Origins’ Morrigan, but according to the farewell post on the Beamblog, he may have something up his sleeve. Have a look:

Today, Beamdog bids farewell to our Creative Director, David Gaider.

Dave came to Beamdog during interesting times. Since then, he has been teacher, mentor, and friend to many on the team. We’ve seen Dave conjure new worlds we’d love to play in, and spin stories in places already close to our hearts. Someday we will share the fruits of his labour!

Most lasting, Dave has built a creative team that will shape the stories Beamdog tells in the years to come. He has freely shared his incredible wealth of storytelling and narrative design experience with the developers, designers, and artists around him. We’ve all learned a lot from Dave and we hope he picked up a trick or two from us as well.

As fans of Dragon Age, KoTOR, Baldur’s Gate, and many of the other incredible worlds Dave has helped create, we’re excited to find out what’s next (come on, give us a clue Dave!) be it a new game, novel, or whatever else it is you choose to create.

We’ll certainly miss your lunchtime stories. Best of luck Dave!

And while you’re wondering about the exact nature of David Gaider’s future in the video game industry, you can also check out this week’s Beamdog livestream with Trent Oster and Phil Daigle, and read the latest Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition patch notes. Here are the latter:

Patches 8157 & 8158 introduce a number of bug fixes and Steam features in preparation for a beta on that platform.

An old friend returns with a new look! The brand new Aribeth character model will be available to view through Steam Workshop. This model sets the standard for future Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition content.

Love it? Hate it? Have an idea? Let us know in the Beamdog forums!

Known Issues

• Server filters (“Localvault only, Max Ping, etc.”) still don’t work. We’re redoing these soon-ish as part of the new-and-better server list display.

Regression Fixes

• Servers will now grey out properly when the version is mismatching. This also introduces a change from previous versions, where older server versions would not list at all.
• PvP mode column again displays the correct value.
• We fixed yet more audio issues related to clipping issues in OpenMP3. This hopefully takes care of all remaining issues.

Features

• Steam: Support for Friends List through Steam. Support for Steam Workshop. Both are not available to beta testers, as Steam is not public yet.
• MDL: Normals are read from ASCII files.
• MDL: Tangents are read from ASCII files.
• MDL: Animeshes now support TSB and thus normals & specular maps.