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NWN Linux Client Delayed
An anonymous reader writes "Posted tonight on the Neverwinter Nights Linux client page: '[Dec 13 2002] There have been many questions as to why the Linux client is taking so long. The two big issues are sound and movies due to the fact that BINK and Miles are only available for Windows and Mac. BINK is the in-game movie player and Miles is the sound engine for Neverwinter Nights. We are having to find our own solution for Linux sound in Neverwinter Nights, and we are exploring possible movie options. Due to these factors, we are revising the estimated release date from Fall 2002 to Winter 2002 (Dec 22 2002 to March 21 2003), with January 2003 being the earliest date it could be out. Progress has been made on sound this week, and to re-iterate, the graphical side of the Linux client is looking excellent and is almost complete.'"
Why not using divx and mplayer (a downsized version, of course) to play the movies? mplayer can operate in a lot of ways (that's what I like on it) with various input and output systems, and I think it's nice as backend for playing videos in linux games. Sure, there is smpeg too, that was used by lokigames.
RAD Game Tools, the company who sells Miles is the same company that sells Bink, but since I have never used Bink, I don't know how easy it would be to port it to Linux. But as a general rule, it would be better to use effort to port APIs that many developers use rather than porting specific applications like NNN... Just my .02 Euros...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
The single-player game is very much RPG-lite and also not very interesting IMO. A big step backwards from prior efforts. The plot was supremely generic. It's really too bad about the Interplay fiasco, Bioware and Black Isle could have done some great things building off one another's resources as they were. Now both seemed doomed to overhyped yet mediocre releases burdened with Diabloesque gameplay in their feeble attempts to boost sales by trying to satisfy everyone.
NWN's multiplayer game is great if you can get a decent DM, a good module and quality people to play with. That's a nice big compound "if", by the way. Good luck finding anyone older than 12 using Gamespy. The matching sites are nice if you don't mind having to conform to someone else's schedule, and don't mind waiting hours to days to play. I don't even bother anymore.
And if you're just going to be playing over LANs I wouldn't even bother, just spend the money on 3E D&D books and some dice and get your nerd fill with far less annoyance and hassle. A 5-player LAN NWN session requires $250 worth of software, whereas a 5-player pen and paper game requires $30 in books and is less restrictive.
Lastly, I think it's distinguished as a client because the game shipped with three major components, and this is the one they're working on for Linux. If they said "NWN for linux almost complete" it would be a little misleading, as the server is already complete and was released months ago, the client is in limbo and the toolset may or may not ever be ported.
"Is there a technical reason not to do so, or is it a philosophical one?"
DirectX is property of MSFT, enough said.
Anyway, I never understood why people would use DirectX unless they were certain they would never release the software for another platform than Windows. There are already a number of cross-platform solutions for audio, video, etc.
Examples include SDL, OpenGL, PortAudio and OpenSL.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
What a lot of rubbish. Blizzard are using DivX now, Warcraft III used it for all ingame video. Nobody uses Sorenson for games. Were it not for Apple having a movie trailers site and Enchanced CDs being forced into it, nobody would use Sorenson for anything.
I imagine RAD Video are running scared now on the DivX front, they seem to be emphasising the speed of Smacker now (and their other products, Miles and Granny) in favour of Bink.
- Chris
Here's a sound engine [libsdl.org].
Actually, for sound you'd want OpenAL. This works together with SDL but isn't tied to it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Divx is a joke as far as commercial products go...
;-) you've seen has probably warez movies. If you encode DiVX (MPEG-4 actually) at high bitrates, the quality is astonishing and the size surprisingly small.
;-) would be one of those. It's optimized for animation? Yes, all video codecs are optimized for animation. That's kind of the whole point of a video codec. So Bink gives great quality at a range of bitrates? What the hell does that mean? So you have to be sure you use between 100Kb/sec-271.5Kb/sec or something otherwise it will look like shit? The bitrate of any media stream is directly proportional to its quality. More data, more detail. It's just that simple. You're talking like there's some secret magic to getting a well chosen bitrate and that only some codecs do it. As for why Bink is used for games -- only because it's marketed that way. Many companies clearly choose technologies without being clueful as to why they are choosing them. That's certainly the case here (read the story). There's no reason for them to have chosen Bink aside from someone saw an ad for it somewhere and immediately assumed it was the answer to their prayers.
Troll. The quality of a compressed video, using any codec is going to be shit if the encoder used an extremely low bitrate. The only DiVX
Don't knock technologies you clearly don't understand. DiVX would be great for commercial products!
Quicktime/sorenson is the only thing that even approaches an acceptable compromise for video in a game, due to its high quality at reasonable bitrate. On the other hand, it's pretty CPU heavy and it doesn't give you very fine control over the encoding process.
Wait a minute, you just reamed on DiVX -- which has very high quality and a very reasonable bitrate. Note that MPEG-4 decoding is not very CPU intensive, which makes it a better choice than QuickTime for games of all applications. Perhaps you want a video playing while something interactive is taking place. Furthermore, having a fine-controlled codec is hardly specific to QuickTime. You make no sense.
Bink is PC and mac compatible out of the box, it's optimized for animation, the encoding process is very tweakable, it gives great quality at a range of bitrates, and the SDK is very well developed with games as the primary application. So really, I can see why they would have chosen it - not to mention that it's basically been the standard for any game with cutscenes since PCs gained the ability to play video.
Bink works on N platforms, eh? Trust me, there are plenty of other video codecs that work on at least N + 1 platforms. For the uninformed (the parent), DiVX
You sir, are a troll. I cannot believe the moderators rewarded your clueless meanderings though the world of video encoding. You probably picked up a few sparsely scattered jargon terms in you day to day life and now fancy yourself an expert.
Why bother.
Actually, NWN already uses OpenGL for 3D, and the Linux dev folks were reportedly messing with OpenAL. In win32 DirectX is used for stuff like controllers.
How do I know? They specifically said it's OpenGL, and besides, my D3D8 setup is so screwed that if they had used D3D8, I'd be staring at "can't use 1024x768 @ 0 hz display mode" error message - but NWN works fine. =)
From the NWN Community board ( Great Linux Client Thread #18):
Posted: Saturday, 14 December 04:45PM
Miles problems solved!
I've ported Miles 6.5c over to Linux. It works flawlessly, including dynamically loading ASI, FLT, and M3D modules. I've submitted the code back to RadGameTools. NWN dev folks, please contact me for details: slouken@devolution.com
--Sam Lantinga, Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment
We have just been informed by Rad Game Tools (http://www.radgametools.com) that they have Linux versions of both Bink and Miles, even though its not mentioned on their web site. We will be getting our hands on these tools on Monday and we should have further information for you then.
This solves the two outstanding issues with the Linux Client, and I bet we will have even more good news for you in the coming week in terms of future Betas or Demos of the Linux Client. We here at BioWare are thrilled with this development.
We would like to apologise for the confusion arising from the Dec 13th update where it seem like we were blaming Rad for the delay. This is entirely untrue. We were stating that, to the best of our knowledge, we would have to find our own solutions for movie and sound playing in the Linux Client. This is no longer the case and we look forward to using the Linux Rad Game Tools just like we are in the Windows and upcoming Mac version.
Rejoice (and I guess its time to upgrade the TNT2 video card in my Linux Box at home)!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Derek French
Producer, Live Team
Neverwinter Nights