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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.'"
...apart from the cheesy opening sequence. The "cut-scenes" are more like static slide shows. Couldn't be too hard to write up a drop-in replacement for something like that?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Here's a sound engine.
Here's a movie player.
I want my client now, please!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Not entirely. "Porting" a DirectX API means porting driver interaction, or drivers themselves. This has always been a selling point for Linux (hardware support), and new drivers could disrupt that reputation. We would see lots of buggy beta-stage things, as is expected with OSS, or on the other hand, the port would have to be more of a re-write.
Just my un-informed $0.02, and that's the Aussie dollar...
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
I do not like having to wait even longer but I believe they are working hard on a project that deserves my support. If Linux users like myself, do not wait and buy it when it comes out then they will get no reward for their effort and may decide not to bother with any future Linux ports. The only way to get people like Boiware to support Linux is to buy their products when they do release them so that they see it as worthwhile.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
seems sort of lame, they could have a demo or something without it and i would be very happy. i'll take a static image of 'movie forthcoming' and 'ctrl-g' bell for sound ding ... ding.
if tons of people download and use the thing maybe it would help the prioritize it better. if not, then they can stall it if they want for good reason.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
1) delay the release
They're doing that already.
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
If they wanted to do that they could do it in a heartbeat. RAD Video (who make Bink and Miles) have a tool which enables conversion of their formats to AVI extremely easy. I suspect if they wanted to just go DivX it would have been done.
3) port the player. painful.
I think that's what they're doing.
4) find an OpenSource player that's stable, common, and supports Bink. Unlikely. I doubt mplayer supports Bink, but even if it did, it's not necessarily stable, uniform, or common enough. Though a binary COULD be built and called by the game to play the movies. If it supported Bink, which I doubt.
How do you suggest incorporating a GPL video player into a proprietary game, exactly?
5) offer it as download. Bandwidth costs money.
Offer *what* as a download? You mean ship without video and put a note in the box saying "plz come to nwn.com in 6 months"?
6) have a cheap hack to disable videos - definitely not cool.
That appears to be an extension of 5.
- Chris
Just please read old Slashdot news about NWN client for Linux. All sane people know it won't happen soon. But there is another and another useless raport on news sites.
It was smart marketing to sell more copies of NWN. Thanks to promise of Linux client, authors get a lot of announces on Linux-related sites, and even not-so-Linux-related, because it was just a unusual event: "new game for Linux".
Now please look at news archive. Please read all this CRAP. How many people is working on Linux port? They realized then can't play movies or sounds NOW? So what they did all the time before? When they started work on Linux client? Maybe after first Windows release? Or maybe they still don't know which libraries use for it?
I know it will be probably moderated down, but I don't care. I am sick of all that commercials put on news-sites. When Carmack say "there will be Linux client" - he release it just with Windows and Mac one. And IMHO community will remember who was honest, and who was not.
This is like the DOS days when every vendor had to write their own printer/monitor/sound drivers.
The modern OS should have a standard. DirectX is works great, why not make thinks easy implement DirectX in Linux.
Is there a technical reason not to do so, or is it a philosophical one?
More games should be coming out on Linux, since how to port it is already figured out. Well it may not be a massive number but it should be noticeable number. Then more and more programs should follow since marketing and management will finally figure out that there is a market for Linux. I'll be picking up the Linux Client when its finished and I hope it will work as well as Windows. BTW, why didn't they get Transgaming to port or is there some clause for them to do it?
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
Why in the world would they do that? This isn't a reverse-engineering job. They made the game, so they probably have all of the source data for the movies. Why wouldn't they just recreate the movies in a format that is Linux friendly?
The problem is that MPEG doesn't have the same performance as BINK does. Just making the files MPEG doesn't mean that NWN-Linux will magically have the same video performance as the Windows version.
To all people saying Bioware is making a honest effort with this port and should be supported, please realize they are saying their movie player and sound system don't work six months after their announced release date. If the Linux gaming community wasn't too excited about getting this port to make a balanced analysis, nobody would believe in Bioware's good intentions anymore.
Like some person in The Linux Game Tome usually comments after these announcements, "I voted Never in the poll [about when would NWN Linux Client be available] and I stand by my choice".
...we should let Radgametools know how profitable it would be for them to code for Linux. After all, the alternative is that their products aren't used at all, -or- someone enevitably hacks together an OSS version of Miles and Bink. Surely they don't want that!
Send Radgametools an email and let them know that there's interest in seeing their products on our favorite platform.
support@radgametools.com
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
As much as it may be the company company milking the Linux chance, it may also be lack of knowledge. It is certainly feasable that this company wishes to be in the Linux space, but is having to undergo a training curve. This may be an opportnuity to start a company that contracts out Linux game coders.Or if your are one of the distro companies, then start snatching up Linux game coders and offer them around.Between contracts, they improve the architecture. Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gonna be sending this to bioware:
I appreciate that you're working on a linux port, but geez, how difficult can this be? Especially if the sound/movie player is supposed to be the culprit? I mean I vaguely remember you wanted parallel releases (on one cd) originally. I would've expected you to chose an audio/movie api/format that is compatible with all platforms you intend to release the game on. I mean it is not like the linux port is an afterthought of yours. I am pretty disappointed that sound and movies are holding this thing up. As a compromise, just screw movie support - the cutscenes in the game are really just slideshows anyway and I for one could live without them.
And while we're on the subject of disappointing all the linux gamers out there: Have you at least re-considered releasing the toolset on linux?
bye,
[L]
And now we are seeing another estimate change. Why? Sound and movies. Fair enough, the game should be quality and complete for any platform if we are to spend money on it, but don't you think it would have been at least half-ways intelligent to pick solutions for sound and movies in the game that weren't tied to any particular platform or at least have a solution in mind for Linux that they could have been working on?
The Linux port of this game is vaporware. I used to be really optimistic about it, supportive of BioWare's efforts, patient for its delayed release in the Fall. Now we're told Winter 2002, which actually means Q1 2003 or later. I feel like BioWare was lying outright when they sent out press releases bragging about simultaneous cross-platform development and release of the title. Did they even know what they were doing when they said that, or was it simply a statement made by some marketing drone without bothering to check to see if that was realistic? Whatever the reason, the "we don't have a solution that works for Linux" is garbage. If you didn't have a solution when it was being developed originally, supposedly simultaneously with Windows and Mac, then you should have just STFU about anything other than the platforms you could actually cope with. The Linux community would have been overjoyed to have the game released as a surprise, but instead you've set Linux gamers up for a huge dissapointment, one that is entirely your (BioWare) fault.
A general flame to Marketing weenies: never forget, you have no product to get fat commissions off without engineers to build it. BS empty promises based on a cocain-fueled press release writing frenzy do nothing but hurt the company you work for, your credibility, and the credibility of your industry.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Now, looking at the legal reality, the fact is that the EULA disallows this. It disallows it in most of the games. Why? So that we can tell who actually did something bad. So that we are forming a legal contract via the EULA with one individual who is legally responsible.
It seems to me that the legal reality is that a 14 year old cannot be bound by the terms of a EULA because they are not an adult. Therfore, not having "Family" accounts run by a parent is actually opening them up to legal problems. If a child does something nasty and violates the snot out of the EULA, they have no recourse. If a child does so on a parents account, then they do.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I was going to buy the game anyway, but I know some people who bought the game and still have it in the box, because they are waiting for a Linux client.
Bioware promised a simultaneous release for Linux, Mac, and Windows four years ago. At the time they even said that there was the possibility of a BeOS port as well. Just as a note, this promise was made during the "dot com" bubble. Bioware might have felt that they could have hired more people to work on the Linux and Mac versions at the time.
Up until right before the game was released, they were still promising this. Then, all of a sudden, they announced that only Windows would come out, with Linux and Mac to follow. Recall that at the beginning of the year, Bioware and Interplay had some sort of disagreement... and the game was in danger of not having a publisher. Then Infogames, the only other company with a lisence to D&D, picked it up.
Admittedly, they _did_ deliver on the Linux server fairly quickly. That is a good thing for me, but the client would be nice as well.
There are a few differing opinions on why the Linux client delay has occured.
My personal opinion is that the publisher of the game, Infogames, was holding Bioware to a June release date very strictly (probably so the game would release two weeks before Warcraft III). This explains the extremely short Beta period, as well as the relatively high amount of bugs (compared to previous Bioware releases).
I also believe that Infogames is still pushing Bioware to focus on adding new content to the game and begin work on expansions, rather than focus on getting the Linux client done, and that is why they only seem to have a few people on the Linux client. I personally believe that if Interplay were still the publisher, the game would have likely been pushed back to fall, and the simultaneous client release would have been a reality.
Some people believe that, from the beginning, the Linux client was just a marketing ploy to get more people to buy the game and to get the game advertised on Linux sites. I really question the validity of this accusation. Bioware has a history of making good RPGs, so it isn't as if they had to rely on a cheap marketing tactic to sell the game. Mentioning that this was from the "Makers of Baldur's Gate" is enough for most RPG enthusiasts to buy the game.
The third point of view is that Bioware really is trying their hardest to get the Linux client out, but these few problems are really causing them hell. Personally, I could care less if the movies don't work.
What I believe Bioware ought to do is release a "beta" of the client as it is. No matter how crappy the sound is, I believe that it would probably at least keep Linux folks happy that Bioware is working on it.
What really hurts the Linux client right now, in my eyes, is that Bioware has mentioned NOTHING about porting the two expansions they've announced to Linux.
On the bright side, people say they've gotten NWN to run Wine. I haven't tried it myself, but at this point, it looks like Wine will be the only way to play in Linux for at least a few more months.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
You might remember that besides in box Linux support Bioware was also promising OSX. Apple users are in a much worse situation, since not only has Bioware released "jack" about the Mac client or server's progress awhile back it announced that it would become its own boxed product. WTF? So whereas x86 linux users bought a game they must by an operating system to play, Mac users bought a game they must by 1k worth of computer to play.
As far as the responsible thing Infogrames could have done, they could have released more new pre-launch promo material featuring its new "windows only" status. A demo disc with a textfile, a flysheet with system requirements etc. My girlfriend works at Babbages and reads those very carefully, "internet" and other sources of news have to be very compelling to make her change what she tells customers. Sure this would have been perhaps monsterously expensive, but that is the cost of being an ethical publisher in this situation. Of course being French owned Infogrames decided instead not to take a shower.