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.'"

Comments

Not more time

[Tyreth]

Gar, this is so frustrating! Been waiting for so long for the client. This was an opportunity that the Linux community had to be in at the start to help with the flow of mods.

Still, I must really thank bioware. The fact that BINK and Miles only run on windows will do a great service to Linux. This will draw attention to the fact that some companies (such as Bioware) are remaining committed to bringing the game to Linux. As a consequence, it will draw attention to all those people who think it is acceptable to produce products that run on windows only, or windows and linux. And yes, I am also thinking of all those web designers who think Internet Explorer is the only web browser being used, and everyone should just download it - after all its free.

So even though the difficulty of bringing out the client may be a downside, I think that Bioware's persistance could serve to aid us, along with putting to shame solutions like BINK and Miles.

I have friends waiting for me to get the Linux client. We could play before that, but once I have the client I am much more likely to get involved. Then we can get a campaign started. Until that time, even my windows friends who purchased the game are not doing much more in the meantime.

multiplatform project?

[ville]

It's starting to sound the project wasn't intended to be multiplatform from the getgo. Wouldn't they have chosen other means of playing video and sound or written their own right away?

// ville

Get something out now

[Simon Brooke]

OK, I've already said this on the NWN discussion boards, but I'll say it here as well. There is a trust issue here. I (and I suspect a lot of other people) went out and bought NWN as soon as it was released to support a games company which supported Linux. I've had the game now for many months and I still can't play it on my own machine.

At this stage I don't greatly care whether the movies work or not, and I don't care how bad the sound is. I want the game which I paid for working on my machine. I don't care if it's called a beta. But I want it now. Yes, I'd like it if there was a patch release available by March which had as good sound as the Windows version, but I think waiting the Linux client till March is a long time to ask loyal supporters to wait.

It has to be remembered that this isn't the first time they've put it off...

Who's up to build a BINK player?

[Simon Brooke]

This is a copy of something I've just posted on the NWN site:

Quote: Posted 12/14/02 06:37:02 (GMT) by Kwalish
It looks like our fearless BioDevs have their work cut out for them when it comes to Bink. I mean, they have to either convince Rad Game Tools to port Bink to Linux, which is a possibilty, however that might take too long (if such a qualifier exists at this point in the game ). One option, if it is possible from a legal standpoint, would be to recode all of the video using MPEG and release it with the client download and when it installs that, replace all of the video content then. However this could be a problem in the future for the expansion packs, as the video would have to be recoded in those as well. Another option is to see if a bink-to-whatever conversion program exists for Linux (I highly doubt this) and convert the videos during the install. [ Edited By Kwalish: Saturday, 14 December 06:44AM (GMT) ]

OK, guys, maybe this is somewhere we can do something practical to help.

I am a good general purpose geek, and I expect a lot of the rest of us here are. I've never actually written a CODEC, and while i've reverese engineered file formats before I've never tackled a compressed video stream. However, it can't be impossible.

How many people would be up for setting up a sourceforge project for either an open source BINK player or an open source BINK2mpeg converter (actually both would use most of the same components). This way we could make an actual positive contribution to getting games onto Linux. We probably would not be finished quick enough to make a real difference for NWN - three months is damn tight for such a project - but it might help BioWare and other companies with future cross-platform games.

We've also all got sample BINK files to analyse, and a google search for 'bink file format' found me a useful text from someone (Mike Melanson) who has already started to analyse the format.

So, come on, who's in?