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Neverwinter Nights Update
nyquil superstar writes "Just thought everyone might like to know, there are a whole bunch of updates at Bioware's NWN Linux Client Page. Includes goodies like the timing of future releases and betas, how to install the Linux client and future(!) expansions, and updates on the movies and sound issues. The quick version: sound is in and they will release a Linux client before they integrate a movie player. Oh, and you'll need to download the game's resource data or use a Windows install, the CD is only good for the reg. key and Windows install. Good news though, because it sounds like it's getting close."
Finally! It's getting closer to a great release and a milestone in linux gaming.
;)
Hopefully more companies will follow bioware's example. Give the distributors the windows games, give the community the linux patch
-- Would it be acceptable to just put my name on my sig?
Once gnu/hurd actually supports a graphics card better than 80x25 text mode!
Until Linux has superior speed, drivers and ease of use, it will remain as a server based OS, and not as a Gaming OS.
Seems to me it is the games that are needed to make Linux a gaming OS.
-jfedor
Will this really be viable? There are some serious man-hours spent on this port, is it reasonable to expect this project to be profitable?
I have been playing the NWN client on windows 2000 since last summer. It is stable (as much as nwn can be for it being nwn) and runs great for hours at a time. The win32 server also has stayed up for 12 hours at a time before needing a reboot (this is good for a nwn server).
This might be a big step for linux gameing but it is still not that big of a deal. Anyone who is serious about NWN should just stick to the windows version like the rest of the serious gamers in the world.
*hides from the flaming cows that are about to be shot at him*
But it doesnt have superior drivers! Surely games would be released for Linux and all the gamers start to use Linux for games if it did have. But it doesnt. Not where speed is concerned anyway and thats what counts.
I dont see why he's been modded up apart from some Linux zealot being biased. Its quite right that Windows is better for games and its hardly something that can be discussed.
As a Windows user, I can't wait for the Linux Client to come out for NWN. I want the added people out there, scripting modules, writing content and playing the game. God knows I'm sick of a bunch of little 733T hacker brats on there. Some games are fun, but I've been waiting for the chance to go up against some other people. Hopefully that isn't flameworthy, but if you've played it online, you know what I mean.
This game is the one that will actually get Linux Gaming off the ground. It removes the need for an emulator or middle-run to get it working, and is one of the biggest games in recent memory. If we saw some of the other big guns, like Blizzard and EA doing this, there would be a lot more solid development on the gaming front.
Since Bioware already will have the linux base installed, and the NWN engine is the core of their future RPG games, this looks well for the Linux community. Now if only they would start releasing the stuff out of box like this...
The vast majority of Gamers use Windows because it has better graphics drivers, better hardware support and its easier to install and set games up.
They use Windows because they don't have much choice, not necissarily because of a better driver base. Most Windows drivers are updated more frequently, but that's because of the distribution of the market.
What is true is that DirectX is the API of choice for game makers, but for a reason. The development of higher level graphics processes and Shader development for the OpenGL 2.0 specification has been rather slow, and no where near the specification and performance of DX. But that is changing slowly.
Linux is just easier to use on the graphics front, with display properties tweaking and things like NView and the ATi Control Panel, but given time, you'll see similar functions appear in Linux (if they're not already there).
And the reason is for making conversions? Money. Linux is also a desktop OS, for most of the people that read here, for example. Those people like to play games too (or so I'd assume), and would purchase games they can play. More people playing the game on different OS's, especially for a user-content driven game like Neverwinter Nights is a good thing.
And the speed thing is debateable. The actual Graphics Driver speed that is gained by running Windows can be offset by the efficient memory utilization and processing streamlining of Linux. I'd be willing to bet that the low-end specs for NWN would be a lot more friendly on a Linux Box than a Windows box, if for nothing else other than the ability to strip what's running in the background.
I have not ever played NWN. I was so excited back when I thought the Linux client was going to come shipped in the same package as the Windows and Mac. Fast forward a few years; I was so excited when the Linux client was actually going to come out what with the server out and Windows version out for a while now. Fast foward to present day; I don't really care, I am already sick of the game and I still have not even played it yet.
What's your favorite game among these: DN Forever, MOO3, or NWN for Linux?
Screw false hopes and eager marketing liars. I'd rather play the original side scrolling Duke Nukem; Master of Orion 1 was the best anyways; NWN, well I am already sick of it and maybe I will go back to the old TSR: Poolrad, Curse, etc.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Yah, because a computer has only two uses 1) As a gaming machine (Playing UT2003) 2) As a server machine (Hosting a UT2003 game)
Some things are more important than an animated rat
The Linux client would require you to have a Windows install or download all the games data because the files are in .cab format, there is however a .cab file extractor for linux. Would this work and why doesn't Bioware do somthing similar to the installer. It could be that .cab files were created by microsoft.
The linux cam extractor is at http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php3
cat
Jobs at BioWare
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But it doesnt have superior drivers! Surely games would be released for Linux and all the gamers start to use Linux for games if it did have.
I think it's more an ease of support issue.
Publishers have enough trouble walking people through Windows installs and troubleshooting conflicts with the four supported versions of that OS (98/ME/2k/XP).
Can you imagine the hassle of - over the phone or email - trying to figure out what was causing the problem when your customer could be using any Linux distribution, with any number of possible configurations? "Sorry sir, it looks like you didn't enable a function the game requires in the kernel. You're going to need to recompile it."
When I want to play a game, it's *for fun*. I don't want to have to futz around with config files and length install processes. Windows is bad enough WRT this, and the vast majority of customers are just not technically-inclined enough for the added complexity of Linux.
Personally I'm finding I prefer consoles more and more every day, other than the ability to take high-res screenshots.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I can only say that if the Linux users are missing the movies until they get that part included, they aren't missing much. I didn't find the movies very necessary for the storyline. They pretty much only tell what happens as a consequence of the previous Chapter you completed, which isn't hard to figure out by yourself. Also, the movies consists of still pictures that fade in/out, are zoomed into, etc. You aren't exactly missing any movies of "Blizzard quality". This was kind of an anticlimax to me since the *intro* movie is decent, but the inter-chapter movies are of a very different quality. :-/
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It doesn't have superior drivers because there aren't the games to use it with. The driver makers can't fix graphical problems because they don't occur, since there aren't the games to produce them. I also don't know about following Bioware's example because in December they didn't even know that there was a port of Blink and Miles to Linux. Id seems to know what their doing when it comes to porting. I'm sure that there are many gamers that are going to us Linux but are waiting for Doom III, and knowing Id there will be a Linux version.
It really seems like Bioware is 'forest-gumping' their way through this project.
I'm not a programmer, but this seems like such an easy task. They have the engine, the art, and the interfaces. The engine should be good to go. The movies should be re-encoded into another format that plays natively in Windows and Linux. The interface should use wrappers.
Hell, even the wankers using WineX have been running NWN for a while.
This should be a lesson for future projects. Don't try and bolt on functionality that was never intended. Either do it right (cross platform) from the start, or not at all.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
"You will have to purchase a copy of the game to get a valid Neverwinter Nights CD-Key. Of course, with this purchase you also get a lovely Neverwinter Nights mapkin, a spiral-bound game manual, and three plastic-coated aluminum-reinforced W1nd0z3 brand coasters." Never expected that from the bioware guys =] but a nice touch all the same
Linux isn't exactly an OS built for games, otherwise there would be a lot more titles available.
I think you're jumping to the wrong conclusion there. Linux has a smaller market share then Windows, so when a game company has $X in resources and that will only cover development for one platform, the often focus on the one with the biggest potential for sales - Windows simply because there are more people with it.
Linux is gaining share, and I'm starting to see a shelf in my local computer store for Linux games. People start buying more of them, it will become more profitable to make them, and more will come out.
It's market factors, not any inherent limitation in the OS.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
im a gamer and main reason i dont use linux is the lack of games nothing to do with hardware soon as alot of companies start making linux versions of there games ill switch from windows without a second thought
A battle.net hosted d2 world (even with the occasional cheating bugs, which I don't persue at least), is far more challenging. Running a hardcore character that you have had for months and gone through hell with (puns intended) just has far more of a rush and satisfaction (for me at least). If my character dies, it's permanent, and I've suffered a real loss. Death has meaning, and death sucks. It's great!
That must be it, because why else do I waste so much time on an aging game, running the same quests and acts over and over and over again... I don't get it personally, and I guess neither did those two Asians that dropped dead after playing D2 non-stop for more than a day.
(At least I understand my condition well enough to stay away from worlds where I have to pay to play, like Evercrack. If battle.net charged, that would finally cure me....)
This is the kind of in-depth update we have been waiting for. Bioware I think is learning that detailed information into the development process is actually appealing to the Linux community, whereas for windows users it's typically been vague like alpha, beta, almost gold, etc.
It's been interesting that they have been watching the Linux threads a bit, and our input has been helping. Eg, when they were talking about mouse issues, we informed them that it is up to the distribution/xfree configuration to set up a mouse properly, and they could safely ignore that within NWN.
I hope from here that Bioware development for Linux will grow to work more hand in hand with the willing and eager Linux community, rather than the little information they previously gave. A progression from silence to this latest release has been clear. Perhaps if they decide to port the toolset too they will be even more open and we'll be able to help them quicker!
Either way, I can't wait to play this game under Linux.
And for those who don't know - they previously anounced that Bink (movies) and Miles (sound) were available for Linux when they thought they weren't. They later discovered there was no Bink for Linux, and that is why movies don't work.
online the game is more about having patience creating a character again and again on different servers. reconnecting or rebooting when the server/client crashes - and finally quitting and playing something of the quality of quake, diablo or warcraft :P
Superior drivers?
How about the fact that NVidia's drivers for Linux are at least on a par with the Windows ones? They're slightly faster in some benchmarks, slghtly slower in others - over all, pretty much the same.
Besides, superior drivers or not, what we have with Linux is a Catch-22 situation. No-one will use it because their favourite games and apps aren't being released for it. On the other hand, no-one will write such things for it because no-one is using it.(Yes, I'm ignoring questions about perceived ease of installation and use, etc)
If by "Windows is better for games" you mean "there are more games available for Windows", then yes, that's true. If you mean that Windows has a broader range of supported hardware as far as games is concerned, then yes, that's true. If you mean that Linux is fundamentally too slow, or it's too hard to install games under Linux, then all I can say is that you've never played UT, Q3, etc on a machine with an NVidia card and drivers installed. Easy to install, and just as fast (qualitatively) as the Windows versions.
Fundamentally, the reason that (commercial) games aren't released for Linux is three-fold: lack of userbase, lack of good hardware support, fragmentation of distributions. These reasons are all very much inter-related.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You seem to be under the false belief that technology is the deciding factor when game developers select a platform. It is not. The developer will go where it can reach the largest potential market so that they can profit from thier labors. That is why most games are still developed for Windows. Windows clearly has the larger market share among gamers' OSes, and so it offers the greatest potential profit.
The only way this can change for Linux is to get Linux onto more gamers' PCs. How to do that? You have to force them to install it. You have to offer them games that they really want to play, but they have to be Linux only titles. ( Or at least, released first for Linux. )
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
It took them how long? How much deceit did we go through? (Come on, you don't expect me to believe that Miles didn't tell Bioware they had a linux version, and then told an angry mob that they did have one) This entire Neverwinternights Linux Fairytale boils down to one thing, YOU HAVE BEEN DECEIVED BY A CLEVER MARKETING STRATEGY, and now Bioware is afraid of the pending "I want my money back"-claims.
IMHO, Bioware never intended a linux client to exist from the start. And they're making one now, cursing every linux geek that bought the game. And I think it'll be a LONG while before Bioware ever makes a linux game again.
Face it, they made choices in design that were never intended for multiplatform development: Miles, Bink,...
Personally I regret buying the game. It sucked compared to the other AD&D based games, and the amount of tinkering needed around the bad design (RecomputeStaticLighting() ring a bell?) to get a moderatly realistic campaign set up... Grmpf... And let's not mention the fact that the toolkit won't be ported. whoops, mentioned it
Yes, you can say I'm spiteful, and you can say I'm bitter. Go ahead. It won't change the facts.
I'm a little disappointed but it will be nice to finally be able to play the game.
Yes, but if you never ask for games on non windows platforms can this trend ever cease?
Seriously think long term.
Do games require a window manager/desktop environment to run on?
I always thought games would be run stand-alone on an X-server.
Has anybody run a game like this, or do they require a wm?
errera hunamum ets
too little, too late
id say, directx is one of the bigger problems :)
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Bioware came out of the closet to say:
You will have to purchase a copy of the game to get a valid Neverwinter Nights CD-Key. Of course, with this purchase you also get a lovely Neverwinter Nights mapkin, a spiral-bound game manual, and three plastic-coated aluminum-reinforced W1nd0z3 brand coasters.
Ok, I giggled.
Oh, and you'll need to download the game's resource data or use a Windows install, the CD is only good for the reg. key
Well the reg key is on the book, so if that's the only reason to buy it then Bioware is about to flop on this. This just sounds to a regular person like you have to d/l about two disks worth of stuff-if you only use linux, or just do a mass amount of file moving from one partition to the other. Plus some extra little tweaks. This sounds very messy and poorly thought out. At least UT2k3 was simple, as was quake3, RtCW, and I am sure Doom III will be easy too. So what in the heck was the set back? Poor management that just thought at the last moment that it would be "kewl" to make it for the top three OS's out there? I bought the game and run it on Windows, if I have to go through a bunch of install crap to get it running under Linux, then I'
ll just keep it on windows. Don't give me that crap that I'm not supporting Linux game noise. I do support it but if I have to copy this, tweak that, and download this; then I would rather keep playing the version I have on Windows that is already updated, besides I can use the tools set-unlike Linux where you have to tweak wine or winex a few twists to get it running.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
It was the biggest flop in 5 years. So much buildup, so much hype, and so dull. It was just as bad as Black and White, and that game recieved half the attention that NWN did before release.
They really ought to be able to find programs which extract the data off the CDs. I don't know what the format is, but there's a good chance it's installshield or some such. i5comp and i6comp, which are installshield extractors, come with source and run under wine. hwun would do the same for WISE, and of course there's cabextract for the Microsoft .cab formats.
I also think that if they're going to distribute a version that doesn't yet have Bink working (movie player), they ought to call it a beta, not a release version.
You're asking me to pay $$ for win2000 so I can play a winblows version of a game that runs natively under Linux?! Since I don't "own" any windoze OS I would pay how much for a brand new operating system?!? Don't you have a bridge to go hide under?
*Laughs as the flaming cow smashes troll into the ground.*
I just bought a brand new Radeon 9700 Pro for my brand new PC. Eventually it will dual boot WinXP/Linux, but I'm waiting for the next version of a particular distro, so for the immediate future it's XP only.
You know what? ATI's Windows drivers still appear to suck. Contrary to what I'd read before buying, their new Catalyst 3 drivers do not seem to be completely stable with DirectX 9 (their raison d'etre). I got copies of both Neverwinter Nights and Black and White for Christmas, both games several of my friends have enjoyed playing and things I was looking forward to. Right now I (and a lot of other people with ATI cards, apparently) can't play NWN for more than five minutes without it taking out my whole PC.
If Linux has ATI drivers that work at all with the advanced features on the graphics cards, it's going to be better than Windows.
(I put together the PC myself, BTW, from nothing but well-regarded and highly recommended kit. The only other drivers I've installed apart from the ATI ones and DirectX 9 are those supplied with the mobo to handle the on-board kit. I'm thus reasonably confident that it really is the combination of Catalyst drivers and DirectX that accounts for the lack of stability.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
For multiplayer games like this, I like to play along with my gaming friends. They all bought NWN when it came out, played the hell out of it, and now they don't play it so often. So if I buy it now, I'm playing alone.
Even though the game looks promising, I'll give it a miss.
Yes, it officially marks how bad things are for Linux gaming. Game developers continue release second rate and late products for Linux when they bother to release anything at all. I predict that all this work for the Linux client will have been a waste because those who really wanted the game already got it for Windows.
What would be a good milestone, and something that I have yet to see is a really good game being released to Linux first (or only for Linux). Don't get me wrong, there are some good games for Linux, but nothing that has Windows gamers contemplating installing RedHat just so they can play those games. That's what I'd like to see, but it'll have to be an independent developer that does this because none of the major vendors are going to take the chance on it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
1) NWN WAS cross platform from the beginning. I'm not sure where it got hung up, but most of the linux code was in there from the start. Same with the Mac code.
2) The port was not done by some intern. Not only do we not hire interns at Bioware, but the guy doing it is quite a competent programmer. Unfortunately, he was also the victim of having a lot on his plate from being such a good programmer.
3) Only the toolset was sent to an outside company to port it. Mac development is otherwise done in house. It's too bad about the toolset. It really is quite good.
4) I'm sure the client will work fine when we release it. I don't think that Bioware is noticed for our shoddy products. This is a big game. We had to delay it a bunch when we released the windows version. Quality takes time.
I'm not really in the habit of defending the company I work for from Anonymous Trol^H^H^H^HCowards, but you really don't know what you're talking about.
At that time, all the features promised by DirectPlay, such as master host failover, reliable datagrams, etc. simply were missing or did not work in catastrophic ways (like crashing Windows 98 hard, for example.) At the end of the day, one ended up writing all the code one would for a sockets implementation, but with the added feature of not being able to communicate with any non-Windows machine.
DirectPlay then was a broken 'solution' in search of a problem. Sadly many developers (including ourselves at the time!) were suckered in, and used it regardless.
Given that NWN was supposed to be cross-platform, I can only presume that they did not use DirectPlay for their networking. Even if it were not meant to be cross-platform, it probably would have been a good idea to steer clear of DirectPlay.
Would unfortunately go out of business before getting to start on the Windows port of their game. While there are a large number of Linux users out there, there simply isn't the same number of Linux gamers as there are Windows Gamers.
Game support under Linux is unfortunately sub-par. From the feel of games like Quake III to the lateness of games arriving, like NWN. It isn't always the developers fault. There just aren't all that many great and very powerful game development API kits available on Linux that are as robust as the ones available on Windows.
Part of that is the lackluster Linux gaming community. If the Linux Gaming Community took it upon itself to buy the Linux versions of games released by Loki, instead of whining about the games Loki released, or simply whining about how no publishers are releasing Linux games. Well, Loki would probably still be in business (Even with the bad book-keeping I had read something about...) and perhaps a few more companies would be out there supporting Linux games and producing Linux games.
If some company announced that they were releasing a game for Linux, even if it isn't something I generally like to play, I would buy it. Simply because I wish to see Linux move into the home entertainment realm, instead of conceding that segment of computing to Microsoft.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The game completely sucks anyway. I played and finished it on Windows and had no desire to go any further. The interface is clumsy, you only control one person, the graphics are choppy, and it just isn't very fun.
Then imagine a bunch of halfwits trying to make custom levels for it, and you get a slew of buggy unfun modules.
It was a nice try, but they could have done so much better.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
That's kinda sucky.. The main reason I'd want to get this is so me and my far flung rpg buddies could play custom campaigns, and now I won't get to build any..
Oh well...
The problem is that until there are good Linux games, Linux users aren't going to take the platform seriously. Until the Linux users take the platform seriously, there will be no developers working on games for it.
Generally speaking people who have Linux also have a windows computer around. The deeper a person is into gaming the greater the chance that they'll have Windows as at least a dual-boot option. I know very few people who run Linux exclusively and none of them are heavy gamers.
I've begun to think that the only thing that has the potential to bring the Linux platform into a better gaming position is a community effort to produce something truly unique for Linux. Independent developers, as you point out, cannot afford such a plan. Big developers aren't willing to take the risk. So in the end it may just need to be a collective of interested geeks hacking away. Of course that's how Linux came to be what it is, so I suppose that'd be an appropriate way for it to become a gaming platform.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Well, so much for opensource... where is the source?? Just a fucken binary... with shell scripting.. blah.. boring.. Use the source LUKE.... http://pied.com:5121 ZzZZz
Though a little unpopular with the politial types, winex really works. I'm running SuSE Linux and currently have the following (windows) games installed:
- Diablo II
- Warcraft II
- Starcraft
- Deus Ex
- Icewind Dale
Of course, that's not counting native Linux games like UT, Quake 3, Tribes 2, Ultima 7, Heretic II..It may take a little more tweaking and technical know how to be a Linux gamer, but it comes with the territory.
I'll believe it when I can download it.
This is a troll, or at least someone who has not played the game enough to give it a fair shake.
The "single player" campaign of NWN is, admittedly, not as good as the Baldur's Gate games. However, you can have TONS of fun with this game and a bunch of friends playing some custom modules. The reason you only get to control one character is because this is designed to be a multiplayer game (even the "single player campaign" is better as a co-op with others).
The amount of quality fan-made material for NWN is actually quite staggering. Yes, most of the fan-made modules aren't really that great... but there are quite a few fan made modules that are BETTER than the "official campaign."
Plus the fact that Bioware, from the start, has been very helpful to those who want to make their own character models, tilesets, music, and so forth makes things great for custom content builders.
Things have been slower than everyone would have liked for the Linux client. However, NWN is an awesome game that is well worth playing if you're into D&D and similar RPGs.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It's not just nVidia. My PowerVR Kyro 2 drivers are noticably faster under Linux. Framerates are smooth and graphics render fast. Granted, the games that I've been able to compare have all been OpenGL games. The exception is UT2003, which got a really sucky OpenGL engine on all platforms. That game was built around Direct3D. I'm concerned that the same thing will be a problem with NWN. Many users could find it unplayable becuase the OpenGL code could be little more than a D3D wrapper, and a half-assed one at that.
I'm a Linux user first, gamer second. I love the things I can do/work on/hack in Linux. I also love to play games once in a while. I can't imagine blowing $200 on a Windows license and going through the hassle of dual-booting to play the occasional game. For people like me, a very high quality high-end game like NWN being ported to Linux is a godsend.
Yep, it's late. Yep, it doesn't have a toolset. Yep, I'm gonna be as happy as a pig in sh*t when I buy it, bring it home, and fire it up under Linux. Late or not, I'm thrilled Bioware made the promise to port it to an OS that most major game companies never take a second glance at, and stuck to that promise even after being derided for it being late. Thanks, Bioware!
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
I dont see why he's been modded up apart from some Linux zealot being biased.
You must be new here.
There are server-vault only servers, so you can't give yourself unlimited XP, gold, weapons, or anything else. If you have enough self-control to stay on those servers then that would seem to fit your requirements.
Pirates rejoice! The game wont require the cds! Just a key and long download of resources!
*cancles dev-nwncd2.bin*
I thought that NWN was an openGL based game. Box says openGL 1.2 compliant video card required. Recommends the gf2.
and Linux Emulation
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I checked up and your completely right, i found this:
Derek French: Line Producer
multiplayer: BGx used DirectPlay and was at the mercy of that layer for multiplayer.
NWN uses a completly new/custom multiplayer layer (since it has to run across 4 platforms).
on neverwinter vault, so guess I was to quick on the directplay thing. The fact that the game required DirectX8.1 to run, AND most games today seem(I'd better be carefull now =) to use DirectPlay just made me think it used directplay.
But DirectX talk wasnt at all the point of my post, my point was simply that the people of bioware probertly is'nt "forrest gumps" as the comment i replied to suggested. And there was some logical explaination to why the linux client is delayed and directplay or not, im not willing to belive that the entire engine is ready to run on linux without any porting as the original post also suggested.
At least they're giving us Linux users something. Most companies don't even have us on the radar. I own all but 1 game Loki ported, and I'll buy more but only if more are written.
If all you're going to do is bitch about 'Oh This Game Sucks' then go play your windows games. Those of us who are happy to have this attention (admittedly, it's not that much) will still buy a version of almost any commercial game that's aimed at us just because we believe in what we run and why we run it and believe that it deserves the attention of even the most unfree of software companies. Even if they work against us. All the attention does is validate those of us who believe we have something that can't be ignored.
You are all fartheads.
There is a fork of the official WineHQ wine that is trying to support NWN though I hear. It's called nwwine.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
and this gets modded down due to 'offtopic'? oh the irony...
Neverwinter Nights held my interest for about three weeks, as opposed to BG I/II/TOB and IWD, etc.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) all of the work that went into the 3rd edition rules and the graphics engine, the gameplay is far to shallow to be interesting. There was too much attention to eye candy and no attention to the storyline.
I'll grant you that the premise of this particular piece of software was to allow the user community to write and distribute modules, but as of the last time I checked (again, several months ago) there weren't any really great campaigns out there, just a few simple modules that people threw together.
All in all, I was not impressed.
That's kindof funny, as part of the reason I stopped playing hardcore was because of all the twinks running around PK'ing with their duped items.
I really did enjoy playing with perma-death (and I also enjoyed those few text muds which had that feature), and as you say, it's a great feeling of accomplishment to have a powerful character whom you've guided up through levels over days or weeks of play.
It sucks when you manage to survive playing against some of the nastiest things in the game through your own skill, and then some joker nails you with the hydra trick because you had a moment of weakness and were nice enough to open a portal when they asked.
When I play now, it's only to see if any interesting things drop (the maps aren't random enough to be interesting), or to socialize with others I know who also play.
NWN has FAR more potential, provided the community support remains strong. What I hope Bioware realizes is that the strength of the game is not in the client, but in the toolset. Their story won't sell it, nor will a linux client. What will keep this thing making money for years to come is the flexibility of the toolset. Allowing the users to create their own stories, and doing so with as little fuss as possible will keep things fresh.
And yes, you can make perma-death in NWN too with the right scripting. I really hope they consider porting the toolset to linux, and perhaps (if nobody has done it yet) making a small GTK wrapper for the server as well. *I* like the command line, but many people would rather have a poity-click way to poke at things.
A mathematician, a doctor, and an engineer are walking on the beach and
observe a team of lifeguards pumping the stomach of a drowned woman. As
they watch, water, sand, snails and such come out of the pump.
The doctor watches for a while and says: "Keep pumping, men, you may
yet save her!!"
The mathematician does some calculations and says: "According to my
understanding of the size of that pump, you have already pumped more water
from her body than could be contained in a cylinder 4 feet in diameter and
6 feet high."
The engineer says: "I think she's sitting in a puddle."
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