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How To install Neverwinter Nights on Linux
Joe Barr writes " As soon as I saw the news that BioWare released a beta of a Linux client for its popular and successful Neverwinter Nights title, I downloaded the beta (registration required) and went shopping for the prerequisite retail Windows version of the game. Before I proceed, let me offer this brief warning: Neverwinter Nights is the mother of all timesinks. Do not follow my path unless you have nothing important you want to get done for the next week or so."
Finally... Not a post regarding the new RFC and IP stuff. Thank god 4/1 is over! (And this could be 1st post, i doubt it though)
Insert Sig Here
I'm scared to read the article. Is April fool's over yet?
seriously
how far are you willing to go to avoid "big bad M$"?
Haha. Like the Never Winter Nights Linux client will ever come out.
What's next? How to install Duke Nukem Forever on Linux?
You're kidding right? You're posting to slashdot claiming that some game is the mother of all timesinks? Hah!
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
A quick check of the NWN modules section on Bioware's site shows over 2000 player created ones. Carry on then. I don't anticipate I will be seeing you around here much from now on. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I believed "President Bush's War on Iraq is incredible hoax culminating on April 1st with a Soldier's Ball open to Americans and Iraqis in Baghdad hosted at the Jewish Community Center" before this one.
------
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --George W. Bush, in Jan. 2000
I'm trying to fight the impulse but suspect I'll be one of them very soon...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you think NWN is a huge timesink, then you've obviously never played the original Baldur's Gate. We're talking about a magnitude scale of at least 4 here.
At the end of Baldur's Gate, after having thuroughly explored every nook and cranny of the world, I'd accumilated 212 game days of play. That's approximately 2 hours per game day: 424 hours. (If I recall the conversion properly.) That's 17 and 2/3rd days, straight. Now, consider your average person sleeps 8 hours a night, it equals roughly 26.5 days of gameplay, not taking into account things like bathing, eating, and work.
And that statistic doesn't even begin to take into account the many hours spent saving, loading, and replaying sections of the game that are all but impossible to perform well. I'd say that, realistically, you can easily double or triple my figures.
In contrast, it took me less than a week to beat NWN while going about school, sleeping, eating, and other various activities.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Cool! Now I don't have to pay Microsoft $300! Where do I sign up?!
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
isn't this kind of stupid to post instructions for how to install a game on /.? aren't we supposed to be nerds capable of such?
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
The reason I speak out against these kinds of public servers is that, first and foremost, you'll be playing against the biggest most idiotic cheaters ever. That and nine times out of ten it's just the servers admin fucking around and killing everyone because he's made his character into a dragon. So play with your buddies, you'll have a more enjoyable experience and it's easier to track a cheater down and punch him in the face.
Just my 2 gp.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Hmmm... Linux, D&D, can it be any nerdier?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Installed flawlessly and took me about 15-20 minutes to copy stuff around. I've already logged countless hours playing my dwarf and monk....
I wonder how hard it would be to re-write their game editor in qt..
Thanks Bioware! My rebooting time has been drastically reduced.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Hmmm... Linux, D&D, can it be any nerdier?
/., right?
You're new to
Dog slow in 16bit mode and simply prints "Error" in 24bit mode.
My best guess is that I need NVidia's drivers, but that probably won't be an option anytime soon on my 2.5 kernel.
Aribeth's 'jiggly bits'. Wheeeeeeeeeee!
Unfortunately this had to be posted today of all days...
:) and the game is a blast. It's also good to see that news of the installer is getting out, as there are many people who don't know about it.
Anyways, the Linux Client really exists (you can even check the packets coming from Bioware, the 'evil bit' is set to 0!
-Colin
As the article fails miserably to do that...
/mnt /mnt/cdrecorder /mnt/cdrom /mnt/dvd /media/cdrecorder /media/cdrom /media/dvd
/path/to/cdrom/mountpoint with where your cdrom gets mounted.
/tmp during installation. /tmp, change your temp directory to somewhere where you have more than 1GB free.
Where to download the Linux NWN instaler:
Here or here or here.
MD5SUM for the files: b72d9ec2b9c43e7e3cd39bec22afbe7c
You will need to download these extra file to play in your language:
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Unzip into your nwn directory and move the files to their correct case. ie.
mv dialog.TLK dialog.tlk
mv dialogF.TLK dialogf.tlk
Notes:
This installs the 1.29 English version by default. See above to play in your language.
The beta2 binaries are included.
CDROM Mount Point
If your cdrom mount point is not listed below, you will have to set an environment variable first.
These are the mount points:
If your mount point is not listed here, before you run the installer, from a shell, type export SETUP_CDROM=/path/to/cdrom/mountpoint.
Replace
Temp Directory
This installer uses close to 1GB of space in
If you have limited space in
eg. from a shell, type export TMPDIR=/home//
If any of these apply to you, do them otherwise Neverwinter Nights will not install.
If any of these do not apply to you, then you can just run the installer.
*just in case you were wondering, portage already has an ebuild for NWN server, for all those people getting their nwn running in lin
Try minesweeper.
"I almost got it last time. It was down to one or the other!"
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Please don't lump the many *fantastic* public servers into the steaming heap of dog feces that are the local vault servers.
Local vault == Bad
Server vault == Good
If you really want to waste some time, hop on to Richterm's Retreat sometime. I played the single player NWN campaign for about 7 days, RR for about 7 months...
.rpm, .deb, and .ebuild (gentoo) are AFAIK all script-based, or at least have scripting capabilities, so there's no such thing as an "application that can't be packaged". If the app couldn't be packaged, then you couldn't install it by hand, either. (Debian even supports asking the user for input as part of the install process.) .rpm and .deb, by convention more then anything else, are supposed to be binary-only packages. There's nothing technically stopping them from compiling source code (except perhaps that you aren't supposed to need a compiler on such systems).
.rpm and .deb, if not essentially impossible.
Ebuilds, on the other hand, embrace compiling source to the near exclusion of all else, so for those packages that can't be wrapped into a nice binary that will work for everyone, an ebuild can still be created. In fact it is common practice to make such wrappers, and ebuilds for other uncommon situations as well.
For instance, Sun no longer allows automatic downloads of its Java distribution, so Gentoo has an ebuild that asks you to download the Sun-provided tarball and put it in a particular place, then proceeds to open the tarball and put it in the correct place, also allowing you to have full packaging system support for uninstalling it. This is harder to do with
Ebuilds are a superset of binary packages, such that they can package anything you could install by hand, simply because they are a higher level. (This is where the sandbox support comes in real handy, since you don't have to specify what files were installed and what files to uninstall; the sandbox picks it up automatically and I expect all packaging systems to pick that up eventually.) Of course, there's a price to pay for that in compile time, since virtually by definition it's impossible to have this flexibility and still distribute binaries*, so it's not like it's a absolutely superior method in all cases. Tradeoffs just like anything else.
*: People keep talking about having a "package repository" for Gentoo which would function as a giant multi-person cache of Gentoo compiled packages, which you could then grab instead of compiling. Nobody AFAIK has made any progress beyond suggesting it, because even with just the obvious configurations (the four or five main processor types, the three or four good optimization settings from conservative to ultra-aggresive, the three or four obvious USE settings from conservative to everything) mulitplied by 10 or 20 gigabytes for a pure install means that nobody can afford to host it, and people would still find it too limiting.
It's not just cuz everyone's an MS hater. Personally, I don't really mind MS, with the exception that it's a pain in the ass to get infected with Code Red, Nimda, etc etc.
:)
I run Linux on my laptop and Windows at home. Why? Because it's different, it's interesting, mainly. And because I have a higher control over my system and as a Computer Scientist, I can actually see some of the things we talk about in those stupid classes in action. As I watch the kernel compile, I see mutex functions and remember the operating system course I took 2 years ago. I see gcc compile and I remember that class I took on assembler.
It's also kind of neat to have a fully customizable desktop, with weather conditions and wireless network link quality displayed in the 'panel'. Litestep with Windows used to be neat for this kind of thing, but for me, it never quite seemed as stable as explorer was.
Also, what happens when you've used Windows for 10 years straight and you get a job at some company that uses some form of Linux? I'd think it'd be nice to be able to sit down and get to work without having to complain to IT you don't know how to use this non-Windows crap.
So geez, get a grip. We're not all MS-avoiders.
Let non humans be paladins, and they crumble at the first temptation. Stupid traitor Aribeth... ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mine sweeper tourmants where big a a certian bank I used to work at. .ini files. then I created my own minsweepr, it had only 2 buttons. I called it the "Cut to the chase" minesweeper.
IT was pretty funny, every time a new record was set, I maged to beat it by 1 second. hehe, they eventually wised up to the
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All that time and energy wasted getting it to run on Linux. Stick to the mainstream.
Yes, play a Monty Python module.
"The palandrome for Bolton is notlob"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
[BEGIN RANT]
Seriously...the amount of people on this board who bash MS...it gets annoying. Yes, there are things you can do with Linux & not with Windows. Yes, Bill Gates is filthy rich and I'd love to have his money and I'm jealous as hell.
But...fuck...just trashing on MS 'cause "everybody else is doing it" is...I'm not sure what. Stupid is the only word I've got.
[END RANT]
The single player campaign in NWN is just the beginning. There are hundreds of servers to play on, thousands of modules to download, and a full-featured toolset to create your own game if you want.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
touting an impressive "BSD is dying!" campaign?
/. baddie)...
Set in Soviet Luskan, where DRAGON slay YOU!
You must rescue Natalie Portman* from the clutches of the evil (Bill Gates/RIAA/MPAA/other
*Actually, I prefer Natasha Stillwell as far as geek girls go.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
after a few little problems with install nwn on linux i can confirm that bioware has made a great port for a great game, some tip for nb:g zm l?topic =204654&forum=72
of course enable agpgart kernel module, dri and glx for xfree86 server
if you have a ati card you should try this fix:
http://mschoder.bei.t-online.de/nwnati.tar.
otherwise the nwn executable may not work.
from: http://www.linuxgames.com/
A mysterious man with a hexeditor and a dream posted to the NWN forums saying that he has made an unofficial patch which fixes some of the problems ATI users have been experiencing with the game.
the thread is here:
http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.ht
good playin'
kain kuht.it wizard
Hey man, I even started my post out with "I've got nothing against MS and run it on my desktop."
:)
Why you bitching at me?
It is more important to me not fund an arguably evil monopoly, pay idioticly high prices, get locked into licensing schemes, be subject to a myriad of viruses and security issues, and be unable to have full control over my system.
I purchased this copy of Redhat 8.0 for $24 after my corporate discount. With it I recieved applications for IM'n, word processing, web browsing, web development, application testing (for free), database development and testing (for free), image and video manipulation - and for a little extra a year I can play my games with WineX. The alternative: $140-$200 for an OS that would have demanded of me more powerful hardware, anti-virus software, personal firewall software, and the need to purchase my basic office applications, image manipulation tools, web development tools, and database software.
I choose intellectual integrity and savings in excess of $2000 over the ability to play the newest games.
I watch NT go to blue, and it reminds me of that time the dog threw up in the front seat of my Rambler.
Watching Linux boot makes me think of that time my girlfriend slowly....uuummmneeever mind.
What, like this one? Very good mod, I hope he comes out with part two soon.
To get full marks one must link to it:
4 60 29457628.shtml
http://nwvault.ign.com/features/reviews/data/10
StarTux
did you see this screenshot of the game,
:-)
they have stolen those hands and coming out of the wall from zelda 1 on the nes
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
I simply get more done under linux; Windows is for playing games (for me).
I haven't tried loading a Linux saved game under Windows. Anyone know if this works? (The reverse does).
I wonder how this works under Lindows? /. article to neccessitate play, Linux will gain the foothold it needs with the commons. I'm sure PC cafe's would love it if they could run StarCraft and Counter-strike just fine on a Redhat or Mandrake distribution for a LOW LOW fee.
As soon as installation can be snagless without needing a
It's called WineX made by Transmeta I believe or transgaming not sure which.
:)
Google it
Should half your Linux boot up time.
One minute I was planning a Y2K party, my friend handed me an EQ CD, and the next thing I knew there was a war with Iraq. It took me half a minute to figure out that I slipped forward instead of back in time!
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
...were added to distract you from her absolutely terrible voice acting. Apart from a couple of voices (ex., Linu), the acting in NwN is pretty bad (with Arwen at the bottom of the list). And, following Bioware tradition, they make you listen to the same lines over and over and over again. If I hear Tomi say "Aww, I can pick that open easy!" again, I'll grab a baseball bat +5 and pay Bioware a visit. How hard would it be to have 5 or 6 versions of each line?
BTW, if you don't have the game and are looking for a real RPG (à là Ultima 7), this is not it. NwN is a lot more like Diablo than like Ultima. There's no food, dialogs and "quests" are very simplistic, NPCs just stand in the same place day and night (they don't have jobs, don't go to the pub, etc., like in U7), and the scenery is very repetitive. The editor doesn't really help there, either, you are limited to existing "tiles", and there's no easy way to create custom architecture or objects. Some monsters are nice, and combat can be fun, but this is not a very intellectual game (at least not the default campaign).
RMN
~~~
"We killed a lot of people.... We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?" [In one incident], he recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. "I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."
I thought this was a troll too, but it's real. Check it out:
NY Times link
How did this make it to the main page? Seriously, the article just says to download the installer and run it. This is news how? Anyway, everyone knows that real linux geeks only play nethack anyway. Beware the ASCII!!!
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All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Would it be possible for me to install yellow dog linux or linux PPC onto a partition on my G4, and boot to that partition, buy NWN for windows, and then install the linux client on my powerPC? Or would the client only work for linux running on x86 systems? If it would work, it is a very tempting reason to install linux, since I have drooled over this game since it came out for windows. I apologize if my question is stupid and this is clearly technically impossible, as I have a feeling it might be, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
This guy obviously has never played EverQuest before.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
You can get the beta right here. Looks real enough.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Umm dude you get the award for "Nerd of the year". The guy was talking about something else going up and you replied as if he had a technical problem. Not only that but someone else modded you insightful; it's times like these that I fear for the future breeding of the human race :)
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
I didn't have a single problem installing NWN. Yes, the 'official' way to install it is using a separate windows installation. But the day after NWN for linux was released, a linux installer was posted for the latest NWN version that didn't need the windows installation.
Im a proud user of NWN, and I truly find that posting an article such as this is way to spread FUD, which clearly Bioware doesn't need nor deserve.
Kudos to Bioware, and thanks for taking the linux gaming community seriously!!!
Santiago
I downloaded the Linux client beta (all 3 of them so far) and they just installed and worked. No problem.
:)
Granted, there's no installer (yet - actually - there is a port of the Loki installer available - look in the fora) but if you're comfortable with your Linux PC and know how to create, copy and change permissions on directories, it's pretty painless. Runs like a top. Better framerate too
JB
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Nevertheless, it's great to see a native Linux version of NWN in the works. From what I've seen, running the Windows version in Linux under Wine is not exactly the best gaming experience.
Hopefully BioWare can work some magic and allow people of either platform (Windows or Linux) to play multiplayer together.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
I use 10% of the applications 90% of the time. One of these 10% just happens to work a lot better with optimizations - that being Mozilla/Galeon/Pheonix (all about the same improvement).
Prelinking has also done wonders for me when using the massive applications. This is a binary feature, but it's one that is implemented quite well in Gentoo thanks to the fact that the developers are optimization nuts.
Optimization makes a big difference on really big, really slow applications, though not much on smaller ones. Not surprisingly, these are the apps that are talked about the most frequently in Gentoo chat channels and the forums with regard to optimization.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Could someone please reply with *actual* hardware requirements? I have a somewhat aging AMD Duron 800 machine with 384MiB of RAM and a Matrox G450 video card in my Linux box.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The day I have to change the tyres, frame and engine on my Honda in order to use a different brand of spark plug I'll start complaining. Until then my bike and car are very satisfactory thanks.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
I don't tend to keep up with the latest windows driver releases because 99% of the time I'm running Linux
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
I picked up 'The Atlas of Dragonlance' and, although it has taken months and will take many more months, Neverwinter Nights allows me to build a persistent world that is very close to the Dragonlance world.
Any rpg/adventure game that limits you to 20 lvls of growth seriously cramps the fun of working through all that insanely overdramatic combat. Avoid this...
Fnord.sig
The first quest in the game with any choice in it was the altar in Helm's Keep. It was the first time in NwN where I didn't feel like a monster exterminator or someone else's errand runner.
NwN's base story is ridiculous: there's a disease so they're training warriors and archers and wizards and thieves to find a cure. Shouldn't they be training doctors and alchemists instead? And if I'm such a great hero, why do I spend the entire game doing what other people tell me to do? Never in NwN are you required to actually put 2 and 2 together; from start to finish it's "go here, do this, come back for more instructions". I know they're going for a "wide audience", but there's a point where too much dumbing down is just, well, dumb. NwN may be like a "real" (PnP) RPG inthe sense that it follows the same rules, but if so, then it's a "real" RPG with a very bad DM (BTW, I'm not a big fan of PnP RPGs, and I think a good computer RPG should use much more complex rules - PnP rules are "practical", a computer CPU can handle a lot more variables, giving a game more depth).
Regarding the potential... well, Half-Life also has the potential to be used for RPGs. It's a good thing people can use the NwN engine to make their own games, but it would have been an even "gooder" thing if NwN was a better game to begin with.
Most people who go on and on about how NwN and BG (and, in some cases, Diablo) are such great RPGs are people that never played the "golden age" of Ultimas (U6, U7, UU, U7p2 and UU2). The main difference is the fact that the world in Ultima games (especially U7 and U7p2) is much more dynamic, much more "alive". NPCs have daily routines and interact with each other, your actions have logical consequences, objects are in logical places, there are hundreds of "irrelevant" side-quests and easter eggs, there are thousands of lines of dialogue (all good), etc. You can pretty much ignore the main quest (which, itself, changes a lot as you play) and just "live" there (a bit like in MMORPGs). In U7 for example you can become a baker, a farmer, a drug dealer, a professional gambler, a fisherman, etc. NwN has very linear progression and is more about stats and items than about role-playing.
The only recent RPG that I really liked was System Shock 2 (brilliant sound, great atmosphere, shame there was no dialogue, shame the ending was so predictable). I never got to play Deus Ex, but since it was made by some of the people involved in UU and UU2, I'm planning to check it out one of these days.
The current trend seems to be releasing poor games and hoping the community uses the tools (or, in some cases, develops the tools) to make a good game based on their engine. This would be perfectly OK if a) you could buy just the engine and the tools, without the original campaign and b) if most of these games' EULA didn't include a clause stating that any mod you make belongs to the game's publisher, and that you cannot profit from it. Also the original tools that shipped with NwN were very, very poor. They've been improved, but they're still not quite as flexible as they could be.
RMN
~~~
You've just reminded me of another issue: during the whole game I never came even close to dying. I could take on 4 or 5 enemies at the same time and I consistently wiped them out with a couple of slashes. What is this, a Charles Bronson RPG...?
I bet someone, somewhere, is working on a remake of U7 using the NwN engine. But I suspect that, despite all the amazing shadows and reflexes and shiny water (BTW, why can't anyone seem to make decent refractive water, like in Tomb Raider?), they are still finding that a lot of what U7 did (back in, what was it, 1956?) can't be done in NwN.
RMN
~~~
I used to think that these solo player RPGs and multiplayer adventure games could be timesinks. Then I played the persistent MMORPGs....
There is no comparison. The other day I ran into someone in Everquest whose name was an odd Gold color. It turns out that is the reward for 500 days played... That's 500 realtime days, or 12,000 RL hours playing one character.
I do the NT administration (2k) for an ISP/Web hosting company, and I can attest that our Web Server has not had unplanned downtime. Ever.
There are serious flaws in some of the software out there for Windows, but the OS itself is extraordinarily stable. And an admin that simply takes some time to understand how it works can make it secure as well.
I've seen no objective data indicating that Windows (at least 2k) is less stable than Linux, Unix, BeOS, or anything else. I really think all this hooplah is due to inexperienced admins.
Example:
I never had to do any kind of Linux administration before working for my current employer. In fact, I had never even used it except to try it out as a curiosity. And I can attest that I am NOT an experienced Linux admin. I can also attest that my Linux server crashes, locks up, etc. significantly more often than our Windows servers. Why do you suppose that is? That's why I don't buy all this FUD about Windows being unstable (or even to a certain extent insecure as we were unaffected by every NT worm I can think of other than that SQL worm (which isn't really an NT worm, now is it?)).
Maybe admins should stop believing everything they read and actually try to learn how to run a Windows server.
My 1
It's wasy easy IMO to stand up now and boast about how stable Win2k is.
I wont disagree with you there.
But up till 2K What were you guys running on?
I have had some serious issues with base NT4 over the years, most versions of Windows were not designed to handle multi users, and the multi user ones seem to not be great at handling hundreds of users. The stability of Windows depends greatly it seems on what you do with it. If no one ever uses it and it just sits there from 98SE on was rock solid.
Yes I agree that NOW Win2k has made those problems less/go away, but as Windows releases goes so far 2K has been the exception not the rule.
Win2k introduced some nice storage featres, but they are years behind other systems in that area.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Whoops...sorry about that. I put my reply under the wrong post. Please accept my apologies.
For anyone wanting to install easilly, when the final version is released, Tux Games will be selling a fully functional Linux version that includes the boxed product plus an installer CD that does all the work for you.
Here is the product details link.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Ultimas are made for single-player game only, and in their design, the story was of lesser priority. Thus, the game needed a good world where things seem alive.
In NWN, the story is more important, the players need to interact with the world far less because they can interact with the other players. People don't come to the module to live virtual life for months in game time, they're coming to adventure for hours at time.
Yet, NWN has tools to produce modules with a "living world", and even tools to produce MMORPG-like persistent worlds (even when it's clumsy at the time). People are making story-focused games simply because making story-focused games is far easier. Besides, that was the focus of the game from early on: Make a game where DMs can create their own game modules to tell stories and improvise. In PnP games, people sat down and went adventuring, led by their DM. In NWN, people sit down in front of their PCs and log on to server where DM leads them to the adventure.
Certainly, creating a world where everything is scheduled and every NPC has daily routines is hard now. But as said, I'm really waiting for something like the Memetic AI to make lifelike routines easier. =)
Most people at the moment seem just think "we don't need a living world - let's build a world in MMORPG style where players can be their own 'living' NPCs."
If we were to download a module called "The Defeat of the Guardian" and play that with a group of 5 people, would it make sense if the adventurers just sat down and baked bread for weeks? Sure, it would be a nice touch, but hey, nobody expects that in a module of such epic proportions. Who wants to bake bread when they are adventurers by occupation and there's a world to save?
I don't follow the logic here. If the point of the game is the toolkit, who cares of the official work? If it's good, fine, if it's bad, bleah? Or are you saying people shouldn't pay extra for the official campaign if it sucks?
Mmyeah, the official campaign obviously wasn't Bioware's focus
That's the optimistic view. The pessimistic view (supported by Baldur's Gate) is that they really think (and perhaps they're right) that people like "RPGs" where they're not required to think, but simply follow instructions and kill monsters for 40 hours of gameplay.
are you saying people shouldn't pay extra for the official campaign if it sucks?
Exactly. Same problem I have with MSIE being included in Windows. I don't want it, therefore I shouldn't have to pay for it (they can say it's "free", but obviously it's included in the price of Windows).
Half-Life has great user-made mods, and great (free) Valve mods, but the original (SP) game is also excellent. Still, they did release a "stand-alone" version of CS, for people who are only interested in the MP side of things (note: I don't know if the stand-alone CS also lets you run TFC, NS, etc., but I assume it does).
The story in U7 is light-years ahead of NwN's. To start with, it makes a lot more sense. The NwN "plot" sounds like something written by James Cameron (or worse, by a committee of James Camerons, each writing a separate "quest", without checking if it rhymes with the other ones).
One thing that really annoys me (in games, books, and movies) is lack of consistency; things that don't make sense (they don't have to be realistic, but they have to be consistent). And that's why I hate most James Cameron movies, and that's why I don't like NwN's original campaign. MP does have potential, but most modules still play a lot more like Diablo ("let's get together and kill all the monsters in this dungeon") than like a RPG.
The engine isn't bad (looks nice) but it's not exactly brilliant, either. No 1st person view, no sky, no swimming, no jumping, no climbing, no horses / carts / ships / etc., no pushing / moving objects, not really 3D (you can't walk over a bridge and under it, for example), etc..
The whole "chapter" thing is another aspect I don't like (and that BG shares). It makes me feel like I'm playing a pre-determined story (i.e., an "adventure" game) instead of creating my own (i.e., a RPG). Of course, the story is always pre-determined (possibly with some variations), but again using U7 as an example, you had access to the whole "world" since the beginning of the game, and could in fact "solve" a lot of "quests" before anyone asked you to do so (or before reading about them in a book, or hearing about them in a song, etc.).
Oh well, I suppose it's still better than this... (c:
RMN
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I agree with the story points for most parts. U7 is a really good game. (I just hope Exult folks implement journal so that I can remember what the hell I was doing after I've taken a break of a month. I guess I need to start all over again and get a notebook like everybody else! =)
I see the problem with buying the sucky campaign. I have some hopes about Shadows of Undrentide campaign, but I'll be definitely buying it for the tiles and creatures =)
The engine has been pushed pretty far - not quite as cool as official support, but good enough. 1st person view was possible (until .28, camera change broke it) for people who have tunnel-vision and insist on torturing themselves with it. (Really, what's wrong with over-the-shoulder??? Bloody immersive...) There has been sky hacks, but regrettably it needs a quite dynamiteful vidcard. There was some "go jump in lake" script which I haven't seen. And no, there's no Z axis =( Yet, climbing walls or cliffs is cheatable with exit triggers. No transportation is stupid, yeah, but static ship transports aren't that bad (the galley in last NWNWednesday rules - small file and feels almost like the real thing! =)
One of the things I liked about Ultima was precisely that sense that there weren't any "quests". There was information, action and consequences. Sometimes I'd completely forget about what a certain NPC had asked me to do, and then I'd remember it while reading a book that had some information about it, or while talking to another character. In other words, a bit more like Real Life (TM) than an automatic journal that tells you exectly where to go and what to do next.
1st person view was possible for people who have tunnel-vision and insist on torturing themselves with it. (Really, what's wrong with over-the-shoulder??? Bloody immersive...)
The same that's wrong with the "cutscenes" in many FPS games (ex., AvP2): they take you out of your character. In RPGs with a party, a 3rd person view is a necessity (because you are expected to control all members of the party). In games where you are supposed to be a specific character, and control only that character, it doesn't make much sense to see that character from a ghostly floating viewpoint. Unless you eat some funny mushrooms, anyway.
Yes, it makes the game visually more attractive, and helps to sell (especially in a game that's so much about collecting items, weapons and armor), but it's definitely not "immersive".
RMN
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