Beamdog has announced that Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition [Steam, Official Site] will officially release on March 27th and it's coming with day-1 Linux support.
Announced on Twitter, where they also replied to our question to confirm Linux at day-1. We obviously knew it was already coming to Linux, but knowing it's for sure at the same time as other platforms is indeed great news.
It will cost $19.99 at release and they've confirmed it will support English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish with more languages to come. They've said it will not be an Early Access title, but development is still ongoing so it's likely to get some bigger updates after release. Also, so far only Steam (and the Beamdog Client obviously) has been mentioned, GOG has not been.
I actually have pre-release access through the Beamdog Client and I can confirm it runs quite nicely, here's two random shots of it running:
One issue I have come across in the Linux client, is the cursor vanishing in the Video Options menu (which I've been told is already fixed in a newer build). There's also some audio issues, like the audio for torches and other items suddenly popping in at max volume at a certain zoom level and then totally vanishing at another—instead of it fading based on camera distance.
Although I haven't yet had an extensive amount of testing time, but it seems smooth in terms of overall performance.
Here's what's going to be updated:
- Improved Display: Your portrait, combat bar, inventory, and other UI elements adjust in size based on your chosen resolution including 1080p and 4k.
- Advanced Graphics Options: Pixel shaders and post-processing effects make for crisper, cleaner visuals. Enable contrast, vibrance, and depth of field options as preferred.
- Community Endorsed: Original developers have teamed with key members of the Neverwinter Nights community to curate important fan-requested improvements to support players, storytellers, and modders.
- Backwards Compatibility: Works with save games, modules, and mods from the original Neverwinter Nights. A galaxy of community created content awaits.
It also includes all content from Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition.
Will you be grabbing a copy?
Post updated after publishing with issue information.
Quoting: scaineQuoting: NotSoQTI really wish we had more games like NWN and NWN2. As today I'm still unable to drag my D&D gang into NWN, but this is surely a stimulus, with or without toolset (it would slow down the things a lot but...).
Also, I found this some years ago and I guess it's pertinent to share now for anyone who cares:
A reimplementation of BioWare's Aurora engine (and derivatives). Pre-pre-alpha :P
DrMcCoy frequently posts here about his endevours on Xoreos! Here's a search of GOL for those articles: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=search&q=xoreos, although he does mention that they're mainly crossposts from the changelogs he writes for the project itself.
I've been watching Xoreos for a while, and OpenRW. Unfortunately there is no telling if the experience will ever be close to the original. OpenMW is awesome though.
Quoting: FeistWhere did you see this? I haven't seen any indication that the graphics are this enhanced, everything they've shown till date have been very modest enhancements, and barely perceptible in screen shots.
Wow, these are some pretty neat enhancements. I was just a little concerned that they'd settle for the "bare minimum", where graphical enhancements are concerned. This level of improvement is above & beyond what I hoped for. (although I assume it'll still be some time before the whole game is up to snuff graphically)
I'll probably buy the game anyway though as I played it a lot back when it came out (I still have the CDs), and it's a pain getting it to work on Linux these days. The original campaign was very boring, but the expansion packs were great.
EDIT: found the video here, however it sounds like the new graphics are merely an experiment and not what will be in the release.
Last edited by Stupendous Man on 10 March 2018 at 6:53 pm UTC
Quoting: Avehicle7887Liam (or anyone) can you please check of this game comes with a 32 or 64bit client?I'm more concerned if the game will be 64bit. Didn't think if this one.
But the original is 32 and 64 so I suppose it's a given.
The client if you mean Beamdog's client is 64bit. http://client.beamdog.com/releases/stable
Last edited by bolokanar on 10 March 2018 at 7:54 pm UTC
Quoting: sbolokanovThe Linux client for the actual game is 64bit from what I understand, going by their patch notes from 5th March where they said this:Quoting: Avehicle7887Liam (or anyone) can you please check if this game comes with a 32 or 64bit client?I'm more concerned if the game will be 64bit. Didn't think if this one.
But the original is 32 and 64 so I suppose it's a given.
The client if you mean Beamdog's client is 64bit. http://client.beamdog.com/releases/stable
QuoteWe now compile the Linux binaries with 64-bit-only filesystem API support (so that nwserver runs properly inside docker-on-mac/windows).Although it's a little confusing, as the beamdog launcher doesn't seem to have traditional executables for the game. The files in the "bin" directory aren't normal executables (since they go through the launcher) and they're 32bit.
I will reach out to beamdog for an official proper answer.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 10 March 2018 at 7:53 pm UTC
Quoting: liamdaweQuoteWe now compile the Linux binaries with 64-bit-only filesystem API support (so that nwserver runs properly inside docker-on-mac/windows).
No, that just means that filesystem operations report 64-bit offsets, sizes and inodes, so that you can run the binaries on large partitions. You might have heard about the problem, that certain 32-bit games fail/crash on large (often XFS) partitions. That's what they fix with that.
From what they said, true 64-bit support is planned, but it'll take a while. The game depends on a lot of 32-bit pointers.
From my xoreos work, I can confirm that: their usual method of reading several files, like for example models, is to just read the whole file into a block of memory, and then operate on that memory as a C struct. The files on the hard disk even have reserved space in them, because after reading the block into memory, the game will put pointers to other structures there. Things like that. I can imagine it'll be very annoying to work around that without completely rewriting half of the plumbing.
Quoting: liamdaweThe only issue I have come across so far in the Linux client, is the cursor vanishing in the Video Options menu (which I've been told is already fixed in a newer build)
Huh. Can you confirm to me that you have area background music and sounds on Linux in NWN:EE? Because I don't. In fact I have several audio related issues:
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/33701#note-3
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/35851
Others reported those as well:
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34454
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/35527
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34564
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