Latest Comments by abelthorne
GZDoom 3.2.3 released with improved Mesa driver support and more
7 December 2017 at 12:14 pm UTC

Unfortunately, the launcher (to select a WAD to run) is still broken on Ubuntu.

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
23 November 2017 at 10:13 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeEdit: Okay, depended on how you bought them. If you bought them with one of the editions that included them off the disk (as I did) then it had no authentication requirements. Infinite Dungeons was the only premium module that never had a boxed version.
Not sure how they were released but from what I've gathered when installing the game on Linux, the premium modules need to be authenticated and the process generates a .dat file (a keyfile, basically). I guess the versions sold on CD included the .dats so that it didn't need to connect to the servers. The GOG version includes these .dats so that the modules can be played.

The authentication servers are down but there's a (unofficial) software that can generate .dats for the modules using the orginial NWN serial, so it's still possible to play the non-CD versions. Not sure if I can put a link here, as it's pretty much a grey area?

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
23 November 2017 at 9:14 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeI think you're correct, maybe the original ones I bought were the Platinum Edition. Yup, confirmed: https://www.amazon.com/Neverwinter-Nights-Platinum-PC/dp/B00029QORW?th=1

I think the difference is the Diamond Edition came with Pirates of the Sword Coast and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. I later had bought those as well to try to encourage Bioware to keep releasing them.
Not sure what the Platinum edition included, probably just the main game and its two expansions (Shadows of Undrentide & Hordes of the Underdark), or maybe just the first one judging by the description on Amazon? The Diamond edition I have on GOG has, as well as the expansions, the premium modules Kingmaker, ShadowGuard & Witch's Wake. The other modules (Infinite Dungeons, Pirates of the Sword Coast & Wyvern Crown of Cormyr) are not included.

Not sure what the EE will include, as the article only mentions the last three premium modules: the whole bunch (game + 2 expansions + 6 premium modules)?

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
23 November 2017 at 8:20 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeHmm, I wonder why the game data packaging team for Debian haven't implemented Neverwinter Nights yet.
Even if the client files could be packaged (though they're proprietary, I'm not sure what's the Debian policy on this), the data files are quite a bit of a mess to install.

Quote4) Platinum Edition NWN (through GOG)
What's this Platinum edition? I have the Diamond edition on GOG and I don't see a different version on the store. Was it an older version that's been replaced by Diamond?

Quoting: KuromiI seems not gettin sound to work, though, usual Pulse related problem?
I've seen a lot of different installers/patches for the NWN Linux client, some of them being incomplete. I'm not sure what the ./play.it version uses as a base but NWN uses the Miles sound system for audio and maybe the version you have doesn't include the required libs (that might not be in the repositories: libmss). Do you have a "miles" subdir in the game's dir? If so, does the script adds it through LD_LIBRARY_PATH? Also, be sure to delete the old libSDL (in "lib" probably) that might still be included from the Bioware client

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
23 November 2017 at 7:30 pm UTC

Quoting: KuromiIs there way to use script without building goddamn DEB package? In my case it produced 5 GB deb file, which is just plainly insane.
If you're talking about the script from ./play.it, I don't think so: its purpose is specifically to make a deb.

You can try to do a manual installation using the guide on GitHub in the link you gave though the files from Bioware might be unavailable. I just did an installation but I had kept the original files. I can share them if needed, with instructions.

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
22 November 2017 at 10:08 pm UTC

Quoting: DMJCThe NWN sourcecode does exist last I heard. I'd like them to fix the videos and actually recompile the engine. The sad truth of NWN2 is that they cancelled the Linux port when they chose to make an Xbox port of the game, which was then later cancelled. The engine hasn't had Linux support since then. There won't be a NWN2 Linux release.
Didn't they upgrade the engine for the Baldur's Gate games and Planescape Torment for the EE in order to have Linux support? I guess the original versions were Direct3D only and didn't have an OpenGL renderer? If so, would there be more work to do for a Linux port of NWN2?

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
22 November 2017 at 3:35 pm UTC

Quoting: DrMcCoyPeople from the community wrote an LD_PRELOAD hack that hooks up into the original game, at the place where the video player would be called, and instead call a native Linux program for playing videos, like mplayer.

Nowadays, there are native Bink player for Linux, both the official closed-source Bink player, and also all FLOSS players, because the ffmpeg people have RE'd the Bink format. So while that hack to hook into the original game is still necessary, you at least don't need to transcode the video files anymore.
The hack I mentioned is nwmovies (on GitHub). Is that the same one you're talking about? I'm a bit annoyed that it displays a window border for a fraction of a second every time it plays a video, that's why I was looking for a solution with a more classic format. Also, for some reason, while all the guides I've seen say to put the Bink player in the movies folder, they seem to play fine on my system without it, using only nwmovies. I assume it includes Bink decoding but I'm not sure about this.

QuoteMy hope with the NWN:EE is that they'll make the hack obsolete too, by just using the native Bink library to play the videos, like on Windows. Or alternatively, use a different codec altogether, by recreating the videos from their original source (thus not lowering the quality through transcoding).
I guess they'll reencode the videos in a more modern format, I think that's what they did with the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions. I wouldn't make a bet on them using the original "master" files, though, they'll probably just reencode the existing bik videos to mp4 or similar.

QuoteYou of course can still do that. But you'll introduce quality losses, because going from one lossy codec to another is lossy.
Sure, but the videos are already in pretty low quality, a proper reencoding would barely be noticeable.

Quote
Quoting: abelthorneI assume the game would look only for the bik movies, do I simply convert them and it'll play whatever is in the dir as long as the file name without the extension is correct?
From my understanding of the nwmovies hack, this is correct, yes.
Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
22 November 2017 at 10:59 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: slaapliedjeI'm really curious about the editor too, otherwise the game ran great on Linux. Though they did have some weirdness with the Bink video player, but once you converted the videos to mpg or other standard video format, it worked well enough.
A bit off topic but do you have more infos on this? I'm currently reinstalling the game and while I've found a hack to play the bik movies, it would be better if I could use a better format. I assume the game would look only for the bik movies, do I simply convert them and it'll play whatever is in the dir as long as the file name without the extension is correct? do I have to "cheat" and rename mpg files to .bik? or is there another hack needed to play the videos in a different format?

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is coming from Beamdog, Linux support confirmed
21 November 2017 at 10:33 am UTC

Will they also redo the NWN editor (if so, on Linux too? the original was specific to Windows) or is it only the game itself?

GOG release a bunch of SNK NEO GEO classics, all with Linux support
5 October 2017 at 6:13 pm UTC

Do the DotEmu versions implement online play? I know that some devs who release old arcade games like these add online play through GGPO (e.g. the Dungeon & Dragons games on Steam) but I don't know what's the policy of DotEmu on this kind of feature.