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Games Entertainment

NWN Linux Client Delayed 270

Posted by michael from the breath-holding dept.
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.'"
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NWN Linux Client Delayed More

NWN Linux Client Delayed

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  • try using something that already works... (Score:5, Informative)

    by protomala ( 551662 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:17AM (#4886489) Homepage
    Why not using divx and mplayer (a downsized version, of course) to play the movies? mplayer can operate in a lot of ways (that's what I like on it) with various input and output systems, and I think it's nice as backend for playing videos in linux games. Sure, there is smpeg too, that was used by lokigames.
    • Why not using divx and mplayer (a downsized version, of course) to play the movies?

      SDL already has MPEG support... And interestingly, Myth II was a similar case: Original Myth II had (AFAIK) Smacker video files, which was the previous video codec from RAD (makers of Bink), and the solution was that Windows and Mac versions of the game used Smacker and Loki's version used MPEG.

      • I believe they intend for the linux client to be released to function with the existing game whereas Loki released full ports. I don't want to have to go buy a Linux port.

        Personally, I don't care if movies work on my hardware as I skip through them anyway because they chug. Apparantly sound is coming along...if they released a port with working sound and no movies, I'm game.

  • I don't recall the game having movies... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:20AM (#4886495) Homepage
    ...apart from the cheesy opening sequence. The "cut-scenes" are more like static slide shows. Couldn't be too hard to write up a drop-in replacement for something like that?

  • What's the holdup? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by abe ferlman ( 205607 ) <bgtrio@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:22AM (#4886498) Homepage Journal
    Here's a sound engine [libsdl.org].

    Here's a movie player [icculus.org].

    I want my client now, please!

    • Here's a sound engine [libsdl.org].

      Actually, for sound you'd want OpenAL [openal.org]. This works together with SDL but isn't tied to it.
      • OpenAL is cool (the only way I know of to get 3d panning sound mixed in hardware on Linux), but nobody has the thing installed.

        May not be an issue for commercial game vendors like Bioware, but it's a pain in the ass for open source types who would like to have its features available.
        • That's not a big deal. UT2K3 throws an openal.so in one of its install directories.

          So just ship the lib with your package and link your app with it. And OpenAL IS really frickin cool. id always gets the kudos for supporting OpenGL, but Epic never gets kudos for supporting OpenAL.

          • just ship the lib with your package and link your app with it

            That's why I said it's not an issue for commercial game developers -- they have a "frozen" copy that goes out on a CD anyway (so stuff is going to "get out of date" anyway)...and the package size of the software isn't really an issue. If you have an open source project on, say, sourceforge, it is.

  • Not more time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tyreth ( 523822 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:27AM (#4886509)
    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.
    • bioware should have ditched bink&miles.

      it's not like there weren't any solutions that didn't already work on multiple platforms for video and sound. besides than that, music engine/video playing engine are like the easiest part of the engine in the first place...
    • I am glad that you can be so positive about this, it is commendable, i on the other hand have basically told Bioware to fschk off! I'm damn sick and tired of there one year story of how close the client is. I would love to sell my copy of NWN, I just don't care anymore, by the time this game of wounder comes out, so will DOOM III! At least that will be ready for Linux.

      Bioware should thank the gods for customers like you, cuz if they were like me they would be hurting in more ways than one!.

  • multiplatform project? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ville ( 29367 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:29AM (#4886517)
    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
    • I have to agree. The options I can see is that they were giving next to or even no attention to the multiplatform angle the entire time the game was getting all the hype, they were pushed to publication not only early but grossly early and development time all had to be channeled into what amounted to finishing the thing, or they're incompetent when it comes to multiplatform development. On the other hand, I'm sure it's also quite possible that there were things going on that we're just totally unaware of.

      I'd really give a lot for a sneak peak behind the development process. I mean seriously, who develops a game for multiple platforms by writing a program then trying to port it. If the program isn't compiling at any time on a suposidly supported platform that's a very good sign that something's not going right somewhere. And they honestly expected that they'd be able to get this thing working in BeOS! What's really a shame for them is that they've lost a lot of good reputation from both the Linux and Mac community. Hardcome gamers on windows were a pretty sure sell from the start for something like this, but being an early adopter for the slowly growing number of casual gamers on both other platforms might have done them a considerable amount of good. I don't know though if in the future I at least would be able to trust any promise they made for a game, whether windows, linux, ps2 or whathaveyou at this point. Putting up a page centered around the port was a good step in repairing that, but the fact that it's become apparent that it is a port widened the gulf even more for me at least.
    • My WAG [netlingo.com] is that they may have been expecting Miles and BINK, the multiplatform (Win, Mac, various consoles) SDKs they mentioned, to be ported to Linux. When NWN got started, Loki was all the rage, as was Linux in general. So, if my theory's right, the company that does Miles and BINK dropped their Linux development when it became clear that it wasn't going to make them any real money anytime soon, and the NWN team got left with a Linux port but no implementation of some libraries that they're heavily invested in.

      Again, this is just a WAG [netlingo.com], based on the idea that the NWN guys clearly planned to make a simultaneous Linux, Mac, and PC release. If you start with the assumption that they had a realistic plan to get there, this could make sense.

      So, in any case, I'm pleased as punch that in the face of the near-total implosion of commerical Linux gaming, these guys are still plugging away at it.

  • Minor point... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lilricky ( 632829 )
    I think Bioware's biggest mistake in Linux port is being so hush-hush about what is happening with the port. It was always "It will be out real soon!" or "Just a few bugs stand in our way" or my personal favorite, "We dont have time to give updates"

  • Get something out now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:31AM (#4886522) Homepage Journal
    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...

    • "and I suspect a lot of other people"

      As I said to another poster, you need to get an objective view on teh size of the Linux gaming communtity. History shows that the Linux market is niether huge nro profitable when it cames to games. That doesn't mean that there is nothing to be gained by making a Linux port, but it does mean that you can't expect companies to bend over backwards to accomadate you.

      Also, buying them game already is teh WRONG message to send. If you buy a Windows only product, the company will assume that you intend to play it on Windows (and I'm betting you have played it using Windows). Now if you wait, and then there is a sudden surge in sales when the Linux clent comesout, well that tells them that there is a significant market that wants the game, but only if it comes out for Linux. All said and done, they'd rather just release one version and if Linux people show a willingness to just buy the Windows version and use that, that will be all most companies release.

      • Re:Get something out now (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DarkVein ( 5418 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @09:27AM (#4886809) Journal
        History? You mean the half-dozen Linux releases of big titles that came out one to twelve months after the Windows releases?

        Most Linux-using gamers have access to at least one Windows machine, or dual-boot. There is a social preasure to aquire the games at release to play them with your friends. Nobody except a die-hard supporter with cash to burn will buy the same product twice.

        I've tried hard, but I can not justify spending double for a product that yeilds a diff less than 365kb. Quake3's only difference between Win and Lin was the binary executable: 884kb Win, 895 Lin, less than 176kb difference. Granted, this speaks of Carmack's skill, but that 176kb is a ridiculous reason to pay US$49.99.

        On Bioware's defense, it doesn't appear that Infogrames/Atari gave much liberty to Bioware in their development course. The Mac and Linux ports drifted behind as soon as the publisher shift occured. Miles and Bink provided plug-in solutions for them. There are oodles of pretty tiles and placables in screenshots that weren't in the final game, and it appears that Infogrames/Atari want NWN to be a massive franchise.
        • History? You mean the half-dozen Linux releases of big titles that came out one to twelve months after the Windows releases?
          Most Linux-using gamers have access to at least one Windows machine, or dual-boot. There is a social preasure to aquire the games at release to play them with your friends. Nobody except a die-hard supporter with cash to burn will buy the same product twice.

          Hey, you have to have a lot of cash to burn to be able to afford an extra near-state-of-the-art machine just to play games. As to dual boot you cannot be serious. Oh, I'd like to play a game now, I'll just wait ten minutes while Windows sorts itself out and sets itself up?

          Sorry, no.

          • I've been playing Icewind Dale II lately. No need to reboot. I just use Wine.

            I've found that wine and winex will run more and more lately. When it doesn't run something, I just don't care to play it.

            Mind you, I've held off on getting NWN specifically because there is no 'official' Linux support. It works in Wine, but Bioware promised native Linux support so they get my money only when that support becomes reality.
        • I can not justify spending double for a product that yeilds a diff less than 365kb

          That's silly. If you were really so cash-strapped that this was an issue, why do you have a machine capable of *running* the "latest and greatest"?

          Most of the time, I've seen people that trail releases by about 12 months are the happiest. They get the bug-fixed copies on *release* (i.e. no corrupted saved games 30 hrs into a game), good performance on a computer that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, better community support (fan websites are up, mods made, walkthroughs done, etc), and sometimes better prices.

    • I also purchased the game to show support for their linux efforts. Around September I gave up hope of seeing the Linux client anytime soon.

      However, the game runs perfectly under wine (The sound during the intro movies is messed up. Just skip them). Just use the wine settings from the comments posted here Wine App DB [winehq.org]

      I have the full effects enabled and run at 1024x768 on my Ti4400/PIII 500Mhz with perfect performance. It is sluggish in Win98 at 800x600 w/ effects turned off on my friend's GeForce2/466Mhz. Quite a complement to the Linux, X, NVidia, and wine folks.

  • Bink dilemma (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dogun ( 7502 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:37AM (#4886537) Homepage
    Yo, so this is how I see it.
    Anyone know what this Bink format is? Miles audio system I'm not to worreid about; they could have sound fixed, albeit not very positional, today, if they wanted to. As for Bink - you've got the problem of having these bigass movie files on the CD i assume. That leaves them 4 options:
    1) delay the release
    2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
    3) port the player. painful.
    4) find an OpenSource player that's stable, common, and supports Bink. Unlikely. I doubt mplayer supports Bink, but even if it did, it's not necessarily stable, uniform, or common enough. Though a binary COULD be built and called by the game to play the movies. If it supported Bink, which I doubt.
    5) offer it as download. Bandwidth costs money.
    6) have a cheap hack to disable videos - definitely not cool.

    • Re:Bink dilemma (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thumperward ( 553422 )
      1) delay the release

      They're doing that already.

      2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.

      If they wanted to do that they could do it in a heartbeat. RAD Video (who make Bink and Miles) have a tool which enables conversion of their formats to AVI extremely easy. I suspect if they wanted to just go DivX it would have been done.

      3) port the player. painful.

      I think that's what they're doing.

      4) find an OpenSource player that's stable, common, and supports Bink. Unlikely. I doubt mplayer supports Bink, but even if it did, it's not necessarily stable, uniform, or common enough. Though a binary COULD be built and called by the game to play the movies. If it supported Bink, which I doubt.

      How do you suggest incorporating a GPL video player into a proprietary game, exactly?

      5) offer it as download. Bandwidth costs money.

      Offer *what* as a download? You mean ship without video and put a note in the box saying "plz come to nwn.com in 6 months"?

      6) have a cheap hack to disable videos - definitely not cool.

      That appears to be an extension of 5.

      - Chris

    • Re:Bink dilemma (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:35AM (#4886660)
      2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.

      Why in the world would they do that? This isn't a reverse-engineering job. They made the game, so they probably have all of the source data for the movies. Why wouldn't they just recreate the movies in a format that is Linux friendly?

      The problem is that MPEG doesn't have the same performance as BINK does. Just making the files MPEG doesn't mean that NWN-Linux will magically have the same video performance as the Windows version.
    • This hits particularly close to home for me -- I developed a Linux game for a class this semester, and one thing I had to throw out was 3d audio, because there's piss-poor 3d audio support on Linux. Don't get me wrong -- I love Linux, and chose not to work on Windows -- but I had to throw out a feature that would have been relatively easy to do with DirectX.

      The entire state of Linux sound support is somewhere between "bad" and "pathetic". Let's take a look:

      * Sound servers. Sound servers are essentially the currently accepted way to do sound mixing on the local host. They are, however, simply awful from a performance standpoint -- high latency, CPU overhead, and inability to take advantage of hardware mixing capabilities are pretty much showstoppers.

      Esd is probably the best general-purpose Linux sound server. It has an ugly hack for "giving up" the sound device -- a simple time delay. It's very inefficient and blows CPU time, and adds latency. The quality of its resampling sucks. It has notoriously poorly written internals, and the author (and maintainer) has been out of the picture for years. The GNOME Project adopted esd, but has done very little work on it.

      Artsd is, impressively, even worse than esd. It is *extremely* heavyweight in RAM and CPU usage. It's a pain to get it to give up the audio device. It's even slower, and as most distros I've seen don't nice it to a negative value, it's frequently the cause of audio breakups. One of the ugliest parts of KDE, and a very ugly wart to new Linux users.

      The only legitimate reason to have sound servers is to do network-transparent sound. And while I frequently use network-transparent graphics, I and the vast majority of people simply do not care about network transparent sound (other than beeps, which X does nicely). You can't reasonably stream a decoded sound stream over the network with sane performance.

      Sound servers should be *much* less common than they are now. They give Linux awful media performance, are confusing to new users, and have almost no utility to most users.

      * OSS/Free

      OSS/Free is, well, free. It's also fairly reliable and simple. That's about it. It has only supports common sound cards. It doesn't do cards that require NDA, supports essentially no advanced features (wavetable MIDI, hardware mixing, bass/treble/reverb/etc on the DSPs). It doesn't manage sound requests at *all* -- basically, if you've got the device, you've got it, and if you don't have the device, you don't have it. End of story. The vast majority of Linux installations are still using OSS/Free.

      * OSS/Linux
      Supports some less common sound cards, since it can use information released only under NDA. Costs money, so very very few people use it. Fixes some of the failures of OSS/Free (like a lack of hardware mixing), but the pricetag pretty much kills it as a general solution. If you're doing hardware mixing, but all the channels on the card are currently being used, this thing simply fails. There's no "software mixing" fallback that starts being used if all the existing hardware channels are being occupied.

      * ALSA
      This is The Future. It has good support for many modern features. *Still* does not support major features for which commercial documentation is available for -- no treble and no bass on my SB Live, for instance. More than a little complex to set up, though most distros have patched over the ugly installation process by giving you a GUI that autogenerates necessary files. Supports hardware mixing, but again has *no software fallback* (which the ALSA coders have specifically said they will not support). I can't have an 8 channel soundcard, play 8 sounds at once, and then have the next sound be mixed in hardware. Half of the software out there is written to the incompatible and obsolete version .5 API instead of the .9 API. This is the best bet if you're willing to do some work -- xmms actually now has an ALSA [nongnu.org] plugin that *works*.

      * Linux kernel SB driver
      If you have an SB-compatible soundcard, you can probably use this. It has somewhat less than convenient hardware mixing support -- the series of dsp devices, each of which can only have a single program attached, may be technically accurate, but is incredibly annoying to use -- you have to arrange your applications to share your DSPs (in my case, only two -- and I wanted to be able to play snes games, play mp3s, and still get ICQ sounds.

      Creative Opensource drivers [creative.com]:
      Not pre-installed, so essentially not acceptable for a newbie. Even though this is from Creative, incredibly enough, it does not do MIDI synth OR have bass/treble/reverb/etc support.

      I've poked around with the sound system on my box for quite some time, and have worked with a number of sound cards -- at the moment I have multiple ones installed. I'm fairly disappointed with the piss-poor functionality that users can expect from their audio hardware under Linux.

  • The project deserves support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zemran ( 3101 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:38AM (#4886538) Homepage Journal
    I do not like having to wait even longer but I believe they are working hard on a project that deserves my support. If Linux users like myself, do not wait and buy it when it comes out then they will get no reward for their effort and may decide not to bother with any future Linux ports. The only way to get people like Boiware to support Linux is to buy their products when they do release them so that they see it as worthwhile.
    • The only way to get people like Boiware to support Linux is to buy their products when they do release them so that they see it [in linux] as worthwhile.

      Or, alternatively. They could count the number of linux client downloads.

      Just a thought.

  • sound? movies? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hpavc ( 129350 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:41AM (#4886547)
    seems sort of lame, they could have a demo or something without it and i would be very happy. i'll take a static image of 'movie forthcoming' and 'ctrl-g' bell for sound ding ... ding.

    if tons of people download and use the thing maybe it would help the prioritize it better. if not, then they can stall it if they want for good reason.

  • How long news services will publish that CRAP? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jacek Poplawski ( 223457 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @07:55AM (#4886578)
    Just please read old Slashdot news about NWN client for Linux. All sane people know it won't happen soon. But there is another and another useless raport on news sites.

    It was smart marketing to sell more copies of NWN. Thanks to promise of Linux client, authors get a lot of announces on Linux-related sites, and even not-so-Linux-related, because it was just a unusual event: "new game for Linux".

    Now please look at news archive. Please read all this CRAP. How many people is working on Linux port? They realized then can't play movies or sounds NOW? So what they did all the time before? When they started work on Linux client? Maybe after first Windows release? Or maybe they still don't know which libraries use for it?

    I know it will be probably moderated down, but I don't care. I am sick of all that commercials put on news-sites. When Carmack say "there will be Linux client" - he release it just with Windows and Mac one. And IMHO community will remember who was honest, and who was not.

    • Re:How long news services will publish that CRAP? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:57AM (#4886735)
      I hate to burst your bubble but the Linux community and specificaly the Linux gamer community is not some huge force that programs live or die by. The reason NWN sold a lot of copies is because it is a good game, from the company that made Baldur's Gate(2) and it is something people want. The promise of a Linux client has next to nothing to do with it.

      I am not speaking on their keeping with promises, as I really couldn't care less (I play my games in Windows) but please, let's not try and rpetend like the Linux gaming community is some huge force.
      • I think you're taking his post the wrong way, or at least the the situation as such. Getting free promotion on a Linux related site dosn't mean only being promoted to the Linux comunity. Take Slashdot, a fairly Linux oriented site and the gist of what the poster was getting at. How many times has Neverwinter Nights gotten free promotion here, and a free plug to the many many windows users here because of it's supposed Linux support?
      • the Linux community and specificaly the Linux gamer community is not some huge force that programs live or die by.

        No, but tech news sites like slashdot are. Maybe the several articles about NWN on slashdot contributed nothing to Bioware's sales, but that seems pretty unlikely. There are a LOT of "techie" users out there who don't keep up on the game scene, but buy a game from time to time, and read slashdot daily.

        It is a fact the slashdot has a daily readership of at least 100k people... usually more. It is true that a lot of "buzz" was created regarding NWN here, posted due to the promised linux client.

        Even if you are correct, that linux users are an insignificant number, it is a well established fact that most people visit slashdot using MSIE. A LOT of people read hype on NWN as a result of slashdot. They would not have, had it not been for the promise of the linux client.

        I am not speaking on their keeping with promises, as I really couldn't care less (I play my games in Windows)

        Then you are off-topic, as the topic is the fact that they are badly slipping their promised schedule for the late release of the linux client, which was originally promised to be released together with the windows one.

        but please, let's not try and rpetend like the Linux gaming community is some huge force.

        Let's also try not to pretend that several high profile stories carried here on slashdot and elsewhere in the "linux community" didn't generate a lot of buzz about NWN.

        After all, YOU are here, reading and posting at slashdot, and you couldn't care less about the linux client. Even if there are no linux users anywhere in the world at all, YOU and hundreds of thousands of other slashdot "doze-only" readers saw several stories here on slashdot about this cool new upcoming game.

        The reason why... Bioware's promises of the linux client, which was originally promised at release (and of course the release was originally promised and delayed many times), and then promised for Fall 2002, and now promised for Winter 2003.

        I believe Bioware is trying. I don't believe it's some big conspiracy to simply promote the game and spread the word to "techie types" who don't read news about new games.

        But only now, after supposedly working to release it with the windows client and then supposedly "actively" working on it for 4-5 months, at this late stage admit they depend on third party libraries for sound and movies... well, it does indeed give the impression that they have made a half-hearted effort.

        But you couldn't care less. If Bioware is lying, if they break their promise, the fact that you don't use linux would make it ok. Moreover, your impression that there are relatively few linux users would make it OK for Bioware to lie about the linux client, or completely reverse couse and break their promises.

  • Miles Sound System and portability (Score:5, Informative)

    by igomaniac ( 409731 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:11AM (#4886608)
    The Miles sound system is implemented in a very portable way, it is available for all major Consoles, Windows and Mac. We use it for our game "IGI2: Covert Strike", and I have to say it is very good (Much better than using DirectSound which is the main alternative on the Windows platform). Since I know that the Miles license includes access to the source code (I built Miles myself in search of a bug, and submitted a patch for it), so why not port it to Linux? I don't think it would be very hard at all (and in contrast to 99.9% of the other posters, I have seen the source), and it would also make bringing any other game using Miles to Linux that much easier. Miles is used in hundreds of games, as it is the fastest, most reliable, tried and tested sound system out there... AFAIK, all EA's games use it. Bringing it to Linux would be the right way to go, and would bring Linux gaming one step closer to a reality.

    RAD Game Tools, the company who sells Miles is the same company that sells Bink, but since I have never used Bink, I don't know how easy it would be to port it to Linux. But as a general rule, it would be better to use effort to port APIs that many developers use rather than porting specific applications like NNN... Just my .02 Euros...

    • Since I know that the Miles license includes access to the source code (I built Miles myself in search of a bug, and submitted a patch for it), so why not port it to Linux? I don't think it would be very hard at all (and in contrast to 99.9% of the other posters, I have seen the source), and it would also make bringing any other game using Miles to Linux that much easier.

      Hrm. Interesting. I hope that bioware decides to take this route then. Sheesh, to me it's a no brainer for them to work with RAD Game Tools to port this thing, and RAD Game Tools should be all over it too.

      This is a serious business opportunity here with a closing window. If RADGT gets on it and makes this work they will have seriously strengthened their place in their market. Not that I think that linux gaming is an unstoppable juggernaut (too many of us still keep windows boxes around for that to be true) but it's a big PR win. Even if a company doesn't plan to port to linux/mac/etc, using an excellent product (acc to igomaniac) that has that as an option if they should choose to do so is a no-brainer. Esp vs. using directX.

    • Thanks for the insightful post, got one question though.

      Have you ever enquired about having their RAD tools ported over to Linux?

      StarTux
    • and basically said the same thing I said here about the potential benefits, and asking them to give it some consideration.

      They wrote me back already:

      This was news to us. We already have Linux ports of both Miles and Bink that Bioware could have had if they had asked...

  • First of all, does this not sound like a gread opportunity for RAD [radgametools.com] to make a chunk-of-change by providing a BINK decompressor for linux?

    Secondly, the movies are not a big part of the game. There's only eleven of them in total, including such highmarks as "AtariLogo.bik", "WOTCLogo.bik" and "BiowareLogo.bik". The in-game movies are the intro and then one per chapter and the ending. The consist mostly of images fading together and a storyteller voice. Recreating this in code (change the movies to a series of pictures) and possibly extracting the voice and layering that on top should NOT be a big problem. Sure it won't be the _same_, but it'd work

    But I must tell you, I'm disappointed with Bioware on this. I _urged_ them to use more open formats. I made numerous posts on the benefits to them of them going with Vorbis instead of mp3... and that all ended with one of their engineer saying words to the effect "Don't you worry, we'll have all our licensing ducks in a row".

    Well goodie, but then why are we having this problem?

    I've just got to wonder if the problem with bink isn't that they _can't_ reverse-engineer it (I'm sure it can be done, especially since there are free tools so you can compress whatever you want and analyze the output. The file structure is actually very simple and I already know the header and chunk format)... or maybe there's the legal implications of doing it.

    Man, those licensing ducks sure lined up fine!

    (the problems with the sound API sounds odd, I don't see of SDL_sound/OpenAL wouldn't be enough)

  • What is with "season" release dates!? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Danny Rathjens ( 8471 ) <slashdot2@ra[ ]ens.org ['thj' in gap]> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:24AM (#4886632)
    I can understand a granularity of 3 months before you start a project.
    But they are already 6 months past their first promised release!
    It defies belief that the best estimate they can still make has an error factor of 3 months.

    I was one of the idiots that bought it shortly after release because of the claimed linux support soon, and since the linux server really was out soon they had us all fooled that the linux client really would be soon too.
    It wasn't until a couple months after the windows release that they even deigned to tell us 'Fall 2002'.
  • More games should be coming out on Linux, since how to port it is already figured out. Well it may not be a massive number but it should be noticeable number. Then more and more programs should follow since marketing and management will finally figure out that there is a market for Linux. I'll be picking up the Linux Client when its finished and I hope it will work as well as Windows. BTW, why didn't they get Transgaming to port or is there some clause for them to do it?
    • Transgaming don't port! They use Wine (or Winex in their case) to make Windows games run on Linux. Its good for games that come from development houses that will not be doing a native port for the forseeable future. Originally Transgaming did say they would never get a game working that has a native port planned or in the works.

      Bioware insisted that they do their own port, having a third party in this case would take away the experience needed for future ports I'd imagine.

      StarTux

  • Who's up to build a BINK player? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:30AM (#4886641) Homepage Journal
    This is a copy of something I've just posted on the NWN site [bioware.com]:
    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 [radgametools.com] files to analyse, and a google search for 'bink file format' found me a useful text [pcisys.net] from someone (Mike Melanson) who has already started to analyse the format.

    So, come on, who's in?

    • Join Mike Melanson's mailing list and try to get him on the project. Seems like he know what he's doing.

      (It's pretty amazing that I read that useful text you linked to some ten hour earlier in the day, before this story hit slashdot)

      Personally, I don't know what good I'd be, but I could stand by the sideline and cheer you on? ;-)

  • There must be something fishy going on (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ElMiguel ( 117685 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @08:42AM (#4886680)

    To all people saying Bioware is making a honest effort with this port and should be supported, please realize they are saying their movie player and sound system don't work six months after their announced release date. If the Linux gaming community wasn't too excited about getting this port to make a balanced analysis, nobody would believe in Bioware's good intentions anymore.

    Like some person in The Linux Game Tome [happypenguin.org] usually comments after these announcements, "I voted Never in the poll [about when would NWN Linux Client be available] and I stand by my choice".

  • Hopefully this will be a lesson to many gaming companies...hopefully they will release they should support and use API's/toolkits that are supported on many platforms. You can do this without taking any kind of feature hit. There are so many great tools for that support Linux/MacOS/Windows. Here is a list...and this list is in no way complete: 1) OpenGL: 2D and 3D graphics 2) SDL: 2D graphics, 3D rendering context's, sound, input management and more ;) 3) OpenAL: 3D positional audio or just stereo too! With these three you can basically create any game you like
  • While using special hardware features may be hard, and while installing audio drivers can occasionally be tricky, the audio API on Linux is easier than on just about any other platform. Ditto for video playback under X11.

    Either they just don't know what they are doing on Linux, or they are using the prejudice that "Linux has no multimedia support" as a lame excuse for not delivering a client they didn't really care much about anyway.

  • Disappointment (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tokens ( 516526 )
    Damn, this is really a big disappointment. I mean, Bioware basically had us believe that the Linux client would ship with the Win release. Now they have revised their plans continuously. I am starting to have second thoughts about my investment in NWN, which I bought because Bioware let us believe that we could play it under Linux a couple of months after the retail PC/Win release. Now I have a three useless NWN CDs that are only collecting dust.

  • How many game players are there out there who MIGHT buy this for Linux BUT haven't already bought (or "shared") it for their Windoze install?

    Note that I very carefully specified "game players". Any serious game player - i.e. people with a machine good enough to play NWN and that are statistically likely to buy games - have a Windows install. Yes they do.

    So, how many of them are there? I mention this because I bought the Windows version ages ago. I simply wasn't prepared to wait for the promised Never-ever Winter Nights on Linux.

    Note to developers: if you actually want to sell Linux games, you have to release them at the same time as the Windows install. Otherwise you're just polishing your dev skills.

  • ...we should let Radgametools know how profitable it would be for them to code for Linux. After all, the alternative is that their products aren't used at all, -or- someone enevitably hacks together an OSS version of Miles and Bink. Surely they don't want that!

    Send Radgametools an email and let them know that there's interest in seeing their products on our favorite platform.

    support@radgametools.com

  • opportunity? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 )
    As much as it may be the company company milking the Linux chance, it may also be lack of knowledge. It is certainly feasable that this company wishes to be in the Linux space, but is having to undergo a training curve. This may be an opportnuity to start a company that contracts out Linux game coders.Or if your are one of the distro companies, then start snatching up Linux game coders and offer them around.Between contracts, they improve the architecture. Sounds familiar, doesn't it.

  • The should have choosen better in the first place! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @11:58AM (#4887371) Journal
    ... especially considering that until relatively close to the release of the game this summer, BioWare was promising a simultaneous release of the game for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. This was stated in their FAQ, press release, etc. Shortly before the release of the Windows-only version of the game, BioWare changed their site to indicate that the Mac version would be taken care of by a third party and the Linux version would be ported in house but release "soon after the Windows release".

    And now we are seeing another estimate change. Why? Sound and movies. Fair enough, the game should be quality and complete for any platform if we are to spend money on it, but don't you think it would have been at least half-ways intelligent to pick solutions for sound and movies in the game that weren't tied to any particular platform or at least have a solution in mind for Linux that they could have been working on?

    The Linux port of this game is vaporware. I used to be really optimistic about it, supportive of BioWare's efforts, patient for its delayed release in the Fall. Now we're told Winter 2002, which actually means Q1 2003 or later. I feel like BioWare was lying outright when they sent out press releases bragging about simultaneous cross-platform development and release of the title. Did they even know what they were doing when they said that, or was it simply a statement made by some marketing drone without bothering to check to see if that was realistic? Whatever the reason, the "we don't have a solution that works for Linux" is garbage. If you didn't have a solution when it was being developed originally, supposedly simultaneously with Windows and Mac, then you should have just STFU about anything other than the platforms you could actually cope with. The Linux community would have been overjoyed to have the game released as a surprise, but instead you've set Linux gamers up for a huge dissapointment, one that is entirely your (BioWare) fault.

    A general flame to Marketing weenies: never forget, you have no product to get fat commissions off without engineers to build it. BS empty promises based on a cocain-fueled press release writing frenzy do nothing but hurt the company you work for, your credibility, and the credibility of your industry.

  • I'll say it flatly--a character record in SWG is FAR larger than you think. There's a business reality to see here. We share fancy databases over multiple servers. Said fancy databases cost $X up to a certain size. Then they cost ten times that if you go over that limit by one byte because you have to buy the "next size up."

    So basically they've invested in a database with a ridiculous pricing scheme and so this is the side effect. Damn shame for them that they didn't use PostgreSQL or MySQL.

  • The EULA logic is flawed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @12:10PM (#4887421) Homepage
    Now, looking at the legal reality, the fact is that the EULA disallows this. It disallows it in most of the games. Why? So that we can tell who actually did something bad. So that we are forming a legal contract via the EULA with one individual who is legally responsible.

    It seems to me that the legal reality is that a 14 year old cannot be bound by the terms of a EULA because they are not an adult. Therfore, not having "Family" accounts run by a parent is actually opening them up to legal problems. If a child does something nasty and violates the snot out of the EULA, they have no recourse. If a child does so on a parents account, then they do.

    • The fact is, if I want cable TV in another room, I have to pay for an additional cable outlet. If I want a phone for my daughter or heck, for myself in my office, I have to pay.

      Actually, until the advent of the overpriced digital cable services, this wasn't true of cable. You would have one cable connection into your home and an infinite number of TV's connected for free as long as you ran your own cable. So until some company decided they could make more money by making people pay for multiple connections, it didn't work that way. Same thing here.

      Now, I think the phone analogy makes more sense here and how they SHOULD do it. If I have multiple phones in my house, they can be used by multiple people, they just can't be used simultaneously. If they are wanting to make sure 20 people aren't sharing one copy, that's fine, just say that they cannot be logged in simultaneously. Or perhaps, not logged in simulatenously from more than one IP. This would provide the means for a family to share one account and all play at the same time, but would disallow the possibility of it being abused.

  • Sam Lantinga solved the Miles problem! (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeathPenguin ( 449875 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @12:11PM (#4887426)
    From the NWN Community board ( Great Linux Client Thread #18 [bioware.com]):
    Posted: Saturday, 14 December 04:45PM

    Miles problems solved!

    I've ported Miles 6.5c over to Linux. It works flawlessly, including dynamically loading ASI, FLT, and M3D modules. I've submitted the code back to RadGameTools. NWN dev folks, please contact me for details: slouken@devolution.com

    --Sam Lantinga, Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment
  • "We never actually intended to make a linux version so we picked tools which are not found on linux. Someone told us there might be some money in linux so we decided to port it there but we won't be done any time soon because we're bozos. Maybe next time we'll think about using an open solution like everyone else is doing lately but for now you're screwed."

    I've noticed that more and more games are using open standards for their file formats, going with mpeg 1 layer 2 or 3 audio files for example, for both music and effects. (You can always decompress to ram for frequently-used sounds.) This is a good thing. It's unfortunate that THESE developers didn't think to do the same thing with the various APIs needed to play sound and movies. When will people learn that proprietary standards are anything but?

  • I don't know what to think anymore. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Saturday December 14, 2002 @01:49PM (#4887907) Journal
    I was going to buy the game anyway, but I know some people who bought the game and still have it in the box, because they are waiting for a Linux client.

    Bioware promised a simultaneous release for Linux, Mac, and Windows four years ago. At the time they even said that there was the possibility of a BeOS port as well. Just as a note, this promise was made during the "dot com" bubble. Bioware might have felt that they could have hired more people to work on the Linux and Mac versions at the time.

    Up until right before the game was released, they were still promising this. Then, all of a sudden, they announced that only Windows would come out, with Linux and Mac to follow. Recall that at the beginning of the year, Bioware and Interplay had some sort of disagreement... and the game was in danger of not having a publisher. Then Infogames, the only other company with a lisence to D&D, picked it up.

    Admittedly, they _did_ deliver on the Linux server fairly quickly. That is a good thing for me, but the client would be nice as well.

    There are a few differing opinions on why the Linux client delay has occured.

    My personal opinion is that the publisher of the game, Infogames, was holding Bioware to a June release date very strictly (probably so the game would release two weeks before Warcraft III). This explains the extremely short Beta period, as well as the relatively high amount of bugs (compared to previous Bioware releases).
    I also believe that Infogames is still pushing Bioware to focus on adding new content to the game and begin work on expansions, rather than focus on getting the Linux client done, and that is why they only seem to have a few people on the Linux client. I personally believe that if Interplay were still the publisher, the game would have likely been pushed back to fall, and the simultaneous client release would have been a reality.

    Some people believe that, from the beginning, the Linux client was just a marketing ploy to get more people to buy the game and to get the game advertised on Linux sites. I really question the validity of this accusation. Bioware has a history of making good RPGs, so it isn't as if they had to rely on a cheap marketing tactic to sell the game. Mentioning that this was from the "Makers of Baldur's Gate" is enough for most RPG enthusiasts to buy the game.

    The third point of view is that Bioware really is trying their hardest to get the Linux client out, but these few problems are really causing them hell. Personally, I could care less if the movies don't work.

    What I believe Bioware ought to do is release a "beta" of the client as it is. No matter how crappy the sound is, I believe that it would probably at least keep Linux folks happy that Bioware is working on it.

    What really hurts the Linux client right now, in my eyes, is that Bioware has mentioned NOTHING about porting the two expansions they've announced to Linux.

    On the bright side, people say they've gotten NWN to run Wine. I haven't tried it myself, but at this point, it looks like Wine will be the only way to play in Linux for at least a few more months.
  • I'm a bit out of the loop, both waiting for the Linux release before buying and finding it too depressing to lurk around the bioware boards anymore.

    What's the current situation with the toolkit? Have they made any official comment on a native toolkit for Linux since kylix added C++ support? Also, how well is the toolkit working under wine right now?
  • The only reasonable answer to what Bioware is doing is, IMHO, this:

    a) don't buy the game until the Linux port is there
    b) do buy the game when it is
    unless
    c) they take so long that it doesn't matter anymore (e.g. shortly before the release of NWN2, which would mean you don't have anyone to play with)

  • Fantastic News! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Derek French ( 580271 ) <derekf@biowar[ ]om ['e.c' in gap]> on Saturday December 14, 2002 @09:02PM (#4889754) Homepage
    We have just been informed by Rad Game Tools (http://www.radgametools.com) that they have Linux versions of both Bink and Miles, even though its not mentioned on their web site. We will be getting our hands on these tools on Monday and we should have further information for you then.

    This solves the two outstanding issues with the Linux Client, and I bet we will have even more good news for you in the coming week in terms of future Betas or Demos of the Linux Client. We here at BioWare are thrilled with this development.

    We would like to apologise for the confusion arising from the Dec 13th update where it seem like we were blaming Rad for the delay. This is entirely untrue. We were stating that, to the best of our knowledge, we would have to find our own solutions for movie and sound playing in the Linux Client. This is no longer the case and we look forward to using the Linux Rad Game Tools just like we are in the Windows and upcoming Mac version.

    Rejoice (and I guess its time to upgrade the TNT2 video card in my Linux Box at home)!

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