NWN 2 + 0.9.59 update

I've recently updated my wine to the latest version 0.9.59 and I'm glad to say that NWN2 mini-map and map problem is now fixed! I'm still playing it in a very slow pace as I've very little time for it. (I've also checked Icewind Dale if it is still working fine with the new version of wine and luckily it is.) Kudos for the wine developers! :)

PS.: I sadly see that the link to the guide for nwn2 installing is now broken. Here goes a copy of it: guide. Another important detail may be that I've patched the game to 1111153 without problems but haven't tried any newer updates yet.

UPDATE (13 Nov 2008): Trying to use with wine 1.1.18, result: no longer works! It tells me no usable D3D device could be detected, so I can't run the game with that version.

Neverwinter Nights 2

Neverwinter Nights 2 is another game of BioWare second in the Neverwinter Nights series. It's with D&D rules and the story plays in the Forgotten Realms near Neverwinter. It has decent 3D graphics, requires a strong GPU/CPU combo to play. Using this guide I could install and play NWN2 with wine 0.9.52 plus the additional native dlls of Windows (devenum, dxdiagn, d3dx9_30, imm32, ms vc80 dlls and such) and a little registry tailoring with wine's regedit. Tested it for some couple of hours, configuring 3D options and playing. Works good so far, slower than in Windows although but only a few drawbacks in the graphics with the similar look. One major problem is the small map is not working as you can see it on the shots. I will modify this post later if more things turn out. I have installed Mask of The Betrayer expansion and am playing it - as I've already finished the original one (under Windows).

I could easily patch the game in offline mode to the latest NWN2 final patch set. I only had to download the update zip files (around 240 MB). Combats and such work with good speed. I had to switch shadows off, bloom on, water reflections off, water refraction on. Without these I had some problems with the shaders of the game. Turning shadows off means a large cut on GPU stress and it made the game rather playable with medium look distance in 1280x1024 with my configuration.

I've found an open bug in wine's bug tracker. There's a workaround for non displaying maps in outdoor area: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9193#c15. ("Pressing ALT-ENTER twice...") No luck with indoor though.

The installation of the expansion was pretty straightforward without any errors. To apply the latest patches I had to rename the nwn2_pcx1_*.zip files to nwn2_pc_*.zip to make it work with the offline installation. I've started the campaign with my good old wizard/pale master combination, level 18. Playing the expansion I have not met any critical bug yet. I've patched the game to the latest expansion patch available. One mediocre problem I've found is the rest option getting stuck. I had to restart the game to be able to rest. (I remember that this happened once in plain NWN2 under Windows too.) This occurred only once so far in a gaming of 4-5 hours. Also going to the shadow plane once resulted in the gray shader blocking the view from above. (Restarting the game helped.) So far that's about the expansion.

Paul's test configuration

Just a short description, I'll modify it later in detail.

Software:
Gentoo Linux 2006.1
Xorg 7.3
wine 0.9.59
nvidia binary driver 169.12
kernel 2.6.22

Hardware:
AMD64 X2 3800+
Abit KN9 motherboard
Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB
2GB DDR2 RAM 800MHz

Icewind Dale I. - 1st post

Currently I'm playing this title. It's one of those famous Black Isle games. Beautiful painted 2D graphics with AD&D set of rules in the Forgotten Realms.

I've stumbled upon it in a hypermarket's PC game shelf in the form of a 3 in 1 game set of Icewind Dale / Heart of Winter expansion and Icewind Dale 2 for about $12 which I counted as a bargain for such a cool combo. I jumped in and pushed the box between two packs of mineral water.

I was counting on it to work under Linux as previously I had messed with Baldur's Gate and wine some years ago. And I was right. It installed flawlessly with latest vanilla wine 0.9.52, I had to run not even winecfg. Of small importance but a bonus was that the base game was recorded in 1 DVD format. Symlinking the automounted /media/ICEWIND directory under dos devices of ~/.wine directory was a key thing to run it.

There's a small configuration tool sitting in the game's directory which gives many possibilities of configuration regarding game play and graphics too. One advice I can give you is to experiment with the resolution (I set it to 1024x768) and try to find out which gives the nicest interface experience. In some of the higher resolutions you may get magnified buttons and such. Look at my screenshot, it looks good I think. :-) The 1280 resolution had bigger buttons and not so nice UI compared to the 1024x768, although the higher resolution the bigger part of the levels you'll see. My compromise is to use 1024x768 on my 1280x1024 19" monitor. (I've added a screen shot with the "too big buttons" mode.)

If you have Heart of Winter expansion and patch set installed you'll have an option to use OpenGL rendering mode. It results in a much nicer fog of view effect yet I experienced crashes when quick saving rooting in the GL libraries of nvidia driver. So I go with normal engine settings.

So far the game is rather enjoyable. I have to root out some evil presence around Ten Towns and the Spine of The World. I set up a party of 3. Two multi class fighters (dwarf cleric, elven thief) and a gnome illusionist. They are around raw level 6-7 now. I'm deep in the game and experienced no crash at all after I found the right settings. There seems to be some minor lags with the sound system as far as I can tell it. When speaking with people sometimes the loading of the dialog takes some seconds.

All in all I much enjoy playing the game. You can have it for a few coins maybe around your location and the 2D graphics made in 2000 are just really nicely done. This game got nice reviews around the net, e.g. gamespot.com gave it a score of 8.6. If I'll finally finish it with no Linux related problems I'll recommend it for sure for the Linux gamers.

Purpose of this all

This is a blog to share the experience of playing different role playing games for PC (well, other architectures may happen) under the famous Linux operating system.

For all of my computer activity which spans now over some years and decades I've been playing RPGs many times starting with old C64 ones till reaching the PC era of DOS games and later the Windows ones. Now as time passed I've become a notorious Linux user too and prefer to use it as my main operating system. Yet I'm trying to play my favorite newer or older games without switching to the Windows OS. This may or may not succeed at times. I choose to write about the success stories here, I hope there'll be some to share... ;-)

This way we hope to help those Linux users who are RPG fans with pointing out the possible alternative games and showing how we cope with them. The blog was started as a single man effort yet it's started to grow into something bigger when KhaaL joined. Hope we'll get a good work done here. Let's discover that Linux is for gaming! ;-)