Mini-: Neverwinter Nights Linux Client

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I know, the first thing you asked yourself after reading the headline was Â"so what's up with this Â"Mini-ReviewÂ" stuff?Â" Even if you didn't ask, I bet you're wondering. If you weren't wondering, well you're gonna hear it anyway. I am gonna take a look at the NWN Linux Client from a technical perspective, convering things like installation, stability and performance. So it's not really a review of the game, hence the Â"Mini-ReviewÂ" bit. See? I don't just make up buzzwords to make myself look cool.

I guess I should actually start this thing ...Installation

Â"It left me crawling, staring straight at the sun...Â"

Installation is a tricky thing, it can be very difficult or easy depending on the way you install it. There are two options, either having the Windows version installed only patched to version 1.29 (which isn't the latest version), or downloading a 1.1Gb file from the internet that has the resources necessary for the 1.29 version. Both of these options are rather annoying to say the least, but depending on your internet connection the second option may be the least hassle. To install from the latest Windows version, you will have to revert to 1.29, then copy it, then patch again, much like the hokey pokey. Either way, once you get this far, you then download the client and the patch, and uncompress them both to the resources directory. Installation isn't really the shining star in the whole experience.

Playing the Game

Â"...only a moment I noticed, every dog has his day.Â"

Fortunately, once I got it installed, it ran without any trouble at all. No crashes, weird performance problems or driver related difficulties at all. Just get the latest Nvidia drivers and make sure your have OSS support (which almost all sound cards do, if you can hear sound under Linux, you have it) and you're good to go. ATI cards, or other 3D accelerated cards may have a harder time with it, as I have seen several problems with the Radeon and FireGL series cards on their forums, and on my laptop with an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 there were artifacts and horrible performance issues.
The client was rock solid though, it never crashed once. It supported all the features the Windows version supports, uses the same modules and maps, and connects to the Windows client perfectly. In all my tests on my machine with the Nvidia Geforce 4, I never saw it even hiccup. All in all, it's a great replacement for the Windows version, providing you go through the trouble of installing it.

Get the Linux client at http://nwn.bioware.com/

Comments

I looked at this review for a while.  There seemed to be some words I recognized in there occasionally, but they'd often be right next to words that meant nothing to me.  It's nice to hear that everything on the planet has OSS support, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know OSS if I caught it off a stripper in the French Quarter. 

Okay Captain Smarty Pants, is that any better? FYI, it stands for Open Sound System, and has been the Linux way of doing sound for years, though it's being replaced by ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture), but even at that ALSA can emulate OSS with a kernel module. OSS is being replaced for several reasons, such as the exclusive locks on the /dev/dsp for I/O, sample rate conversion issues and software channel mixing. I can't think of any more difficult words right now, but I'd use em if I had em.

I always thought OSS was "open source software", but your review still made sense.

It's good see a good game on Linux, I hope more companies will follow.

You're right, it stands for that too. Now Im confused