[Screenshot]

Ilmryn summons... the daemon to execute scheduled commands?

I would have never guessed what was the first random name the Linux version created. That name is just cute. And the wolf is cuter. =)

[Screenshot]

Okay, this is odd.

2003-02-21: What happened shortly after the message Ilmryn Glannath casting Invisibility - never give any job to a mage who can't be taken seriously...

...ahem. So we finally have a Linux client! Hooray! ...though it is a beta =( The game screen update is slightly slow for some reason or other and it won't create screenshots with PrintScreen button (well, it worked after I bound it to some other key). Here's a screenshot produced by my usual PrintScreen script (runs xwd -root | convert - /tmp/sshot.png). It doesn't always work perfectly though. Odd results, huh? (Screen background from cover of "Dragonflight" by Anne McCaffrey...)

NOTE: This article is really intended more for historical interest. It's not really that helpful anymore; these days you can get NWN on Linux running with no hassle whatsoever. And this account was probably not that helpful when it came out, either. Most of the problems were caused by me being stupid and my system being messed up. Or something like that. =)

The configuration

My configuration used when doing the beta is as follows:

Usual game settings

1024x768, either in window or not.

TexturePack=3, Enable CreatureEnvironmentMapping=1, Enable TextureAnimations=0 (?), CreatureShadowDetail=2, Gamma=1.000000, VideoQualitySetting=2, EnableEnvironmentShadows=1, EnableFastGrass=1, EnableGrass=1, CreatureWindSetting=2, Enable AnisotropicFiltering=1 (?), Enable Truform=0, EnableVisualEffectsHigh=1, NumShadowCastingLights=2, ShinyWater=0, Enable VSync=0, AntiAliasing Mode=0, NumDynamicLights=7

Problem log

Betas 1-3, nvidia driver 3123

Before you flame "this is what you get for using a cheap MX card", let me remind you that I do get acceptable framerates and 64 meg textures in Windows on the same setup. It's not the hardware's fault.

People talked of trying NVIDIA AGP instead of kernel AGPGART. No difference.

Funkily enough, host bridge supports only 1x AGP, and supports SBA but not Fast Writes, and card can do 1x to 4x AGP and supports Fast Writes but not SBA. A conflict that results in the worst possible combination, as seen below...

/proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status:

Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        1x
Fast Writes:     Disabled
SBA:             Disabled

Beta 2, nvidia driver 4191

X took forever to start, 2D performance horrible all around, and it just froze-crashed after a few hours. Plus, NWN went "pling!" and exited right away. Reverted to 3123.

Beta 3, nvidia driver 4349

2003-04-01: X still takes forever to start, but once it's running it's fine. The 2D performance is again tolerable and NWN works again - but still slow and lacking the textures.

But the bright side: On 3123 Urban Terror and Q3F didn't work too well, but with 4349 (and Q3 patch to 1.32b), they work again. Cool. If I'm not going to kill people with a +1 composite longbow, I'll do that with a no-longer-ridiculously-accurate-but-sure-looks-cool UMP45. =)

Beta 4, nvidia driver 4349

2003-04-08: Guess what? Nothing new. Then again, I've been busy with other stuff so this is not really that bad =) Tried with NVIDIA AGP driver this time. Tried getting FSAA working too, but it just won't budge.

2003-04-10: Hmm, tried (at last) Tenebrae Quake and that doesn't run either even when people say that yes, it actually is supposed to run on GeForce2MX. (Says some or other extension wasn't available...)

2003-04-22: SUCCESS!! WOOHOOOOOO! Guess what was the problem? nwmain linked to /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 instead of /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 - in other words, it wanted Mesa software rendering, not NVIDIA stuff. Everything rendered on software! Damn, these P!!!'s are fast!

Here's the fix - I added this line to the nwn script: export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1

Tenebrae also works now and looks pretty damn creepy. I hope this will also fix gtkradiant =) Now if only I had more rocketful vidcard, the antialiasing worked and looked pretty cool but a little bit slow...

2003-10-12: Special update much later: 1.32 stable release

Okay, so betas worked, and Bioware publishes patches simultaneously for all platforms. Very cool. I also have a new video card (GeForce4 Ti 4200). The odd thing is that the database access has some problems sometimes. Specifically, game sometimes crashes when trying to write to database, especially if it doesn't exist. 1.32 seems to be doing better now - especially since the database is on my reiserfs partition instead of keeping it on VFAT. apparently, file name cases do matter!