Neverwinter Nights 1.68 Patch Released
A reader wrote to let us know about the release of Neverwinter Nights 1.68 patch. The highlights include scripting updates and especially visible cloaks. The cloaks feature is a contribution from DLA who claim we are to expect news on their eagerly anticipated module Wyvern Crown of Cormyr very soon.
Sadly, this is the last official Neverwinter Nights patch from Bioware, as Atari decided to cancel all support (and the Premium Module Programme) for the orginal Neverwinter Nights in hope that this will draw NWN fans to Neverwinter Nights 2 (with prospect that however popular the game may still be a few years after the release, the support will be cancelled so that people feel more inclined to purchase Neverwinter Nights 3, etc.).
August 31st, 2006 at 8:30 am
NWN2 does not exsist for me and my LAN game friends because although 1/2 of them still use Windows, we can only play games together that work in Linux. I do make an exception for WarCraft3 and Starcraft in Wine.
None of my friends have plans to buy NWN2, unless it comes out for the Wii we might.
For once I would like a game company to release a game for Linux 1 week before the Windows release just to see sales.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:42 am
Not enough braincells in the head of Atari… making a nwn2 server for linux isn’t linux support and we don’t want a nwn2 server when we don’t have a client.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:31 pm
No, this will not gain my support for NWN2. All it does is scare me away from NWN2. I can only imagine that they’ll drop support for that too at first opportunity, even if the support costs are self-sustaining like they were with NWN.
August 31st, 2006 at 5:36 pm
>”For once I would like a game company to release a game for Linux 1 week before the Windows release just to see sales.
”
Quake 3 came out for Linux first.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:08 pm
i’m wanting to reinstall my nwn, sou, hotu, does anyone know which order if any, it should go in? a while back you had to patch a few earlier patches beforehand because they didn’t include everything in the later patches, so, anyone have a good tutorial on what goes where?
August 31st, 2006 at 7:29 pm
[q]“so, anyone have a good tutorial on what goes where?”[/q]# emerge nwn
It’s not updated to 1.68 yet, but give it a week or so.
[q]“No, this will not gain my support for NWN2. All it does is scare me away from NWN2. I can only imagine that they’ll drop support for that too at first opportunity, even if the support costs are self-sustaining like they were with NWN.”[/q]I suppose in your mind, practicing smart business in an attempt to make more money is equal to evil moneygrubbing? There does come a time when you must declare “end-of-life” on a product.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:42 am
copyright being valid only for as long as the product is actively supported. Of course limitation still being placed on reselling , but free to copy when vendors drop support.
By dropping support a vendor is stating the product is obsolete . how think you
September 1st, 2006 at 8:41 am
i don’t have gentoo, do you know the install/patch steps kccricket, i’d still love to know, is it enough to install nwn, sou, hotu, and then 1.68, or is it more complex
September 1st, 2006 at 10:05 am
kccricket, you make valid points, yes. The biggest problem *I* see in all of this is that they EOLed it the way they did and they made it so that there wouldn’t be an easy way to produce a Linux and Mac version of the game, trying to reach for an X-Box 360 version (Geez… What were they thinking THERE?).
While I know it’s their call, Atari’s got 39 pages worth of mostly demand for the title and commentary- the polls on the (main) Bioware site indicate that they’re snubbing one of their main customer bases for the title by doing this and they still haven’t responded other than “there’s no plans”…
There’s a little room and reason for at least a little bit of legitimate acrimony- much like there’s a legitimate reason for the vitriol people still reserve for Blizzard over the misunderstanding on StarCraft back ages ago (They DIDN’T act in a good way (Massive understatement, that, really…) to people asking [i][b]nicely[/b][/i] for the title when the rumor had come out…) and then Bnetd.
(Sorry, the only way I’d ever buy a Blizzard title was if they either released a Linux version weeks before the Windows or Macintosh version or if they were producing only Linux titles now. With the way Atari’s comporting itself, I pretty much won’t be buying anything other than probably the next Unreal Tournament title if it still has Linux support in it. I don’t make exceptions for WINE/Cedega normally- and I don’t make exceptions for ANY Blizzard titles right at the moment.)
Right now, Atari’s relegated themselves to much the same situation now. I will probably only buy titles that are either Wii, PS2, or Linux/Windows with a simultaneous supported or unsupported release. This means that I’ll probably only buy the next Unreal Tournament version at this point.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:26 pm
It’s not easy to install everything (I have the 3 installments).
Even though I have gentoo,
I ended up writing a shell script to take care of installing everything from CD and installing the proper patches in the proper order, and also installing the CEP.
I collected all the necessary files and burned them to a single DVD (so I don’t have to swap CD’s like a madman).
I guess with this patch and CEPv2 coming out I may end up making another DVD.
And no way I’m going to buy NWN2 unless they release a linux version. Just not going to happen.
September 1st, 2006 at 3:28 pm
I don’t mind them phasing out support for an old game. In fact, I’m kind of surprised they’ve supported NWN as long as they have. But it would be awfully nice if Linux gamers could move to the new game with Windows users.
Obsidian’s attitude seems to be, “Stop bugging us about Linux. If you want NWN2 for Linux, bug Atari and make them make us make it.”
And of course Atari, being a megapublisher with dozens of development studios to manage, undoubtedly doesn’t give two wet farts about NWN2 for Linux.
But did Atari [i]make[/i] Bioware do a Linux port of NWN, or did Bioware do it on their own?
I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. I’ll bet Obsidian could do a Linux port, too, if they felt so inclined, but I’d also bet they’re aware of the noisy backlash that Bioware received for failing to deliver Linux NWN promptly, and they’ve decided it’s just not worth the trouble.
BTW, the next Unreal Tournament is being published by Midway, not Atari. I don’t think Atari has anything on the horizon for Linux.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:01 pm
can you post your script anonymous, so i can get some grasp on what goes where and when
September 1st, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Oh well. In the comunity of D&D I believe that there are quite a few Linux users out there — Here’s to hoping they shoot themselves in the foot instead of shooting the linux D&D’rs in the back.
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:07 am
BioWare had supposedly done this cross-platform effort from the beginning. What they’d done was announce it that way and indicated that they’d had issues with trying to get the Linux version stable enough for them. Then they’d had problems with their then publisher dying on them and needing to farm the game to another- in this case, Atari. What ended up happening was that they’d relied on RAD to get the ports of the Miles Sound System and Bink ported to Linux in time- and that they’d not really done a cross-platform game as they’d initially claimed at the time (It BECAME one, but only partially done as the cutscene playback never got put in, the editing tools were done in Borland C++ Builder (If you’re doing a cross-platform game, shouldn’t the TOOLS be cross-platform as well?), and we just BARELY got the stuff we initially got because RAD finally came through with Miles on Linux. I’m grateful that they went to the trouble to make a Linux version. What I’m not happy about was the misrepresentations that they made throughout all the time it took to get what we DID initially get. The same goes for all the rest. Now, they probably don’t see it as being a legitimate gripe- but as I’ve pointed out to them on a periodic basis, if they’d done this to the Windows side, they’d be out of business at this point.
September 4th, 2006 at 10:07 am
I have written a how to at least for the Platinum and Diamond editions. It should work in Ubuntu or Debian, probably others as well.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=113259
I’ll try to contact the writer of the installer again and see if he can now add the 1.68 patch to it (currently it will automatically download the 1.67 patch and apply it)
September 6th, 2006 at 3:42 am
You just have to read the sticky forum thread on nwn.bioware.com. It’s a very thorough and detailed howto for different situations of media and how to patch etc etc. Here it is:
http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=347606&forum=72
‘enjoy’ :D