HI gang, I m new to the forums and had a few questions I’m hoping you guys can help me with.
1st off, I bought NWN Diamond edition years back but only played the OC and the expansions…So I’m new to actually modding. I know Diamond edition(though I have no Idea how to install it) and EE both support Linux, but Im wondering how practical it is run /install mods (NIT etc) in the Linux version…are there any other Linux users on here? I’m assuming it would much easier to just install the windows version.
Which leads me to my second question, Which version do you guys recommend using? I was planning on buying the EE but there don’t seem to be anywhere near as many mods for it …and I hear it still has lots of bugs.
Hopefully, one of the Linux users here will advise on how best to install NWN.
I’ve read that mods work just as well on Linux, as long as you change any upper case letters in file names to lower case.
All the old mods work on EE (with minor exceptions). What you’re seeing as a small number are the mods that only work on EE. (Also, that classification isn’t entirely reliable - something site admin needs to fix).
Personally, I’d recommend EE, so that you can play any new mods, and support the developers at Beamdog who are breathing new life into this game. The retail version isn’t noticeably buggy. If you can still buy Diamond Edition, to be honest that wouldn’t restrict you much at the moment - it might be cheaper, but not significantly more stable in my experience.
I use Linux exclusively. Installing EE with Steam is pretty easy and it runs pretty smooth. Also, you don’t need a tool like NIT to download mods and stuff. You can just do things the old fashioned way and extract the files you download into the hak and modules directories.
One caveat is that Linux stores the user’s game files~/.local/share/Neverwinter Nights. But if you run the toolset in Wine, it uses the Windows/Mac default of ~/Documents/Neverwinter Nights. I recommend symlinking the two directories together.
Other option is to do everything (install, play, mod, etc) through Wine.
Retail and GOG Diamond has rating platinum and is extremely stable. Thanks to the virtual desktop you can also alt-tab from it.
Note that the toolset is also rated platinum, but it used to be gold, which is more appropriate. You’ll need to install Corefonts and be prepared for small fonts in few places and occasional access violation errors (which are usually harmless).
I hear you as for Beamdog breathing new life into the game: The new Aribeth model, Hall of justice and character showcase /Pixel/ mesh Shaders look awesome! However…I doesn’t look like Beamdog will have it ready anytime soon.
The other issue I had is with performance. I read about people having frame rate issues with EE, I run Linux on my laptop which is a 4th gen i7 with 16gigs of ddr3 and integrated GPU(HD4500 I think). Will this be enough to run the game comfortably with lighting/shader enhancements on linux? I remember trying to do Linux gaming on my old 6950…linux driver optimization was so bad I only got a fraction of
the gpu’s actual power. I can always just install it on my desktop(windows 10) that has gtx1060 in it, but Im thinking that should be WAY overkill for a 20 year old game…plus it would be nice not to have to switch computers when I want to play.
In case any other Linux users are interested, I tested the performance on some older games and as I suspected, Linux driver optimization is still poor for integrated Intel gpu’s. I couldn’t get a steady 60fps on SVEN Co-op( original half life engine from 1998!) despite having over a hundred on my windows partition …which mean running it in a VM is definitely out of the question. I could try switching video drivers but that probably wont make that big of a difference…I guess I will just bite the bullet and buy EE and install it on the windows Partition… or better yet, my overkill gaming desktop.
I have been using Ubuntu for years and usually ran the Diamond edition using wine but a couple of years ago decided to set it up to run in Linux as well which was a hassle to set up but it lives in my home folder and works flawlessly (I just have to install the 32 bit libraries) even if I update Ubuntu to a newer version. Yesterday I had to reinstall Ubuntu 20.04 and it just refused to run. After almost giving up I realized the issue and am sharing this tidbit here just in case anybody else has the same issue.: I have an Nvidia graphics card and the Nvidia settings profiles said ‘Nvidia On-Demand’ and it refused to run on this setting not even giving me any errors. On a whim I decided to try the the ‘Nvidia Performance Mode’ and voila, it started up in seconds like it usually does. Here is an archived forum topic here which discusses how to install it:
I remember reading on these forums somewhere that some haks may cause problems in linux but I can’t find that post anymore. It had something to do with files inside the hak having names that are too long or some other issue so the linux game just throws an error and shuts down. It’s working fine in Wine both Diamond Edition and Enhanced Edition.
The hak in question is this one: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/tileset/tno03-tileset-crusade
If anybody has an idea about this and how to fix it, it would be greatly appreciated if they throw some light on this issue.
Hi, Linux NWN player here. I’d recommend running the Windows version of EE in Wine, since the performance and stability will likely be better than the “native” version on recentish hardware. You will want to install DXVK from your distro’s repository, or from here:
And d8vk from here:
Your mods will go in “~/Documents/Neverwinter Nights” as on Windows.
Also remember to set a framerate limit! This applies for both “native” Linux and Windows/Wine. IDK how this stuff works on native Windows, but a modern video card running an ancient engine like NWN can quickly overheat if not framerate limited. If you don’t set the limit and your machine shuts down during a boss fight, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Mind, I’m doing all this with installable EXEs from GOG, not Steam, because I’m an oldschool doof who dislikes app stores. To try this on Steam you’d instead have the Windows version running on Proton, but I’m not sure how exactly to install D8VK that way.
I think I have DXVK installed but I can double check that. The game is running fine in wine generally speaking and the toolset is also running quite ok. It throws errors sometimes but I remember it doing that in Win 7 as well.
This is something I should probably double check; which file is this set in? the ‘settings.tml’ or another file? UPDATE: Ok. Scratch that, a quick internet search revealed how and where to set that in both 1.69 and EE.
It’s probably true; there are less hiccups running the game in Wine. Some modules just throw errors in Linux and run ok in wine.
My specific problem is with the above named ‘hak’ file which won’t run in the Linux game but runs fine in wine in the toolset and will run fine if I start the game in wine. I think there are some files inside the hak that are upsetting Linux somehow.
I am Windows user, but I have noticed that video card fan does run when playing EE. Is there a limit you would recommend that does not affect game performance?
@Surazal Windows video card drivers sometimes can set framerate limits on their own I think, depending on the card and the driver? For me I just use the default 60/10/48 Hz; you don’t need foreground FPS to be faster than your monitor’s refresh rate.
@Vivienne IIRC the Linux version just translates DirectX to OpenGL calls, possibly even using an old version of winelib. Translating DirectX to Vulkan is a lot more efficient, and if winelib is involved then the latest Wine may have bugfixes vs. the version of winelib used. YMMV of course, but I’ve found the Windows version and Wine to be more stable on my old laptop (which does not properly support Vulkan) as well.
