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Love the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition from Beamdog and want to make it look just that little bit more modern? Beamdog has your answer now.

After years of work, Beamdog has now released a free HD Models & Textures Pack for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition that gives a visual boost to player character models and their equipment (including armour, weapons and shields). The newer models now support "normal and spec information", plus they can be further modded by the community just the the base game.

Currently, it's only available as a direct external download from the Beamdog website. Hopefully at some point they will put it up on Steam as some sort of free DLC to make it easier for players. Or perhaps another more open modding platform like mod.io. At least this way as a plain download for now, buyers from all PC stores can access it easily.

Beamdog note that lower-end machines may struggle with this extra pack. Following up in a forum post a few pages in on Steam, they mentioned "It's not an optional DLC via Steam because this is still WIP, and using the updated models can lead to performance issues on those PCs that are low-end but can run basic NWN:EE just fine" so it's entirely possible they may eventually make it easier to add in.

Wonderful to see such long-term commitment to an RPG gem.

You can pick up Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition from GOG and Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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soulsource Nov 27, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: soulsource
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Arcadius-8606Anyone have the beamdog client installed properly? Thought I would give this some support and it's a no good install for POP OS 21.04.

Harfbuzz version too old error.
Yeah, this is one of the issues with how people package things. It makes more sense to have a build server set up. Create a repo for the current distributions at time for release, then add a new repo as they come out, and have some post install stuff for upgrades.

This way a new package automatically gets built with the correct dependencies. Problem is getting the build server to handle the main distributions.

Building games can take hours. If you want to do a separate build for all major distributions, that's a massive waiting time...

I'd rather package once on Debian Stable and then just test if the built package installs on other distros.
In addition, I'd do what Unity does, and link a lot of libraries statically. Not all, of course, only those where it makes sense from an upgrade- and security-standpoint. For applications packaged by the distributor static linkage is not a good idea, but for standalone programs packaged by someone outside the distribution I think the advantages (being independent of system library versions, no need to integrate with the package manager,...) outweigh the disadvantages (higher RAM usage, higher HDD usage, responsibility for security updates,...).
This is about the distribution clients, not the game itself.

Sorry for misunderstanding. I thought you were talking about building/packaging of games.
What do you mean by "distribution client" though? Distributors build their packages themselves though, so how could their packaging influence games (apart from shipping older libraries than those the game links against - what is again a problem of the game packaging targeting too new library versions)?
slaapliedje Nov 28, 2021
Quoting: soulsource
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: soulsource
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Arcadius-8606Anyone have the beamdog client installed properly? Thought I would give this some support and it's a no good install for POP OS 21.04.

Harfbuzz version too old error.
Yeah, this is one of the issues with how people package things. It makes more sense to have a build server set up. Create a repo for the current distributions at time for release, then add a new repo as they come out, and have some post install stuff for upgrades.

This way a new package automatically gets built with the correct dependencies. Problem is getting the build server to handle the main distributions.

Building games can take hours. If you want to do a separate build for all major distributions, that's a massive waiting time...

I'd rather package once on Debian Stable and then just test if the built package installs on other distros.
In addition, I'd do what Unity does, and link a lot of libraries statically. Not all, of course, only those where it makes sense from an upgrade- and security-standpoint. For applications packaged by the distributor static linkage is not a good idea, but for standalone programs packaged by someone outside the distribution I think the advantages (being independent of system library versions, no need to integrate with the package manager,...) outweigh the disadvantages (higher RAM usage, higher HDD usage, responsibility for security updates,...).
This is about the distribution clients, not the game itself.

Sorry for misunderstanding. I thought you were talking about building/packaging of games.
What do you mean by "distribution client" though? Distributors build their packages themselves though, so how could their packaging influence games (apart from shipping older libraries than those the game links against - what is again a problem of the game packaging targeting too new library versions)?
Beamdog has their own client (in this case they distribute it as an Appimage. It was crashing on me when I tested it). That is what I mean by them building their own client. As you can buy their games directly from them. I think Feral might have one too?
slaapliedje Nov 28, 2021
Quoting: Arcadius-8606
Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, this is one of the issues with how people package things. It makes more sense to have a build server set up. Create a repo for the current distributions at time for release, then add a new repo as they come out, and have some post install stuff for upgrades.

This way a new package automatically gets built with the correct dependencies. Problem is getting the build server to handle the main distributions.

I just put in for a refund. This is too much work for me. I was hoping to have something easy RPGs-ish to setup for family while they are visiting since most of my library is arena shooters and arcade fighters.
Yeah, I would have just bought it through Steam or GOG. Beamdog's client is just crashing for me.
mrdeathjr Dec 1, 2021
In my case runs very well with xubuntu 22.04 lts x64 (kernel 5.15) and visually new models are very good (vram usage up around to 2x)

old models



new models



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wy59EosKgU




Last edited by mrdeathjr on 1 December 2021 at 7:24 pm UTC
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