Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
We use affiliate links to earn us some pennies. Learn more.

The developers working away on the Infinity Engine open source remake GemRB just released v0.9.5, bringing major classic RPG compatibility improvements.

What's the point of the project exactly? In their own words: "The goal of the project is to make the Infinity Engine games available on a wide range of platforms forever, fix or avoid old bugs, add new features and provide a superb platform for mod development. All done in the open by players for players".

This includes games like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and work towards their enhanced editions from Beamdog too.

From their release notes:

It features significant changes in several areas. The audio subsystem received many improvements and input handling was upgraded especially for users of controllers. The pathfinding performance was dramatically increased, some tests quantifying that as 13-161 % for short paths, 48-196 % for medium paths, 68-146 % for long paths. EE-like zoom is now available in all games, just set “Zoom Lock” to 0 in the gem-*.ini file in your game folder.

On the game support side of things this release brings many improvements for IWD2, now considered as polished as the other games, several fixes for PST and more work on compatibility with the EEs. Support for BG2EE is still experimental, but the Shadows of Amn portion is known to be completable. Our demo received a much nicer avatar and new asset creation capabilities were added (like animations not limited to 15 FPS).


Pictured - Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
6 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.
4 comments

Salvatos 3 hours ago
Wait, they support Icewind Dale 2 even though Beamdog said they couldn't make an Enhanced Edition for it? Huh!

> Multiplayer is not supported.
Aw, there go my hopes and dreams.
such 3 hours ago
Not a huge fan of the EEs seemingly taking priority over regular ol' PST polish, but it's always nice seeing a GemRB update.
Verglas 2 hours ago
One of the things I love about this site is learning about open source projects I didn't even know existed. This is almost as amazing as the open source Cannon Fodder I read about here... Thank you, I <3 Open Source and having some of my favorite games in a timeless, platform-agnostic version always makes me happy.
kaiman 18 minutes ago
Quoting: SalvatosWait, they support Icewind Dale 2 even though Beamdog said they couldn't make an Enhanced Edition for it? Huh!
From what I heard, the source code / assets of IWD2 were lost, and the EEs Beamdog did were all based on the original stuff.
GemRB on the other hand is a rewrite from scratch, so they never had the original code for any of the games to begin with.

Doesn't mean Beamdog couldn't have possibly reverse engineered the bits required to make IWD2 work on top of what they already had, but I guess it may not have been cost-effective, and if they got it wrong they'd piss off their paying customers.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon Logo Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal Logo PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register