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While a lot of people have likely moved onto the newer editions of games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, GemRB [Official Site] is still being updated if you wish to play the originals on Linux.

The latest version, v0.8.5, was released this month bringing in some major changes thanks to SDL2, here's the highlights of what's changed:

New features

  • SDL2 resolution-independent window scaling, environmental audio, IRIX compatibility
  • regeneration during sleep, time dilation
  • iwd2 ability stacking, iwd ZZ* weapon bonuses
  • portrait.2da handling, avatar shadows, dialogF.tlk handling

Improved features

  • infravision
  • better compatibility with bgt, 10pp, ia, kelsey, dr
  • sdl2 input, mouse scrolling, opengl driver
  • iwd2 cg&lu, item (un)usability, avatar sizes, permanent clabs
  • ambients, verbal constants, random walk, walk sounds
  • bugfixes

If you're interested in helping development, they have a todo list here of what is still to be done. Even though it's not technically finished, a number of games can be played through to completion like Baldur's Gate I&II and Icewind Dale.

Thanks for the tip mcphail.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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4 comments

wvstolzing Nov 29, 2017
They seem to be focused almost exclusively on BG1&2, and IWD1. It's been a while since I last played around with GemRB; but the status of support for PST seems to have stayed the same. It says 'roughly completable', but a lot of UI elements didn't work at all, making it 'roughly playable' at best.
mcphail Nov 29, 2017
Quoting: wvstolzingThey seem to be focused almost exclusively on BG1&2, and IWD1. It's been a while since I last played around with GemRB; but the status of support for PST seems to have stayed the same. It says 'roughly completable', but a lot of UI elements didn't work at all, making it 'roughly playable' at best.

It seems like most of the work they are doing for game compatibility these days is for PST. They're very reliant on people playing through the games on their engine and reporting bugs, though, and I suppose the BG and IWD games have a larger player cohort for testing. I'd encourage anyone very familiar with the original games to try them in gemrb and report discrepancies to the developers.
razing32 Nov 29, 2017
Do the games run better in GemRB than they do in say wine ?
crt0mega Nov 30, 2017
Quoting: razing32Do the games run better in GemRB than they do in say wine ?
Depends. Here's what they said on their Wiki:
QuoteGemRB is quite complete, especially regarding BG2, BG1 and IWD1 which can be played through. The whole Baldur's Gate saga is completable. There is of course still stuff to be done.

PST is roughly completable (looking for testers), while IWD2 is not1). Both still require a lot more love to reach the level of the other games.
Plus: GemRB lacks support for multiplayer/co-op. They once thought about reinventingimplementing the weel DirectPlay but they currently have no plans on that topic. I just hope they'll ditch multiplayer-compatibility to the original games and grab something like RakNet for that task.


Last edited by crt0mega on 30 November 2017 at 2:24 pm UTC
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