Quoting: GuestOK, according to their FAQ [External Link], it is indeed Windows only

At the moment. From what I hear, Linux and Mac OS X support will come later.

Quoting: TeodosioIs it free as in 'free beer' or as in 'free speech'?

Beer, and not even that completely.

Have a look at their FAQ [External Link]:

Q. Can I take Lumberyard and make my own game engine and distribute it?
No. While you may maintain an internal version of Lumberyard that you have modified, you may not distribute that modified version in source code form, or as a freestanding game engine to third parties. You also may not use Lumberyard to distribute your own game engine, to make improvements to another game engine, or otherwise compete with Lumberyard or Amazon GameLift.

Q. Is Lumberyard “open source”?
No. We make the source code available to enable you to fully customize your game, but your rights are limited by the Lumberyard Service Terms. For example, you may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code, or use it to release your own game engine.

[...]

Q. Can my game use an alternate web service instead of AWS?
No. If your game servers use a non-AWS alternate web service, we obviously don’t make any money, and it’s more difficult for us to support future development of Lumberyard. By “alternate web service” we mean any non-AWS web service that is similar to or can act as a replacement for Amazon EC2, Amazon Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2 Container Service, or Amazon GameLift. You can use hardware you own and operate for your game servers.

So you can't distribute derivates, and you have to use AWS (unless you use no web service at all). You still have to pay for AWS if you use it, too.

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And if anybody's interested in that, here's an interview I did with The Linux Gamer:

View video on youtube.com

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Quoting: GuestI wonder if by smart single quotation mark, you mean this: ’
And if by apostrophe you mean this: '

Yes, or rather, I mean 0x92 from the Windows Codepage 1252 [External Link], and 0x27.

The former is also used as a single closing quotation mark. The Unicode description is RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK [External Link], with a comment "this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe". Just to distinguish it from 0x27, I called it a "smart" single quotation mark. :)

The strings in the French version Neverwinter Nights use both, interchangeably. In the texture that defines the font, both characters look the same. So some of them were broken, some displayed correctly. This has been fixed now.

The issue, in case anybody's interested was that xoreos didn't take the font encoding into account. It basically acted as if the order of the letters and their indices were the same as in Unicode (or as UTF-32 codepoints). This works for all characters in Latin1 (ISO-8859-1), because those map 1:1 onto Unicode. And because CP-1252, the encoding used in western European versions of Neverwinter Nights (and KotOR/KotOR2), is mostly identical to Latin1, this also worked.

Except for the quote/apostrophe, which is 0x92 in CP-1252, but maps to UTF-32 codepoint 0x2019. And, of course, the extended Latin-based characters eastern European languages (which use CP-1250) don't map either, let alone Cyrillic characters (CP-1251). [1]

This has been fixed, and now both apostrophes show correctly in French Neverwinter Nights versions. Likewise, eastern European versions should also work better now (but I personally haven't tested them).

[1] Neither would any of the Asian languages work, but xoreos doesn't support them at all yet, unfortunately.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyXoreos generally works at least on certain games except for various annoying glitches, and we just cleaned up some of those

Unfortunately not, no.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyXoreos technically makes certain games run but they are unplayable, and this release cleans up certain issues but leaves that broader unplayable status largely intact

This, rather.

What currently works is this: xoreos can detect and start all games. All games show basic ingame areas, with objects and (often) NPCs. Scripts (on area enter, on object click) are evaluated and run, but many of the functionality kicked off by the scripts is not implemented yet. Sound, music and videos work for most games. NWN and KotOR/KotOR2 also have GUIs (NWN more extensive), and NWN also has NPC conversations implemented.

There's no "proper" gameplay as such implemented yet.

For some screenshots, see the screenshots page here: https://xoreos.org/screenshots/index.html [External Link]
For a video of Neverwinter Nights running in xoreos, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EZRvDIB7wI [External Link]

For a big rambly, non-exhaustive list of things left to do, see this wiki page: https://wiki.xoreos.org/index.php?title=TODO [External Link]

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe progress described, not to mention the tools for easing the continuation of progress, sound very positive

It's progress. Slow progress, and there's still a lot to do, but progress nonetheless.

Quoting: Purple Library Guybut I can't tell what that means for the general prospects.

Well, the prospects are these: it's a massive undertaking. With the current level of contributors, who are there (and I'm super grateful for them <3) and me still doing most of the work, this is never going to be finished.

I.e. I need more contributors. Anybody interested, please contact me. Anybody who knows people potentially interested, tell them about xoreos. Get the word out. Thanks! :)

If anybody has any questions about this project or the process or anything, feel free to ask.

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Quoting: oldrocker99I'd love it if they released free copies of Planescape:Torment in a similar manner.

Considering that, AFAIK, WotC/Hasbro is the current rights holder of Planescape: Torment, not inXile, I don't think that's going to happen.

(Me, I'm still sore that they let the Planescape setting, as in the pen & paper thing, die. It hasn't even been renewed for D&D 3e, let along 4 or 5. Hell, I kinda wished there was an official Pathfinder conversion of Planescape, but that's just a pie in the sky.)

Quoting: Shmerlhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nectargamestudios/project-resurgence/description

I second that recommendation.

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Quoting: IvancilloWondering if this will come DRM-Free ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/438068 [External Link]

Many of you have asked us if we will be releasing Torment on GOG.com. After all, they're the best place to get the game that inspired this all – Planescape: Torment. Well, good news! We're happy to announce that we've talked with the GOG.com crew and they've let us know that they would love to distribute Torment! They will be one of your options to download your digital DRM-free copies.

As far for the beta: I for one do have beta access. It came with the $80 all-digital Lore Master level I backed at. I never really cared that much for beta access, though. I was more interested in all the other goodies on that tier: the soundtrack, novellas, etc.; I'm a sucker for those. So I'm only slightly disappointed with respect to the beta.

For what it's worth, I tried it with Wine. I used steamcmd to download the Windows beta, recompiled Wine for 64-bit support, and it worked.

The first area has very low FPS on my system. I understand that's the oscilating pylons that are quite a draw. The second area, the lab, is way better. I only have 4GB of RAM, though, and the game is constantly swapping for me. Until suddenly, in the middle of the battle there, the game crashes with a Unity garbage collector error ("GetThreadContext failed"). So yeah, it's still very much unoptimized and buggy. :)

I don't really intend to play it any further. I do want to sink into it whole when it's finished.

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Quoting: SpeedsterDrMcCoy, is NWScript one of the big missing pieces for actually being able to play NWN with xoreos?

As such, no. There is (and already had been) a working NWScript interpreter in xoreos. What's missing there is the myriad of engine functions that the scripts call. These need to be implemented in xoreos. Currently, about 100 of 850, per game, of those are implemented.

However, having a disassembler helps debugging when things go wrong, because I made a mistake or somesuch. In fact, the work I put into that already helped me finding a wrong assumption I had made, and helped me cement another assumption. Also, figuring out those four new opcodes (two for Dragon Age: Origins, another two for Dragon Age II) was thanks to a combination of the disassembly mode of OpenKnight's nwnnsscomp and the start of this here xoreos' disassembler.

Also also, I personally find disassembling and decompilation a really interesting topic. :)

Oh, and the result might be useful for the modding communities that still exist. So even if xoreos never goes anywhere, at least I produced a few useful tools. Maybe. :P

Quoting: SpeedsterStill another piece needed for combat?

For NWN, next up would be walkmeshes, pathfinding and then putting those together with the (partially working, a bit buggy) animation system to have the characters walk. Then correct positioning of the camera, above the PC. Then evaluating triggers, areas on the floor that start scripts when something enters or leaves them.

For combat, there's way more to be done. Objects need inventories, characters need equipment slots. There needs to be a proper dividing of the time in rounds. All the combat rules need to be implemented, and all the 2DA files that specify values and things for the rules need to be read.

Quoting: SpeedsterThe wiki status page shows what *does* work rather than what is left to do...

The TODO page [External Link] is rather the one with the things left to do. It's not a complete list of what's missing, either, though.

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Quoting: minjJust here to say that I really enjoy these technical yet fairly n00b-friendly articles.

Thanks. :)

Writing these is something I find quite difficult. I want to explain my work in a way that's legible for people not deep within the topic. But I also don't want to bore people who do know more to death. All the while, I need to keep it somewhat short, because it's not helpful either to clobber everyone over the head with a 100,000 words article.

Glad I'm succeeding at least partially there. If there's anything unclear, please don't hesitate to ask.

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Quoting: berillionsThis article is a very good news/good news/bad news for Linux gamers and futures Aaa games?

Yes.

(Or, in other, less jerkish words: it depends. It depends on how exactly it will go and on your personal view on several issues.)

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They are also making the transition to Vulkan easier with stuff like this: [Vulkan in an OpenGL context]

There problem there is that this will probably be Nvidia-only. It won't work with AMD cards, it won't work with Intel cards.

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