Linux client

porphiron

Hi,

Pardon if I sound irked,

I was greatly suprised to find not only a linux client, but an x86_64 client to boot.

My suprise was marred to find the client was neither working (yes I have completed the cust support and got some helpful hints for ?? Windows ??), but seems to be a year old?

Having spent a fair amount of money on Beamdog ( as I know many people have) and not wanting to be a total pita...this seems to be a six month old problem for a year old app.

Its great that so much time and attention on these old games but not not the ability to play them....

like building a car with no doors....

cheers all

Pokota

Can you try running the .AppImage from the terminal, in order to get the error message?

porphiron

thats how i got the output i passed to ?? cust support. I'd never run a programme without running it in cli to debug, the output is this :
./beamdogClient-2.1.11-x86_64.AppImage
/tmp/.mount_0Cj0Vs
installed: X-AppImage-BuildId=eecf1560-45a5-11a9-2e73-1fe010890803 image: X-AppImage-BuildId=eecf1560-45a5-11a9-2e73-1fe010890803

(beamdogClient:75636): Pango-ERROR **: 00:39:05.540: Harfbuzz version too old (1.2.7)

porphiron

and i have tried updating Harfbuzz from source and got the same error

porphiron

If beamdog is producing versions for mobile devices they should still be supporting already available versions, this is a travesty. People who have already paid good money should still feel supported. That support is woefully lacking. I would never have confidence with an app stated to be a year old ? never mind feel that the company behind it, has good will in mind for its customers, never mind the os.

porphiron

so disapointed that there aren't even mods about to discuss this?

JuliusBorisov

Can you try launching a Steam version? You should be able to have a Steam key for NWN:EE in your account on Beamdog.com. The Beamdog Client needs more support, that's for sure.

porphiron

Hi JuliusBorisov,

Cheers for the reply,

I only have keys for NWN:EE and yep that works fine.

It doesnt answer for the rest of my games for which I do not have keys, I think it needs more than support, I think it actually needs to work in linux.

I know I sound petulant, but ffs, a year old app? and a list of forum post going back months asking people to report it, with no answer or update...people supported this company by buying these games, and the company does little in the way of supporting the customer...

Pokota

At last check, it's a manpower issue more than anything else. When I had asked about a follow-up to this in the Ask Beamdog thread, it was reported that there's an ongoing headhunt for someone to take over legacy support. (Which I'll be asking for an update about that on Monday, to sort of establish a monthly tradition)

porphiron

Hi Pokota,

Ok so it seems that, at this point if I understand you, they are looking for someone to maintain the app?

But its taken them over a year and still no one, that is utterly rediculous, also how is updating and maintaining the linux app ? legacy?,

Linux as a gaming platform has started to make great strides. Steam proton and lutris now provide cross platform gaming.

We dont need legacy support, we either need an application that works or platform based keys such as steam.

If this is such a big problem, why not, as stated, just provide steam keys? at least people could play the games they paid good money for and then negate the need to headhunt, or for that matter an app.

This is not a difficult thing, if beamdog can provide keys for NWN/EE then do the same for the other titles.

Am amazed, Beamdog throws out different version of old games, for platforms such as android, but it is disparaging, that people who have already spent their money are unsupported.

Pokota

A large part of why it's going neglected is because Beamdog has in the past given Steam keys to anyone who owns the games via the Beamdog client (under the principle of "only need to pay for it once"), and Steam For Linux covers most of the relevant market share. Since the games themselves run fine and it's just the launcher that's broken, fixing it is a lower priority vs whatever Beamdog's game-of-the-day is.

(I'm holding out on a fixed Beamdog client since Steam for Linux does not play nice with dpmi, combined with the fact that some genius somewhere decided monetizing idle games on Steam - a platform that does not allow multiple machines connected to the same account to run games in parallel - was a good idea)

porphiron

Ok, so heres the question.

How do I download the games ( I have bought and paid for and theres no download link on the page other than a link in big bold letters to buy the game ffs ) without:

A: A steam key

or

B: A dedicated client that works on the OS i am using?

JuliusBorisov

porphiron wrote: »

Hi JuliusBorisov,

Cheers for the reply,

I only have keys for NWN:EE and yep that works fine.

It doesnt answer for the rest of my games for which I do not have keys, I think it needs more than support, I think it actually needs to work in linux.

You can request the Steam keys for all other products by contacting us at https://beamdog.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals

porphiron

JuliusBorisov

Many Thanks.

FaolRuaidh

I have moved all my computers over to Linux (specifically Mint 20 Cinnamon) and I have been trying my best to try and figure out how to be able to run the Beamdog Games on this platform. I have downloaded the Beamdog Client and all it does is opens in Disk Image Mounter. There is a folder "usr," and two files, AppRun and beamdogClient.desktop and clicking on either one does absolutely nothing. I have tried making the files executable and that does nothing either. I have tried making the AppImage file executable but that does nothing either. I have bought every one of the programs from the Beamdog site and am rally wanting to use the program on Linux as I am tired of all the bugs and crashing that goes along with Wincrap. I just would really like something that I can download from Beamdog that I can use on Linux with a simple download. I have tried several times to get the AppImage to work for the Beamdog Client on different forms of Linux, but have never been successful trying dozens of times in different ways. Do people there ever try using this on the platforms that they say they work on?

ghostdancer

HI @FaolRuaidh @porphiron , it's a problem that the appimage is linked to old libs that are not available in your system, they( Beamdog) should compile a new version of the app image with a more modern version of electron, but I guess they don't have too much time and prefer us to use steam. If you don't have/like steam I have found a solution , it requires to search for the old libs and uncompress them in the directory where the appimage binary is. Look at this other thread of the same problem in Debian Hope it helps.

Supaplex

Given that Beamdog is unable to update their client to work with non-ancient versions of Linux, it would be nice if they would instead let us download the games through the website or any other alternative. I'm rather disappointed by their lack of support.

Pokota

I can see a business reason for using the Beamdog Client for distribution instead of having standalone downloads. The BD Client uses Bittorrent and peer-to-peer for downloading the games, which in theory reduces bandwidth load on the Beamdog servers, which in turn reduces costs. (I can't say how many players play with mods vs how many play without, but it's probably reasonable to assume that with the jump to console Modded Players are officially in the minority).

The big thing that the Beamdog Client appimage should do is include statically-linked libraries rather than relying on system-provided ones - we found that using the libraries from the Debian Buster repository directly in the appimage folder is enough to get it working, but at that point you're asking for enough linux knowledge that a newcomer to the inner workings of linux is going to get it wrong.