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Essential Feature: EITHER EE able to connect to 1.69 servers OR 1.69 able to connect to EE servers

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  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    I'm taking estimates from some online lists and then extrapolating a bit by assuming equivalent trends across all servers but this is what I'm coming up with. About 670 concurrent characters at nightly peak hours, roughly 5300 unique character logins per night, 29000 unique character logins per month, 98000 character logins per year. Assuming an average of two accounts and also players play on multiple servers. My guesstimation is about 25000 potential players that have played a PW in recent history. I would say probably most of them would eventually buy it even without any PW support so we could round it off to 10000 for a fairly decent long tail, potentially.

    I know server lists and player login lists might not be an accurate metric but it's probably at least a bit more accurate than the number of browsers or ip addresses visiting the vault. There was some early speculation that the announcement would cause a flood of new players online using the EE version but I think after a month most ppl have calmed down a little and tempered their enthusiasm with some realism.

    I wouldn't want to make any bets if I'm honest but if I had to bet I would say that the player base composition might change a little in some ways but the overall number of players will remain relatively stable. Nothing should be considered in a total vacuum and the ecosystem of online play for an NWN EE release is going to be very different than for NWN. To compete for online player attention we have Warcraft, FFXIV, Divinity Original Sin 2, Souls series, Diablo, Path of Exile, DOTA, Minecraft, Second Life, Roll20, and many other similar ways to enjoy interactive multiplayer fantasy.

    I also believe population or at least the perception of a healthy population matters the most in gaining new players, more than any features. Being empress or emperor of a deserted land just doesn't sound very appealing. So I don't think the EE "brand new player" population will grow much until the majority of the 1.69 players/servers convert.
  • highv_priesthighv_priest Member Posts: 50



    I also believe population or at least the perception of a healthy population matters the most in gaining new players, more than any features. Being empress or emperor of a deserted land just doesn't sound very appealing. So I don't think the EE "brand new player" population will grow much until the majority of the 1.69 players/servers convert.

    Yea I made that remark ages ago. How they've basically relegated nwn, the miniature MMO game, to essentially be single player with a very light multiplayer until they can actually manage to garner the support of the already existing PWs.

    But hey there is always Arelith! :neutral:
  • omedon666omedon666 Member Posts: 48
    edited January 2018
    "Being empress or emperor of a deserted land just doesn't sound very appealing"

    There's a middle ground between "EVERYONE should forsake WoW/FFXIV/ESO for my PW in a game dating back to the internet's dark ages," and "I shall run around an empty module online and to hell with anyone else!"

    Anyone logging into a NWN PW in 2018 or beyond (don't know how long dev time is) has to come with the mature expectation that this is a niche hobby. Now, don't get me wrong, I bought the headstart for a total of seven people because we are building a password protected PW of our D&D world, and we are building it with a "worst case" solo leveling game in mind, and we are looking forward to that... But no one is fooling themselves into thinking that will appeal to anyone that isn't the seven of us or someone invited by one of us, and we're ok with that.

    The people stamping their feet about "o noes, people being introduced to the game in 2018 won't log into our old operating system smut server" need to look at the community they have, come to a decision among themselves (old game or new?), treasure that community and move forward together. Pick a side of the line, because while the backwards compatibility promise by Beamdog is greatly appreciated, there's a reasonable cutoff point, and I think they've chosen one.

    Point is, speaking purely as a PW dev, looking at this like a bunch of salesmen trying to get new marks is just silly. The pool of potential new PW players for any given server will be tiny before and after, because the only appeal for PWs now, aside from a miniscule pool of outliers, is existing investment and word of mouth from that core of existing investment. Beamdog will still sell a lot of copies, to groups like mine that realize "ok, we'll go in on the new game side of the line, together," and to be blunt, "whips and chains dot com" PW never really had a chance at us or our time. I wish them well, I have no right to tell them how to have fun, but we're in this for us, and we're supporting beamdog, who understandably are in it for themselves. We're choosing to help with their success. That's our choice. Make yours.

    Take the ballgag out first though. ;)
    MirandelildaronRaetzain
  • badstrrefbadstrref Member Posts: 124
    edited January 2018

    The majority of people who play NWN, even in this day and age, are people who download modules and play them in single or multiplayer mode, not the people who play on PWs. I don't think lack of 1.69 compatibility is going to be the game breaker you think it will be.

    Quite depressing and aberrant, oc is 0.001%
    Post edited by badstrref on
  • omedon666omedon666 Member Posts: 48
    edited January 2018
    badstrref said:

    The majority of people who play NWN, even in this day and age, are people who download modules and play them in single or multiplayer mode, not the people who play on PWs. I don't think lack of 1.69 compatibility is going to be the game breaker you think it will be.

    Quite depressing and aberrant
    Not at all, look at the competition for player time in multiplayer in 2018! As a player, the fact that amateur DMs can mess with their gameplay isn't the allure it was in NWN's heyday. Multiplayer connectivity is no longer novel enough to be its own sales pitch, and the MMO market is so saturated that people starve for a good single player option!

    And I say this *as* a PW guy! My gang are looking forward to building our D&D world *for us* because we have no illusions about that experience appealing to anyone else! I'm glad for multiplayer options, but we gotta be real with ourselves here: what wows us, what wowed us, has been out-wowed by WoW and its modern competitors. Hell our heyday PW went down because WoW was a thing and there was no reasonable pitch to ask anyone to spend time on our PW when WoW was a thing!

    Treasure the community you have on your PW right now, for they are your audience!

    GM_ODA
  • highv_priesthighv_priest Member Posts: 50
    lol you act like Sinfar is the only surviving one at this time. There is many RPG and even a PvP server that is still going.

    As for new people in nwn, I don't think you understand the point. The point is losing even 20% of the current playerbase of 1.69 trying to shift it to 1.73 is so damaging to many PWs that it has approximately the same effect as NWN2 did. It failed to take off and ultimately only succeeds in damaging the game as a whole because the chunk which left will see the greener pastures didn't go anywhere, leaving nwn as a whole because it's hopeless and the chunk that stayed behind will be ever more lonely with the feeling of abandonment not just once but twice.

    Hey nothing Beamdog can do about that though... Natural consequence of "giving it a shot".

    Let me explain why I currently have zero interest in buying NWN:EE, with zero spin using copy/pasted question/answer setup I had recently.

    "Why isn't the server in EE?"

    To which I answer, "I literally am incapable of hosting it in EE, because they gated NWNX off in Linux only. Custom content I can deactivate for a little while, but database and file management I cannot run it without."

    They respond, "Oh will you be hosting it there when it's available?"

    My last response, "Depending on the month of the year that happens, sometime after maybe 2-3 months when I personally go through and manually recode everything. Provided I don't run into crippling bugs that I need to work around."

    Now something I'd ask my team at work if they were responsible for working on NWN:EE.

    Why are we supporting the less popular operating system before the more popular one?

    Why didn't we get BARE BONES(database) NWNX functioning for both operating systems before we started investing resources into adding depth to the less popular one? Are we assuming Windows is the operating system that has less options to turn to than Linux? Have we done any research into what we're coming up against and what kind of deadline's are approaching? *this is normally the point where I raise my voice* Do we know how much money we WOULD HAVE MADE had we NOT decided to do things in this way?

    I've made this point before, but why isn't Beamdog trying to sell to someone like me? Someone who has a lot of extra money and thus obviously uses Windows and/or Mac, because I don't need a free operating system. Someone with a library of Steam games greater than 800, because my only pre-requisite to purchasing a game is that I can immerse myself in it. Someone who collects old consoles, games, and collector's editions.

    At the moment the ONLY people they are selling NWN:EE to are:
    *Tabletop D&Ders that are incapable of using their imaginations, literally a niche within a niche within a niche.
    *People who use new computers to play old games, because they have some sort of mysterious motive(can't use an old computer when the limit is windows 7).
    *Old time fans of NWN and Baldur's Gate SINGLEPLAYER or only basic roleplayers.
    *The current neckbeards of nwn and their followers. The few individuals who for some reason can dedicate their lives everyday to working on modules, because apparently they don't have jobs or families.

    FreshLemonBun explained it the best.... This game is competing against so many other games(ALL OF WHICH IN HIS LIST I OWN), why would I want to buy NWN:EE? I asked for many things... I asked for AI to not be so terrible, I asked for a main campaign that wasn't terrible(critically panned), I asked for a difficulty mode where my fighter/blackguard/rogue scythe with 12 AC doesn't one shot everything in the game, and I asked for an engine that wasn't so hardcoded. I never once thought... Man this game needs some better graphics. I got Divinity Original Sin for graphics, Dark Souls 3, League of Legends, and even Diablo 3. Graphics do not make NWN stand out in the crowd, especially if it's not even really competing.

    If I ran this project I would of shut down all the voices of "remove discipline/parry" or "add more classes/races". Get a prototype off the ground with bare bones support for each operating system to get hype rolling, made HoTU the main campaign, added some quick difficulty to a few key bosses and made the mobs more effective on D&D hardcore, fixed some of the nastiest bugs, connected a new master server, and start prepping 5-6 DLC by now. Get a tie in with Wizards of The Coast to add in new monster models based on the Magic The Gathering card game and be selling a $20 DLC that softcodes the first 100 feats, adds new item models, new creatures, and maybe even a module. Then once hype has really took off, start running competitions on who can make the best single player modules with a playthrough of the module being done on Twitch and youtube. Then pump out the DLC building this game up more and more, unlocking more and more(a good 100 more feats softcoded each DLC and once you run out of feats start softcoding the core mechanics such as counterspelling and the damage engine), and REALLLYYYYYYY get the hype going. Turn nwn into the DEFACTO ultimate online game. Where the only limit is your imagination! Make NWN stand out so much from the limitations of other games that it makes them look pathetically shallow in comparison.


    I guess I just think businesses should be trying to make money...
    FlashburnAtrophiedericMirandel
  • omedon666omedon666 Member Posts: 48
    highv_priest, obviously you feel very strongly about this, and I respect that. I guess I just gave the existing NWN audience more credit than splitting like billiards balls when a new option arrives, while they also have operational servers that do the job for them just fine.

    We saw NWN:EE, and we acquired it for our whole group because we figured it would work within itself just fine once it releases. It can be for us what the existing NWN community already has going for them with the old game and their toaster ovens. We don't expect to set the world on fire or attract "srs PW" level attention, but we appreciate and respect what beamdog is trying to do. We're on that side of the line.

    I wish the people on the other side all the fun, happiness and leather-clad spankings they want!
    Atrophiederic
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    I think there's some misunderstanding. Many will not play on a server with only 5 players, that is different to believing that NWN is somehow a AAA mmo, even small communities need a certain critical mass to flourish. We can make all sorts of facetious arguments but we all know there's no point to that.

    There are many servers with 0 (zero) players and I've never told any of them to stop or quit, it's their own choice. There are some that host only private locked games, it's their choice. There's a difference between stating the choice some ppl make and observing larger trends in a community.

    As of posting this right now which is not peak time there are over 400 players on NWN, 170 on NWN2, and 15 on NWN EE. There are 90 servers with 0 players on NWN, 25 on NWN2, and 22 on NWN EE. There are around 55 populated servers on NWN, 18 on NWN2, and 5 on NWN EE. It seems quite practical to draw some conclusions from those trends without devolving into making strawman arguments or strange personal attacks on ppl you don't even know.

    I also don't see what is productive about insulting other servers and using degrading terms to diminish their communities which are possibly the most diverse of all servers. It plays into a stereotypical and misinformed chauvinism that really has no place in the modern world, where other ppl play and where women play.

    Stop and think for a second before posting and you might not run the risk of joking about your friend's daughter or someone else's daughter having a ballgag stuck in her mouth. If you wouldn't say it in that context in real life you should probably not post things like that at all.

    Clearly there are many servers that run on almost no regular player base and generally speaking nobody bothers them and they don't try to flame more popular servers. If you want to host a server just for your friends and family clearly you can do that without being concerned about the community at all. Nobody will stop you, it's your choice just as it was your choice whether or not to make extremely inappropriate and sexual comments publicly to stranger.

    It can be interesting to discuss communities, populations, and sales potential but not so interesting to see the other remarks. This isn't a men's locker room or whatever the goto excuse is for such behavior.
    MirandelPlasmaJohn
  • omedon666omedon666 Member Posts: 48

    A lot of fair points

    Fair enough. I just have a hard time taking the BDSM servers seriously. As someone in my community said "it'd be like if WoW was coming out with a sequel but the people crying hardest against it were the moonguard people who were afraid they'd lose all their ERP partners."

    I honestly don't mean them any malice, it's all in good fun, and I'll try to keep it cleaner in the future. :)

  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    I understand but I hope ppl can just leave that sort of thing at the door so we can discuss things that are important to a commonly held hobby. I also find that a social server tends to cater to many interests such as action, pvp, paragraph length roleplaying, monster characters you can't play on other servers, socializing, character customization and outfit designing. It's not just rude but short sighted to generalize them all as caricature bdsm fanatics.

    As it is Sinfar already has a lot of amazing features that would really boost the capabilities of NWN EE if they were fully integrated in the base game. It might also lessen the need for unofficial client extensions and extensive NWNX usage.
  • MavrixioMavrixio Member Posts: 14
    omedon666 said:


    Fair enough. I just have a hard time taking the BDSM servers seriously. As someone in my community said "it'd be like if WoW was coming out with a sequel but the people crying hardest against it were the moonguard people who were afraid they'd lose all their ERP partners."

    That is far from the main reason why I want to stay with the 1.69 server.
    The first reason is that Sinfar nwserver is FAR more advanced than the EE nwserver. It has a load more features and is much more stable.
    The second reason is that we are actually a serious server, actually many servers 3 that share the same servervault vault and 5 side-servers that have their own servervault while sharing the same core script and advance features. We dont want to go trough obviously unstable and confusing upgrade and patches.
    The fact that we don't want to loose players come third.

    dunahan
  • MirandelMirandel Member Posts: 526


    As of posting this right now which is not peak time there are over 400 players on NWN, 170 on NWN2, and 15 on NWN EE. There are 90 servers with 0 players on NWN, 25 on NWN2, and 22 on NWN EE. There are around 55 populated servers on NWN, 18 on NWN2, and 5 on NWN EE. It seems quite practical to draw some conclusions from those trends without devolving into making strawman arguments or strange personal attacks on ppl you don't even know.

    A very interesting statistic! (do you get it online by logging into every game, or is there some central hub to see it? )

    Have to say, though, it made me look at the argument "don't split community" as a very selfish cry "do not give people choices by tempting with better gameplay!".
    omedon666Proontildaron
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    @Mirandel You can take comparisons from going to nwnlist.com and yourserverlist.com/index.php?juego=nwn1, for Sinfar you can find their logged in character list on nwn.sinfar.net which they list as currently logged in but you can also search for characters based on last time they logged in, up to about 5 years ago. For NWN EE you can find the information from the ingame server list.

    It really has nothing to do with giving anyone options or removing options, there are already plenty of options including many other games and new ways to play DnD that have been mentioned. So far there aren't even any significant differences between NWN Diamond and NWN EE in terms of gameplay quality, and there are many posts detailing why some 1.69 enhancements currently exceed the EE enhancements. There are also posts where someone asks if such and such is possible and someone responds it was possible since an update 10 or 12 years ago.

    I think a lot of folks try to read something sinister into all of this when there is no conspiracy at all. It just seems like a simple situation where servers are making rational choices based on the information they have. If you take away those technical concerns then it's like comparing Coke and Pepsi.

    The rumor early on was that Arelith was the poster server for NWN EE and that since they're mostly a vanilla server they would quickly port over and had already prepped for it before the announcement. The interesting thing I think is while some seem eager to "call out" or shame servers that state they wont be transferring for tech based reasons, other servers that have committed to transferring still haven't transferred either. Most of the EE buzz right now seems to be about revivals of projects that have been out of the game for a decade or so rather than with the big contemporary servers that house the pw community.

    I would estimate based on typical nightly player averages that the top 4-5 NWN servers would need to transfer before NWN EE overtook NWN 1.69 in terms of population share. If one of the top 2 servers (Arelith and Sinfar) doesn't transfer then it will probably take 8-12 popular servers transferring. Why this is important is because there needs to be a critical mass of activity to give the impression that something isn't a ghost town.

    Just my 2 cents speculating on population change.
  • AzimnAzimn Member Posts: 24
    I have a question that might have already been addressed but has Beamdog looked at how Sinfar did their EE log in server that then connected to the 1.69 servers? I just tried it out the other day and was impressed that my EE client could connect after passing through what appeared to be a gateway module. This could be a solution for other PWs. I could for example see Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist having a module that starts in the Forgotten Realms but then the "mists" I mean a server transfer takes them to the 1.69 server.
    Proont
  • highv_priesthighv_priest Member Posts: 50
    edited January 2018
    Liareth said:

    @highv_priest

    Beamdog aren't responsible for NWNX - I am. Porting it from 1.69 to 1.74 is my personal project that I work on in my spare time. To be clear, if it wasn’t for the work I put in for free in my spare time, there would be no NWNX for 1.74. It is not a paid endeavour. (I’m not solely responsible; @niv set up the CI and did some core work and @sherincall has been putting a lot of work into the project recently, as well as code contributed by others in the community)

    I appreciate that you're upset about this, but Linux isn't rocket science and developers and server hosts use it for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting a free operating system.

    It doesn't take a neckbeard or the dedication of every waking hour to NWN to understand how to ./nwnstartup.sh. With the Docker images that the community have been working with, it really is as simple as executing one script to compile NWNX and host your own server with it.

    My mistake(genuinely sorry for that) I figured with the blue coloring(I'm assuming mod status) that you worked for the company in some way.

    Answering things in order:

    *No Linux isn't rocket science, but I personally have never had anything to gain from using Linux. I mean literally nothing... You could actually draw a parallel approach to Linux as NWN:EE is to 1.69. Why bother? One of the first things you learn in business and even programming courses is that there should be an adequate reason why this thing you are doing exists, why you are doing it. Mind you it's not that I haven't tried... I've run Ubuntu, Mint and even tried my hand at Redhat... Unfortunately none of them had anything to offer me that made things feel any different than just running ordinary windows(except needing to use terminal sudo command a lot for install fixes on Ubuntu....). Linux quite honestly should of done SOMETHING to distinguish itself outside of being the option least likely to be destroyed by a virus(at least most of them are free, even if most computers come with windows installed for free too).

    *The neckbeard line actually is referring to the individuals like FunkySwerve that literally run profiling on all of nwn's functions just to shave off 1-2 milliseconds from the resource use of a script. That wasn't a dig at Linux.

    *No I imagine starting up nwserver with Linux isn't particularly difficult, but here is the kicker. NWN with Linux was always broken if you used whirlwind attack, something I noticed playing a single player module with a WM that forced me to reload a save when I got stuck(this was using Ubuntu on my laptop). Linux PWs literally either disabled whirlwind attack or modified it's handling in some way to not actually use the DoWhirlwind command, which had the bug. This would be why I didn't have nwserver in Linux -ever- as I actually like whirlwind attack and use it all the time. I missed out on a lot of NWNX functions for Linux in 1.69, but ultimately just coded them myself anyway in windows if someone else didn't already.

    *Sure I have no problem coding the basics of nwnx, but I believe the version of nwnx you're using is drastically different than 1.69's. I recall that your current nwnx has the wonderful benefit of not being invalidated by updates to the game which change sections of dynamic memory. So there is some questions before even attempting to go down that road:

    -How does the current nwnx used in 1.74 handle memory editing without needing a redefine after updates?

    -What language is the current nwnx coded in?

    -Will I need to transliterate(port) the code from the Linux nwnx entirely or will the functions be largely interchangeable?

    -Where is the source?

    -If this wasn't such a massive pain in the ass, why hasn't someone even started a project for it yet and why did the Linux version require support from the devs?

    The last thing I will note is, despite my detractions of questioning business ideals and overall function of lucrative venture(realizing now that nwnx was 70% fan done), 1.74 still has alienated many and at best not presented a worthwhile purchase during this period of massive oversaturation of similar games to nwn. Graphics was literally the one thing they shouldn't of bothered on as that was the thing every other game is already ages ahead and nwn can't even compete(this is especially horrible as 1.69 was ALSO a decade ahead already too).

    Quite frankly SOMETHING in NWN:EE should WOW the average person and not just the people who already had wishlists. I even went through and itemized a LIST in SEQUENTIAL order of very cheap and easy methods to wow people. Heh, there is a reason I'm in business software and not games though I suppose.

    I'm actively waiting for the reason where I will buy NWN:EE, 3 copies of it(gaming, portable, and server). Give me the REASON to buy it.
    Flashburn
  • thirdmousethirdmouse Member Posts: 67
    edited January 2018
    I noticed the nwnx confusion earlier and thought about responding ... one of the things I was really excited about was Beamdog giving code access for NWNX development and then also hiring for NWNX features to make it into the base game -- there were previously NWNX-only features in the very first public build -- but it was kind of buried by the time I saw it, and I'm not anybody important, and I didn't want to derail :P

    Several of your questions are addressed in this thread , so reading through it might be helpful. For skimming, my (unofficial) understanding is that new NWNX is written in C++, plugins are cross-platform so will just work once the Windows API is working, source is here, and while I'm not anyone that'd really know, I'd hazard a guess that at least right now, the ones best positioned/experienced to actually do the porting are themselves developing on Linux, hehe. I also wouldn't put it as "needed devs to help" with NWNX, but rather BD awesomely worked with NWNX people to make sure all would function and be cool and great and then also hired to bring some of NWNX's awesomeness to base game.

    I gather plug-in writing is supposed to be a lot easier, and pretty much every single person I have seen with NWNX experience in that area has been excited. The only consistent negative is the current lack of Windows support (which I'm not trying to downplay for Windows servers -- just saying, I'm excited because they're excited, and we're still early in the beta... )

    Anyway, not looking to sell you on anything, just hoping any of that is helpful.

    Edit - incidentally, I notice you include server in your reasons for 3 copies. I think the intent is for a dedicated server to work similarly to 1.69 and not require it.
    Sylvus_MoonbowdTd
  • SherincallSherincall Member Posts: 387

    I've made this point before, but why isn't Beamdog trying to sell to someone like me? Someone who has a lot of extra money and thus obviously uses Windows and/or Mac, because I don't need a free operating system.

    @highv_priest Typically, when someone has a lot of extra money, and needs a feature/product for which they don't have the time and/or skill to create on their own.. well, typically, they exchange that money for services of an individual or group that do have the time and skill. Basically, what I'm saying is start an open source bounty and someone will do it.

    To start the auction, I offer to port NWNX:EE to Windows in exchange for a $250 donation to neverwintervault.org. Feel free to pool together with others* requesting it, or to look for a cheaper option.

    *people that were donating regularly so far are only eligible for the sum that exceeds their regular donation.
    ProontBalanorFlashburn
  • LiarethLiareth Member Posts: 74
    @highv_priest Sorry you feel the way. To clarify, I do work for Beamdog on NWN, but the EE port of NWNX is not a project run by Beamdog. It is run by me. The rest of your questions can be answered by a little bit of research, as above. :)
    Sylvus_Moonbow
  • highv_priesthighv_priest Member Posts: 50



    @highv_priest Typically, when someone has a lot of extra money, and needs a feature/product for which they don't have the time and/or skill to create on their own.. well, typically, they exchange that money for services of an individual or group that do have the time and skill. Basically, what I'm saying is start an open source bounty and someone will do it.

    To start the auction, I offer to port NWNX:EE to Windows in exchange for a $250 donation to neverwintervault.org. Feel free to pool together with others* requesting it, or to look for a cheaper option.

    *people that were donating regularly so far are only eligible for the sum that exceeds their regular donation.

    I'm a business man. Giving money for goods requiring the legitimate effort of an individual or group who has nothing to gain out of it themselves is often futile(this is why there is a lot of kickstarter scandals).

    I like the vault though and I appreciate everything they did to keep the game going when IGN gave them short notice to fix it. So I don't feel guilty laying down some money to keep it going.

    So like a business man who has a bit of season in dealings.... I'll offer you a deal. I'll donate $100 as an advance and another $200 when the bare minimum of the project is completed(minimum being database support and stability in modifications).
    BalanorFlashburn
  • SherincallSherincall Member Posts: 387



    @highv_priest Typically, when someone has a lot of extra money, and needs a feature/product for which they don't have the time and/or skill to create on their own.. well, typically, they exchange that money for services of an individual or group that do have the time and skill. Basically, what I'm saying is start an open source bounty and someone will do it.

    To start the auction, I offer to port NWNX:EE to Windows in exchange for a $250 donation to neverwintervault.org. Feel free to pool together with others* requesting it, or to look for a cheaper option.

    *people that were donating regularly so far are only eligible for the sum that exceeds their regular donation.

    I'm a business man. Giving money for goods requiring the legitimate effort of an individual or group who has nothing to gain out of it themselves is often futile(this is why there is a lot of kickstarter scandals).

    I like the vault though and I appreciate everything they did to keep the game going when IGN gave them short notice to fix it. So I don't feel guilty laying down some money to keep it going.

    So like a business man who has a bit of season in dealings.... I'll offer you a deal. I'll donate $100 as an advance and another $200 when the bare minimum of the project is completed(minimum being database support and stability in modifications).
    Quoting full post for posterity. At the time of this posting, the quoted post hasn't been edited. And I won't be editing this one, so this should be a reasonable safekeep. First person reading this: Feel free to comment confirming I didn't change anything in the quote :)

    @highv_priest that's generous. I'll accept a $250 donation upon delivery, as that is what I had in mind in the first place - I don't think you'd risk your reputation over $250. No one will complain if it is $300 though :).

    Conditional on:
    1. Next build landing this Friday (it has some changes that are necessary)
    2. @Liareth generating the full Windows API (offsets and structure definitions!)
    I'll take it up over the weekend. If Laura is prompt with the API, it'll be done on Sunday. Your bare minimum seems perfectly sane. Let's specify it as:
    • NWNX Core
    • NWNX_SQL - MySQL as target, as PostreSQL still isn't merged
    • NWNX_Creature, NWNX_Object - Simple plugins exposing additional functions
    I've really no interest in touching Ruby or any of the stuff that's anyway experimental. I'd expect most other plugins to work but we don't really have tests for them, so it's a lot more effort to confirm. If they're broken, they're likely broken on Linux as well.

    After this, any further updates to NWN:EE will require @Liareth to re-generate the API. This is the same as for Linux, so you are at her mercy if she decides not to do it for Windows. I see no reason why she'd do that though.

    Sounds good? Feel free to message me on discord if you wanna discuss details.
  • thirdmousethirdmouse Member Posts: 67



    I like the vault though and I appreciate everything they did to keep the game going when IGN gave them short notice to fix it.

    (This is totally off-topic, but since it's a day for clarifications, I feel like it's worth mentioning that the only notice IGN gave anyone was the vault going read-only. While it was assumed temporary, it intensified concern in people like Rolo, who was adminning there, and out of an abundance of caution people took the worry seriously and went all in on migration. The IGN vault going down was the worst case scenario and the rolovault meant as a just-in-case. AFAIK there was never official comment or acknowledgement of the years of CC disappearing permanently -- rather, they were still working on it, hit snags in wiki conversion, haven't given up, etc, like it was going to come back, and then it was just gone forever. Plus, the URL redirected visitors to that page about Neverwinter MMO or whatever, ha. It's partly why there are some seriously anti-third-party-hosts among vault-goers :P "Never again!")
    Atrophiederic
  • LiarethLiareth Member Posts: 74
    @highv_priest @Sherincall This will actually require much more work than that, as we'll discuss in Discord. Likely a chunk of work from me, too. Sherincall will post when we have more details.
  • highv_priesthighv_priest Member Posts: 50
    Post won't be edited as it lays down the terms quite well. Requiring database support and most importantly the actual NWNX to be stable and not being disabled each update.

    Niv can confirm his 100.00 euros advance is there at this point in time.
    SherincallFlashburn
  • SherincallSherincall Member Posts: 387
    @highv_priest that is very generous!

    The Windows port is underway at: https://code.nwnx.io/mtijanic/unified/commits/windows
    I expect to have the core and MySQL functional for the weekend.

    The problem is with the API generation - every time there is a new NWN:EE build, Liareth has to manually generate the API (function offsets and structure definitions) for each platform. This is a ~30 minute manual task for Linux. For Windows, the first part (function offsets) is similar enough, so another 30 minutes, but the second part would take too long to do manually.

    As a consequence, plugins that require structure definitions will not work yet.

    So, we'll be making a detour to build a new API generation tool that will work on both platforms. Aside from providing parity between platforms, this will also make NWNX updates (both platforms) automatic and not tied to Laura's free time. There would be no delay between the game update and the NWNX update.

    That project can be tracked here: https://code.nwnx.io/Liareth/unified-apigen

    Any questions, best ask them on the NWNX discord: https://discord.gg/hxTt8Fr
    shadguyBalanordunahan
  • PhoosyPhoosy Member Posts: 3
    For anyone visiting this discussion after the fact, the project code has been moved over to Github, located at https://github.com/nwnxee/unified

    Sorry for speaking for the NWNX folks here, but wanted to be sure people were pointed in the right direction as things change around.
    zunath
  • GM_ODAGM_ODA Member Posts: 177



    Because NWN:EE requires Windows 7 or higher and MANY people are old and set in their ways on using older operating systems(especially the case of windows XP). You are literally telling them they can't play the game anymore.
    It's not a case of money(they would gladly buy NWN:EE), it's a case of NWN:EE is making their actual computers outdated. It's a lot to ask of them to buy an entire new computer just to keep playing.

    Those users stuck on winXP systems should consider making their machines a dual-boot linux machine. They can keep XP and just run linux to play NWN, it runs GREAT... and linux is very good at supporting older hardware.
    dunahan
  • AaezilAaezil Member Posts: 178
    so the ten people still without a modern OS can continue to play the old version and those of us living in the current decade can play EE... I really dont see the issue here
  • superfly2000superfly2000 Member Posts: 76
    For my server it is about that NWNX on EE is still mostly for Linux only servers and not Windows ones. Yes I know I am probably the server owner with the least coding skills....but still.....maybe it is the same reason many other 1.69 servers are still there...
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    From what I understand they're different projects and many things available for one aren't available for the other even 2 years on. The basic features and plugins should be the same but for a windows version you're dependent on the time and inclination of the nwnx:ee developers specifically.

    The best solution as always is that Beamdog makes a lot of the stuff native to the client and server. This has yet to happen in any serious way. For basic things you also have other options when it comes to things like database and server restart scripts.

    Without a change in focus I imagine the situation will continue indefinitely.
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