On Sunday 30 June 2002 15:44, Jan Schaumann wrote:
> sudog@sudog.com wrote:
>  
> > Thanks for the interest, back to NWN on a fly NetBSD server!
> 
> Thank you for the info - I've added this to the 'testimonials' page at
> http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/testimonial.html (it should show up there
> within the hour).
> 
> -Jan

I just finished the Neverwinter Nights game start to finish, about 99.9% of 
it playing on the NetBSD machine as server. There were only a very few 
problems I encountered:

0. Recall I had to create the directories "currentgame.0" and "temp.0" before 
I could get gameplay out of the server running on NetBSD using Linux 
emulation with the Suse7 emu package.

1. The most difficult to deal with were module transitions--from chapter to 
chapter. These had to be saved before the transition, the saves had to be 
moved to the windows machine, the transition completed on a windows local 
server, then saved again, moved back, and restarted.

I'm certain there's something simple that I could be doing--have the script 
check regularly (every second?) for some kind of disk structure, or perhaps 
fixing something else, but I was too anxious to get to the next chapter to 
sit there and do a ktrace of what was happening. I have a pile of saved games 
I can monkey with though (about 100 of them) so I'll get to it eventually.

2. When trying to destroy the catapults outside Fort Ilkard, all but one of 
the commanders could be slaughtered--with difficulty. However, with the final 
commander I had to aim an area-damage spell (fireball) *just* within reach of 
the captain to slay him. Even on the ground close to him! Otherwise the game 
complained that I could only target objects or creatures within line-of-sight.

Even after killing the last catapult commander, I couldn't destroy the 
catapults even after a reload.

I did not try to move it to a Windows server to see if this would make a 
difference. I suspect it would've worked.

3. When trying to speak with the Elk chieftain (Zodar? Zodak? Zodak!) about 
the plague blankets, I had to move to a Windows server and restore a saved 
game to be able to converse with him and get the cure-retrieval quest.

4. Saving the game in the middle of an area to area transition (not module to 
module--that just plain didn't work) caused a freeze and core-dump in the 
server. That is the only time I ever experienced core-dumps..  when the 
save-game stuff kicked in and interrupted some other kind of important 
transition. Even the automatic autosave stuff killed it now and again if it 
happened during an area transition (for example during a respawn into the 
Temple of Tyr.)

Other than the above, playing multiplayer through the single-player modules 
100% of the entire adventure was great fun, absorbing, and I had two other 
people who could join up and help me along when there were dragons to be 
fought or large groups of monsters to be slaughtered!

The last encounter with the no-rest, no-runestone area was nearly impossible 
to do with a Henchman, a summoned familiar, and a summoned monster, even with 
my 15-level mage greater-stoneskinned and tricked out in magical protections 
all around.

I intend to try it again soon to do it legitimately, but because it was late 
and I wanted to see the end of the game on Canada Day I had to equip custom 
items from a home-made module.

Things that the NetBSD-based NeverWinter Nights server could do:

1. Play custom modules.
2. Save game *really* fast. Load game *really fast*.
3. Play the entire single-person modules start to finish (exceptions noted 
above.)
4. Generally make life easier because NATting through the NetBSD machine to 
the internal one for this game was not possible without bimap and ipf -F -a. 
NWN makes connections both ways sometimes and needs not to be port-mapped. 
With a server running locally, I could just LAN-connect and people from the 
outside could connect directly. Neat!
5. Haven't tried to advertise publically yet. I believe it might take another 
Gamespy login specifically for that server.
6. Haven't tried to DM or admin the server yet from the Windows client.

Misc. notes for us NetBSD NWN players (assuming I'm not the only one-ha ha 
maybe I am):

1. The NWN updater (which you need to run on your Windows side first before 
moving the files into NetBSD-land and running "fixinstall") uses some kind of 
weird UDP-based protocol plus HTTP plus FTP to download the patches to update 
to v1.19. Unfortunately--while updating to v1.19 uses Internet Explorer's 
proxy settings for http, it doesn't use them for ftp, and so tries to "PORT 
10.0.x.x,x,x" to the NWN updating ftp server. Wasn't able to get the ipfilter 
ftp-proxy working outgoing for some reason. :( Probably my own fault.

2. Don't leave ktrace turned on during a game. The ktrace stuff gets *really 
large* *really fast*. Ha ha. My RAID-0 70GB partition filled up! Doh!

3. nwserver barely uses any CPU time even during heavy battle. P3-700 took 
only about a 25% hit during normal adventuring, and perhaps 45% during large, 
heavy battles with multiple players and screaming, shouting, prismatic 
spraying death everywhere.

4. It's really, really cool to see it work so well and interchangeably with 
the data files from my Windows side and the ToolSet. Make a module, save it 
to NetBSD, playtest it.

5. Most of these problems are likely evident on the Linux side as well--I'm 
seeing reports of similar core-dumps when using it Linux natively.

-sudog
p.s. go out and buy it if you like true-to-AD&D rpgs. The detail is 
absolutely astounding, especially the NPCs. They each have their own 
convoluted, complicated stories to tell and they feed you a bit more each 
time you level up. Very involved the amount of conversational scripting that 
went into this game--the conversation trees are HUGE.