Friday, 2 May, 2008  |    1 Comment

Aint't Neverwinter Nights 2 unpatched enough for your wine emulation aspirations? Do you wanna take the Red Pill ? This part is gonna focus on the hardest part of getting Neverwinter Nights 2 + Neverwinter Nights 2: The Mask of The Betrayer Official Expansion fully patched, to work under wine-0.9.60 and Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 X86_64. For this guide to work, you should have followed (like to the letter) my previous post, NWN2 + Ubuntu Hardy + wine. Since wine is a great piece of code, I take for granted you have not screwed it up with customization or particular settings, but I give you any guarantees - mine works well.

Ideally you have NWN2 installed and working and you just bought at a bargain price its Official Expansion, Mask of The Betrayer. If you're up to the requirements, I'll guide you on how to install and update all the NWN2 stuff and play new, fun adventures!

  • First things first, insert MoTB DVD and install as usual, just by following on-screen prompts.

Now comes the delicate part: Updates. Updates are a bit more complicated, but nothing to worry about; essentially you have to manually download the updates and install'em manually with a tool.

You'll also download the bare, original game’s modules updates and install them manually.

My DVD MoTB Expansion was version 1.10.1115 after installation, while the latest version was 1.12.1295, so I clearly needed updates.

In order to update, you'll need to install the previous, incremental patches, until you get on track.

I first tried to apply the patches via the standard nwn2launcher.exe welcome-screen (it opens up anytime you launch the game).

Unfortunately the standard nwn2launcher.exe hasn't worked for me, so I searched for alternatives and found the nwn2Patcher tool. Simply get yours and decompress it inside you nwn2 install directory.

Here how to:

  • cd .wine/drive_c/Programs/Atari/Neverwinter Nights 2/
  • wget http://nwvault.ign.com/fms/Download.php?id=104156

The zip file holds 2 files within it - a Readme (read It!) and an executable: the exe is the tool used to manually apply the updates to NWN2 + MoTB install. So now you'll need to download MoTB incremental updates and decompress them inside the NWN2 + MoTB directory (we'll obtain some zip files that contain some *.rtp files).

  • cd .wine/drive_c/Programs/Atari/Neverwinter Nights 2/
  • wget http://vnfiles.ign.com/nwvault.ign.com/fms/files/nwn2other/19/nwn2_pcx1_english_from1101115_to1101116.zip
  • wget http://vnfiles.ign.com/nwvault.ign.com/fms/files/nwn2other/19/nwn2_pcx1_english_from1101116_to1111152.zip
  • wget http://nwvault.ign.com/fms/Download.php?id=108369
  • wget http://nwvault.ign.com/fms/Download.php?id=113856

Next you'll need to download the files that will apply some mods to the ORIGINAL [& UNPATCHED] NWN2 original game’s modules:

  • wget http://vnfiles.ign.com/nwvault.ign.com/fms/files/nwn2other/19/NWN2_PCX1_MODFIX_FROM100788_TO105912.zip

Here you'll need to uncompress all of the zip files - you'll get in return .rtp files (find them inside the NWN2+MoTB install dir).

  • unzip *.zip .

After all these downloads, you may start applying Patches, so browse to your wine C drive (from the upper menu: Applications -> Wine -> Browse C:\ drive; go where you installed the game).

Launch NWN2Patch.exe and, from the gui, incrementally apply all the patches to the game (I started from 1.10.11115 to 1.10.1116 to 1.11.1152 etc.).

To do so, simply browse the NWN2+MoTB install dir, choose the right .rtp files then click "Patch" - Repeat this process 'till the last patch has been applied.

At this stage, you'll need to apply the patch to the original NWN2 game modules, so select the Mod FIX .rtp file and click "Patch" again, same as before.

Now you should have a working game, except one issue: It is damn slow, even from the first launch!

Particularly so for me, due to my external USB DVD-RW.

The solution in this case maybe a NoCD, but I don't know if it is totally legal. BTW, I pwn the original DVDs (I bought them from play.com), so I feel entitled to use a NoCD if I can somehow increase my game performance.

To get the NoCD, just search for "NWN 2 Nocd" and hopefully you'll find gamecopyworld, wich would allow you to download the NoCD (make sure you get the correct version, i.e.: mine is v1.12.1295).

Finally uncompress the NoCD inside the game dir and play.

You should now have a decent working game. Also, if you have a powerful enough GPU and an average-res LCD, you may also forgive Windows XP for a while.

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