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Showing posts from August, 2017

Converting Game CDs to DVDs Using Linux

Once you start installing MS-Windows games in a Linux OS, you run into some difficulties. One is that sometimes your game has multiple CDs (This was before DVD drives were ubiquitous) and for whatever reason you cannot get the installer to allow you to eject the CD. Or  you must fumble through six install CDs to install the game, plus patches and updates, plus search for no-cd cracks and hi-res textures or game mods. It's possible to place all that on a DVD to make our installation less painful. File Forums is a community that deals with creating game backups and CD/DVD Conversions. It's a friendly community with an easy registration  and it offers a wealth of information about the nuts and bolts of how game installers work. Go ahead and join now so the following links will work for you. What we want for this discussion is the PC Games-CD/DVD Conversions forum. There, user Joe Forster has listed links for applications needed for editing the databases for game installers

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault on Modern Linux

Installation using Codeweavers Crossover from the DVD version found no problems for the installation or running the game. Of course, the DVD must be in the drive due to the much-hated  SafeDisc v3 DRM .  You can avoid that hassle and get a no-cd version of the game executable from GameCopyWorld.com . The game played without any issues (36FPS), but became unplayable (12FPS) after installing the v1.2 patch , so don't install it . I also installed, again using Codeweavers Crossover, the GOG.com version which is very useful considering that this version of the game is DRM free. However, I received error messages during the install:  "Runtime Error (at 181:806): Out Of Stack Range" and "Out of Global Vars range" messages. Still, the game launched, so I'm guessing that the errors were  from the GOG game installer, not the game itself. Even though the game would install and run, it was very slow (12FPS) which is due to the version of the game engine that GOG in

Call of Duty on Modern Linux

What a pain in the ass to install using Crossover from the two-CD version, and by pain in the ass I mean it won't install at all. Call of Duty , a first person shooter released in 2003, spawned an entire franchise of COD games that persist to this day. Installing using Codeweaver's Crossover should be easy, but it's not. COD: United Offensive is an expansion pack for COD and the COD game must be installed before COD:UO can be installed. Crossover expects you to install the game through Steam, which works. I own the original discs and shouldn't have to pay for it again, but the copy-protection method keeps it from installing. As I understand it, the third step of the install where you must re-insert the first CD causes a Windows registry entry to be written that the game looks for to verify it was "installed". Without this entry, the game will not run. I found some info about registry entries for COD2 here . Maybe they can be applied to COD. And there

Doom for Modern Linux

DOOM was released in 1993 and is considered a pioneer in 3D gaming. Previous games from id Software were 2D. While the original game might be playable in DosBox, there are more modern ports of the game engine with greater stability and offer wide platform support. One of the ports,  prboom , is available for Mageia Linux (and MS-Windows and many other platforms). Based on the release of the original source code; it uses the SDl library. prboom is one of those rare Linux things that has been fixed enough that everything works. It offers a true-to-the-original gameplay rather than updating the game with modern features like ZDoom , EDGE , and Eternity Engine . GZDoom offers OpenGL support. The prboom engine emulates the different games engines from the different versions of DOOM providing an authentic retro experience; it is also compatible with the demo version of DOOM. To install in Mageia: $ sudo urpmi prboom  installs the game in /usr/games and when run the first time wit

Unreal 2003/2004 for Modern Linux

If Unreal2 was the redheaded stepchild of the original Unreal game,  Unreal Tournament 2003 was the redheaded stepchild of the original Unreal Tournament (aka UT99). The gaming community was not happy with the game play as it originally shipped in September 30th, 2002. So unhappy, in fact, that EPIC released Unreal Tournament 2004 which re-used much of UT2003 but reverted to UT99-style gameplay. UT2003 does offer a Linux installer and there is a Linux update  as well as the DE Bonus pack and the Epic Bonus Pack . A Windows-only Community Bonus Pack was released followed by a Linux installer for it. While it can be installed using WINE, PlayOnLinux and Crossover, we will be installing the Linux binaries as root to make the game available to all system users. The Linux installer is on disc3. Mount the game discs and copy them all to  ~/ut2003 . Copy the Linux installer to that directory, cd there and sudo su to become root. First, we need to set a usable libc version. # ex

32-bit WINE on 64-bit Mageia6

Any Windows application that I want to use with WINE will be a win32 binary, so the installation of 64-bit WINE is not necessary or useful. Since the 32-bit repositories are included with a 64-bit install, I just need to select the i586 versions of the following: q4wine wine wine-gecko wine-mono wine32 I also install winetricks by downloading it from $ cd ~/bin $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks  $ chmod +x winetricks And also install the 32-bit version of Zenity because winetricks expects to see it. Winetricks is a handy tool and makes dealing with. NOTE: I has a problem with q4wine in that when I installed it with urpmi, it did not install its dependencies and would not launch; I reported it as a bug. At this forum post at GOG.com, user  JudasIscariot has a description of a  Mini Git Wine tutorial to compile and run WINE . While it's not necessary to compile and install WINE by this method since the packa

Unreal2 on Modern Linux

Unreal 2: The Awakening was not a popular game. It launched on February 3rd, 2003 with only a single-player mode when on-line multiplayer demonstrated in Unreal Tournament was the  the hot new thing. Although a one-game multiplayer mode was added, Unreal2 just never caught on. It does offer a good story-mode single, player experience and a pretty attractive female sidekick. Unreal2 also has no native Linux binaries and must be run with some version of WINE. The current version of Unreal2 offered by GOG.com can be run using WINE , PlayOnLinux or Crossover. Install it into a Win7 bottle. Before You Start Before you launch the game the first time, delete all of the *.con files you find in the /Music sub-directory. These are containers for the looping music that is played in the background and for whatever reason, they are not supported in the game. If you leave them in place, you can open the configuration menus, but launching the game will fail. You can download .mp3 version of

DOS With USB Drives

This page is just a placeholder for DOS-related links. DOS is pretty old and crusty, but still useful for some tasks and along the way, tools have been developed to keep up with more modern hardware such as, for example, a working network stack, or even USB support. Have fun with DOS. RESOURCES Rufus: Create bootable USB drives the easy way Yes, there are USB drivers for DOS... DOS USB Drivers Usage with Cypress DUSE driver for DOS The FreeDOS Project Motto Hairu DOS Drivers DUSE by Example DOS USB Driver - EXAMPLES Connection from a DOS-system using TCP/IP Installing TCP/IP Protocol on DOS Computers DOS TCP/IP Networking with Packet Drivers DOS Software DOS-Meta FAQ: Useful information for DOS users FAQ: DOS Applications for Internet Use Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk GNU utilities for Win32

Quake4 for Modern Linux

The game will install using Crossover, using the following recipe: Select an "unlisted app", select the setup.exe program from the installation folder, create a Windows7 bottle, at the fourth tab, add 'DirectX for modern games' and then begin the installation. Everything shoudl go smoothly from there on, but it might take a while. Start the game and get to the first checkpoint to generate an autosave. Quit the game and install the full v-1.42 Full Patch for Windows ; you can skip all the intermediary updates. You can installed 'saved games' to access all the maps. You can also install hires textures . This game is new enough to install without too much fuss. Just follow the HOWTOs. Download the Linux installer from [the very slow, but  it's free!!] IdSoftware or from here (faster). There is a Linux update as well found here . Because it is older, the Linux version may present some installation issues on your system, so check out the Quake4 FAQ/HOW

Burning 25GB M-Discs in Linux

The popular GUI DVD-authoring apps like K3B and Brasero, do not support burning ISO images in sizes greater than 4GB, which is odd, since they can detect the discs and can create an ISO image greater than 4GB. Please recognize that "4.7GB" is sleazy marketing misrepresenting GigaBytes, i.e. 1000  and not 1024. If translated to actual capacities, single layer DVD±R[W] capacity is only 4.4GB, and 26GB BluRay Disc is actually 23.3GB. Keep this in mind when creating your ISO images to burn manually. I purchased a Blue-Ray writer (an LG-brand Hitachi Model WP40NB30 )  hoping to use the 25GB M-Discs to archive some of the files I have accumulated spread out over several computers. Fortunately, the growisofs tool comes to the rescue, so from the command line, I just execute as a regular user: $ growisofs -speed=1 -Z /dev/sr1=big-image.iso I need the lower speed to keep from prematurely emptying the buffer which borks the disc. Although older, this page provides plenty

Xtra-PC

The advertisement for Xtra-PC is alluring. Xtra-PC: The $25 Computer. New life for old or dead computers. If you were an MS-Windows user with an older or non-functional desktop or laptop, and you just needed to do a few things: Use Facebook to keep in touch with the grandchildren, send a few emails, type a letter or even watch a few cat videos, it would seem too good to be true . . . but it's not. Behind Xtra-PC is the power of Linux, Debian Sid (Casper?) to be exact. That knowledge would be intimidating to that MS-Windows user. After all, Linux is for computer geeks and hackers and is way to complicated for ordinary folks to install, configure and use. By touting its virtues and barely mentioning its underpinnings, Xtra-PC will entice the unwary and deliver on its promise.  Linux users know this, so Xtra-PC may seem to them as a waste of money. They already know how to install, configure and use Linux, but they are not the market for this device, their grandparents are