UFO Aftermath under Linux!

[Megpol]

Hey everyone,

 

Im sure that not many are interested in this fact, but just to let the community know, I have got UFO:AM Running perfectly under linux using the very latest cvs branch of winex

 

If anyone needs any help getting UFO:AM running under linux then you may send me a personal message and i'll do my best to help...

[Slaughter]

It would be great if you'd be willing to write a guide for this. Even though most people probably wouldn't care, the linux community needs all the games they can get. That's the only way they can kick Microsoft's a**

[Megpol]

lol well actually it was quiet easy, its just getting winex running in the first place and with that you can have no end of problems and it would be pointless me writing a guide for this as all i would be doing is writing a guide on how to get winex working, however i will tell you this...

winex is now quiet incredibly hard to get hold of, they have renamed themselfs Cedega and slaped a price tag on the program, and taken all links and hints of where to get winex's cvs tree (free) from their website. however you can get these nice scripts writen by elmer fud from:

https://ting.homeunix.org/cvs_wine/GetWineXscripts.html

running the scripts on this page is the easyest way of getting winex installed and running, it downloads the cvs tree, makes, configures, and it setups all the annoying crap such as registry and so. basicly run the script wait........then wait some more...... and it'll be done and ready to use. from then on all you need to do it set up a single simple config file and your good to go just type

cvswinex ufo.exe

and the program should run, first off the resolution will be a bit skewed, i used the following settings in my cvswinex config:

[AppDefaults\\ufo.exe\\x11drv]
"AllocSystemColors" = "100"
"CopyDefaultColors" = "0"
"PrivateColorMap" = "N"
"PerfectGraphics" = "N"
"Managed" = "Y"
"UseDGA" = "N"
"UseXShm" = "Y"
"DXGrab" = "N"
"UseXVidMode" = "Y"
"DesktopDoubleBuffered" = "Y"
"TextCP" = "0"
"Desktop" = "1024x768"

 

These Settings are for running the game in windowed mode,

If you want it full screen remove the "Desktop" = "1024x768" line and change "DXGrab" to "Y"

 

Oh yeah and as with most games emulated under linux you will need to get a crack to remove the copy protection (that is unless you decide to get the pay for version of winex which includes all the copy protection and install sheild code)

 

EDIT: I am using version 1.3 of UFO:AM which as i have said is working perfectly:

Videos, Graphics, Sound, Mouse, all working perfectly without any distortion

 

I am using the latest version of winex as of Friday 10th september, If you already have winex installed and cant see your mouse cursor then update winex as they have only recently implemented 16 bit per pixel mouse cursors.

 

the linux community needs all the games they can get.

 

I also wanted to point out a great mis-conception amongst most that linux is no good as a gaming station, here i'll list all the games I currently have on my computer:

 

First off games that are designed for windows/dos:

UFO: Aftermath

UFO: Enemy unknown (dont use the xp fix)

UFO: Terror from the deep (dont use the xp fix)

Need for speed underground (a bit slow and i cant set the detail above low)

Red alert 2

Warcraft 3

Master of Orion III (I prefer playing this game in linux as i can play it windowed)

Space Hulk

UT2004 (there is a linux binarys for this game)

Doom 95

Half-Life

System Shock 2 (works better under linux (although i had some troubles getting it working))

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (there are linux biniarys for this game)

Star wars Jedi knight Academy

SIN

Hardwar

Monkey Island 1 & 2 (these games i couldnot get working under windows xp!)

Diablo 2 + expansion

Neverwinter nights

Homeworld 2

Dopewars

Super Mario world (a snes emulation)

Tony hawk Pro Skater 3 (ummm all good except the timer goes funny in game)

 

A list of linux games I have installed:

Nibbles

Robots

Tux Racer

XScorch (Scorched Earth clone)

Scorched 3d (A 3d Scorched Earth clone)

Bomberman

Tron Racer

Tux Kart

Globulation 2

Free Civ (a civilization clone for windows and linux)

Nethack

A huge selection of puzzle/card games

 

The linux gaming community is huge, and there are Thousands apon Thousands of linux based games that are avalible and in development and im not talking about crapy 2D games either! Linux has all the Graphics capibilities of windows and possibly more!

 

Games that i have tryed to get working but couldnt:

C&C Generals (with and without expansion)

X-Com Apocalypse

Thats it!

 

Now i would say im not trying to convert ppl over to linux but.... well i supose i am...

Linux isnt for everyone, it takes alot of work and computing knowledge to get a linux system up and running, but for those of you who want MORE from their system and more customablity and security then linux is for you!

 

About 6 months ago you would have had a tough time convincing me that windows wasnt the way forward, but after using linux for a month or so i would now never go back! i still have windows installed for a few peices of software, and the occasional task which requires its use but i must say i get frustrated beyond beleif at windows slugishness and un-intutive user interface whenever i boot into windows.

anyway i've not only gone off my origional topic, but also unessecarly blabbered on and on about crap so im gonna shut up

 

Peace

[Slaughter]

That is excellent! I'll post about it in the news with ALL the other stuff I should have posted a long time ago . Good work!

[Megpol]

It apears i am not the first to try and run UFO:AM on winex:

this is the rating from transgaming

Rating: 1 out of 5 [ May install but there is no game play. ]

 

which is aloada bull, i've been playing the game under linux for hours now, although i image this is out of date.

 

and in the forums:

 

I installed it. Installed patch 1.2 and 1.3. When I tried to play, it said something about 'Incompatible SafeDisc copy protection.' So, I found a 'no-CD' patch to remove the copy protection. Now, the game plays.

 

So aparently with this game even if you pay for the copyright protection added version of winex you still need a crack.

 

There might be some kind of memory leak. After 8 hours of continuous play, it started to bog down. Saving, shutting down, and restoring worked ok. I have had multiple 4 hour sessions with no problems.

 

I'm not quite sure if i've managed a whole 8 hours continuous game play (i might of!!) but i havnt noticed any slow down, but as stated yeah just save, quit and reload and you'll be fine.

 

and if you cant be bothered to update your version of winex to fix the mouse problem there is this work around:

 

OK, here's a workaround: if you set the game to run on a desktop and set the desktop a bit larger than the actual game screen (1050x770 for example), you can get a visible, white arrow cursor in the wine window by moving the cursor into the unused area of the desktop. Yay /,,/

 

I installed UFO:AM from within windows and then emulated under linux, you may have troubles installing using winex:

 

Hi,

When I run the setup, with winex 3.2, I get the error message:

"An error (-5009: 0x80041f42) has occured while running the setup"

 

Then InstallShield stops and I can't install the game.

DO anybody have a solution ?

( I have the same problem with cvs winex, and cvs winehq )

 

However they are now on version 4.something so this might be fixed by now

 

according to this person yeah it is possible to install under linux, and they also claim they have no problems with the copy protection and have been able to run the game without a crack:

 

Thanks yo your post I just run to buy it, and it installed perfectly and run pretty well! Perf is a bit low ( centrino 1.4M ) but this is very correct, and I have no problem with copy protection.

Note that I bought the game in France, maybe this is not the same copy protection in other countries.

I run FC1 kernel 1.88 / winex3-3.3.2-1 / Point2Play-1.2.2.b-1 ( first time I use point2play, and it works fine! )

Hardware is a Dell Inspiron 8600c ( Centrino 1.4 / 512M ram / 1280x800 / Nvidia drivers 5336 )

I just had to disable prelink ( PRELINK=NO in /etc/sysconfig/prelink )

 

and a note on the RBmod and alpine mod manager:

 

I was able to install the stand-alone version of the Rebalance Mod (v6.7) However, when I try to install the Alpine Mod manager, it keeps saying: "Can't create directory."

 

This post is a about 5 months old, so i'll try the Alpine under linux and get back to you....

[J.R.]

Maybe you can try other game from our company - puzzle game Fish Fillets? Some guys from Czech Rep are porting it to linux :-]

 

https://fillets.sourceforge.net/

[Slaughter]

Thanks for the information Megpol. Do tell us how you do with ALPine!

[Megpol]

ALPine seems to be working fine as far as i can tell, though unfortunatly it is unusable by me due to the fact that I installed UFO:AM under windows and my linux registery dosnt have the info for the game - which ALPine needs to work out which directorys to use.

 

EDIT: Oh yeah I had to use standard wine (or winehq as it is know known) to run ALPine, for which you can also use one of the scripts from the link i mentioned above to download, install and configure winehq.

 

If someone knows which Regestery keys I need in order for ALPine to work that would be great!

 

my only other choice is to install UFO:AM from within linux, or get winex to use my native windows registery. I'll let you know if i can be arsed to do either of these options....

but info on UFO:AM's Reg keys would be great

 

Oh yeah and i also tryed out that fish fillets game, and i must admit its more ammusing than i would have imagined from the screen shots, good job ALTAR

[Harkov]

/me realizes he's bringing up a really old topic

 

anyways:

I managed to get ufo aftermath running on linux. Just by copying it from my windows drive and using standard wine to run it. There are two things that bug me though.

 

1. I don't have a mouse cursor except for the square cursor on the ground in tactical missions.

 

2. The screen is a little off centre, slightly to the right which bugs me too.

 

Anyone know how to fix that?