The Great Linux Project – Part 1

This is starting to become a habit…sorry it’s late folks.

For my first post I’m going to go through a few of the games I’m currently playing, this should provide a nice introduction and also be a useful test on Linux’s viability as a games platform.  But before I start with the regular layout, there are some things I should probably explain.

Graphics Drivers

This is something I didn’t mention in my first post, it wasn’t intended to be a detailed explanation about installing a Linux system but I should have mentioned this at least.  A lot of Linux distros only enable the open-source graphics drivers on installation, in order to run 3D applications you will need the proprietary ones from the graphics card company.  There is an open-source 3D driver in development for nVidia cards called nouveau, however this is still in the early stages and it is extremely unlikely that it will ever beat nVIDIAs own drivers for performance.  For instructions on installing these drivers see the documentation for the specific distribution you are using.  In my custom Arch install things went extremely smoothly, I simply installed the nvidia package and ran

nvidia-xconfig

to generate an xorg.conf configuration file.  In the past I have had trouble installing the drivers in Ubuntu, that situation may have changed but if you are having problems the simplest thing to do is install EnvyNG, this runs a series of scripts to automatically configure the drivers.

nVIDIA and Scaling

A quick note on scaling.  I’m not a big fan of it, and on modern 22″+ monitors it tends to make things pretty blocky, in Windows I have disabled scaling and in Linux it was almost exactly the same.  I simply found the nVidia control panel (searched in KDE, System menu in Gnome) and went to the section with the name of my monitor, then set scaling to centred, very painless.  Although it doesn’t have the individual games profiles like the Windows version almost everything else has an equivalent, I just hope it’s a similar situation for AMD\ATI users.

Icons

Ubuntu has an automatically generated menu entry for Wine programs, when they are installed a compatible icon is placed there.  They also appear in a similar way in KDE.  However I think it’s nice to have some pretty icons on the desktop so here is a quick tutorial.

Right-click on the Desktop, go to ‘Create New’ and then ‘Link to Application’.  A dialogue box appears, click on the Application tab.

There are three lines to fill out.  First off is the title, name this what you wish.  Next you need to enter the location of the executable, the simplest way is to click on browse and find the .exe, this is where you need to know a bit about how Wine stores it’s files.  Everything is stored in a hidden folder called /.wine which is located in your home folder.  The folder called /drive_c houses the equivalent of the C: drive, from here you should be able to find where you installed the program.  However with some games this works a little differently, some do not have an installer they just come in a folder.  Assuming you downloaded the game you quite understandably would put this in Linux’s area rather than Wine’s, you could simply move the folder to the Wine directory but if you want you can keep it in home.  After selecting the .exe the path will appear in the box, now add ‘wine’ to the start of the line, outside the quotes:

wine '/home/mthec/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/Pro Pinball - Big Race USA/BigRace.exe'

The last line to fill in is the Work path, I’m not quite sure why you need this as well but when I tried to run on of my programs it couldn’t find one of the files, just point it to the main directory of the program.

Now that the link is ready to use let’s add a pretty icon, a lot of the ones that come with games are low quality and look fuzzy.  You can find icons for games by simply Googling for them, some people have also uploaded some particularly fantastic ones to deviantART, whenever I cover a game I will link to some possible icons if they exist.  Or you could always make your own, Photoshop is often used for this but assuming you don’t have a couple of hundred going spare you can always use GIMP for free.  If you really wanted you could use Paint, I’m normally a big advocate of Paint having used it for lots of image editing for this blog, but I think icons look much better when they have some of transparency.

To assign an icon to the launcher go back to the General tab and click the current icon, this brings up a dialogue box.  I’ve never really understood how Linux handles icons, so although there probably is a way to connect them up to a Games option I don’t know how to do it.  I would recommend creating a simple folder somewhere in your home area to store icons in, now if you select ‘Other Icons’ you can click browse and search out the one you want.

Spiffy.

In Gnome it’s very similar, right-click and got to ‘Create Launcher’.  Then fill in the boxes as above.

Wine Application Database

Finally, I obviously don’t own every single game ever created and it would take me a very long time to test all my games like this, even if I intended too.  So if you have only just learnt about using Wine to run games in Linux and are dying to to know whether your favourite game, Ultimate Pwnage™, is compatible then head over to the Wine Application Database.  This is where people submit there experiences with various games and post information that can help both the developers and you get picky games working.  There are five basic ratings, in ascending order; Garbage, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum.  You can basically ignore the bottom two if you’re looking for a smooth ride, but although you might think you only want to play Platinum rated games you should give Silver and Gold a chance.  With Silver there is probably a broken feature, how important it is depends on the player.  Gold is even better it generally means you will be restricted to certain settings, for example a game that can run both in OpenGL and DirectX would be considered Gold if the DirectX side was broken, but that might not stop you from playing in OpenGL.  (I have first hand experience of this with Starscape, played flawlessly in OpenGL.)  The ratings are by no means certain either, admittedly that means a Gold applications may not run for you, but it also means that Garbage might.  It could be a system specific problem or an old rating, Wine is constantly being updated so if the version on the games page is older than yours it may be worth a go.  You should also consider playing games so that you can upload your results for others to see.

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Pro Pinball – Big Race USA

Windows

On it’s default settings the menu runs far too fast, but after selecting a higher resolution this problem goes away and everything works flawlessly.  (If you’re having problems with performance, try turning off motion blur.)

Arch

This was the first time I’d installed a game in Wine using the GOG installer.  The text was slightly out of alignment but everything worked properly.  Starting Pro Pinball I ran into the same problem as Windows, after changing the settings however the problem did not go away, there was also some pretty nasty sound corruption.  Starting a game however worked fine, graphically and audibly it’s identical to Windows. Once setup the menu can be skipped straight away negating any real problems, I’d be perfectly happy running like this.

Ubuntu

Things did not go so well here, the first indication was a very minor discolouration in the installer as well as the misaligned text I had in Arch.  Going into the settings the sound corruption and speed was there, the trouble was changing the settings wouldn’t stick.  It was getting late so I gave up and tried again the next day, this time it worked fine.  The game ran well after that (bar the menus).  Subsequent problems have shown that this was probably the fault of my Ubuntu installation, which has always been a bit picky about changing resolutions, rather than a general issue.  I’ll look into it over the coming weeks.

Conclusion

One game down, several billion to go.  Barring the problems in Ubuntu, Pro Pinball – Big Race USA ran fine under Wine (sorry), the menu issue is annoying but is not a problem for playing the game, after clicking the icon it’s just a simple press of the Enter key and you’re in the game.

Icon

Couldn’t find any icons so I knocked this one up quickly from the manual.

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Prince of Persia – Sands of Time

Windows

Arch

I bought Prince of Persia from GOG so mine does not have any copy protection.  This is the biggest hurdle for getting games to run in Wine, many older games would be perfectly compatible but cannot be run or possibly even installed because of harsh copy-protection.  There are ways around it, just as in Windows you can use cracked .exe’s, but this problem can take a long time for the Wine developers to find a way around that doesn’t involve hacks.  Installer worked the same as it did for Pro Pinball.  However I ran into several problems playing the game, nothing that prevents you from playing but noticeable none the less.  First of all fog is broken:

Turning this off removes the problem and I didn’t notice much difference compared to when I have played in Windows.  At a certain section of the game I started getting black-outs (not in real life ), when turning the camera the view would randomly go completely black (except for text).  Turning the graphics level down one notch seemed to solve this problem.  The last problem though I couldn’t find a solution for, random texture corruptions started appearing, it only affected the colour of objects but is a bit off-putting.  However the situation isn’t as bad as it seems…

Ubuntu

An older Wine version will probably be the downfall for Ubuntu in these tests, but in this case it’s actually helpful.  Reading on the Wine website it seems that some recent code is at fault for the fog problems, so recent that Ubuntus version does not share the problem.  Other than more resolution switching issues (I had to guess where the Yes button was so the settings were applied, then had to restart PoP) it looked identical to Windows, except for a different gamma balance, there were none of the texture corruptions that Arch had.  Strangely there was an error message on starting the game:
This didn’t change anything in the game, I seen some older games in Windows have this problem, something to do with not detecting hardware features that are no longer required.  Plus since it has a ‘Do not warn me again’ check box it doesn’t have to be an issue if I don’t want it too.

Conclusion

I was originally going to provide benchmarks to give an accurate comparison of frame-rates, however FRAPS does not work in Wine.  I will try to search for a compatible alternative, but otherwise I cannot do anything about it unless the particular game has a built in counter or benchmarking tool.  This isn’t such a problem for the other two games here, but for something like PoP which has more a complex graphics system that plays a large part in how well the game plays, it limits what I can say.  All I can say is that I didn’t notice any difference in speed, after returning to Windows and playing a little I thought there might have been but when I went back there was little to no difference.  The fact that Ubuntus Wine version (1.0) works proves that this is a temporary situation that will hopefully be solved soon.  Once this is done Prince of Persia can be added to the list of games I would be happy to play in Linux.

Icon

I found it much harder to locate a good PoP icon, and I didn’t find any material I could have used besides the box-art.  This could be good for you though, if you like games using their box-art as icons there are loads of packs available and you should hopefully find the game you’re after somewhere.  The one good PoP icon I did find was this one:

Available from 3xhumed’s Mega Games Icon Pack on deviantART, they’re very good but do not fit very well with other icons.  I would suggest if you wish to use any of these icons that you use the whole pack as an icon theme.

Since trying PoP I have found another icon that works much better on it’s own:

Created by SkullBoarder, again on deviantART, there are also a good many other icons available too.  Well worth a look.

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Dwarf Fortress

Windows

Arch

Only two very minor problems, minimising the window abruptly ends the game, and when moving the view it accelerates quickly and travels faster than usual.  Otherwise flawless.

Ubuntu

Exactly the same as above.

Conclusion

Just what you’d expect from a Platinum rated game.  It’s a little annoying that minimising crashes the game but how often do you actually need to do it, since it’s generally run in a window anyway it won’t get in the way if you need to quickly do something else.  I actually thought that the cursor moved too slowly over longer distances in Windows, although it is slightly jumpy now, I should learn to use the shift button more anyway.  Normal movement is one tile at a time, shift makes it ten at a time, getting into the habit of doing this will be good for Linux as well as Windows.  In a related note the latest version of Visual Fortress has been released, and they’ve implemented objects!  (My latest dining hall.)  The program ran in Linux but couldn’t extract the information from the game.

Icon

There are a couple of custom icons floating around.

Source

Source

I didn’t particularly want either of them so I created my own from a screenshot of DF running with the Mayday graphics pack.  Oh and the blocky-ness is intentional, very retro.

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