Linux

[Deathravin]

Okay. I made a nice little box and threw Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on it a couple months ago.

I've got stormfront to work (poorly) using Wine. But I can't install Wizard. What do you all use (the other two people that use Linux for GS).

One thing I've noticed is I don't have the fixedsys font (which is what I've always used for GS).

[BigWorm]

I don't use Ubuntu, but anything you can do on another distro you can probably do in Ubuntu and probably more easily. Anyway, a good package to look into would be Wine Tools. That will help you install the Windows Core Fonts, which are most of what you need (I think fixedsys is in there, but I'm not 100% sure).

Anyway, SF is just barely unusable for me in Wine, but my laptop is seriously due for on upgrade (1.5ish GHz or so P4) so it may be better for you. My problems were mostly intermittent freezing and wonkiness with the behavior of the window like moving it and minimizing/maximizing but that might be blamed on my dual head xinerama setup with uneven borders. The wizard works really well other than not maximizing (again a quirk in my setup I think) and it actually seems faster on Linux than in Windows (which isn't all that uncommon for Wine apps).

If you use Psinet, I have sad news because you won't be able to use Psinet2 or Sage or wtf its called under linux. If someone else has a way to do this, LET ME KNOW, because I would really like to have this. You will be able to use the old version, but without any of the on-line features. Lich, which is really nice under linux, works perfectly and replaces a lot of the features, but lichnet != psinet ooc.

[Shaelun]

Eh? You can't install the Wizard...? What's not working right -- I don't recall having any problems doing it whenever it was that I did; I assume I just entered wine wizInstall.exe in a shell or something. What's the output when you try to run the installer.exe with Wine?


Also, I'm not sure what version of Wine you're working with, but one of the more recent ones actually runs SF pretty nicely on my machine -- the redrawing of the windows is noticeably slow, but otherwise it appears nearly perfect.

If all else fails, d/l the latest Wine release and compile it from source: that's about the only difference that I can think of between your Ubuntu setup and my Slackware one, and Wine always works like a charm for me.

[Deathravin]

I just installed Wine, it's version 0.9.46. It sounds like SF runs just about the same as yours.

Maybe it's because I'm trying to install Wizard using the Simu Launcher. it downloads it. The installation starts, it says "Searching for Wizard Front End", and sits there for a good 2-3 minutes. Then it says: ERROR: The application was not installed properly, please try again or contact Tech Support.

Unfortunately I don't see an installer that I can DL from Simu.

[septus]

SF has weird redrawing issues, but it's not like it used to be (it used to constantly flicker) SF also has problems with keeping the cursor in the text box.

Ok, with running the wizard in wine the installer has a problem. It gets confused when it looks for an already installed version of the wizard, so what do you do? Copy over c:\program files\simu\wizard from a windows machine into your ~/.wine/drive_c/program\ files/simu directory and then run wine Sge.exe. It'll find it and the install over it. After that you might have to change the log/script/music/sound/etc directories as they'll now be case sensitive.

As for a fixedsys font, I use the fixedsys500c.zip font from http://fixedsys.moviecorner.de/?p=download&l=1. Just unzip it in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts directory (I probably got the case wrong here, but I'm too lazy to pull out my eee pc)

Works fine for me doing it this way: http://www.skyshadows.net/gs-eeepc1.png.

And yes, unfortunately psinet will not work as net 2.0 doesn't work correctly in wine atm.


Oh, and one of the GMs is currently coding a Linux FE. No sure when it'll be out, if ever.. (There's been a handful that people have worked on..none of which have actually come out)

[Shaelun]

If you use Psinet, I have sad news because you won't be able to use Psinet2 or Sage or wtf its called under linux. If someone else has a way to do this, LET ME KNOW, because I would really like to have this.

Mono will run Psinet2. It took me around 4-6 hours to figure out how to actually tweak Mono's environment properly, and in all honesty, I can't even remember the steps I went through... essentially what it came down to is that Jamus made Psinet2 very fickle, and you have to add all the necessary registry keys by hand for Mono.

Most of what took me so long to get it working was figuring out wtf Psinet2 kept giving me a generic error because of, and then figuring out how to make Mono fake the proper registry entires. Turns out Mono uses a directory hierarchy and xml files for its registry.

For my setup (default options when compiled from source, so should be the same if you go that route), the necessary files are (file location followed by contents of the XML files):

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/classes/simutronics.autolaunch/shell/open/command/values.xml

<values>
        <value name="" type="string">"/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU/Launcher.exe" %1</value>
</values>

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/psinet/values.xml

<values>
   <value name="Version"
          type="string">2.1.1.1823</value>
   <value name="InstallDirectory"
          type="string">/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/PsiNet</value>
        <value name="OpenCommand" type="string">"/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU/Launcher/Launcher.exe" %1</value>

</values>

(note that I tweaked the version by hand, if memory serves, and can't guarantee you won't have to do the same)

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/simutronics/launcher/values.xml

<values>
   <value name="Directory"
          type="string">/home/fallen/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/SIMU</value>
</values>

/usr/local/etc/mono/registry/LocalMachine/software/simutronics/sge32/values.xml

<values>
   <value name="Directory"
          type="string">C:\PROG~FBU\SIMU\SGE</value>
</values>

That looks to be the only files under my Mono registry dirpath. I may have also had to decompress the setup.exe program using actual decompression software, because I think it's so touchy it refused to even unzip itself... but I can't 'member very well.


That should get you far enough to tweak the rest yourself, if you're so inclined, at least. Have fun -- though "good luck" is probably more accurate...

[Shaelun]

... yeah, I obviously forgot to point out that you're going to have to alter my home directory (/home/fallen) to whatever yours is -- or wherever else your .wine dir is.

[Deathravin]

Copy over c:\program files\simu\wizard from a windows machine into your ~/.wine/drive_c/program\ files/simu directory and then run wine Sge.exe. It'll find it and the install over it. After that you might have to change the log/script/music/sound/etc directories as they'll now be case sensitive.

That's what I was going to try next... Thanks ^^.

[BigWorm]

I just installed Wine, it's version 0.9.46. It sounds like SF runs just about the same as yours.

Maybe it's because I'm trying to install Wizard using the Simu Launcher. it downloads it. The installation starts, it says "Searching for Wizard Front End", and sits there for a good 2-3 minutes. Then it says: ERROR: The application was not installed properly, please try again or contact Tech Support.

Unfortunately I don't see an installer that I can DL from Simu.

You probably need to install the launcher first. Any software you need is available at http://www.play.net/software/

Mono will run Psinet2. It took me around 4-6 hours to figure out how to actually tweak Mono's environment properly, and in all honesty, I can't even remember the steps I went through... essentially what it came down to is that Jamus made Psinet2 very fickle, and you have to add all the necessary registry keys by hand for Mono.

This is... good news I guess. I haven't installed Mono on my laptop yet and that is going to be a huge ass install, but I will have to look into it. All my hunting partners are WTF when I tell them I don't have Psinet. Thanks for the info, I'll have to give it a try.

Works fine for me doing it this way: http://www.skyshadows.net/gs-eeepc1.png.

Slightly off topic, but what distro are you running on your eeepc? I plan on getting one of these in the near future, but it still looks like support is spotty, especially for the wlan drivers.

Oh, and one of the GMs is currently coding a Linux FE. No sure when it'll be out, if ever.. (There's been a handful that people have worked on..none of which have actually come out)

I'll believe it when I see it. I would guess it would be either Naos (who does the Mac FE) or Ildran (who wrote the EclipseFE) who would be doing this. I know some DR? players were writing a FE called ArchLich but it seems development on that has fizzled like dev on Warlock did.

[Deathravin]

Okie... well, Ubuntu doesn't like lich...

Lich:5997: in 'find': Permission denied - /home/deathravin/lich/.cache.5472.605965718 (Errno::EACCES)
from LICH:5997

I'm assuming this is because root is disabled in Ubuntu, and Lich installs itself to root.