Armed Assault on Linux through Wine

[DirkGent 0]

I think we should get people voting for Armed Assault in the AppDB at WineHQ to get more attention. If we do they will start looking (hopefully). This is something you (Armed Assault fans) can do to help out. You just need to register and put a vote on your favorite game <hint>.  

We are on top 100 but I hope we can bump it up to top 25 atleast. All we need is 25 more votes!

VOTE!

[tuxinator 0]

Hi all,

Interesting topic, i love to use Linux because it is no resuorce Monster like any M$ Product is, specifically Vista

I tried to get run an existing installation of ArmA under Mandriva 2008 Spring with Wine, but the result was a frozen Desktop

But wath i wont to say is that it is on the Hands of the Developer from ArmA to get that done !

Why ?

Because others can handle that too !

How ?

Look at Epic Games and what they do for their Community, since Unreal Tournament 2004 they have also an Linux installer implementet and i checked that out.

I made a test on two OS, one was an Windows 2000, the other a SuSe Linux 10.0. On both OS i installed UT 2004 and used a resolution of 1280x1024, under Windows i was getting about 25 up to 29 FPS, under Linux i getting 70 up to 75 FPS. This shows what kind of resource Monster Windows is and i cant understand that Developers dont try to get their Stuff also running under Linux. A lot of People i know will change to Linux if they dont need to run Windows for a Game or Application they need.

It would be nice if there where more Developers that Programm for both OS and after a while there will be more Users that switch over to Linux.

But this will be a Dream, because M$ is too Big and to much used worldwide

[andersson 285]

If arma could run on linux I would format my C: and get rid of win today.

[hardrock 1]

If arma could run on linux I would format my C: and get rid of win today.

Same here.

[ShrubMiK 0]

Quick, send out a call for all the Windows haters to come post here right now!!!

<Yawn>

[baddo 0]

Linux is not the panacea some people think... I've used it enough to know.

It's good for some things but I am yet to see a Linux distribution which I would recommend to my good friends.

Bier AIG Freak, the difference between Armed Assault and Unreal Tournament 2004 is that the Unreal Tournament 2004 doesn't use DirectX when you use it on Linux. Armed Assault relies on DirectX, which means that porting it to Linux is far from a trivial task, and is likely to be non-profitable as well (charity).

What is discussed in this thread is that people are trying to use Wine to run a DirectX game. Wine is needed as Linux doesn't support DirectX by default, so people needed to come up with a hack such as Wine to try and make it possible. It is in no way BIS' responsibility to support running their games on a hack like Wine.

You can, however, raise the question if they should also enable their games to use OpenGL for rendering instead of Direct3D, and for other DirectX technologies their Linux replacements. That could well mean that pretty much a complete re-write of their game engine would have to be done in order to allow that. You can start to estimate if it is profitable for them to do that. As I already hinted above, it could be kind of charity if they did that, as they would in my opinion not get enough money as a result of that to justify doing it in the first place.

[ShrubMiK 0]

I know - I work with Linux all day, so I'm well-versed in all the problems and irritations it can throw up. And I don't see any likelihood of being persuaded to run it as my main desktop OS just at the moment!

On the subject of OpenGL...back about 10 years ago virtually everything supported OpenGL, and in many cases it ran slightly better than DX. That was certainly true for me, on my hardware, with most games from Quake2 to FarCry.

I did find myself wondering what happened to all the OpenGL implementations, and on reading up about it I got the distinct impression that OpenGL dropped the ball. They didn't keep up with improved DX features. And I've seen some developers stating that improvements in the DX API meant it actually become easier to program with than OpenGL, whereas in the early days it was the other way around. Which translated directly to less willingness to support it. Perhaps somebody with more in-depth knowledge on the capabilities and APIs can comment on this?

[vektorboson 8]

I did find myself wondering what happened to all the OpenGL implementations, and on reading up about it I got the distinct impression that OpenGL dropped the ball. They didn't keep up with improved DX features.

The problem with OpenGL was, AFAIK, that Microsoft was a member of the OpenGL ARB (OpenGL 'standards committee' and kinda 'sabotaged' / slowed down the improvement of OpenGL. After MS left the ARB, the core OpenGL started to catch up; but they should've been on par regarding features (because hardware vendors may implement extensions to OpenGL, without the need to wait for the next OpenGL-version).

As for no commercial games being made with OpenGL: AFAIK games for Playstation 3 and Wii are made with OpenGL; the same is true for games on the Mac.

And now for something completely different:

Would I suggest someone to use Linux as their Desktop OS?

Yes. Especially if they've never used a PC before.

I have less help requests from people who use Linux than Windows; of course there are problems when people give them Windows-only software and they don't understand why it doesn't work (*cough* most of the time it's pirated).

[ShrubMiK 0]

Sorry, perhaps I should clearly have stated: Windows games. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that PS3 and Mac games are not being made using DirectX! (Well actually that's not strictly true, since nowdays the majority of "Mac" games are Windows games rather than OSX games. But I digress...this really isn't important...)

I would suggest the main reason you get less help requests from Linux desktop users than Windows, is not that Linux is magically easier to set up and use...quite the opposite, still, I would suggest...but rather that the majority of people who use Linux desktops are very technically competent and motivated, and far more likely to investigate and sort out any problems for themselves.

[whisper 0]

Id-Tech engine is still developped in OpenGL and ID Software games are all ported on Linux. See their latest Ennemy Territory:Quake Wars installment.

I've made an experiment at home and converted missus to use Linux. I made a dual boot with Windows, so far she keeps it up on Ubuntu and doesn't seem to have issues with that.

Mind you, she's not really knowledgeable in computing, she's a kind a "basic user".

[vektorboson 8]

I would suggest the main reason you get less help requests from Linux desktop users than Windows, is not that Linux is magically easier to set up and use...quite the opposite, still, I would suggest...but rather that the majority of people who use Linux desktops are very technically competent and motivated, and far more likely to investigate and sort out any problems for themselves.

Of course you're right in the case of tech-savvy users.

But I'm also talking of 'sister', 'mother', 'grand-mother', 'girl-friend' and 'neighbour' types of users.

And they are definitely not the technically competent people as I had to teach them how to use a VCR despite a nice and understandable handbook and on-screen-help.

I always expect the worst when a Windows-user asks for help... (which doesn't imply Windows is non-usable, it's just not suitable for beginners IMHO)

But sorry for all the OT.

[arigram 0]

Can you please keep the subject on getting ArmA to work through Wine and not another stereotypical pointless Linux vs Windows flamewar?

Please, I think this is important.

[tuxinator 0]

@Baddo

I know the difference and i did test under Win not only the DX Version, i tried also the OpenGL to have a Fair test.

@arigram

Sorry but these words i postet must be said, because from my point of view ArmA will never run propper under Linux. U can try Wine or Cedega but it wont work

P.S. :

I wont start a Flamewar betwen these OS !

[vektorboson 8]

Thank you Baddo for you input. I understand what you are saying but as I have said before - this is for solving the issue. Not if, but how. Maybe if this get fixed - it can help Arma2 to work when released.

So, I have started a new thread on the Wine forum. Maybe we can continue the discussion on how to get things running and what we need to do there?

Armed Assault - no 3d rendered

According to the output in that thread, the problem is with floating point textures.

As you can see, floating point textures are on the TODO-list:

http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectX-ToDo

Now, I think I've read that it isn't possible to disable HDR in ArmA. In case it is possible, try to disable HDR and look if 3D works then.

[dotted 0]

I made a test on two OS, one was an Windows 2000, the other a SuSe Linux 10.0. On both OS i installed UT 2004 and used a resolution of 1280x1024, under Windows i was getting about 25 up to 29 FPS, under Linux i getting 70 up to 75 FPS.

Either you did something incredible wrong, or you lie.

Also KDE, which i believe is the default DE for SuSE is also a resource hog, and a bad one at that (Probably competes with Vista on that one).

[tuxinator 0]

KDE ? I'm not stupid, did u ever hear about Fluxbox ?

P.S. :

Indeed was KDE the default, but they also change to Gnome

[dotted 0]

You never stated which DE you were using , and i've heard of (and used) Fluxbox. But i refuse to believe those numbers.

[DirkGent 0]

It does not look like you can disable HDR: Disable HDR?

So it is probably that we need to wait for the implementation of HDR. I will do some investigation on this....

[dotted 0]

It does not look like you can disable HDR: Disable HDR?

So it is probably that we need to wait for the implementation of HDR. I will do some investigation on this....

Why didnt you read what the article said?

EDIT: Why didn't i read what you said , missed the "not".

[sdoc 0]

for me the biggest problem with windows is that it's extremely unsuitable for any development work or rather any work. no vi, no shell scripts, no sed/awk, no easy way to utilise perl scripts. so all config edditting gets really really labourous.

Quote[/b] ]If it could be run on wine, then it would be slower than when running on Windows. I do think that ArmA runs slowly-enough on Windows...

as for many arma users the actuall playing is like 10% or less of the time, testing new addons, fiddling around or modding the game are the remaining 90%, slowdowns or other problems wouldn't matter. time lost due to an unergonomic work environment does.

however with the many workarounds bis used to get arma running that well on windows, i doubt it will run with wine. particulary as it's not that popular that it justifies a lot of work by wine devs.

[Serclaes 0]

You wont really tell me you are doing your config work with vi, are you? If this is the case, you have my respect.

To be honest, i tend to use WinSCP as much as i can to remotely edit the files i have to edit, even if they are small. I just have comfy (inter OS) tools. I admit for some very small changes i use vi.

Though i agree that playing makes 10% of my arma time. Though i owuld prefer if i could run it with WINE.

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

You know, it is sometimes possible to get games to run using mixed libraries.  Maybe what we need to concentrate on is figuring out exactly which libraries need to be pulled from a Windows install to make ArmA work.  Once we have that information, it may help the wine developers narrow down where the problem is.

For example, this is my entry into Wine AppDB for Civ 4.  I report it as "Gold" because the game plays absolutely flawlessly (in single player, anyhow) but does require a couple of native Windows dlls.  You'll note that I have an earlier report where I gave Civ 4 a rating of "Garbage."  At that time, I couldn't get the game to run at all.

I'm convinced that it should be possible to get ArmA running under wine if we can just figure out what native DLLs it needs.  For example, right now I'm getting an error that says it needs Pixel Shader 2.0 support using wine 1.1.1.  Anyone have a clue which native DLL calls that?

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

BTW, I just checked the AppDB. There are only 22 votes for the European version of ArmA and 0 for the US version. I /strongly/ recommend that people should add their votes for the European version so we can get some visibility for this great game!

[sdoc 0]

i use vi almost exclusively for any editing, i just can't miss the 's'(ubstitute) and repeat '.'(repeat) functionality. also the regular expressions, i've seen people clicking around for half an hour to do fix something repeatedly in a file, a regular expression could have done it in less than a minute. I prefered to learn for 2 h, instead of doing a boring task for 30 minutes, so it wasn't a problem for me to learn how to use regexp. After 4 such boring tasks, you got the time invested in learning back.

however i'm quite noobish when dealing with the operating system itself, as the most time in linux i spend at work, where it's maintained by the admins. i generaly haven't had much success with running games through wine.

ps.: wooot - just read that one of my favourite games Mount&Blade is platinum with wine 1.1.2!

[DirkGent 0]

 For example, right now I'm getting an error that says it needs Pixel Shader 2.0 support using wine 1.1.1.  Anyone have a clue which native DLL calls that?

You probably need to update or reinstall your graphics drivers. I had this problem in Ubuntu and did an update of the drivers that solved the problem with this error message. (Using Nvidia drivers that is)