Monday, December 8, 2008

DAoC on Linux under Wine (Ubuntu 8.10)

I started feeling the daoc itch again, and wanted to reinstall. My current computer (Acer Aspire x1200) only has a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 though. Creating a winxp or vista partition wasn't going to work as each had various issues (like winxp lacks good driver support for my system).

So, I installed daoc in ubuntu. I've done this before and each time I had to build wine from source and also patch something because the mouse cursor would disappear often. However, this time (8 months later), the new versions just worked.

  1. I activated the restricted nvidia drivers.
  2. I installed wine-1.1.10 via apt-get.
  3. I downloaded the DAOC trial version (I didn't want to pay for an account if I wasn't sure if daoc on linux would work for this computer)
  4. ran "wine" on the exe file
  5. went through the install process with no problems
  6. went through the update process with no problems
  7. created an account (this seemed to be glitching a bit -- you might need to try to manage the account via https://accounts.eamythic.com/
  8. logged in and selected a server, but character creation failed and crashed the program
  9. ran "winecfg" and turned "Vertex Shader Support" to None and unchecked "Allow Pixel Shader"
  10. created a handsome celt bard
  11. logged in
  12. at this point the music was fubared (and it seemed to affect the graphics/overall feel).
  13. I logged out, changed the sound on "winecfg" to oss from alsa.
  14. logged in. sound is working.
  15. kicked some ass.

Note: I did run into a few issues.
  1. First, my character's face was just one blob of color.
  2. After running around for a while, I found a set of buildings in bright purple.
  3. A set of mobs was completely invisible (which turned into an interesting encounter with them).
  4. The PrintScreen button caused Gnome's print screen function to happen, which was bad.
  5. Alt tabbing from full screen meant I couldn't get back in easily. I could alt-tab back to daoc, but the visuals wouldn't show up. So I just type "/q" and wait 20 seconds and then the login screen pops up and I relog and it is fine.
  6. Connecting to the login server sometimes took a really long time. I don't recall that ever happening in windows.
  7. The server list shows weird/incorrect population numbers (maybe this occurs on windows atm)
  8. The scrolling on the EULA and ROC windows is a little bugged.
Other than that, the game ran great. It was much faster than I expected for this computer I'm using (and I'm on full resolution 1680x1050).

8 months ago, when I tried daoc on linux, there were a couple issues that aren't present today:
  1. funky/invisible mouse
  2. all characters appeared to have undyed basic armor
Also, you should note that Mythic doesn't support this and they even threaten to ban you:

The Linux environment is not supported under Dark Age of Camelot at this time.

Also, please do not attempt to run the game via Linux through Windows emulators. This often results in accounts being terminated for speed hacking due to differences in emulation vs the actual operating system, resulting in speed and timing issues.

http://support.darkageofcamelot.com/kb/article.php?id=348

I didn't notice anything funky about my speed. But then again WINE Is Not an Emulator.

Some pictures:

some warnings shown with loading screen

population numbers bugged? or feature for each cluster? (I guess it would be too depressing to show actual server numbers)

My uber faceless bard, coming to a BG near you

OT: I forget -- how do I twist endo and speed on the bard? I have to change instruments each time which means clicking in the inventory. I thought it was easier...