HOWTO Setup Steam Version of Crysis on Ubuntu

In one of my previous posts I mentioned I had the game Crysis running successfully under Cedega with a few native dll over rides. Today I am going to detail the few hoops you will need to jump through if you wish to get Crysis running on Linux.

We are going to need a few things before we get started and I feel it is easiest to round up all the files before we get started. Go download the following files:

• vcredist_x86.exe
• odbcbcp.dll
• pdh.dll

In addition to these three files before we start you are going to need Cedega and the latest Wine version installed as well as Steam installed under both Wine and Cedega.

First thing we want to do is get Crysis downloading under the Wine version of Steam (this is going to take awhile depending on your internet connection). While you are waiting for this to download take the two .dll files you downloaded and place them into ~/.cedega/Steam/c_drive/windows/system32 next load up Cedega and install the vcredist_x86.exe into your Steam folder.

Once Crysis is done downloading on Steam (running under Wine) go ahead and load the game through Steam. It will prompt you to install several things (DirectX, .NET, and Punkbuster) - install all of them. Once it is done with this Wine should even load Crysis to the main menu for you (however if you try to load a level of the game itself it will result in X crashing - give it a try if you do not believe me).

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Running Tales of Monkey Island with Wine

I’m a proud adventure game fan boy and have enjoyed countless hours in the company of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Legend of Kyrandia among others. ScummVm have helped to re enjoy many of these titles after replacing my preferred desktop system with Linux.

When the news reached my ears about “Tales of Monkey Island” I was very exited. But also nervous if would be able to play these episodes without Windows… but fear no more.
It is possible!
My system:

• Nvidia graphic card
• Ubuntu Karmic 64bit
• Wine from special package archive (to get native pulse audio support)

The episodes install on all Wine versions I’ve tried on so far (several guides on the internet suggests not to check for DirectX, though I haven’t personally experienced any difference). When the game starts you are asked to provide the serial number. In this phase I’ve encountered trouble several times. Earlier providing the serial number only worked in old versions of Wine (like version 1.0) but this time I got it working with the newest version of Wine (which at the time was 1.1.32). Also I had to delete my .wine folder in order to reset wine because I apparently had some IE6 leftovers in there which otherwise would mess up the registration.

After activating the episodes you need to install D3DX9_41.dll into .wine/drive_c/windows/system32. Remember Linux is case sensitive so it is possible to have several different files with the same name except for the case. If it still doesn’t work make sure you only have one d3dx9_41.dll and that it’s not the one provided by wine (which won’t work).

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How to install Spotify on Ubuntu Linux

Although there's officially no Linux client, it's actually very easy to run Spotify from a Linux computer.

Spotify is a great application that allows you to stream music direct from Spotify's servers and play it on your local machine. There's a good Mac client, one for Windows, but as yet no Linux client.

However, it's actually quite quick and easy to get Spotify up and running on Linux when you know how. Spotify even provide details on how to do this on their website.

Download Spotify for Windows
First go to Spotify.com and download the Windows version of Spotify. This is a .exe executable.

Install Wine
We're going to run the Windows version of Spotify using the Wine software. Wine recreates a Windows-like environment within Linux allowing you to run Windows software relatively seamlessly. To install simply open a Terminal and paste in this command 'sudo aptitude install wine'.

Load Spotify with Wine Windows Program Loader
Find the Spotify.exe file in your Downloads folder, or wherever you saved it to, then right click it and select 'Open with Wine Windows Program Loader'.

Select install location
You can simply select the default install location when prompted. Wine doesn't save files to a place within your home directory so this doesn't really matter too much.

Login using your Spotify credentials
When the login form comes up, simply enter your Spotify username and password to login.

Play with Spotify

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Google Map Saver on Linux with Wine

About Google Map Saver

Google Map Saver is a portable software program that feels more responsive and less complicated to use. The user can enter a location or point of interest and the program will download the available data from Google Maps. Then just click on the Go! button and the map of the location will be displayed, this process takes only a few seconds on a fast Internet connection. The usual Google Maps controls are available including zooming in and out, moving around with the mouse or switching between map, satellite and terrain view. The ability to save loaded maps as images, so that you can use them offline or take them anywhere with you is really nice.

The zoom factor and map type can also be changed in pulldown menus at the top. Just select the desired map size and output format and click a button to save the map in PNG, JPG, BMP or TARGA format. Images of the maps that are displayed can be saved in various resolutions (e.g. window size, QVGA – 320×240, VGA-640×480, iPhone-320×480, PAL-768×576, NTSC-720×480, SVGA-800×600, XGA-1024×768, WXGA-1024×600, WXGA-1280×800, HD720-1280×720, HD1080-1920×1080 or custom formats up to 10000×10000. Various output formats including jpg, png, targa and bmp are available. The resulting images can be large (40+ Megabytes) if the highest resolutions are selected.

Google Map Saver is an uncomplicated program that can be used to save locations in Google Maps in a short period of time. The program is portable and available at the developer’s homepage. The watermark can be removed by clicking on the globe in the upper right corner to get to the about page and there on the Activate button which will remove the watermark.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory.

Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Windows version emulated: XP
Wine version tested: 1.1.35

Dependencies

Before Google Map Saver will run properly with Wine you will need to install Internet Explorer, I installed IE 7 via winetricks as this is the easiest way to install IE 7 on Wine at this time.

GMS Download

Version 1.0.2 of Google Map Saver can be downloaded from here. gms.exe is a stand alone application that doesn't need to be installed only run from Wine.

First Run

Just open a terminal and run $ wine gms.exe and the application should start and display a blank page. The default location is Karlsruhe, Germany and if you try to load it as is you will receive a error.


To work around this error just enter the name of the city or the country and then your map should start to load. You will receive two script errors once the map starts loading, jut click yes and proceed. once the map is loaded the zoom in and out will go blank but it still works. One the fist zoom in or out go to the upper left and click in or out. Once the first zoom is completed you can then use your mouse to zoom by just double clicking the map. You can also drag the map with your mouse as usual.

Here is a screenshot of GMS running on my laptop, also two maps I saved of Reykjavik Iceland the most beautiful city on our blue planet, and a satellite image of Nuuk Greenland.

B.T.W... This howto should also work on FreeBSD, OpenSolaris and Mac systems.

Has Transgaming Abandoned Cedega?

Pretty much anyone who has used Linux for at least a short while is aware of Wine technology and what it does. For many Linux users, largely Linux gamers, having properly working Wine technology is essential to their everyday computer user. The topic of commercial Wine software has been known to cause many heated discussions over the years on various Linux message boards. It appears at long last that perhaps this seemingly eternal argument may finally be coming to an end. Transgaming, the company behind Cedega, appears to be finally putting down its (some would say much controversial) Linux software.

While nothing official has been posted by the company itself, I feel it is pretty obvious Transgaming is letting Cedega die a slow death. November 13th 2009 marked the one year date since we last saw an update in Cedega's news page - The Den. While we did see a small update to the software in August - this did not add any new functionality to Cedega, it simply resolved an issue a World of Warcraft update had introduced. It is also heavily obvious that Transgaming does not check their user forums (or they really just don't care about what happens there if they do). There is now a two page thread on the boards of users simply asking for news on what is going on with the company/future of Cedega - we've gotten no official response.