MegaVolt

Join Date 07/2004

GalCiv2 and Linux

Hi,
you really did make a great game and i enjoy playing it a lot. I also like your DRM approach. I'm a Linux user and only have a Windows installed for gaming ... on Linux, i'm quite used to having games without copy protection (and i bought all of them

again: very good job, its one of the main reasons i bought the game - the other main reason is that it is simply great). Sadly, GalCiv2 doesnt work with emulation software (e.g. cedega) that well.
I would be really, really happy if you could provide some sort of Linux compartibility (a full port would be awesome but sadly impossible i guess). Maybe it is possible to work with transgaming to get at least emulation support (e.g. they are listing civ4 as one of their supportet games)
Thanks a lot in advance

ideas

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is there noone who wants to play this game on a linux box? that makes me really sad

if anyone managed to get it working, please tell me

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It would be very nice if it was a 'simple' task...
However i suspect is not such a trivial matter and for the time being i guess it's better if all efforts are focused on improving the game as it is... in the future who knows i'd certainly would love it !

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I certainly want to use it on linux, I only keep windows for games aswell (figured out some of my games using terminals, some non supported), and Linux doesn't hog gobsmacking amounts of memory to run, unlike windows

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It would be very nice if it was a 'simple' task...
However i suspect is not such a trivial matter

I would bet on the use of DirectX 9.0c. It is very important for GC 2 since it allows to use TrueType fonts in the game.

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I couldn't get it to install, because it kept popping up an error "can't find application Internet Explorer" ROFL

So I installed it on Windows instead. I'll try moving the game folder over to my Linux drive later and see if that does any good. I can sometimes get a game to play on Linux like that, even if I can't install it normally.

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cactoblasta

Join Date 04/2004

+48

GC2 needs DirectX or it won't play. If there's no way of emulating that in Linux, it's not going to work.

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Just wanted to say that I use Linux as well. I have been playing GalCiv2 by dual booting into windows, but it would be really nice if it worked with some kind of emulation in Linux. I don't have Cedega, so I can't help much with the trouble shooting there. But if anyone figures it out, please post how it was done. Just thought it might be important to let everyone know other people care about this.

I really appreciate Stardock's community approach. Are you sure you guys aren't a Linux company? I've never seen this level of involvement from a company in any other windows program!

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Linux would be cool, but as others said: it would probably be quite a huge undertaking to convert. Most games that are portable to Linux were originally designed to be portable in the first place or are extremely modular.

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its not really about porting it to linux (that would be awesome but indeed too difficult)
there are good ways to get directx games to work with linux
cedega CVS (which is free!) should do it, the closed source cedega version only adds copy protection emulation, which is not needed for galciv anyway

the cedega developers also vare a lot about their community and try to get as many games to work as possible
to make galciv2 cedega compartible could be as easy as writing the cedega developers a kind email and ask for their support

after all a very good selling game working with cedega is a huge benefit for their marketing

edit:
windows (directx) games running perfectly with linux:
http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/
would really be a shame if galciv could not join the list ...

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Linux support would be excellent. Write for for SDL:

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."

SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, SymbianOS, and OS/2, but these are not officially supported.

SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, C#, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria, Guile, Haskell, Java, Lisp, Lua, ML, Objective C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Pliant, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk.

SDL is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2. This license allows you to use SDL freely in commercial programs as long as you link with the dynamic library.

If Civilization: CTP (and Heroes III, and Railroad Tycoon II...) can be written so as to run on Linux, GalCIV II should be doable. I'm not saying that it's easier or simple just doable. The bonus of writting against SDL is code once, compile three times and you have instant ports for Linux and MAC, in addition to your Windows version. I realize that Stardock works closely with Microsoft, but that shouldn't be a reason not to allow us other OS users to enjoy the game, should it?

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To run on Mac OS X and Linux, Stardock would have to port GC2 to an OpenGL API which has nothing in common with DirectX. Bottom line, if they aren't able to add MP to the game for free, I highly doubt they would do an OpenGL port for free. Sure, they would get a few sales here and there for those that want it (same can be said for MP), but the additional revenue would not justify the development cost. I do have a Linux box I use quite a bit myself, but my gaming machine is Windows. Though, a Linux version would be very cool and I bet the game would be more stable. In any case, better get used to that dual boot.

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writing galciv2 in open GL and SDL would be awesome and i'd even buy a second gc2 license for that

but its not what i ment

leaving galciv2 with direct3d is fine but you might just try to talk to the cedega developers so they can support galciv2 with their emulation software (i know, wine is not an emulation - whatever

)

that would just take some emails, so no real work is needed and i could use my favorite game without having to reboot (i think there are lots of linux gamers out there, i know at least 10 that would highly appreciate it)

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I would definitely like to see an WINE/Cedega-friendly GalCiv2. But there's always the option of virtualisation, I suppose...

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I would definitely like to see an WINE/Cedega-friendly GalCiv2. But there's always the option of virtualisation, I suppose...

To my knowlege, no virtualisation is possible since the game requires 3D accelerated graphics (and those aren't avaible on virtualisation software to my knowlege)

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