Linux

[Jizaboz]

Is anyone here actually playing this game in Linux? I read that the servers can run in Linux and that they actually may be more stable for hosting some of the custom maps.

I also saw this http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... &iId=11208 and it doesn't look too promising.

[Daddyo]

There's a Mr Anderson that may have tried it, maybe Jademz can ask him?

[Jizaboz]

Yeah, that's the guy I heard ran the Linux servers

I finally got my PC back this week. I've had a lot of problems with this machine I had built around December, and it finally blew a capacitor on the 3-year-old MSI motherboard 2 weeks ago. Got a an Intel board in it now with some more ram and it runs wonderful

But at any rate, it's running Ubuntu 8.10 and while the wine page is a bit depressing, I'm going to give it a shot. If I figure out some tricks to getting it running smoothly, I'll let you guys know and submit it to the Wine database.

[TronFAQ]

There's a product you can try for free, called CrossOver Games. It's based on Wine, but it's supposed to be enhanced and offer better games compatibility. Or so the company says . . .

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Worth a try, I suppose.

As for the Tron 2.0 dedicated server application running better in Linux than in Windows, I can't help but be skeptical of that. An application running better under emulation than in its native environment? Hmm. A shame Monolith never released Linux binaries, though. (They did for AvP2, I believe.)

[Jizaboz]

Ah yeah I'd heard of Crossover games, and also am really shadey on if such a thing would be worth the money. Using a free OS it seems a bit hypocritical to mess with it!

As far as the dedicated servers for a Windows game working better on a *nix system, let me tell you.. you'd be surprised. While I have not run a Tron server yet on this, I am currently running an Ultima Online server called "RunUO". With the same version of the software not ported to Linux, (Linux using mono instead of Wine since it's a terminal type program) I found that running it in Windows XP gave me some strange client side stability issues. In other words... I'd never crash my actual game client from work, and other users didn't complain of crashing. However, on my own machine running the server and playing the game at the same time... my client crashed CONSTANTLY! lol

Also, "worldsaves" on the RunUO server running Windows were typically very short... about 1 second to save all accounts and all the crap happening in the world. But, if I had anything else running besides the server.. say Tron 2.0 for example.. the worldsaves would cause tremendous lag to the system and result in take 8 + seconds to worldsave. Running Ubuntu 8.10 and the Mono release of RunUO, I get less that 1 second saves every time, even if I'm doing something like playing Lord of the Rings or Quake Wars. Big difference there.

I'm actually about to tinker with this some more now, after learning something weird about how when running install programs for games with more than 1 CD in Wine, it can be a pain to swap discs but the workaround for that. I hope to have a Linux Tron 2.0 guide posted for you guys as soon as possible

EDIT: First impressions... after figuring out a trick to get both discs to actually install I got the game running. It looked pretty much spot on except for 2 major things:

1. Voices are electronically distorted and sound terrible. They scare my girlfriend. Other sounds seem normal. If Wine itself can't be configured correctly to fix this, perhaps it could just be a sound compression issue.

2. For some reason even if you turn mouse sensitvity and mouse smoothness all the way down or any other combination, the screen jerks violently if you try the circle-strafe technique. Moving in one direction with A or D on the keyboard as you center your view with the mouse to the opposite direction in other words, which is a natural motion for many FPS players

[Jizaboz]

OK so I've messed with this some more and wanted to fill you guys and gals in on something... perhaps you could give me a clue on how I should go about this.

First off, take a look at this:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=2837

You can see the bug reports of running Tron 2.0 in the Wine for Linux is different for each Linux version.. and version # or distribution of the actual game. "Gold" is the best rank, "Garbage" is the worst. Look which version has the "gold" rank! Tron 2.0 DVD edition? I thought this game was only available in CD-ROM format

Does anyone own or know about a DVD version of this game? I own the original 2 CD version. I would be very to know if perhaps the sound was re-encoded or something for the DVD version, if one exists. I can't seem to find anything about one on the Internet. This sound issue is the main thing thus far keeping the game from being completely ported to Linux in some fashion, hopefully working around the circle strafe glitch somehow won't be too hard.

BTW TronFAQ, you may notice one bug reporter tried using the client patch from here I believe, but also notes "then tried to apply a no-cd patch". I really don't believe that garbage report to hold much water at this point. I'm fairly certain if it works with 1.0 (the CD is mounting fine) then it should work just fine with your patch.

[TronFAQ]

The game was released on DVD in Europe and possibly some other parts of the world. It was released on CD in North America and the UK. As far as I know, there is absolutely no difference between the two in terms of content. It was just put on DVD where possible to help slow piracy and to reduce manufacturing costs (1 disc vs. 2 discs), and adoption of DVDs was happening more quickly in Europe at the time. Adoption of DVD-ROMs in North America at that time (2003) was pretty slow.

The patch that was mentioned on that page is the v1.042 Official Patch. Which is why a no-CD crack was later required, to replace the game executable with an "unwrapped" version, stripped of its copy protection (which won't work on Linux). That person did not use the v1.042 Unofficial Patch, which is already no-CD right from the start.

[Jizaboz]

Yeah, I think I'll wait until WINE straightens a few more things out. Over the past weekend I just wiped my drive and put Windoze back in because I was sick of all the compatibility issues. When the times comes and I go back to it though I'll let you know, if someone else doesn't clarify how to get it working 100% before then.