Slashdot Mirror
Wolfenstein Linux Binaries Available
gurb writes: "Acording to Christian Antkow's plan (finger xian@idsoftware.com or see webdog.org) linux binaries for the latest installment of Wolfenstein are out.
Grab it all over at id's ftp server, enjoy!"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Is there anyway to buy a linux license or cd for this game? one that comes with it's own cd key, it's own pak files & such? I dunno, if you're gonna show your support for linux gaming, you can't really do much by purchasing a windows game. Whether you buy the RTCW for the windows or linux, you still increment that statistic by one.
I think id should have provided some sort of cryptographic signature to give people, who are downloading the file from mirrors, the option to check whether their file has been tampered with. An executable which will be installed on so many servers certainly is a great vehicle if someone wanted to distribute a backdoor.
This release isn't quite as nice as some of iD's past Linux offerings. First, this release only works for the multiplayer portion of the game. The single player portion is said to be supported in a later release, but who knows how long that will take. Second, you must use either wine or an actual windows installation to install this thing. Apparently it has to do with how the CD was put together, it's just one big EXE from which all the PAK files are extracted. So you must run the windows installer under wine so you can get the PAK files, so you can finally install the Linux binary. Seems like quite a hassle to me, I would really hate to install wine just so I could run one game natively under Linux. Apparently the people at Tuxgames are working on setting up some sort of linux installer. But what options do they really have? The way I see it they could either set up some sort of mini-wine distribution on their installation CD to extract the data from the EXE, or find out the compression scheme that this EXE uses and hack together some native linux program to get the PAK data out. Either way, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun.
Linux Castle Wolf rocks, but be aware of the following limitations:
1) The current binaries are multiplayer full version only. No single player.
2) The game must be installed under Wine or Windows. Which sucks...
Now for the interesting bit:
Everyone will love you if you fix this piece of software (or make your own) to work with modern Wise Installer archives.
The Wolf3D CD contaisn a 500MB win32 setup.exe file in which the necessary pak files for the linus install go. Thsi is in wise installer format, which is similar to zip with different headers. Coders - if you can work out a way of extracting this archive under Linux, you have my external respect and the love of Linux Gamers everywhere. It should be pretty easy from my research (the software mentioned is non free qmail license source code) for someone with the skills, but I'm still teaching myself Kernighan and Ritchie.
Loki ports windows games when no linux version is made available. Since ID made linux binaries, Loki doesn't need to. We should be glad for this, and hope other companies follow suit.
It should read something like the following...
Dear Sirs,
I humbly bow down at your feet, for thou hast graced upon we humble followers of the Linux faith, another one of the greatest games of all time.
We of the Linux faith understand that you will be compensated in no way whatsoever for your efforts to provide we few with the pleasure of playing your games, so I must reiterate how greatful we truly are.
Sincerely,
Whiny bitch
P.S. And if you have time, do you think it would be possible for someone to write an installer? But only if you're feeling really generous. If not, that's ok, I'll just use wine to install it, I am an intelligent Linux user afterall, so it's no problem for my whiny ass.
P.P.S. My humble thanks again.
And if they still don't write an installer, you STFU and use wine to install it and thank the Linux Gods that there are people on this earth who do things even when it doesn't help them in any way. And do so quickly before you anger the Linux Gods and the folks at ID for being so unappreciative.
Damn... you'd think people could appreciate things once in a while...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Download the Linux binaries. I'm sure they're counting every sale as a windows game, but if their servers get slashdotted for a month straight by people downloading the Linux version they might notice :)
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Hey everyone,
Do what I did (if you are a RtCW gamer). It takes less than 5 minues, and you will feel good about it.
Go to their web site. Go to the "Contact" page, and send them an email thanking them for their contribution. I know if I was a developer, and I got a few emails saying thanks, it would really be a nice thing. So, say thank-you from the Linux community. They didn't have to do this, they chose to.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.