RO Unix client / Steam emulation

[/linuX/gitano]

Hi all!

Aw...first thread in a brandnew forum, what an honor

Well, as there has been quite a bit of disappointment for some Linux and Mac users regarding the delivering mechanism and that RO will probably drop its support for these operating systems, i just wanted to point out that Steam itself seems to work under LinuX using wine.
See this Howto dealing with HL2, Steam and wine under Linux:

http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/...p?articleid=17

I just have installed it, and the whole installation process works ok, havent tried it in action, though, coz' i dont own a CS:S nor HL2 copy.
Would be very interesting to see if and how the updating mechanism works with these games and Steam, if You interested Linux users wanna check it out, would be cool .

I dont know about Mac and emulating Steam, but afaik there are quite a lotsa windows emulators or similar environments out there for OS-X.
At least...Steam doesnt seem to be THAT kinda big and complicated prog, i really believe it could be done as well with OS-X.
If u Mac guys know about Howtos and other information regarding that topic, let us know, please.

So, if we can proove to You developers that and how this program works under our operting systems, could we expect that You probably release some RO clients for us as well? That'd be friggin awesome...i think we'll love You guys even more, then

Well, i'll give that Steam a try maybe with CS:S soon and make some reports here. U can download Steam here, btw, if u wanna test it:

http://steampowered.com/download/SteamInstall.exe

Keep your heads up!

greetz,
gitano

[[TW]Wilsonam]

From the Tripwire point of view - we'll be very interested to see how this works. Please let us know!

[Bobdog]

You can emulate steam on the Mac (With Virtual PC, at the very least), but the game itself will have to be Mac compatible for it to run.

[Case]

I used TransGaming's Cedega program to install Steam on my linux computer and then install and play the HL2 demo. Here's a screenshot:



It's been scaled down quite a bit. A link to the fullsize screenie is http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~tcr/Steam_on_linux.jpg

[Mormegil]

Steam may run under Linux, but you'll still need to run the Win32 executables presumably.

How well do those work under Wine?

[[TW]Wilsonam]

Originally Posted by Mormegil

Steam may run under Linux, but you'll still need to run the Win32 executables presumably.

Just give us enough reason to get the ports done to Linux/Mac! But if it can run under emulators as an interim solution...

[Case]

Well if Tripwire can provide us with linux-native binaries then no, we will not have to run the Win32 binaries. There's already an OpenGL port of UT2k4 so I'm hoping this would greatly lessen the pain of porting other Unreal-based games. I don't know how well RO:O will run under Cedega as the Win32 binaries aren't even out yet. I assume the performance would be fairly poor. If linux binaries are on the way though....I can certainly wait.

[Yoshiro]

I don't know if this will help you guys but its a guide to getting a linux server running under Steam

http://japje.nl/steam/install

[/linuX/gitano]

Heyho,

I've been playing around with Steam.exe and wine quite a lot, yesterday.
Well, as stated before, that binary runs, it connects, downloads and installs stuff, but it is really screwing up the RAM through the emulation...at least on my machine.
Whatever, You guys wanted a description how it works, so here we go:


That wine is not a real "emulator" itself, its more a kinda fake-windows environment, which allows you to run native windows binaries on a Unix filesystem.

That fake-windows environment is a sub-directory, f.e. in your home-dir, lets say

/home/gitano/.wine/c_drive/

The wine-app itself runs in the normal executables dir on unix (mostly /usr/bin/), but takes this .wine/ subdir as a root-directory.
Beyond this you have the usual windows folders, e.g. System, Program Files etc. with the most common system files ,.dll's etc. Programs installed via wine will all install properly into these sub-dirs.

Well, the same did that SteamInstaller.exe, installed fine into /home/gitano/.wine/c_drive/Program\ Files/Steam/; u can change into that dir then and run Steam with "wine Steam.exe". Creating account, login works all fine, the Steam browser will load and is *usable*, although eating quite a lot of ressources.
I could download that Codename-Gordon demo fine through Steam and it installed fine, too. Here's where it went:

Beyond the Steam folder theres a folder named SteamApps/, into this folder Steam downlods a "gamename".gcf file. I guess, that one is a kinda compressed archive like .zip .tar.gz etc.

Download went ok with ~120KB/s, that demo was about 40mb, so pretty quick.

Installation of the demo went into the same directory: Steam/SteamApps/"username"/codename\ gordon/.

After installation, startup worked as well through steam, but i couldnt play it, though, 'coz wine is not designed to run hardware accelerated games.

I tried to start it on another commandline by going into that demo-dir and starting it up with cedega, that showed a bit more reactions, but totally crashed my x-server...



Well, thats it what we kow so far about Steam and there are now lotsa possibilities/ questions open:

1. If You guys let us download a native Unix-binary through Steam, it will install properly into the subdirs as decribed above and we will run Steam on a terminal being logged in at the Steam servers all the time:
Could it be possible to startup that Linux RO-binary on another commandline the normal Unix way? Or does_it_have_to_be_started through Steam in order to work properly?
I was thinking about authentication, cd-key query, map-download and whatnot, i guess thats all managed by Steam, does it work also if u start up the game external with Steam running all the time?

2. How are the bindings and dependencies/ commands between Steam and the game-binaries managed? Are they hardcoded into the files, or does it work like a local server/ client thing, e.g. game binaries authenticate and are recognized by the local steam app as valid clients?

3. If it doesnt work to start up the game external, is there a way to modify some configs within Steam, or are there maybe some configs going to be installed with RO where u can edit the startup commands for the games to a normal unix-call (f.e. ./redorchestra-bin), so that u can start the game normally inside Steam?



You see, questions over questions...all that could be avoided, if Valve would release a simple Steam client for Unix, soon.
If You guys could ask them at Valve to do so...i think You'll get thousands of more Unix fans out there .
Lotsa people waiting for this since years...no sign yet that they'll do it.
If You RedOrchestra developers could be the initiators for this...good gawd, you'll be my absolute heroes .

Well, dont be afraid, i dont expect too much.... but i still have some hope .
At least i can hope, that maybe after a year of great success in selling RO via Steam You will have the money and ressources to release a cd/ dvd version with the native Unix clients on it and an independent game-browser/ authentication system.

I wish u guys the best luck and future with your great game!

greetz,
gitano

P.S.: Thx, Yoshiro, but that doesnt help...yeah, they have a native Linux-server for Steam...but we need a native Steam-client...dont ask me why they havent done that yet.

[Borat]

Gitano more or less summed it up. The main reason why companies do not issue Linux versions of their software is because they do not want the "hassle" of supporting it. Instead of tackling this issue head-on, they avoid it. They hope the demand will just go away.

RO means a lot to us Linux users (and Mac guys too). It would be a great shame if it moved on now, leaving us sitting on our thumbs. So maybe you guys could push the right buttons and get us a native version.

Even if the "non-Microsoft" demand was tiny, why not issue a Linux / Mac version on a CD?

[/linuX/gitano]

Hey Borat,

Well, i have to disagree. I think the main reason why companies do not port their stuff to Unix is because they're bind to contracts and demands by a company we all know....
And i have the strong feeling, thats exactly the same thing with Valve.

Support? C'mon, give a unix guy even a piece of non-open-source of his desired software which runs on his system and he's glad.

Especially in this case, a little commandline-controlled daemon which loggs u in, sends the user-data to valve and downloads the files would be perfect for us. Maybe even with an ASCII advertising banner at the top .
Be honest, most of us dont give a f*ck about eye-candy-like GUI's which only screw down your system-performance. The program has to do its work, and thats it.

Well, i guess to code something like this described above wouldnt take more than an evening for them programers at valve. But they wont. They never will. Guess what? Yeah, theres someone sitting in the office at valve who knows some guys in Redmond pretty good. And these mateys have some pretty clear instructions from uncle bill...i dont think i have to go any further.

Sad but true.

greetz,
gitano

[Bobdog]

You guys are both wrong. The reason is money, plain and simple. Most companies do not think it is worth the investment to port over their games. Windows has upwards of 90% of the market share while Mac and Linux combined have probably less than 8% (generous guess, assuming there are more *nix users than Mac users, only because I don't have a figure for *nix). They probably dont think they should sink the same amount of cash into developing a program for such a small percent of the market as they did for the Windows crowd.

I don't like it, but it's true, sadly

[Case]

Some more Cedega information: I just fired up HL2: Demo via Cedega. The Cedega HUD will give you FPS and memory usage information. I got ~15FPS and the whole thing used ~800MB of RAM. The RAM usage was steady and the FPS fluctuated between 2FPS and 35FPS, but by an large remained around 15FPS. I doubt this compares at all with RO:O, but it may be a useful comparison when looking at the native HL2: Demo on a windows machine and it's resource consumption. For reference, my machine is:

2 - 2.4GHz Xeon processors
2GB RAM
NVidia 6600GT 128MB, AGP 8x

[ungoliaNt]

Some months ago I spended I week trying to get HL2 to run on my Gentoo Linux.. When I finally did it, I could see the performance was really really awfull. By that time I had a friends hard drive with windows installed, so I went to compare the performance..
in my machine (Athlon 64 3200+, GeForce 6600 GT, 768 RAM) I could play in windows with everything set at High Quality very smoothly. In Linux, I noticed the performance was 40-50% lower, and even setting it at High Quality, it looked ugly (I think the textures where at a lower quality, or something).
After spending one week trying to get it work on my gentoo, I saw it was a complete waste of time.
Anyway, I could get other Half Life 1, and his mods to run really ok, since they are OpenGL based and not Direct3D.

Hope this information is usefull.

[ungoliaNt]

I got steam working more-less correctly (some problems with typing my login, and with minimizing the windows, but it seems to run ok. For the first time I used Wine to emulate, and after downloading the correct fonts that steam uses and downloading the mozilla plugin DLL, I got easily running Counter-Strike, and HL1 based-mods (OpenGL game). I tried to play HL2 (or its mods) without success.. it just reported that I hadnt the correct directx version installed.. I tried to use Directx for wine patches http://directxwine.sourceforge.net/, but for some reason I couldnt compile it.. then started to try with cedega..
With cedega 5, I can run HL2 and it mods, but the visual quality sucks compared to what my gf card should give.. because its Direct3D..
To summarize, devs, I think that there would be a possibility if you still let the users to choose between OpenGL and Direct3D: I've heard that other UT engine based games, like lineage2, run really well, with cedega or wine. But keep in mind that this isnt a linux port, so its likely that with updates you brake cedega/wine support, and that we will have lots of issues to play it on our linux boxes..

[rhohan]

i have a buddy with a geforce 3 ti200, a 3200+ athlon XP, and 1024m of ram.

he is able to play cs : s at 800x600 on windows.

He loaded steam in cedega on his gentoo box, and was able to play fine at 1024x768. Cedega for him anyways, works BETTER than windows. I would use it myself, but cedega only uses ps 1.4 (as far as i know).

it could work just fine, however, i agree a native linux install would be the best. hell, i would LOVE to see a x86_64 native install. that would be the **** :P

[PUTZ]

PS1.4...ack.

[/linuX/gitano]

Heyho,

Originally Posted by Yoshiro

I don't know if this will help you guys but its a guide to getting a linux server running under Steam

http://japje.nl/steam/install

Yoshiro, i have to apologize. You where right, this could INDEED help us . A guy in the steampowered-forums (see here ) just pointed it out that this hlds application is indeed nothing less than an elementary Linux Steam client.
Only thing which has to be added to that one, is an authentication/ account function and a game-client startup command, as it seems. And Voila, that'd be a fine Steam-client for Linux .
Gameserver browsing could be done through an external program like f.e. XQF and thats it. Great information!

greetz,
gitano

[/linuX/gitano]

Hi,

Well, yesterday i played around a bit with the Steam Linux client for HLDS. These are the already existing commands for that tool:

root@ALHAMBRA:/home/gitano/Desktop/hlds_l# ./steam
Checking bootstrapper version ...

Use: steam -command <command> [parameters] [flags]

Commands:

 update: Install or update HLDS

   parameters:
      -game <game>            -   Game name: use 'list' to see available games
      -dir <installdir>       -   HLDS Install dir (if dir not specified, will use value from last run of tool)

   flags:
      -verify_all             -   Verify all HLDS files are up to date
      -retry                  -   Automatically retry every 30 seconds if the Steam Network is busy
      -remember_password      -   Remember password (if a username is supplied)

   For example: steam -command update -game cstrike -dir /hlds

 version: View installed versions

 list: View available games

Optional parameters for all commands:

      -username <username>    -   Steam account username (only needed to access limited content)
      -password <password>    -   Steam account password (only needed to access limited content)

Installing a CS:S dedicated server with

./steam -command update -game "Counter-Strike Source" -dir /opt/valve

went like a charme.

Now, to this already existing tool there need to be added 2-3 more commands, f.e.:

1. -order "RedOrchestra, Darwinia, ???" opens up a commandline dialog where u have to type in your account-data, name, address, e-mail and cc number. After the money has been transfered and your account has been updated u can download the ordered game, then.

2. add a cd-key/ game-protection routine, e.g. when starting the game through Steam, it looks in your game files, if there is some protection data and compares it to your account-data (dunno how this exactly works with Valve software, actually)

3. -run "RedOrchestra, Darwinia, ???" fires up the purchased and installed game, finally. could look like this:

./steam -run RedOrchestra -remember_password

This sends Steam into the background as a daemon which always verifys your data at their servers, manages mapload, does updates, etc. The -run option just starts the game-client.

There may be more options to add, depending on how Steam finally works together with its games, but i think these ones above would be the most important. This would work for the OS-X guys as well, just needs a ppc-recompile, afaik.

Dunno if there will be a gameserver-browser in RO:O like we have with the ut2k4 mod, but even that would be no problem. HL2 servers already work with the above mentioned XQF gamebrowser, so we just have to add the steam start-command to this program.
U see, no need for a GUI at all:
buddy-list -> i think we all use irc or icq,
Valve-news -> i think we all can browse their website for news
etc.

Now, i think THIS could be really possible to do for the Valve devs, i think they already have a guy supporting the HLDS client. Looks like just adding a few more lines in the already existing code (correct me, if i'm wrong).

Post your suggestions, guys!

greetz,
gitano

[Case]

I just dug up some more information regarding linux and steam. Over on Ryan "Icculus" Gordon's site in his Linux Gaming FAQ I discovered an item describing how to extract Darwinia after it's been downloaded via steam on windows and then use a linux installer provided by the Darwinia folks to install and run the game on linux with no steam requirement.

http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/#darwiniasteaminstall

If this analogy holds for Ostfront (i.e. Steam isn't required to actually run Ostfront) then if Tripwire provides the linux installer download (game binary) us linux folks can use Cedega to install Steam and download Ostfront and Ostfront updates and then run it on linux! As for the running Steam under Cedega part...see earlier posts in this thread.