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Playing Ostfront using Cedega on Linux

Case

Data Hippo... in the pants
Nov 21, 2005
348
27
49
Santa Fe, NM
Here's a brief step-by-step.

1) Download and install Cedega (http://www.transgaming.com). I installed the latest version.
2) Download the Steam installer (http://www.steampowered.com)
3) Start up cedega and use point-n-play to run the steam installer.
4) Once steam is installed and updated, exit steam.
5) From a commandline, run the following:
Code:
cedega -winver winxp -use-dos-cwd ~/.cedega/Steam/c_drive/Program\ Files/Steam/ steam.exe
This command assumes you let cedega do it's thing and DID NOT mess with it's installation so that there is a .cedega directory in your home directory. If you cannot locate the .cedega directory try checking for .transgaming.
6) Purchase, download and run Ostfront.

It should work just fine. You will most likely have fairly low FPS using the default DirectX renderer. I find it's easiest to make changes by hand-editing the RedOrchestra.ini file in ~/.cedega/Steam/c_drive/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps/common/red orchestra/System directory. You don't have to stop/start Steam for these changes to take effect, just stop/start Red Orchestra. I get a constant 30-40 FPS on a 32-player server using the OpenGL renderer. Of course using OpenGL means that you have the normal screwy looking menus, no motion blur and no HDR, but I haven't found that to be a problem yet.

Please respond with various setting tweaks that you've tried and the results.

A couple changes to make in your RedOrchestra.ini file
1) Uncomment "RenderDevice=OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice" and comment out "RenderDevice=D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice"
2) In the section [WinDrv.WindowsClient]:
StartupFullscreen=False
3) In the section [WinDrv.WindowsClient]:
WindowedViewportX=1280
WindowedViewportY=1024
Set these to something less than your current resolution (mine is 1600x1200, hence 1280x1024).
4) In the section [Engine.Engine] make sure that "DetectedVideoMemory=" matches the RAM size of your video card.

Thx for the sticky!
 
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Hi,

[DonD]Stinky9 said:
Awesome! Thx man! Is there a demo version of Cedega? So I can try it, before I buy it?
No, there is no official demo of cedega. However, from time to time there appears a time-limited demo on various gaming magazines dvds/cds (f.e. on this famous gamestar linux edition a while ago).
Not at least, there is a CVS branch of cedega, which is a free version to download and compile, but from what i've heard it has not much of the usability the precompiled versions have.
I guess the most easiest way to install this version is using the WineCVS.sh script, located here.
Instructions how to compile the cedega CVS manually are located here.

Atm, i'm trying to get RO:OST running with wine, i'll post my experiences here later, maybe a Howto as well.

greetz,
gitano
 
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If you don't want to use Cedega (like me) I've managed to get RO to work successfully in ordinary WINE. It's a bit more fiddly though, here's what I did:

DO NOT AT ANY POINT TRY AND MINIMISE STEAM! - it buggers up and requires a hard reboot.

1. Get hold of the latest version of WINE (0.9.16 at the moment) and the latest Steam installer.

2. Install this in WINE (easy peasy)

3. Fire Steam up, if it asks you to install the Mozilla Active X Control you can either install it or not, I did and promptly replaced it with the Transgaming version (from this page) However, my friend didn't and it still seems to work. If you get any error messages I seemed to fix them all by re-installing or deleting the client.blob file a few times.

4. Install the tahoma.ttf font. (also on the other page)

5. Once you get to the log in page the text box won't work until you paste some text into it (right click -> paste) Then log in and check it all works.

6. Go into the new steam directory in the consolse and type:

wine steam.exe -clientbeta newfs –beta fs

7. That will then update itself with the new file system. At this point I copied my .ncf files and common directory over from my windows hard disc.

8. 'Close' steam so it goes into the task bar. then fire up anothe consolse head into the steam directory again and type

wine steam.exe -clientbeta newfs –beta fs -applaunch 1200

This ought to fire up Red Orchestra. I had already set my redorchestra.ini to use opengl, so you might have to close RO and do that after it's been generated. Also, when my cachesizemegs was set too high it crashed whe trying to play online.

Dunno if that'll help anyone but I had fun getting it to work. Load times are longer than in windows, but still shorter than before the beta patch in windows. The FPS is slightly lower than before the big patch, but quite playable.

/forgot to add. In winecfg you'll need to add vgui2.dll as native for steam.exe

Hope you don't mind me popping this up, thought it might be of some use.
 
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I installed ROOST following your Cedega instructions. But it freezes steam when I am launching it. The window: "Launching Red Orchestra..." appears and then it just freezes. (I don get the RO splash screen.)

I also don't have a RedOrchestra.ini file in my System map...

Still figuring things out... Any ideas?

(Info: I got Cedega installed right, because Diablo II works! YAY! :) )
 
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It's a shame you have to use an emulator for a game that runs NATIVE on Linux...

The game may run native under Linux but unfortunatly Steam is only windows based & thus requires the emulation.

Major shame that they cannot bring out a dedicated Linux version of it as it would save alot of hastle.

a nice .deb package would be great
 
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I installed it using Wine through Steam, but I use this command to launch it...
I am using ubuntu 6.06 and Wine 9.16.

I use ubuntu at work but not at home because of Red Orchestra. I was thinking about giving it a try but I'd like to know if it's working well with wine or cedega and particularly its performance

thx in advance

fradim
 
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Hiho,

I want to know that too, if you do it let me know, I'm thinking of running a dual boot or something.

Well, then ... heres a short description of the performance i get.

Havent tried to run it emulated for quite some time (yes, /me dual-booted... *hide*), figured it out again this evening.

Hardware:
Barton 2600+
512mb ram
nvidia gf 440mx
asus a7v880 mobo

=> pretty crappy hardware (except the cpu ;))
[SIZE=-1]
Software:
Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake"
Kernel [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]2.6.15.12-1[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Gnome 2.14.2
Nvidia modules [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]1.0.8776
cedega-5.2.3
wine-0.9.25

[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]=> pretty standard and stable Ubuntu workstation
[/SIZE]
Roost installed on a VFAT share, Maxtor 6Y080L0 hdd ([SIZE=-1]7200rpm, 2MB-Cache, UDMA-133)

=> bad filesystem, bad hdd :D

Ok, so, starting steam with cedega takes ages to connect to my account...dunno why this takes so long, maybe something u can tweak. After having connected, launching roost takes as long as under windoze.

Before u launch it, u have to make sure about a few settings in RedOrchestra.ini (dont even try to set these in-game, it will crash):

Code:
[Engine.Engine]
;RenderDevice=D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice
RenderDevice=OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice
Just..use it, d3d will take MUCH more of ressources. Has some glitches though, no HDR, no motion blur etc, and the white menus.

Code:
[WinDrv.WindowsClient]
WindowedViewportX=1024
WindowedViewportY=768
...
StartupFullscreen=False
Well, it will crash in fullscreen mode using cedega, so turn it off and set the resolution of te windowed viewport as high as possible.
Everything else in the view menu ingame i have set to medium and disabled any special effects.

This config allows me to play the game quite good, have around 20-30fps on a map like Kaukasus on a full server, on maps like lyeskrovy fps goes down onto its knees, though...but thats not differing much from the windows install, more a hardware issue, i suppose.

--

Starting the game with wine allows u to set StartupFullscreen=True, yay :).
It launches wayyy faster and the overall Steam and gameclient handling seems much less laggy.
But...
once connected to a server or having launched a map in practice mode, fps goes to ~0, sound is stuttering etc => simply not useable. Have to kill the process externally...no idea what is causing this. Looks a long night fiddling through various settings with wine.

Well, to sum it up, the game is playable "out of the box" with a few minor changes to the default settings using cedega.
One, who doesnt like cedega (like me :p) has to tweak quite a lot...or wait for upcoming wine releases. The overall approach in using wine looks promising, i remeber that i couldnt even use the mouse ingame 1 or 2 releases back...

Anyways, considering that most of u kids out there own the absolute uber/1337/pwnage hardware, yes, i think its definately worth to give it a try in Linux :).

greetz,
gitano



[/SIZE]
 
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Hey gitano... how's about ya ;)

I can get it working fine in cedega and had it working with WINE also... but a recent wine upgrade or change in my setup, now gives me an error. I can connect to Steam ok and see the splash screen. However, when the game is about to launch, I get a "Pure Virtual Call" error. Can't remember the exact wording or error number. I'm not really worried as I tend to reboot *spits* to play the game in any serious way.
 
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