BSD & Gaming

Only six more days till Fallout: New Vegas is available for those of you waiting to run out and grab a copy hot off the press. I myself am not in any rush and will not likely get a copy till long after the hoopla is over.  Bethesda’s Fallout 3 was a disappointment compared to the first two incarnations of the game, but I do admit that after watching the G4TV trailers I found myself more interested than I expected. Fallout: New Vegas is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment and not Bethesda which may be it’s saving grace.  Let’s hope Obsidian will be able to steer the Fallout franchise back on course.

I finally got around to typing up what I did to get STO running on my BSD laptop. It’s quick and dirty but covers the basics.

If you want to get the details just click on article #5 to the right or click on this – [LINK]

Ok I finally got it up and running, it’s far from ideal, there are definitely some bugs but it is running. I’ll put together and post the full details in a few days once I’ve had time to tweak it some more and see what I can accomplish.

Basically a combination of following the details found on WineHQ [LINK], some hacks, and lots of lost sleep. The sound or lack of it is the one major hurdle I’ve hit so far, the game doesn’t think there is a sound driver/card setup. However if you check the details on the WineHQ link above you will see it is a WINE bug not specific to Fallout 3 that I hope they will remedy in the not too distant future.

I have to say I’m thrilled just to have it running at all. Now if I can load up all my favorite mods and have them work I’ll be a happy post-apocalyptic camper! Say that three times fast and you get a free box of ‘Cheesy Poofs‘!

Time to sleep – g’night!

Tiberian Sun and the Firestorm expansion pack are now free from the official Command and Conquer home page under the classic games section.

Get it now! – [LINK]

I loved Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, they are some of my all time favorites. It’s funny I was just looking for those cd’s in my collection the other day and couldn’t find them. I just downloaded a copy and will be giving it a run with WINE as soon as I get a chance.

[Update] – WINE 1.1.31 runs Tiberian Sun just fine, in fact it’s more stable than when I ran it under WinXP Pro. I don’t know why but under XP it crashes after playing for 30-45min, none of my other games do…..  go figure.

Setup winecfg for Win98 mode and the recommended registry settings are pasted below. Enjoy!

Improving performance

• Run ‘wine regedit’, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine. If there is no key (the stuff with folder icons) called AppDefaults, then create it
• Right-click on that key and create a new key game.exe
• Create a new subkey Direct3D. In that key create two string variables:
  DirectDrawRenderer with value opengl
  RenderTargetLockMode with value readtex

I put together a little list of the mods I felt were deserving of getting on a ‘must have’ list. The FO3 developers fell short in many areas and these mods really help bring your Fo3 game experience back on track.

Take a look at my list here – http://www.bsdgaming.com/must-have-mods-for-fallout-3 and try them for yourself.

DEFCON by Introversion Software is a great game and doesn’t seem to get the notice that I think it deserves. It has a linux kernel version of the game that works great under FreeBSD. In fact if you install it via the ports it’s a quick simple install.

You don’t have to buy the game to play it, you can try it out for free. It’s a hell of a lot of fun and the soundtrack definitely has that creepy feel that sets the right mood, you know the end is coming and all you can do is try to survive and keep as much intact as you can. One nice feature is being able to play solo or online, it’s your choice with lot’s of options for online multiplayer games and even mods to change things up.

The game itself is not very big in size only 59mb. Don’t let that fool you though it’s more fun than many games taking up gigs of space. Windows and Mac versions available as well. I bought the download copy and it was well worth the price (currently around $16.60).

Try it out you won’t be sorry! http://www.everybody-dies.com

Some games are just so much fun that it’s great to go back into my collection and dig them out again for another round.

Using WINE I installed Lords of the Realm II. I didn’t have any issues with the install and the process took relatively no time. I found a no-cd fix for it a long time ago which requires you to copy over extra files from the disk. But the advantage is I can put my cd back into storage for safekeeping.

Now that my installation is done I have the game almost ready to go. The next step is to setup winecfg to run the game in a window (personal preference), and I found the sound would not work unless I set it up for emulation mode. After that I was all ready to play.

The game is fun and addictive, and for me it’s definitely in the top end of my all time favorites. There are not many games that have much staying power, but this one does.

If you don’t have a copy of this game and want some inexpensive entertainment, just head over to eBay, there are usually a few copies for sale. Enjoy!

Welcome to BSDgaming.com! A website about all my tech related misadventures. If you want to know more check out the “about” link when I get that done.

Thanks!