BSD & Gaming

Back in 2000 when Red Alert 2 was first released I fell in love with it immediately.
While I enjoyed the previous C&C game Tiberian Sun very much and still play it occasionally, it just didn’t capture the imagination like Red Alert 2 did.

Growing up in the last gasp of the Cold War I can still remember doing Civil Defense safety drills in elementary school. Those years made a strong impression on me, the fear of war with the Soviet Union weighed heavily on everyone’s mind and even though as children we may not have understood all the details we knew it would be something bad. In fact to this day any book, movie, or game that reflects the feel or imagery of the Cold War era still evokes an emotional response and fires my imagination. That connection has even led to a need to collect some Civil Defense relics in recent years… go figure. There is something about that iconic CD logo that I’m drawn to. Anyway enough of that I’ll get back on track about playing Red Alert 2 on BSD using WINE.

The ‘Good News’ :

Playing Red Alert 2 on BSD [ FreeBSD or PC-BSD ] is possible and it seems to run well now that I actually have it installed.

The ‘Bad News’ :

I have not been able to get RA2 to install easily. I still don’t know what the issue is but for whatever reason trying to get RA2 to install properly straight from the CD just isn’t happening. I keep getting errors preventing it from completing the install. I won’t go into all the gory details but basically I gave up and did what the Ubuntu Linux folks did, installed it on a Winblows box – then copied it to my WINE drive.   @*&# !!! Bah!

Once the installation ‘goat rope’ was over I ran into issues with the damned cd copy protection crap, I hate games that insist on the CD being in the drive in order to play – it doesn’t prevent piracy it just exposes the original install cd to potential for damage. Needless to say I had to continue to take the Ubuntu communities lead and follow their advice on countering that nonsense.

Red Alert 2 is over a decade old, but I think it is still a great game and worth the effort to install. I realy prefer RA2 versus what I consider to be the ‘over the top’ cartoon graphics and general silliness of RA3. If anyone ever finds a ‘finished’ conversion mod making RA3 into a likeness of RA2 please let me know. I found a few mods that are or were being worked on but found nothing complete.

WineHQ’s information about Red Alert 2 – [LINK]

Ubuntu documentation for Red Alert 2 under WINE – [LINK]

Wikipedia information on Red Alert 2 – [LINK]

Red Alert Den’s custom maps, missions, and misc. files – [LINK]

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]

As promised I put together the details of my FO3 adventure and what it took to get it running. The WineHQ page had tons of good info on it, many of the people there had already done the hard part of figuring out what was needed. I just had a few minor changes for my hardware and that was about it.

I’m hoping Fallout: New Vegas will also work when I get my hands on it.

Details here – [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!

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!