Running an old Win95 game

joechummer · Post by **joechummer** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:14 am

I'm fairly new when it comes to using WINE and Linux (although I have a barebones Unix background), so bear with me.

I'm running WINE on a 4G Eee PC (running Xandros in KDE mode, not tabbed "Easy mode") and trying to experiment with what WINE can run on this little thing.

I recently tried running an old Win95 version of DooM (doom95.exe, so-called "Ultimate DooM"). After WINE starts, the game loads the main engine's init page/splash screen; then it sits there until I hit the space bar, upon which it and WINE both close without any kind of error message.

I should think that the graphics card on the Eee PC should at the very least be able to render a 12+ year-old 3D game that doesn't even require 3D acceleration, but I can't figure out exactly what is tripping up the initialization. I have doom95.exe configured in WINE to run in Win95 compatibility mode.

Is there a log or something i can look at to see what might be causing the game to crash? I took a look at WINE's man page, but all of the parameters are Greek to me.

Also, I've only installed the default winelib but saw there are other wine-related packages in the debian repositories. Would I need any of these to support WINE-run apps like this one?

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:38 am

Sorry to say wine not required for this game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_source_port The engine of that game was released in 1997. Now the question what enhancements do you want to play the game with.

If the game is made by ID there is normally a Linux version around somewhere.

Of course you are free to leave appdb entry.

joechummer · Post by **joechummer** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:13 pm

I figured there was probably a Linux version of it somewhere (although I didn't know it was freely available), but:

1. I already have Windows/DOS installers for all of the old id games based off the DooM engine.

2. I wanted to see what I could get WINE to successfully run.

3. Since I'm rather new to Linux in general, I figured trying to figure out why an app won't run in WINE would be a good learning experience.

Also, what do you mean by "appdb"?

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:17 pm

On 4/1/08, joechummer <[email protected]> wrote:

I figured there was probably a Linux version of it somewhere (although I didn't know it was freely available), but:

1. I already have Windows/DOS installers for all of the old id games based off the DooM engine.

2. I wanted to see what I could get WINE to successfully run.

3. Since I'm rather new to Linux in general, I figured trying to figure out why an app won't run in WINE would be a good learning experience.

Also, what do you mean by "appdb"?

http://appdb.winehq.org/

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:16 pm

joechummer wrote: 1. I already have Windows/DOS installers for all of the old id games based off the DooM engine.

Wine does not run DOS programs all that good if at all. Use DOSBox for that instead.

oiaohm · Post by **oiaohm** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:30 pm

Note austin987 depend on your version of Linux you might already have one of the open source doom engines for Linux too. Check you package manager.

You are free to try to make it work but from a I want it to work simplely point of view the open source engines are simpler.

http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/download/ << There are a few full IWAD replacements for doom out there that are free too. So the engines get a lot of use.

Marcel W. Wysocki · Post by **Marcel W. Wysocki** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:58 am

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:21 -0500
"oiaohm" <[email protected]> wrote:

Note austin987 depend on your version of Linux you might already have one of the open source doom engines for Linux too. Check you package manager.

You are free to try to make it work but from a I want it to work simplely point of view the open source engines are simpler.

http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/download/ << There are a few full IWAD replacements for doom out there that are free too. So the engines get a lot of use.

i'd recommend prboom http://prboom.sourceforge.net/ or zdoom http://zdoom.org/
those engines are a lot more advanced than the original doom

--
Marcel W. Wysocki <[email protected]>
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DARKGuy · Post by **DARKGuy** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 9:39 am

I wonder, if we're keeping offering alternatives, what's the whole
point of WINE then?...

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:26 AM, Marcel W. Wysocki <[email protected]> wrote:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:21 -0500
"oiaohm" <[email protected]> wrote:

Note austin987 depend on your version of Linux you might already have one of the open source doom engines for Linux too. Check you package manager.

You are free to try to make it work but from a I want it to work simplely point of view the open source engines are simpler.

http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/download/ << There are a few full IWAD replacements for doom out there that are free too. So the engines get a lot of use.

i'd recommend prboom http://prboom.sourceforge.net/ or zdoom http://zdoom.org/
those engines are a lot more advanced than the original doom

--
Marcel W. Wysocki <[email protected]>
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Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:01 am

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:38 AM, DARKGuy . <[email protected]> wrote:

I wonder, if we're keeping offering alternatives, what's the whole
point of WINE then?...

Here's the deal:

It's great to try running old Windows games
and reporting bugs when they don't work. That helps Wine
advance. We should encourage users to do this.

However, for users who just want to play games and
don't have the patience to help Wine, it's useful to
suggest alternatives.

I think the user in question was willing to help Wine,
so we should guide him through the steps of filing an
appdb test result and/or bugzilla bug report.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:27 pm

Dan Kegel wrote:On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:38 AM, DARKGuy . <[email protected]> wrote:
I wonder, if we're keeping offering alternatives, what's the whole
point of WINE then?...
Here's the deal:

It's great to try running old Windows games
and reporting bugs when they don't work. That helps Wine
advance. We should encourage users to do this.

However, for users who just want to play games and
don't have the patience to help Wine, it's useful to
suggest alternatives.

I think the user in question was willing to help Wine,
so we should guide him through the steps of filing an
appdb test result and/or bugzilla bug report.

Then people should say something about that. Bugzilla is the place to file problems for some one in some point in the future to get to and possibly fix. Forum is the place where people ask to get their stuff working now regardless of what it takes.

In this particular case, having native Linux version of the games that works exactly the same as the windows one is way better. And ultimately they are the same exact thing. Just different versions of exactly the same program. Suggesting replacements like pidgin in place of MSN messanger is not the same things.

Dan Kegel · Post by **Dan Kegel** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:12 pm

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 2:27 PM, vitamin <[email protected]> wrote:

In this particular case, having native Linux version of the games that works exactly the same as the windows one is way better

Sure... but the user was trying to help us by running the old windows game.
He said so in his second post:
"I figured trying to figure out why an app won't run in WINE would be
a good learning experience."

If he wants to learn, then let's teach him how to file bug reports, etc.
- Dan