New winex2.2 - Basic EQ support

[Blaze]

just thought you may be interested. Virtual Desktops may be nice for running seq and eq.

[fryfrog]

anyone started playing with this?

i've got a 10gb hard drive, gentoo 1.4 rc1 cd and i used my other gentoo box to download all the source tar.gz type files i'll need (to save time). i'm gonna be installing gentoo on my real gaming windows box and playing with this. i even subscribed to transgamings kindof bs method of earning money. i found that eq had -84 votes in a past pole, so i immediatly voted -2 on EVERY game that was in the current pole (and +1 on all the general winex updates).

is it against the liscense they use (alladin something or other) to give the file to others? it seemed to imply that it was only against the liscense to distribute it comercially...

anyway, hoping to get eq working in winex, as that truely is about the only thing stopping me from completly switching to linux. woo.

[fade2000]

Fryfrog,
Please keep the boards up to date on that. I don't think I would drop my PC boxes, but I would surely be able to run EQ on my linux box (1.4 gig, 512 ram, geforce3) if that's possible.

Like you I'd like to play around with that but I guess we'll see how it goes.

[gore]

OK... this will be SWEET if it works.

Wonder if a GF2Pro Duron 950 can pull it off? I currently have this machine dual boot Linux/2k... JUST because of fuggin EQ.

-gore

[fryfrog]

little silly update... i "emerge winex-cvs" as well as downloading and untaring the binary builds. i was able to start hl.exe as well as everquest.exe, but all of this was done remotely (with some testing under vnc) so i'm not sure if its working or not.

we will see when i get home :)

eqgame.exe would not run at ALL in vnc, but everquest.exe started up the first box that says "connecting to servers" (or something like that) but it never actually patches... not a problem as i can boot into windows if i need to patch i spose :)

i just wanna log in and see it!

gf4 ti 4200, 1ghz athalon-xp (should be a 1700+ @ 1.4ghz, but my mb is old) w/ 512mb ram. got 5500fps in gears! (wine says you should get at least 500).

[splooge]

Patcher wouldn't work for me, either.

Logs in pretty fast to server select. From there, it took about 15 minutes to get to character select. From there, another 10 minutes to actually log into the game.

Once in the game, I was able to type to the guild.

Frame rates was absolutely terrible. Like, no joke, 1 frame every 3 seconds. I couldn't do a 360 cause it would have taken an hour.

I was in the bazaar, so people were constantly running by me which I'm sure didn't help, but it was like playing turn-based everquest.

I haven't checked into it too much. For those gentoo users you can simply copy the winex-cvs-2.1.ebuild (or whatever its called) to winex-cvs-2.2.ebuild. then ebuild winex-cvs-2.2.ebuild digest. When when you emerge -up world you should see it and it will appropriately grab the 2.2 branch which is the one needed to play everquest. (until they make their own 2.2 ebuild)

BTW I have a P4 1.8g machine w/512mb ram using a lightweight window manager. (fluxbox)

[fryfrog]

what kind of video card? and did you do that turn off debugging thing? or use the transgaming binaries?

[splooge]

Well, I know my video card sucks, but it's an Nvidia at least. It's a Geforce2 MX 64 megs of ram. (1.8gig processor, 512ram). I'm using the CVS version, and I did not turn off the debugging. I'm also using a lightweight window manager (fluxbox) and nothing beefy like kde or gnome. The only things I have running are basically my system logger and dcron (which has no jobs it runs)

I remember reading through the ebuild, and saw a comment in there that winex insists on (or used to) compile with its own flags, and ignores whatever you have in your make.conf. I'm not too fluid with ebuilds so I hesitated to make any changes. Maybe I'll play around with it tonight but I don't expect myself to be able to find out how to compile it using different flags through the e-build, but maybe if I look at them hard enough tonight I can figure it out by comparing it to other ebuilds.

Half-Life and Return to Castle Wolfenstein work beautifully for me under winex, in fact, I don't even play them in windows anymore. I haven't figured out how to turn an FPS monitor on but I'd swear I'm getting 30+fps in each of these games, so I'm not quite sure what Everquest's problem is. I'm pretty sure it's not my system.

I'm patient, I can wait for it to get better. =)

[Cryonic]

Did you try EQ with or without the New UI?

I have found that even under Windows, the new UI is almost impossible to play under.

My Hardware:

Athlon 650
512MB RAM
40GB 7200rpm hd
GeForce4 MX440

Turn off the new UI, go to the Bazaar and I can run around with no frame lag and can rotate very quickly.

Turn on the new UI, better face the wall in the Bazaar or I won't be able to move very much (even just moving the mouse is lagged to hell).

[fryfrog]

damn, i'm having trouble even getting it to run. did you install eq using winex? or did you just copy over your everquest dir?

i copied mine over, and when i run "winex-cvs EverQuest.exe" it doesn't actually connect. running "winex-cvs eqgame.exe" results in an instant bomb as well. hl:cs seems to run, but i haven't gone into a game. the intro is in the upper left o my screen and not so fast or pretty looking.

[landaile]

I ran EQ under linux and I too had similar results. The patcher however worked fine for me. I am using Gentoo 1.4rc1 but I just did the install from the winex cvs, not the portage (mostly because Im a noob and couldnt find how to unmask the winex ebuilds). However when I took a look at the actuall instructions from transgaming I found that it stated that you need to set your X to 16 colors and eq to 16 colors as well. It also stated that the "old UI" does not work well if at all using winex.

Fry do you have your X setup to allow it to change resolutions? If you dont and you run a program that is full screen and less then your desktop reso it will appear in a window in the uper left corner. Also winex image quality is well less then stellar (or at least in my experience) if you have you X setup at anything other then 16 bit color.

I intend on playing with this some more and will keep you guys up to date.

[fryfrog]

my desktop is at 16bit, and allows anything from 640x480 - 1280x1024. i got hl.exe to go full screen by including the 640x480 reso. but, it still won't play. it tries to log into a hl:cs server, but just sits there in the middle of the screen all messed up (not full screen). should i be choosing "opengl" "software" or "direct3d"? i sure hope not software, cause thats ugly.

[splooge]

For half life under linux? opengl. I was able to run the setup program via winex.

For everquest? I copied my files over.

Make sure you run halflife like this:

winex-cvs hl.exe -- hl.exe -console

[splooge]

Oh, also wanted to mention that I tried compiling winex without the -g (debug) flag and it didn't make any sort of performance increase.

[xfesty]

WineX runs EQ perfectly with the new ui - I was playing EQ for a few hours last night under it. No graphical glitches, its rock solid, but unfortunately only runs at 60% or so the speed :-(

Any of you guys interested in a screenshot? :-)

Try getting winex-2-2 from cvs.

One thing I've noticed, which doesn't make any sense, is when I'm running EQ inside WineX - showeq will NOT decode the data - its almost like it doesnt even see it. This is showeq both running on a different machine, and on the same mahcine.

Odd.

[Exo]

xfesty,
Could you post some more details about your configuration?

Currently it looks like it will work for me but is being horribly slow. It takes about 20 minutes to load the character select screen and I probably haven't given it enough time to get past that. My machine is an 800 Mhz with 256 Ram so it's not the top of the line but isn't total crap either.

[Cryonic]

Saw the release notes for Transgamings Wine:

http://downloads.transgaming.com/files/winex-2_2-releasenotes.txt

Support for EQ is only in the preliminary stage.

[Exo]

If you are running RedHat take note that the kernel that ships with 8.0 and 7.3 blows for WinEX ... grab a kernel from www.kernel.org to fix this.

[landaile]

I dont use RedHat so Im not sure what version they use. Anyone know what it is? I have a gentoo system and am using the gentoo kernel which I think is 2.4.19 with a bunch of added stuffs. Anyone used WineX with gentoo and had a good experience? My only experience with it was less then wonderful but it was also on crappy hardware.

[Cryonic]

EQ needs good hardware to run in Windows. To run it in an "emulator" would require better hardware since you now have the load of the Windows libraries and EQ on top of X (which is also a memory resource hog) and the linux drivers for the hardware and interaction.

[fryfrog]

my windows box that i tossed an extra drive and gentoo onto is pretty beefy for eq. its not the best, but it should work.

amd 1700+ (running at 1ghz due to old mb), 512mb pc133, gf4 ti 4200 on a 10gb 7200rpm drive.

i'm also using the gentoo-sources version of the kernel, and it isn't working for me. i really don't know what to try next, its probably the first real linux problem that i haven't been able to figure out. the patcher tries to run, but just brings up the initial "connecting to server" thing and eventually dies with "couldn't reach server". it seems like it MAY just be networking or something... but i dunno.

[Mr. Suspicious]

To run it in an "emulator" would require better hardware since you now have the load of the Windows libraries and EQ on top of X (which is also a memory resource hog) and the linux drivers for the hardware and interaction.


Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Overall tho, given that:

a) most Everquest addicts only eat/sleep/shower after a Windows BSOD ends their 15 hour EQ session;
b) Linux can run for months or even years without a reboot;

I conclude that this is a bad idea. :cool:

[fryfrog]

WOO WOO, it is (almost!) working i think!

today, i unmerged winex, wine and winex-cvs. i then searched for all wine/winex/transgaming stuff and NUKED it. i THEN edited /usr/portage/profile/package.mask and #commented out the TWO winex lines (one for winex-cvs and one for winex-20021008 (i think, it was the latest).

after compiling, i was able to run the patcher in a vnc session, and went all the way through selecting options for display. course, its a patch day and i know it won't work in vnc so i didn't try.

i THINK my WHOLE problem was that i copied over my c:\winnt dir from my win2k install. the winex and i think winex-cvs COMES with a windows and programfiles drive/dir which i think works better than the dlls i tried to use in my winnt dir.

anyway, can't wait to go home and ACTUALLY try it ;)

[StarTux]

Originally posted by Exo
xfesty,
Could you post some more details about your configuration?

Currently it looks like it will work for me but is being horribly slow. It takes about 20 minutes to load the character select screen and I probably haven't given it enough time to get past that. My machine is an 800 Mhz with 256 Ram so it's not the top of the line but isn't total crap either.

Use the Source and a little extra patch, in this case sleep.diff, get it here:

http://www.ping.uio.no/~ovehk/sleep.diff

Instructions here, so you don't think I'm too smart:

http://www.transgaming.com/postlist.php?forum=14

Hope that helps,

StarTux

[vern]

Downloaded the CVS and the sleep.diff patch as Startux says and EQ works for me. Performance is pretty good (Not much different from windows), but it sucks a lot of memory @~1GB.

I found that things wouldn't work right if I just mounted my FAT32 partition and tried to run from there. So, I installed from the original EQ cd, and then copied my EQ dir from windows into the Everquest directory on the 'Fake Windows' C drive. It patched and fired right up.

I had the same problem as xfesty though, SEQ doesn't seem to see the packets. I would think they would look the same, but maybe SEQ is looking for some Windows quirk that doesn't happen under Linux? Any thoughts? This is on a separate machine that is able to detect the packets when the EQ machine is booted to 2K.

FYI, the EQ machine is a Tbird @ 1.53 Ghz, with 512MB ram and a GF4-4200

SEQ is a Inspiron 8100 w/ a P3 1ghz and on-board LAN

Thanks.

[hellraiser]

I was also trying on Gentoo 1.4 RC1

After emerge app-emulation/winex-cvs/winex-cvs-2.2.ebuild,
the patcher run just fine, although it hang at the end of patching, so I had to run eqgame.exe with the patchme option.

I disabled all the Luclin Character models, switched X11/EQ to 16 bit and it was running without any problems ;)

Of course, I only tried on the test server. I think I will be emailing Verant to ask if the appreciate further testing, and also are interested in feedback.

I'll do more tests this weekend, but from what I have seen, I really runs very well ;)

My System:

P4 1.8 GHZ
768 MB Ram
2G Swap
Geforce 2 GTS / 64MB (the Asus version)
X11 with NVidia glx drivers

[flipper]

Here's a data point for those of you with low-end graphics cards.

Athlon XP1800+
512MB PC2100
Gentoo Linux 1.4_rc1 (/w Alsa sound, KDE, KDE sound server disabled)
Geforce256 (yep, the first gen geforce)

I downloaded the CVS release (the 2-0 branch) myself using the cvs command (not emerge). Before compiling it, I modified the ./tools/Makefile to insert the following optimization parameters:
-march=athlon-xp -m3dnow -mmmx -fomit-frame-pointer -O3 -pipe -ffast-math -fthread-jumps -funroll-loops -falign-loops=2

Then I compiled using the provided compiler script:
./tools/winexinstall (this must be run from the top level cvs directory)

I'm getting very playable frame rates (actually silky smooth) at 800x600. At 1024x768 it is playable but there is some screen lag. Sound has been nearly flawless for me -- better than my Windows box does with sound. Everything was fast (loading, zoning, playing, patching).

[StarTux]

Now we've got SEQ up running again I found something a bit of an irony...SEQ does not seem to be able to decrypt my winex version of EQ :).

Anyway, latest news is that EQ under Winex will be even better when the new Winex comes out, fixed fonts and they added some speed increases.

StarTux

[jonnyboy]

I noticed also that seq doesnt seem to detect clients from winex. upon investigating the issue, I discovered that packets from a winex machine originate from a high port number (32850, 32851), whereas packets from a windows machine are low (1143, 1139). Being not so well versed in C, i poked into the source but couldnt find anything, my guess is the packet capture stuff in seq uses a data structure that cannot hold port numbers greater than 32767? maybe its signed when it shouldnt be? i couldnt find anything in it. Well if anyone out there knows how there are 2 ways to do this, make winex start sending at lower port numbers, or let seq work with the large port numbers.

[myleftfoot]

Everquest wants to, by default, use port numbers below 1024 for most communication. You cannot bind to ports below 1024 or create raw socket connections unless you run an application as root. The workaround for this, I think, is to either run Everquest as root (ugh!) or possibly create a setuid wrapper that runs EQ and intercepts raw socket / <1024 port connections.

Going to be testing this theory out in a little while when I get some time, just have to figure out what's EQ's port addressing scheme so I don't gunk it up.

[Jord]

Well after playing with it a bit I got EQ running quite well under Linux. There is a currently a big memory issue that prevents me from running more than just a few lucling textures, but other than that it is running great. Performance is comparable to Windows.

Would love it if SEQ could see the packets for EQ on Linux.

BTW My config is:

Mandrake 9.0
Transgaming wine CVS build
512 MB
1700xp athlon
GForce3 64mb

[cbreaker]

I as well was able to get EQ working under Linux (Mandrake 9.)

Machine is Athlon XP 2200+, 1GB RAM, SCSI, GF4-4600.

I had to get the latest WineX CVS to get around the unreadable text problem.

The performance is very good, and the world textures look fine. The player characters are however incomplete; I see a lot of naked bodies and solid color armor. Sound was perfect.

Also I noticed that Mip-Mapping did not appear to be working properly (or perhaps just Mip-Map dithering) so looking across a field looked a little more "jagged" then on my Windows installation. (and no, this isn't because of FSAA, I don't use FSAA ever)

Unless I wanted to run EQ in a "window," which I do not, it was seemingly impossible to switch to another desktop and then return without problems; notably a window frame around the game.

I think that with a few code updates to WineX to specifically address these problems in EQ, it would work quite well. Considering that EQ support was almost accidental (fixing other games' issues and implimenting new code), the developers shouldn't have much problems doing the rest.

Of course, I can't run it full time because SEQ apparently won't work with it. Ho hum.

As for what settings in EQ I used: Turned everything on except Texture Compression, used 16-bit mode, used 1280x1024.

[steppuppy]

I have searched but found no walk through. was hoping someone could link or post a walk through for a linux newb on how to download and install the latest winex needed for eq (free) and the instructions for installing everquest within winex.

Thanks in advance :)

[Cryonic]

Try Wine's own site:

http://www.winehq.com/

[Jord]

Try searching transgaming's site. they have a very good walkthrough on how to set up wine and run everquest. There is even "gasp" a forum that discusses install issues!!!

Wow imagine the horror.

try www.transgaming.com and see what happens.

[The Sage]

I'm sure you guys already know this, but your video card doesn't make a whole lot of difference when you are dealing with EQ. Now granted, it does make a difference on some of the smaller points but EQ is as much of a whore for CPU power and RAM as young casters are for KEI.

So my question is this. Are you sure that between the Linux GUI you happen to be using, and your WinEx(or whatever) that enough of your CPU/RAM is left over that EQ is happy?

I used to play EQ on an AMD 900 Duron with 384MB PC133 RAM ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB Video. I had previously been running an ATI Radeon 7000. When I upgraded video cards there was a SLIGHT performance increase, and even more of an increase when I jumped up to 512 DDR RAM. Had to udnerclock the DDR though cause of my mobo.

Now, I recently upgraded to AMD 1800+XP, 512MB DDR, ATI 8500LE, changing mobos, and I run ALL textures, 1024x768x32, clip plane all the way up, with everthing maxed out, and the ONLY place I have ANY problems is the bazaar. Even then if I just set my clip plane down a bit i'm ok. Even have particle density high which used to lag the *&^^ outta me.

Just my worthless two cents.