LINUX: Aces High II Tutorial

[Nikitis]

This is a Work in Progress Post.  Please no flak, if you have issues.  Please post your reply here if you are having problems pertaining to the following steps I listed below ONLY.  

I'm this Ryan Waters that Peabody (My future Father in-law mentioned).  My AH2 name is LinuxAce.  I managed to get AH2 to run in Linux.  I give thanks to those on the Wine project who work hard for free to develop Wine.  I from time to time help people develop small fixes for wine.  But I am not listed on the project manifest.  I just help where I can.  

As for history of my work with Aces High II with wine.  I was doing a lot of debugging per request of BBosen. (My future Father-inlaw)  I was never too big into flight sims until he introduced me to them.  He bought me a Joystick, and let's just say my piloting skills aren't yet as good as my Linux skills.  

What i had to do to get it running.  Well I noticed that DirectX was failing a lot.  It was missing key directx files which were not yet implemented in wine or cedega.  As of late Wine has been doing heavy directx implementation.  Now this does not mean that it uses directx files.  It emulates it on it's own.  I have a CVS Build of wine and not an official release.  Basically my copy of wine has more patches than what you can download as a binary setup.  A couple of which are my own.  I will not release these patches as they are way to hard to explain on how to implement them.  I'm sorry.  I will however send them into the Wine project in hopes that they will implement them soon.  All the DirectX implementation that AH2 needs has been added to wine as well as cedega now.  What you may notice is a white screen poping up and then crashing.  If you see this, then your drivers are installed.  And you are 3/4 of the way to running AH2 on linux.

The current problems:  The current problems are if you see the white screen popup, then crash are.  VBO indexing is not working.  In Wine you can enable this, and it will load up.  But freeze once the clipboard pops up.  This is where my patches come in.  With Cedega however.  if you use vbo indexing, and Engine 5.2.10, and ALSA Sound.  It should function.  

The white screen that comes up is a DirectX window.  It crashes because it doesn't like the OSS Sound architecture.  So in Wine or Cedega, you must kill OSS and enable ALSA.  On some boxes, this will automatically fix AH2.  But for optimum performance, Select WinXP as the emulated OS.  Alsa, and check vbo indexing in Cedega with Engine 5.2.10.  Once done, you should be flying high on a linux box.  

So as a recap:

1.  Install Video Drivers
2.  Install Cedega (Don't try on wine.  It won't work fully as of yet)
3.  Install Aces High II via Cedega.  (Visit an IRC channel.  Server:  irc.freenode.net Channel: #Cedega   if you cannot figure out how to do this.  They should assist you.
4.  Right click on AH2 Shortcut in Cedega and select Edit properties for this shortcut.
5.  Select WinXP, vbo indexing, and Alsa sound.
6.  Run Aces High 2 and pray.

I'll be doing more extensive testing later for Wine, and will report once the latest CVS on it's own will run AH2.  Once this happens then the next official release will play it.  And then no more paying for Cedega.

I was only able to figure out what to do in Cedega because I was testing it in wine and figured out the problem.  I know the cedega configuration seems easy enough and you may think I just got lucky.  But i really only knew what to do after some debuggin in wine.

Thanks
LinuxAce

[Irwink!]

Cool. Thanks for the post.

[sev]

Thank you for your work.  Can't wait for wine patches

[Reschke]

Skuzzy can you make this a sticky?

[bbosen]

Thanks Ryan!

I've _almost_ caught up with you. I've recently learned:

-- My favorite Linux distribution is"PcLinuxOS" v2007livecd-TR3
-- How to enable hardware-accelerated graphics with nvidia
-- How to install Wine V0.9.33 (one level beyond what you were using)
-- How to configure "Wine" with my initial guesses about defaults
-- How to install Aces High "classic" (about 3 years out of date)
-- How to map joystick and keyboard controls without Windows tools
-- How to remaster a boot CDROM to get me back to this setup easily
-- How to sign up for a Cedega account
-- How to install Cedega
-- How to configure and test Cedega in general


The old, outdated "Aces High Classic" works splendidly under Wine V0.9.33, allowing me to verify things like joystick support and mapping, etc. I have more experience with Wine than with Cedega, and I haven't got it to work under Cedega.

The current version of Aces High II immediately crashes to desktop after the initial video configurtion dialog (both under Wine and Cedega). I've deleted the resulting video8.cfg file and diddled with several video options to no avail.

I've just found your suggestions from this thread and I'll be experimenting with them soon. In particular, I'll disable ALSA as a starting point.

After the big wedding, when things settle down a bit, I'll post detailed instructions for the things I've successfully completed.



Regards,



-Peabody-

("Dad")....

[bbosen]

YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!


It works! I switched to ALSA sound and enabled the options you describe above, and it works under Cedega. I'm mapping my joystick now. Thanks!


-Peabody-

[Nikitis]

Congratulations.  Glad to see you managed to get it running in PCOS linux.  I've been having trouble joining your server as of late.  Can't figure out why.  I'll try again and hope to see you in there.

[bbosen]

My "Peabody Hosts Solomon Islands" server was shut down for almost a week while I travelled out of town. It's back on now. See you soon.


-Peabody-

[bbosen]

HMMmmmmm......


Cedega's joystick button mapping is problematic.

I figured out the analog "axis" controls, so my ailerons, elevators, rudder, and throttle work sensibly.

But Cedega isn't like "Wine". With "Wine" and AH classic, all of my joystick buttons worked sensibly, and I was able to re-map them using AH configuration tricks.

Under Cedega, there is some problem with my joystick buttons. I can't detect ANY joystick button press activity. I can't fly my beloved P38 without convenient access to flaps on the joystick (among other things).

The Cedega "documentation" for joystick support is SEVERELY lacking. I diddled around and found out that I need to refer to my joystick as "Logitech Logitech Extreme 3d" (learned that from KDE config tools). Some of the Cedega forums encourage me to add the following cryptic string of undocumented jargon to the Cedega joystick config GUI:

"X,Y,slider,Z,POV,none"

or

"X,Y,Rz,Z,POV"

I can only guess what all of those details mean, but I can't find any documentation on them anywhere. In particular, I am wondering what "none" means, and whether I need to refer to the 12 joystick buttons somehow.

I can see that that information was automagically pushed into a configuration file at ~home./cedega/AH2, but (again), the associated comments and documentation are sparse and essentially useless.

Does anybody understand Cedega's joystick management jargon?



Regards,


-Peabody-

[Xjazz]

Hi

 I'm planning to install WinXP/Ubuntu dual boot system to my laptop for the testing purpose.

Is it possible to make several game controllers to act like one in Linux? I would like to test good old Flanker 1.5 sim in Linux but flanker only accept one controller and I have a three (CH, Saitek & Logitech).

Thanks

[Nikitis]

I'd imagine you would have to configure each one.

[sev]

It's working under Cedega for me too. (Slack 11 , Nvidia gpu)

[bbosen]

Sev:

Congratulations! Now there are at least 3 of us.

Are you able to use or map joystick buttons? I can't figure out how to get any response to any of the 12 buttons on my joystick thru any Cedega applications.


-Peabody-

[sev]

Originally posted by bbosen

Are you able to use or map joystick buttons?

Button mapping is working for me and i can use them without problems on my MS Sidewinder 2 (through is has only 8 of them )

[bbosen]

Thanks for the info Sev. At least now I know it's possible. Did you have to specify anything special in Cedega's GUI to describe you joystick and its buttons?


-Peabody-