Video Game

Two of our friends came over to visit this weekend, and as I was showing my friend Tim the arcade systems in my garage, Soul Calibur III shut itself off in the middle of starting up with a crackle of static from the speakers followed by the sound of the high speed cooling fan spinning down.  The marquee stayed lit, and it sounded as though the monitor still had power.  This was not a particularly happy thing, but I knew going into this acquisition that I was going to run into problems with these arcade machines because they are a bit old and consequently they will tend to have failures for various reasons.

I also I obtained these arcade machines because I wanted to learn how to repair them.  One of my life goals is to some day own my own video game arcade.  I figure the best way to accomplish this goal is to a) steadily acquire arcade games and b) learn how to repair them, until I can c) open an arcade with a bunch of games to start off and keep acquiring more as finances permit.  Brighid wants to run her own movie theater some day where she could show classic and cult films, so the way I figure both the arcade and theater would do well to compliment each other.  It would be like a museum of entertainment as it was back in the '70s and '80s.

So I got into the internals of Soul Calibur III Saturday night, and found that the system contains a modified Playstation 2 complete with a dongle in the form of a memory card, another 8MB memory card presumably for settings and scores, and a DVD drive holding the game itself.  I had wondered why it took a while for the game to load after the system was turned on, and now I know.  I cracked open the metal shell for this PS2 unit and dusted it out, inspected it for damage and found nothing, reassembled it and then attached it back to the JAMMA board.  Someone had thoughtfully included the manual for a Soul Calibur II arcade system beneath this case, which was also released for the PS2, so I assume the hookups are pretty much identical.  While putting the case back into the cabinet I noticed what appeared to be a connector cable for a stereo speaker (based on the end) and reattached it to a corresponding connector on the JAMMA board after straightening a bent pin.  I was preparing to disassemble the power supply next when I decided I would stop for the night, as it was already after midnight and I was getting tired.

When I got a chance to look again the following day I found a burnt 5A 250V fuse cartridge inside the power supply.  I took a trip to the hardware store and bought a 2-pack of 5A 250V fuse cartridges of matching size, and also got some groceries, so it was getting a bit late by the time I returned.  I recorded the above video while I replaced the fuse, but this time when I switched on the cabinet, I no longer had power to the monitor or marquee, indicating the transformer was no longer delivering power.  Sure enough, I pulled out a scorched 2.5A 250V fuse from the transformer, and also noted that the slot I pulled the fuse from was marked 3A 250V.  Nice.  Someone was lazy.  Hopefully they weren't just intentionally sabotaging the system.

By this time the hardware stores in town were all closed, it being after 10pm on a Sunday, so I waited until after work to pick up a two-pack of 3A 250V fuses and also a two-pack of 1A 250V fuses in order to proactively replace the other fuse in the transformer, and swapped them both out last night.  I flipped on the power switch and the marquee lit up, but nothing else.  I then noticed I had detached the harness cables from the monitor and power supply and reattached them.  I flipped on the power switch and nothing turned on.  Crap.

Turned out the 3A fuse I had just put in was scorched already.  I thought for a while, then remembered the bent pin on the JAMMA board and wondered if it had been bent intentionally.  This arcade cabinet was originally used for a Mortal Kombat II system, and consequently there are a number of other detached and loose cables hanging around everywhere, making a bit of a mess on the inside of this cabinet.  I love the smell on the inside of these machines - there's that certain blended odor of compressed wood mixed with electronics that you can't find anywhere else.  I detached the cable from the JAMMA board that had been previously left unplugged, replaced the 3A fuse with the spare one from the two-pack, and double checked the connections everywhere else inside the cabinet.  I even opened up the Playstation 2 one more time to make sure there were no loose cables touching down somewhere, and verified that all other connectors I had previously detached had been reattached correctly.  I plugged the arcade cabinet back in, flipped the on switch one more time, and heard the monitor click on and saw the marquee light up, but the fan did not start spinning on the PS2 unit.

I flipped the switch back to off, unplugged the arcade machine from the power strip one more time, looked at the power supply again and noticed the 5A fuse looked scorched.  Crap again.

So this is where I'm now at - I do not currently possess a multi-meter but I'd like to acquire a good analog one that will let me test various things including capacitors without losing an arm and a leg in the purchase.   My neighbor Steve has some experience in electrical work and possesses a multimeter, and he's agreed to take a look with me to see if there's something I missed that's obvious.  He's also keen to see the Moon Patrol arcade cabinet in working condition; the last time he stopped by it was still in the scrambled state, and he was the one who recommended disassembling it and cleaning it out.

I need to do some more research on the wiring for this system (I found and downloaded a digital copy of the manual and archived a copy of it here) and on how to find shorts, bad capacitors, etc. on electronics.   Hopefully YouTube has some helpful videos in this department as well.

I'm also reaching a point where I think I will need to further disassemble the system, remove any unecessary leftovers from the old Mortal Kombat II setup (I have no desire to own a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet from any era, but Brighid would like one, so I'll probably have to cross that bridge at some point down the road), and then trace each of the harness wires and verify they are all in good condition and properly attached.  That's probably going to be a huge project that will have to occur over several days.  I'm hoping that we can just get it running again so I can put that project off for now, but my OCD is already kicking in there, so I know it's gonna bug me at some point to where I'll just HAVE to deal with it ASAP or go crazy.

If anyone cares to contribute advice in the comments section below, please feel free.  You have my thanks in advance.

I was exhausted when I got home last night, and sitting with my youngest watching cartoons on Netflix I almost fell asleep.  One of the neighborhood kids was over playing with our daughters and when it was time for her to go home, we took a walk outside, so that combined with the mug of coffee I had just finished invigorated me enough to motivate me into taking a direct look at the internals of my Moon Patrol arcade cabinet for the first time since it stopped booting correctly.

Part of my reluctance was caused by the knowledge that I did not possess the tools or resources to conduct a proper repair, combined with my lack of knowledge regarding electronics at a more basic level than modular assembled computer components from the late 90s era to the present.  This is a computer type system dating back to 1982, and self-doubt as to my ability to even figure out what was causing the problem was a bit of a deterrent.  This, combined with there being a significant other number of things that always seem to need doing around the house and my ability to distract myself with video games or other time wasters resulted in my putting this repair off for about four months or so.

Last night I put all of that aside; I was determined to figure out what could be causing the problem.  I opened the back access panels and removed the four circuit boards which were all stacked together and connected by vinyl separators.  I pinched the top of each separator to remove each board, and also detached the flat cable connectors from each so they could be individually dusted and inspected for damage.  I was looking for scorch marks, broken contacts and swollen or leaking capacitors.  Strangely, I found none of the above, but I carefully cleaned each board with anti-static compressed air and set it aside.

I also found a power regulator of some kind attached to the bottom of the cabinet, cracked it open to inspect it for damage and also dusted it out.  I also blew off the dust covering what appeared to be the main power supply at the bottom, and found some leftover remnants of what must have been an earlier repair job, cut wires and scorched plastic connectors.

When I put everything back together and turned the game on, not only did it start up correctly, but the picture was brighter, there were more colors and the sound was clearer and louder than I remembered from when I had played it before it stopped working.  It appears that disassembling, cleaning and reassembling was all this system needed.  I still need to replace the bulb in the marquee space because it's on its way out and making a bit of a humming noise.  Eventually I would like to replace the joystick with one that's a bit less jiggly and I also would like to make repairs to the cabinet and repaint it, but that's a project for another day far in the future, when I don't have more pressing things to attend to.

Quick caveat - if you're hoping for a simple, easy explanation on how to get this one video game working in whatever flavor of LINUX you happen to be running, think again.  I hate Windows, I prefer to not have Windows running on my computer, not even in a virtual machine, but in this particular case, for most other people, I'd actually suggest trying to get this game working in Windows first before going down this particular rabbit hole.

That being said, unless you are using a computer that is more than two years old with Windows XP, you will probably have a really hard time getting this game to run correctly, especially if you are using an HD series ATI video card or any GeForce video card newer than the 8000 series.  Therefore (ironically) trying to get the game running correctly in LINUX actually makes a certain amount of sense, even with the complexity involved.

"What's with the whole 'while Rome burns' comment, Valkyri9?"

Oh that? I'm just remarking on how silly this article seems when compared to things like Occupy Wall Street causing protests to spawn in other major metropolitan areas across America, when we still have over 9% unemployment and the economy has been officially declared as in ANOTHER recession, as food prices skyrocket and incidents of crime increase and prisons are releasing their "less dangerous" prisoners due to insufficient funding and chaos is everywhere while the rest of the country is fast asleep.  Or the lesser issue where WineHQ itself was hacked.  It's all about perspective. Getting an old video game to run in LINUX is not a challenge compared to these issues, and could quite seriously be called a complete waste of time. But it does pose some interesting questions, so in my mind it's still a worthwhile pursuit.

Of course all of this pales when compared to the Universe, as pointed out by my friend Hardgeus. So again, perspective.

"Why are you even bothering with Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance? This game is over twelve years old!"

This is true, however, it is also the last complete space-flight simulator released by LucasArts. There have been other simulators since, but because they were designed for console systems such as the Sony Playstation or the Nintendo Gamecube they did not grant the player full control over their craft.  This level of control enhances the immersive qualities of this game, much like it did in its predecessors (Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter and Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter).

In other words, it's the last Star Wars themed video game out there that lets you do things like match the speed of your target, divert power from engines toward shields or lasers, or transfer power in quick bursts from shields to lasers or vice versa.  It's the last Star Wars themed video game out there that will allow you to quickly slow down to 1/3 your maximum speed so that you can perform a quick turn in order to get a bead on your opponent, and then quickly switch back to max speed in order to stay on their tail.  It's the only one set up so that you can map out the buttons on your flight stick in order to be able to easily look around in your cockpit, switch weapons from lasers to missiles, throttle up/down, perform rolls and other evade maneuvers, and so forth.  That makes it relevant.  It also makes it a goddamned shame that the developers decided to rely as heavily on DirectX 6.0 as they did during development, because now it's come back to bite those of us who still love this game in the ass.  Thank you Microsoft, for yet again finding another way to piss me off.  While I'm at it, hey LucasArts, stop recycling those pieces of fecal matter you call The Force Unleashed and start making some good games again. Is that too much to ask?

So to get to the nitty gritty - I received an email from a gentleman asking if I had run into an issue where the entire background of the game goes blue - or black after running Reiman's patch, and could not get in-game sound effects or voices to work.  I had not attempted to get the game working for quite some time; after my last aborted attempt I decided I'd wait for Wine to mature some more before I gave it another shot.  So I let him know I'd try again now that PlayOnLinux had made some great strides and we are now up to version 1.3.30 in Wine.  Current documentation at WineHQ is old and out of date, but indicative of the problems I had previously run into when trying to get this game working.

PlayOnLinux is an amazing tool.  Go to the website and install a copy on your LINUX system if you haven't already.  Wine is an awesome tool but it comes at the price of complication when dealing with these kinds of games.  My success rate in getting a game to work in Wine has been improved dramatically when using PlayOnLinux because I don't have to spend as much time fighting with the software, trying (begging and pleading) to get it to work.  The biggest benefit of PlayOnLinux is that it encapsulates each of your software installations, so that when you make a change to try to get one game working, you don't inadvertently break all of the other games that used to work just fine.  It also makes it very easy to use different versions of Wine - sometimes regressions occur with new Wine releases, and this tool makes it incredibly simple to specify the version you want with the game in question.  I can't praise it enough.

I also used to use something called POL Helper so that I could easily take advantage of winetricks.  This is no longer necessary as the primary functions of winetricks are now built into PlayOnLinux and done in a significantly more user friendly way.

You must have a copy (legitimate copy is strongly recommended here) of Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, which I have. However, because the CD copy protection does not play well in Wine, I also obtained a utility to strip this copy protection from the main X-Wing Alliance executable.  As far as I'm concerned I am well within my rights to take whatever steps necessary to get a twelve year old copy of software that I purchased through legitimate means in working order, especially when the developer or publisher has pretty much washed their hands of any responsibility beyond hosting a patch update (and many don't even do that for more than a few years).  However, explaining how to accomplish this is not within the scope of this post (you're on your own).

PlayOnLinux does not at this time have an automated installation option for Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, but it is perfectly fine to select "Install a non-listed program" in order to install it.  I chose "Install a program in a new virtual drive", created a wineprefix with the name XWingAlliance (no spaces) and then selected "Configure Wine" and "Install some libraries".

In winecfg I changed the OS version to Windows 98 since that was the latest Windows version available when the game shipped, and I selected ALSA as the default audio option and applied my changes.  I did not change the Wine version to 1.3.30 at this time because it resulted in an incomplete install - I left it at the default "System" version of Wine, the 1.2 release that shipped with Ubuntu Natty Narwhal.  I also installed the d3dx9 and directplay libraries in the next menu since these areas have not yet been fully addressed in Wine for many games.

I then installed the game from the CD-ROM, which was pretty much identical to a Windows install, and was sure to select Full Install (275MB) in order to get the majority of the files copied over from the disk.  I elected to not select Alliance.exe as the icon launcher because I knew it also made checks to verify the game disk was present in the drive.  I also knew that if I needed to create or select a new pilot I could access the launcher from within its installed folder, or from Applications > Wine > Programs > LucasArts > X-Wing Alliance > Play X-Wing Alliance in the Ubuntu menu, and I prefer to not have multiple entries for the same program within PlayOnLinux.  I instead browsed for and selected xwingalliance.exe as the launcher.

Because my laptop has a built-in Radeon HD 5850, I had already installed AMD's latest proprietary drivers for the best possible 3d rendering support as documented on the unofficial AMD LINUX driver wiki.  I also selected X-Wing Alliance from the PlayOnLinux menu and clicked the Configure button.  I selected 1.3.30 in the Wine Version menu, then switched to the Display tab and left everything at default except for "Video memory size", which I changed to 2048 to reflect the 2GB memory dedicated to my graphics card.  I finished up my PlayOnLinux setup by selecting the Wine tab so I could click the "Windows reboot" button in order to refresh the system with these changes.

For (hopefully) obvious reasons, X-Wing Alliance does not support widescreen resolutions.  To address this, I visited WSGF (Widescreen Gaming Forum) and found their article for this game.  I downloaded and installed ghex from the Ubuntu repositories and followed their instructions on modifying the entry in xwingalliance.exe for 1280x1024 to display at 1920x1080.  I also applied the NOCD patch on xwingalliance.exe to remove its CD checks at this time.

At this point the game failed to launch, so I accessed winecfg from the PlayOnLinux config window under the Wine tab, and changed DirectPlay from (Native) to (Native, then Built-In) and tried again.  The game now launched correctly, running movies and the main screens at 800x600 stretched across the widescreen.  Starting a new mission and entering the hangar rendered correctly at 1920x1080, but the mission could not begin because no keyboard inputs were recognized within the hangar.  Consequently the game was unplayable from this perspective.  It was possible to start a new game in the simulator environment in single player mode because no launch from a hangar was necessary.   I did not bother testing multiplayer mode because I fully expected it to fail due to the lack of support for DirectPlay, and that really wasn't within the scope of my expectations at this time anyway.

Reimar Döffinger, author of the XWA Hacker tools on Sourceforge that will help get this game and other X-Wing themed games running on new hardware and new Windows systems, mentioned in a Wine bug report that I can no longer find that he had been successful at correcting this input bug in X-Wing Alliance with Wine 1.2.0 by replacing dinput.dll.so with the same file from Wine 0.9.15 - and he had uploaded the file so that others might be able to use it in their version of Wine.  Much to my disappointment, by the time I found this, both his hosted file and someone else's had already been taken offline.

I was not able to find a copy of Wine 0.9.15 on WineHQ, but I was able to download a copy of Wine 0.9.19 and compile it.  I copied my new version of dinput.dll.so from Wine version 0.9.19 into my Wine 1.3.30 installation under my .PlayOnLinux folder and tried again.  The input bug in the hangar was eradicated.  I had one last thing to address - the game played music but there were no voices or sound effects.

I accessed my CD-ROMs and copied the "wave" folder from each disk into my PlayOnLinux prefix XwingAlliance folder.  I also did the same with the "movies" folder from each disk.

I now have a fully playable (at least single player anyway) Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance running on Wine in Ubuntu!

For my next trick, I will be repairing my Moon Patrol arcade cabinet that no longer boots up properly.

Thank you, Reimar!

I need to start off by mentioning that I have not yet played either Bioshock or Bioshock 2.  I have taken it under advisement that both of these games are quite excellent, especially in terms of their story, but I am not generally interested in survival horror 1st person shooters and consequently have not paid them much mind.  I also generally do not play console games much of late.  Therefore (even though both games are also available for the PC) my impression was that these games were developed primarily for the X-Box 360 , which resulted in my putting them in a sort of limbo of various video games that I will most likely never get around to playing, if only because I simply do not have the time.

I would also like to state for the record that I am discussing a video game that is in development, which means anything is possible at this point because the game is not yet finished.  I merely find it interesting that the developer has shown a game in three separate stages, and each time the focal character of the storyline has a significantly different appearance.

Why am I so interested?  For starters, the basic premise of the game (in simplest terms) is to rescue a princess from her imprisonment, which for me hails back to the draw of Dragon Warrior (and various other games before and since).  In the game, you play the character of Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton Agent, dismissed from the agency for excessive violence (which says quite a bit based on the reputations of the Pinkertons during the turn of the 20th century).  In massive debt, you have been granted an opportunity to improve your situation by locating the lost city of Columbia, a floating city that was meant to be the embodiment of American exceptionalism.  The story takes place in an alternate universe, in an industrialized United States where things have started to go horribly wrong.  Throughout Columbia are tears in space and time, and the populace appears to be devolving into madness.  A blend of steampunk, metaphysics (you have telekinetic abilities and the potential to acquire more as you progress through the game, and Elizabeth has the ability to alter space, time and matter) and history make this game very intriguing to me, and although it is unlikely that I will play it as soon as it is released I will very likely want to check it out at some point afteward.

In the meantime I am caught up in the looks.  Bioshock: Infinite is already shaping up to be a very pretty game.  Elizabeth (for obvious reasons) is also a very pretty young woman.  It is clear that the game wishes to immerse the player emotionally into the game with the inclusion of a character who is both fragile and powerful, and ready to assist you when needed.  This is part of the reason why I find these differences notable, because we have so far been shown three different Elizabeths, and I am wondering if perhaps this is to see which one appeals to the public most, and whether she will end up in the final game.

In the original preview for the game, Elizabeth makes a brief appearance as Booker is falling, reaching out of her window as he passes.  My impression of this image is that Elizabeth is still being developed in terms of character, voice acting and so forth by the Bioshock: Infinite team, she has not yet been fully realized as a character and consequently she does not have significantly distinct features that are memorable.  You can tell she is young, has dark hair and is wearing a gown of some kind, but since Booker is also in the process of falling, possibly to his death, it is forgiveable that you do not necessarily get a clear look at who this girl is supposed to be.

I'm not particularly fond of this version, but that is to be expected.  Call this Elizabeth version 0.1 - she is too early in development for anyone to grow too attached, but that's probably as it should be.  She is obviously pretty and young, sad and resigned as she is being grabbed by a monstrous mechanical hand, but the environment has clearly been given more attention than her character at this point in the game's development.  She looks more like a doll than a living, breathing character, which is probably why the more I inspect this photo, the less I like it.  I would almost file this image in the category of uncanny valley; there is a problem here but I do not quite know what it is.

Given time, however, there is always room for improvement.

The second version of Elizabeth, as revealed in this video, is strikingly different.  She is suddenly alive, has a distinct appearance and personality (and I'm not just referring to her chest size, which appears to have grown somewhat since her first iteration).  She seems young and vibrant, but also easily saddened by the chaos surrounding her.  This was the screenshot that caught my attention on the existence of this game, and made me very much want to play it.  Uncanny valley seems to have been eliminated, and while her eyes seem proportionately too large, giving an almost cartoonish appearance, I think it also gives her a certain humanity that did not exist before.

She also seems less like a victim and more like a force to be reckoned with, which makes her more appealing.  There are improvements to her hair and makeup, and the presence of freckles across her face all help contribute to the feeling that this is a real character that you would want to help get out of this obviously bad situation.

The funny thing about art, however, is that when you keep working on it, sometimes something that made it wonderful gets lost in the process of refining and perfecting it.  I feel that also holds true here.

In the E3 video preview, Elizabeth has changed again.  I feel as though the game developers have tried to make her look more realistic, and possibly older, and in the process, something magical about her was lost.  I am less interested in helping this character than I was before.  A faint touch of the uncanny valley has returned.  For a very long time I have been of the belief that goal of achieving realism in video games often has the unfortunate side effect of ruining the game in question.  Consequently this is a very real problem the developers need to address, and based on certain video game forum comments I am not alone in this assessment.

To be a bit more specific, it feels as though Elizabeth has been given the airbrush treatment.  She now has a bit of a tan.  Her cute raven bob haircut has been replaced with a brunette wave.  She has less eyeshadow but more lipstick.  I may be wrong, but it also feels as though the size of her chest has grown once again, which is starting to get ridiculous.

But ultimately, I have lost some of the interest I initially had in this character.  While it is unlikely that these changes will go away, as they were most likely requested by the publishing company financing this production, I feel it is unfortunate that the Elizabeth who could have been is now no longer.  This is an unusual thing for me, it is not normal to grow attached to an in-development character and then wonder what became of her as she was replaced by someone else entirely.

The closest thing I could compare this to would be when a sequel to a film replaces an actor with another in the same role - such as in Ironman 2.  In most cases that second actor never measures up to the original, and in the process some of the magic that could have been is lost, as you are violently reminded that this is all just a made up story on a big screen with lights and special effects.

Willow asked me to install her old Lego Star Wars PC game back on her computer last night, a game that we bought for her about five years ago.  This should have been a simple five minute task, yet something between half an hour and forty-five minutes were spent getting it installed and working.  Bear in mind that I know what I'm doing - this task could easily have taken someone less knowledgeable several hours, or possibly required professional tech support to accomplish.

Willow's computer is still running Windows XP Home, and has been relegated to the role of "family computer" due to the vast amounts of home tech support I was engaging in when I made the mistake of allowing each child in my house to have their own system instead of sharing one.  Part of the reason this machine still running Windows XP Home is because I haven't had the free time to set it up with LINUX and also install the various Windows games they like to play on it and make sure they all work - if that is even possible.

This computer also serves as a portal to their virtual public school; they get their daily lessons and attend virtual classes on it, and because the school primarily uses Windows-based software to accomplish these tasks, it's much easier to maintain a Windows computer for this purpose.  Unfortunately, due to the age of the hardware, upgrading to a more secure version of Windows (Windows 7) really isn't an option without performing some significant hardware upgrades.  As a result I have been forced to work with XP Home's archaic system of security, which is annoying at best and downright draconian at worst - the Limited user account.  At some point I would love to replace this system with an iMac computer, but at the moment that's not in our budget, so I'm still working with what we have.

In order to get this system a bit closer to the modern era of allowing administrative rights when needed, I turned to a free utility called SuRun (short for Super-User Run).  Windows XP already comes with the option to hold the left shift key, right click on an executable and select Run as - which, if you know the password, will allow you to use an administrator level account to perform a task.  That's fine, as long as you don't need this level of security EVERY time you perform a task.  For example, Mozilla Firefox is installed as the default web browser on this system to minimize the risk of applications executing as if they were native to the system from compromised web sites.  However, each time Mozilla Firefox starts up, it launches a Java update utility that checks to see if there are newer versions of the Java plugin available.  This utility requires administrator level access in Windows XP in order to work as designed.  SuRun is therefore very helpful because you can grant specific programs administrator access every time they are launched automatically, without requiring someone to type in a password, if you so wish.

At this point many readers may be scratching their heads and wondering why I don't just set up an account with administrator privileges and be done with it.  The answer is that in Windows XP, administrator accounts that are compromised by spyware or viruses grant those rogue programs full access to do whatever they want to the system, and also permit these programs to use the system to attack and/or infect other systems.  This can lead to identity theft, credit card fraud, stolen bank accounts, hacked user accounts on social networking sites and much much worse depending on the intentions of the person(s) who designed the rogue software.  In terms of basic security, Windows XP administrator accounts have none.  I don't care if you have special antivirus software, the best firewall programs in the world - if you access the internet with a web browser or email client on an administrator account in Windows XP, you are taking a potentially serious gamble that could affect your life and livelihood - not just the computer.

So, because my children are not yet as savvy as I am about how to avoid the potential pitfalls of the internet, they need to be using a limited account to access the internet.  Please note - as mentioned in a previous article - a limited account does not 100% guarantee your system will never be compromised.  It's just a smart practice to follow, along with maintaining a modern and up to date antivirus program (I strongly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, it's free, it's designed by Microsoft and has excellent ratings from various security professionals who are not affiliated with Microsoft), keeping Windows up to date with Windows Updates (or Microsoft Updates if you also are using Microsoft Office), keeping Java, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader up to date, and using a firewall of some kind, either with a router or at the very least, the basic Windows firewall.  Let me reiterate here, when followed, these practices are not 100% foolproof.  The only way to avoid getting infected while using the internet is to simply not use the internet.

That brings us back to Lego Star Wars for the PC.  Lego Star Wars was originally designed as a console video game during the Playstation 2/Nintendo Gamecube/XBox era.  It was ported to the PC, which happens fairly often, and given some nice graphics updates to take advantage of 3d accellerators on the PC.  However, as is also often the case with ports, the installer is downright terrible, and the game itself for some unknown reason requires administrator priviliges in order to run at all.

I first attempted to install the game from the limited user account, using SuRun to grant the installer administrator privileges.  The installer failed over and over again with an 1182 error code.  I did some research on the error and attempted to resolve it by killing msiexec.exe from the task manager, clearing temp files, upgrading Windows Installer to the newest version for Windows XP, disabling antivirus protection temporarily, re-registering msiexec.exe - all of which failed to resolve the error.  I finally logged into the administrator account and the game installed flawlessly.  How annoying.

I then downloaded and installed the Lego Star Wars 1.12 patch for the game, logged back into the limited user account, removed the install disk and attempted to launch the game.  It failed with a bizarre error code indicating something had not run correctly in one of the C code modules.  I right-clicked on the launcher, selected "Start as administrator", and the game loaded as expected within the limited user account.

I then closed the game, relaunched it by right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Start as administrator", and added check marks "Always start as administrator" and "Do not prompt me again" from the password prompt that came up.  I closed the game one more time, went into the SuRun settings from the tray icon, accessed the list of apps granted administrator privileges, double-clicked on Lego Star Wars, and moved the selection from "Always run as administrator" to "Always run as administrator and do not request a password", then applied and saved the changes.

Lego Star Wars now runs flawlessly in a limited user account by left clicking on the icon, and it no longer requires an administrator password.  I gave Windows XP Home the proverbial finger and enjoyed the rest of my evening.

I'm not talking about the beverage here.  I'm talking about the LINUX Wine community, which is responsible for assisting the development of Wine, a compatibility layer for LINUX and Apple's OSX that allows programs created for Microsoft Windows to run on these alternative operating systems.

As detailed in my previous post, I've been struggling with getting full 3d rendering support in Star Trek Online for my new Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 graphics card. The latest release of AMD's LINUX Catalyst 11.2 drivers that came out only a few days later unfortunately did not resolve my problems, so I decided to be patient and wait for a solution to appear, rather than continue to bang my head uselessly on it.

As it turns out, I didn't have to wait very long.  Jan Lemecki posted a comment on WineHQ's bug report with an attached C file that corrects the missing 3d textures issue not just in Star Trek Online, but several other games when using a Radeon 5000 or 6000 series graphics card.

More detailed instructions appeared on the Ubuntu Forums thread I've been following in regards to the same issue.  Following these instructions required that I had the mesa-common-dev and libc6-dev-i386 packages installed (I already had installed build-essentials).  I then edited my Star Trek Online launcher, added LD_PRELOAD=/home/[PATH TO]libAMD-Fix.so (after changing [PATH TO] to the correct path) and suddenly had full 3d rendering with UseGLSL enabled, which allowed reflections and other lighting effects to work where before they had been either unavailable or invisible, or just plain ugly.  I now feel as though my video card upgrade was worth doing.  Thank you Jan Lemecki for fixing this issue.

It was seriously killing my enjoyment of the game.

But not anymore...

I've explained in the past why I prefer AMD products to Intel and nVidia, so we'll skip past all of that.  Being a big fan of LINUX, I reached the point of dumping Windows entirely a few months ago, which has the side effect of requiring me to go through some hoops to get things working in LINUX.  Consequently, I rather appreciate it when AMD also goes through some hoops on my behalf.

I recently upgraded Lain with a Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1GB PCI-Express graphics accellerator, which is built on the GPU manufactured and distributed by AMD.  AMD also provides the proprietary LINUX Catalyst drivers for this and other Radeon cards, and releases updated drivers on a monthly basis.  AMD is simultaneously working with the Open Source community on the development of non-proprietary drivers as well (unlike nVidia), but they are not quite ready for video game use, so for the time being I will continue using their proprietary driver releases.

Installation of the card was painless - the same drivers that were installed for my Sapphire Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB PCI-Express graphics accellerator also supported this new card, and Ubuntu booted up flawlessly.  The first thing I tested out was Star Trek Online, which had been suffering from performance issues upon my transition to LINUX with my older graphics card, and this is where I ran into my first (major) snag.  All animated 3d character models were invisible - which meant that while I could clearly see the environment, physical objects in the environment, starships, and even objects held by NPCs such as tricorders, the NPCs and the avatars of other players were not visible - aside from their shadows.

I found a tip on the LINUX support thread in the Star Trek Online forums that mentioned disabling GLSL would help resolve that problem.  Because I used Play on LINUX to install Star Trek Online, this was relatively simple to disable - I selected the game, clicked edit options, picked advanced options, and then changed UseGLSL from Enabled to Disabled.

This fix worked, making the previously invisible character models visible again, but had the undesirable side effect of disabling reflections and various lighting effects, which reduced the quality of the textures in the game to almost the equivalent of "Low Graphics" mode.  I fiddled with various configurations and settings trying to get around this issue, but ultimately gave up.  I was now disappointed - my upgrade purchase had failed to provide the desired upgrade - speed was improved, but graphics were worse.

At this point I decided to turn to the bug reporting for ATI/AMD LINUX graphics drivers and found that I was not the only one experiencing these sort of issues with a Radeon HD 5000 series graphics accellerator in more than a few video games.  I submitted a supporting comment that this was an existing issue and waited, hoping that AMD would respond with a fix before I was no longer able to return the graphics card to Newegg - my preferred tech vendor.  I also submitted this information to the Ubuntu forum thread that was discussing the same issue, and then waited patiently.

Last Friday morning, an update was posted by one of the AMD LINUX driver development team, stating, "We have fixed the issue, the fix will be included in future release."  I am now a very happy camper.

Working in the tech industry has made me a bit jaded, and I have come to expect customer support of any kind to not be at all helpful.  This attitude has driven my do-it-yourself attitude when it comes to computer related issues, but this was one issue that I had absolutely no control over.  It is deeply satisfying to know that the AMD LINUX Catalyst driver developers take the gaming community seriously, and are willing to work hard to address issues in a matter of a few weeks, not months.  Many kudos are deserved by the AMD LINUX Catalyst driver development team, and my thanks as well.

I am a nostalgia gamer.  When the going gets rough, I like to remember when PC video games did not require 3D accelerators and insanely powerful computer systems like they do today.  They could be difficult to install, they could be even more difficult to configure.  But once they were working the way they were designed, they were a certain form of magic.

They were also much harder than today's fare.  With the advent of the affordable PC came a much wider PC gaming market, and to appeal to this new breed of gamers a lot of difficulty that us old-timers had been putting up with for years got cut away.  I feel like a crotchety old man yelling at "you youngsters have it WAY easier than we did, with your instanced saves and super-powers", even though I'm only turning 36 in a few days (I keep using the word "only" to myself but it's not really working).

Regardless, whether due to the fact that I'm feeling my age or that the winter is really starting to wear on my nerves, I've been much touchier of late and consequently I found myself itching for some old school dog-fighting like I used to play back when I was in college.  The game that I always wanted to own a PC for, the game that I used to play in my imagination before I owned a computer - that game was Star Wars: X-Wing.

This is not an easy game to learn.  It is more difficult to master.  It is significantly harder without a flightstick controller.  You need to memorize keyboard hotkeys and be able to rapidly use them in a dogfight.  You need to be able to track where your opponent plans to go and fire ahead of their craft in order to strike them with your blaster fire.  You need to be able to keep an opponent in your sights long enough to get a missile lock.  You need to know how to regulate power so you do not run out of blaster fire, so you can catch bombers before they reach their target's missile range, or so that you can buffer your shields that are taking a lot of hits.  These are just the basics you must learn in order to complete your missions.

You're also typically trying to destroy something that looks like three red blinking pixels clustered together on your screen.

The original game features three different starfighters that you will fly to complete your missions, including the Y-Wing (slow bomber class), the A-Wing (fast scout/strike & evade class) of course, the X-Wing (space superiority fighter) which can be applied to almost any purpose.  Your missions grow increasingly more difficult as you progress through the game.  You have the option to replay missions through the "Historical Combat" option, and there are also the "Pilot Proving Grounds" which are also incredibly difficult to master.

Even with all of that, this is an incredibly good game.  There is a lot of immersion that goes on once you learn how to properly play the game.  There are secrets that can be unlocked - such as how to easily take down a Star Destroyer by yourself with either the X-Wing or Y-Wing fighters (the A-Wing is far more challenging because it does not carry photon torpedos).  If you destroy the two round power generators above the bridge by firing three photon torpedoes at each one at point-blank range, you will knock out the Star Destroyer's shields.  The Y-Wing can then switch to Ion Cannon and disable the Star Destroyer, making it a sitting duck that cannot fire back.  The X-Wing will need to dodge cannon fire in order to survive, as will the A-Wing, but blaster fire will eventually take out the power generators as well.

The storyline kept true to the films, and the way each mission was presented helped drive the game along and give the player a sense of accomplishment.  This was not true in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, although they attempted to address the problem with The Balance of Power expansion on that game.

An expansion added the B-Wing fighter as seen in Return of the Jedi to the list of available craft, and additional missions beyond the trench run on the first Death Star.  When I purchased the Collector's CD in 1996 (my first PC video game purchase ever), it included this add-on, so I'm not sure how much of an impact it had for players who had only had access to the X-Wing, Y-Wing and A-Wing fighters until the expansion was released.  For me, it was part of the game immediately following the destruction of the first Star Destroyer.

So, how does one go about getting this DOS/Windows 3.11 era video game working in a 64-bit non-Microsoft operating system? Pretty simple.  You need DOSBox.

As you can see, DOSBox does not load drive C: by default, but it must rather be mounted instead.  On a typical Ubuntu installation your command to do this would be:

mount c ~/(your DOS video game folder name)

You can then navigate to the folder by typing "C:" (without the quotation marks) and "CD (folder name)" to change into the directory of a specific video game.  You may need to configure the game using its INSTALL.EXE or SETUP.EXE file in order to set the audio to Sound Blaster - most DOS games support Sound Blaster cards and DOSBox does a pretty good job of emulating it for you.  You should then be able to type the command to launch your DOS game, and enjoy.

Because X-Wing really should be played with a flightstick, just a little more work needs to be done.  You can install a joystick calibrator in Ubuntu with the following command:

sudo apt-get install joystick

And you can then type "jscal /dev/input/js0" to calibrate it (you may need to change the js number to match your flightstick if you have more than one joystick installed on your computer).  If your DOS game supports joysticks or flightsticks, it should automatically detect that you have one installed, and in the case of Star Wars: X-Wing, it should go through a simple three step calibration before launching the game.

Once the above is accomplished, you should be destroying TIE Fighters in no time.