TacOps and UNIX

[rich4421972]

Dear Sirs:

I have installed TacOps on my Debian GNU/Linux system and am very happy to report tyhat it works excellently. I used the program WineX to simulate the Windows operating system on a small portion of my hard drive. The only problem I have had is that the little dialog windows that allow the user to control unit movements, SOP, TRP's, etc... are lacking some of their usual functionality. Specifically, the windows must be opened and cloed with key combinations like alt-F4, ESC and such. This does not effect the games playability in any way, but it makes me want to know if there was some compatibility problems with the program when it was first ported to windows from Macintosh (these nuances would definately show up later in a n emulated environment where nearly everything is very touchy). If this a dumb question, or too boring to think about, I understand. Any ideas or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Rich

[ June 20, 2002, 12:01 AM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

Which version of TacOps?

[Redwolf]

Wow, and I thought WineX is just crap. Guess I didn't try at the right time. Which version of WineX?

wine --version

(or winex --version?)

[rich4421972]

This is version 3.02 of TacOps (right off the CD) and version 2.0.1 (the most current debian package). of WineX from http://transgaming.com.

I use build 20011226 of wine from codeweavers.com

No extra dll's are needed to run TacOps under wine.

[ July 03, 2002, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[Redwolf]

Thanks for the info. I found that older TacOps run better under Wine. Could you please try the 3.1.2 patch?

[rich4421972]

I sure will as soon as I think of how I want to do it. I can't remember if gunzip supports the .zip format of windows. It should work, regardless.

Here are some more tips and nigglies,

I have a P3 system with i810 video card and an 828801 AC '97 sound card (both from intel). My system has 1.3GHz of CPU speed.

One niggly I have noticed since this morning is that the little line that extends from one unit firing on another is not there. The little puffs of smoke from ATGM's are, though. The spot reports are just fine and appear in a small box that is appended to the bottom of the sawfish window. All unit pictures appear beautifully and the unit info is fully functioning. I only have used CA scenarios If you want to use wineX, too, make sure your linux supports .RPM packages, .deb packages or that you know how to compile a .tgz source tarball. It is very easy to set up (or it was to me and Debian! )

Redwolf, what do you mean that the older TacOps works better? I thought the version 3.1.2 only added new fixes and added a few new units (I am not a grognard by any means). I have never used the patches very often anyway . I will try it though and report back. I also invite anybody to ask questions to me about how this thing works under linux and if you want me to check out anything else. I speak Canadian, though! Some things are different, but 97.375% of it appears and behaves exactly as it does in Windows.

A big difference in the setup phase is that in linux you can drap and drop your units across the map while in Windows you must click on the unit once to select it and click on the map where you want the unit to appear (within the gray lines, of course). This felt eery at first, but it is OK and doesn't affect gameplay any. Also, through the sawfish manager, you can presumably control the size of the fonts that appear in the dialog boxes within the game. The boxes appeared rather small to me, so I think I will use a 7 point something-or-other.

One other problem: give the linux guys a few months (or weeks, or days) to add support for IPX games. Some have complained in the wine forums that IPX doesn't work yet. This is specifically mentioned at transgaming.com. All other info can be easily gotten at http://winehq.org. It is a great site. Thank you for your interest in my post!

Rich

[ June 20, 2002, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[Redwolf]

Thanks for the info. I use TacOps in vmware because I was fed up with Wine and WineX after too much ping-pong of works/broken/works/broken/broken/verybroken.

Another question: the winex folks have their own native DLL files that are not part of the Debian packages, can you tell whether you use the proprietary ones or the free ones (don't ask me how to tell)?

I know how to install *.tar.gz files, in fact I am using the CVS versions of Wine and Winx, but I don't try them often these days since I was disappointed too often. I noticed that the 3.1.2 patch at that time broke something that wasn't broken in whatever patch I used with Wine before that. IPX will not be needed, as TacOps 4.0 with TCP/IP will be available soon. See the preview on battlefron't web site.

[rich4421972]

The .dll files that I use now come right from WineX. Further, if you want the proprietary ones, they come right off of your Windows 95/98/XP CDROM. Just install them into your fake-Windows drive and use them when you need them. This is why I am confident that 32-bit applications should have no problem with WineX 2.0. Maybe I am over-confident.

I was not intending to condescend to you by asking if you could compile source! I'm sorry to you if you thought that! I measnt that WineX provides prepacked binaries of .deb, .rpm and .tgz format. This was informational only. By the way, a red hat/Mandrake RPM will not ecessarily work on a SuSE or Caldera system, for example. But SuSE has a great compiler and a very stable system for making files. I think you should give wine another try, if you like. It is much better, now. Major problems (they say) are that the more graphically-intense "twitch" games will not work well without the proprietary Windows code for DirectX version 8. TacOps and other 32- and 16- bit applications don't require this, so its OK.

About IPX, I only mentioned it because TacOps players like it so much. I always play it solitaire. Linux only works if people mention every single problem they are having with a program. It is not a put-down at all, its the only way linux can get better.

By the way, I'm delighted to speak with you and I'm surprised that someone was interested in this subject besides me. Perhaps others will read it, too.

Well, I'm on my way to install some patches so wish me luck!

By the way, those fonts still seem too small in sawfish and I have trouble reading them on my 14" monitor! Perthaps Enlightenment or even IceWM is a better session manager to use with this program.

Rich

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

TacOps v3 used standard Macintosh and Windows routines for displaying windows and dialogs. The source code in TacOps v4 uses a custom library of window and dialog drawing and management routines that is neither Macintosh nor Windows.

I have no idea if v4 will be at all compatible with UNIX Windows emulators.

[Redwolf]

Home-grown graphics will rather be an improvement. But the OpenPlay library seems to do some fancy TCP stuff that is not yet in Wine's scope.

It is a safe guess that I could make this work by sending my wife to the Bahamas for a week, but Wine is so unstable that I have to assume that someone else stumbles over my fixes the very next week. And I don't plan to get involved with Wine on a permanent basis. Especially since vmware does the job without ever breaking.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by rich4421972:

The .dll files that I use now come right from WineX. Further, if you want the proprietary ones, they come right off of your Windows 95/98/XP CDROM. Just install them into your fake-Windows drive and use them when you need them. This is why I am confident that 32-bit applications should have no problem with WineX 2.0. Maybe I am over-confident.

I guess the WineX guys may not be that bad after all. I should go reading...

I was not intending to condescend to you by asking if you could compile source! I'm sorry to you if you thought that!

I didn't, no problem. I just prefer to be overly clear about everything on a forum like this, you never know where the archives end up.

By the way, I'm delighted to speak with you and I'm surprised that someone was interested in this subject besides me. Perhaps others will read it, too.

There had been quite a few people asking about Linux over the last years. Most people seemed to come from an anti-microsoft position, as opposed to a pro-Unix position, so they generally were not too comfortable with the system.

Do you plan to order Tacops 4? I would be interested in hearing about your WineX setup and version 4. I am mainly on FreeBSD and hence prefer the main Wine (not x) branch. I generally don't have a maintained WineX tree with native DLLs at hand, no to speak of regular updates.

[rich4421972]

Here's my opinion about TacOps 4:

I haven't decided yet. (pretty simple, eh?)

I am very pleased with TacOps 3.0 and am not sure that it can be improved by the new version. I wanted to use this game on linux because it is one of my favorites. If you are using FreeBSD, you may have different results from me unless someone ports ( or you do) the Wine source code to your particular machine (it should be in the ports collection. I didn't realize that you were a BSD customer. FreeBSD is a "true" AT&T UNIX and is a different OS from Linux.

That makes it a little harder (but not impossible) for you. I hope I didn't say something wrong to offend you with all my blathering about Debian. I should have called this thread "TacOps and 'GNU/Linux'" instead of what I did. The thing is that it is the Macintosh "feel" of the program that makes it just the least bit problematic for Linux. That Macintosh feel is only supported in Enlightenment 0.16.x

Another thing, one of my M113's started wandering across the screen (about 200 yards, a normal retreat) after it had been fired upon by a RedFor unit. I checked the SOP for the unit and it was blank. This is a slight bug.

I have tried to be very fair about what is niggly about TacOps under linux and what is just the same as always. You can tell if you want it or not.

Redwolf, if you can compile wine from CVS, I think you are very smart, indeed!

WineX claims that they have special API files that emulate windows better than anything. I think that is not true. Regular wine has these files, too, and they are totally free and open. Just know that eventually, you will need your Win 95 CD and its vaunted .dll libraries if you want really in-depth 3D accelerated applications or games. If you follow the documentation, wine is rather easy to use and install. UNIX and Linux should run TacOps the same way. I expectthatthey will have the same problema that I mentioned above. There should be a wine port in FreeBSD-RELEASE 4.5, so that should be OK

I think I might wait to see if they get that IPX matter settled before I buy the next TacOps (or see if I can hack it myself).

regards

Rich

[ June 20, 2002, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[rich4421972]

Sorry to be a pain-in-the-neck, but here is the offical FreeBSD port name for wine:

wine-2002.05.09 in 4.5-STABLE/i386

This should work just as well as WineX 2.0.1 for someone of your ability. Have a lot of fun!

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

>Another thing, one of my M113's started wandering across the screen (about 200

>yards, a normal retreat) after it had been fired upon by a RedFor unit. I checked the SOP for

>the unit and it was blank. This is a slight bug.

Not a bug. Unit SOP items are cleared after activation.

>UNIX and Linux should run TacOps the same way.

If TacOps v3 or v4 works under UNIX or Linux, it is a complete coincidence. I do not support UNIX/LINUX.

[ June 20, 2002, 11:19 PM: Message edited by: MajorH ]

[rich4421972]

Originally posted by MajorH:

Not a bug. Unit SOP items are cleared after activation.

I did not know this about SOP. Also, this thing only happened once.I meant it was a "bug" in wine or linux, not in your program! It's fine now, anyway.

>UNIX and Linux should run TacOps the same way.

If TacOps v3 or v4 works under UNIX or Linux, it is a complete coincidence. I do not support UNIX/LINUX.[/QB][/quote

A happy accident!

TacOps must have wine or vmware or another windows emulator to run under linux

I started this thread as a "heads up" to those who might wonder if they could play this program on their UNIX servers at work or elsewhere. Wine is free. There are, after all, 18 million of us worldwide and most of us ike to play good games.

PS I just read your post about additions/changes in the 3.1.2 patch. Now I realize what you mean by "Windows support." You really mean in-depth support to the platforms of Mac and Windows. It would be much too hard to support linux users especially with the level of service that you give to your Mac and Windows customers. Many apologies if I was out-of-turn.

Rich

[ June 21, 2002, 01:58 AM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[rich4421972]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Thanks for the info. I found that older TacOps run better under Wine. Could you please try the 3.1.2 patch?

Yes I downloaded it today and used

unzip -Z tacops_312u.zip to unpack the file. Alternatively, you can use the Konqueror's unzip-in-place feature and just unzip the file into your TacOps folder in the fake-windows drive and then copy the new tacops.exe file onto the old one r and do the same with the new pdf files in the directory.

I tested this with Team Ostle in the US battles. That is a really tough battle! :eek: I think that the program runs a little better and all the enhancements are there, for sure. Ostle has some really good features for testing in it. The HMMWV AT is a challenging tool to master on the battlefield. Here, you can have your HMMWV battalion lurk in the shadows of the woods in the center of the screen. I did not test air strikes yet with this wine program, but I think it OK. So give a big check mark to version 3.1.2 of TacOps and its implementation under wine! S

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by rich4421972:

Sorry to be a pain-in-the-neck, but here is the offical FreeBSD port name for wine:

wine-2002.05.09 in 4.5-STABLE/i386

This should work just as well as WineX 2.0.1 for someone of your ability. Have a lot of fun!

I know. I am a FreeBSD developer and worked on that port before I gave up on Wine. But working with TacOps this version does not, nor does this Wine version under Linux. WineX seems to have some real difference by now.

In any case, TacOps 4.x will be substancially harder, and I know I want 4.x.

BSD Unix is not a derivate of AT&T Unix.

[ June 21, 2002, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[rich4421972]

BSD Unix is not a derivate of AT&T Unix.[/QB]

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by rich4421972:

Maybe you can make a FreeBSD port from the WineX tarball (you have to pay the fee, though ). You could be playing TacOps 4 in no time! Well, as soon as they sell it to us!

That is not really relevant. I have enough Linux boxes, don't really insist of having TacOps on FreeBSD. The relevant thing here is that I use vmware to run TacOps on Unix derivates, as I gave up on Wine and derivates some time ago.

My entry in this discussion is trigged by your trial of the newest WineX, which seems to have made a significant step while I wasn't watching. But that is only useful for me if it runs TacOps 4.x, too.

I'm didnt know that the wine 2002 port does not work for you. I am just learning myself. I thought FreeBSD 4.5 had many bleeding edge packages in terms of some of the packages.

There is no "2002" version of wine. Random snapshots are released, some of them make it into an official FreeBSD package, some not. The maintainance of a package like this depends on demand and developers. As I said, I gave up on controibution to this particular port, so unless someone else follows newer Wine snapshots, it will stay as it is. And I know from my CVS version trials and that non-x version of Wine did not really improve for my needs.

In any case, the Version of Wine in question, from May this year, does not run TacOps 3.x, neither on FreeBSD nor on Linux.

Perhaps there are more things in your UNSTABLE tree.

FreeBSD makes a destinction between "stable" and "current" only for the base system. The third-party package like Wine are always shared between these two brnaches.

It is also not really relevant since I can install Wine snapshots or CVS checkouts as I like, without the help of the ports system. The issues is that I didn't like what I have seen

Transgaming's code developers have broken with the wine developers at www.winehq.com. I think this was a mistake for them because they will only benefit from their own developers from now on, but maybe not. Obnn the other hand, you are right about the proprietary Windows API's, they really are the core of the WineX program. I can't understand why wine would not work for the average user, though.

I noticed at that time. That is one of the major reasons I didn't really consider Winex anymore and didn't notice that they made enough progress. If they get too closed, I cannot rely on them, could as well rely on Microsoft.

PS I'm glad that vmware works so well for you. It was too expensive for me.

Best $99 I ever spent. I spent $25 even better, though

[rich4421972]

Originally posted by redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rich4421972:

I noticed at that time. That is one of the major reasons I didn't really consider Winex anymore and didn't notice that they made enough progress. If they get too closed, I cannot rely on them, could as well rely on Microsoft.

Wow, I understand the retail for that is $329 (amazon.com). I think you received an OEM deal. Nevertheless, wine is free andf it works.

I guess my conclusion is: Windows costs $300 by itself. Why pay twice?

I hope you'll give the guys at wine another try

Cheers.

Richard

[ July 03, 2002, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: rich4421972 ]

[Redwolf]

Bumping this, too, to give people an update.

The CVS version of Wine runs TacOps4 with one bug: after redrawing the map after menu operations or TacOps order window fiddling the map is often whitend out and requires a manual redraw (Control-R). As you cannot give Control-R at all time in TacOps this is annoying. The Wine developers knows what causes this but had labeled the implementation of the neccessary Win32 event as "not trivial". In addition, it is pretty slow. This shouldn't happen since Wine is a thin emulation layer and points to the same event handling problem, most probably somebody painted himself into a corner when designing this part of Wine.

Vmware continues to run TacOps 4 fine, but be warned that Redhat Linux 8 ships with a pretty broken kernel which broke both Wine and Vmware for me. FreeBSD with stick kernel is fine with vmware, as always.