Characters's 'Status' list? - Problems under WINE

[Who]

Hi all,

 

I am playing Rebellion on Linux through Wine - it works really well, except for one rather major thing - I can't see the character status text (I can see the whole page and no text!)

 

As I haven't played for ~6 years I really can't remember any of this detail - does anyone know of a good web resource containing the _starting_ details (I know my characters can improve - but having starting details would be great)

 

I found

http://www.the-spoiler.com/STRATEGY/Lucasarts/rebellion.1.html, which is duplicated around the place - but it doesn't give me the details I need.

 

If anyone knows how to make this text do it's thing under WINE then that'd be nice too

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Who

[Mad78]

I don't use Linux so don't have much experience with WINE but I think we have several Linux users lying about on the site.

[Who]

Interestingly - I discovered if I mess about and put my computer into 640x480 8 bit colour (256 colours) then I can see the status but many other things look terrible!

 

Any of the other WINE users have solutions?

 

just a note - I only see the tooltips if I change to 640x480 BEFORE starting the game - WINE doesn't seem to be able to change graphics mode for me...

[budious]

Rebellion is a really odd game as far as directx is concerned. The developers chose to use DX2 Retained Mode which is basically directdraw applications passed into the hardware rendering mode. So basically there is no applicable hardware acceleration, why you can't get anisotrophic or anti-aliasing to work with the game. The game was touted as one of the DirectX3 launch titles which had made me wonder if there isn't a hardware DX3 mode hidden somewhere within the executable accessable via some unknown command switch. Obviously, the developers canned that approach and went with the software hybrid technology.

 

What this has to do with WINE maybe very little, I'm not sure how the WINE developers have implemented the directx support. I know this the very reason why Rebellion no longer works in Vista though, as DX2 Retained Mode has been completely removed from system support.

 

Who... you may want to try the -w command switch, this is the only known command switch for the games executable. It will launch the game in windowed mode, however I'm not positive how WINE implements or can handle window mode Windows applications. I am an occasional linux user but I have not used WINE much.

[Mad78]

BTW bud. Do you think there will be a way to get Reb to work in Vista?

[Moribundus]

Hi,

 

I just managed to make Rebellion run under wine yesterday and I must say it works flawlessly (almost). I play it in windowed mode, it's better than changing my desktop resolution every time. You just have to run winecfg and in the graphics panel check the "Emulate virtual desktop option". Videos are playing, the character stat are there, just perfect.

 

Oh, the only buggy thing I've noticed so far is that I can't skip the briefing when starting new game.

 

I'm running Arch Linux with wine version 0.9.29.

 

Btw. aren't the starting stat's random?

 

Mad78: Try installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 with win98/95 (or XP ). Microsoft released it as freeware, you can get it directly from their site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en. But Vistas aren't listed as supported system (and micro.. is developing VPC 2007) so it's not guaranteed to work. Otherwise you would need another emulator (eg. VMWare).

[budious]

Actually I am on the Virtual PC 2007 beta test. It is at release candidate stage and final should be here pretty soon. I haven't tried loading linux in it yet but all the microsoft o/s I have tried worked flawlessly for me. connect.microsoft.com if you want to take it for a spin, just apply and it auto accepts, not too pickly for vpc 2007 testers

[Moribundus]

Seems like best free solution for playing old games on Windows Vista. VPC also emulates hardware, so there's no problem with drivers (eg. for newer soundcards).

[budious]

Well I was attempting to play Rebellion in VPC 2007 RC and cannot get the game graphics to display. Note that I was using a Windows 2003 Enterprise Server SP2 RC build that I was also testing, but I had enabled hardware acceleration in the dxdiag utility and turned on the windows audio services which are disabled by default in MS server editions. Im not sure if this is a configuration issue or lack of support.

 

The interesting advantage to this if the game did work is you can use a 64-bit host OS with a 32-bit guest OS installed in VPC. The 32-bit OS will allow the 16-bit game installer to run so this would add an alternative to the x64 installer I was messing around with at one time.

[budious]

Let me revive this thread shortly... I am attempting to get Rebellion working in wine 0.9.30 on ubuntu 6.06. I] installed from the Rebellion CD but when I run the executeable from the wine windows location the game window comes up and abruptly exits. I am curious to the two guys who have this working in wine what your winecfg settings are, did you do anything special as import native windows dlls or using the standard wine libraries? Library overrides, etc.?

 

Update: Nevermind, I figured out the problem. Winecfg drives even when I edit them would add a second drive letter for the cdrom every time I mounted a cd. I changed the original cdrom drive entry from hard disk to cd_rom for whatever reason it was auto-detecting it that way, but now everything works. I guess there's no combination of settings to get it to display a full 1024x768 in an emulated desktop? Even set to 1024x768 using the -w or not it only shows 640x480 in the emulated desktop. I run 1920x1200 native res on my laptop screen so it's utterly annoying to try and play the game at this point, but at least it works.

 

Update: Added some pages to the SW Rebellion Wiki - Please discuss your problems or changes to posted solutions to the original forum thread. Refinement of the wiki documentation will be updated as deemed necessary.

 

http://www.swrebellion.com/rebedwiki/index.php/Windows_XP_x64

 

http://www.swrebellion.com/rebedwiki/index.php/Windows_Vista

 

http://www.swrebellion.com/rebedwiki/index.php/Wine_on_Linux_or_BSD