Wine-friendlyness

[luncheonticket]

Hello people, long time no see! I've been kind of busy with university, but have been following your updates and I have to say: Automation is looking better every day!

I don't know if you devs are aware of the Wine project (http://www.winehq.org/). It is a software compatibility layer that allows Windows software to run natively on Linux and OS X. Right now it does support a big number of Windows apps and games, however it's still far from perfect. Some Windows applications are certified to run with Wine (uTorrent comes to mind, they used to provide a Wine-ready Windows executable, but they don't anymore since they wrote a native Linux app). Also, many games run fine on it (I tried GTR2, GT Legends, Civilization 4, rFactor and they all work OK).

Anyway, the thing is that since this game is still in development, maybe you could take a look at the developer pages the Wine project? It has several pointers on how to write a Windows application that will behave well in Wine. Maybe with little effort you can make this game run fine in Windows, Linux and OS X without having to use multi-platform SDKs such as SDL etc.?

Let me know what you think!

[zeussy]

Hello people, long time no see! I've been kind of busy with university, but have been following your updates and I have to say: Automation is looking better every day!

I don't know if you devs are aware of the Wine project (http://www.winehq.org/). It is a software compatibility layer that allows Windows software to run natively on Linux and OS X. Right now it does support a big number of Windows apps and games, however it's still far from perfect. Some Windows applications are certified to run with Wine (uTorrent comes to mind, they used to provide a Wine-ready Windows executable, but they don't anymore since they wrote a native Linux app). Also, many games run fine on it (I tried GTR2, GT Legends, Civilization 4, rFactor and they all work OK).

Anyway, the thing is that since this game is still in development, maybe you could take a look at the developer pages the Wine project? It has several pointers on how to write a Windows application that will behave well in Wine. Maybe with little effort you can make this game run fine in Windows, Linux and OS X without having to use multi-platform SDKs such as SDL etc.?

Let me know what you think!

Making it work in Wine has been ticking away in the back of my mind. Automation uses DX9 and doesn't do anything particularly fancy.

[Vie]

I use Linux when I'm not gaming, so I'd be willing to test it out via wine on a couple of different machines.

[luncheonticket]

Making it work in Wine has been ticking away in the back of my mind. Automation uses DX9 and doesn't do anything particularly fancy.

Then it shouldn't be a big problem; DX9 behaves particularly well in Wine. There's even a good chance of it already running the way it is.

I use Linux when I'm not gaming, so I'd be willing to test it out via wine on a couple of different machines.

What Vie said: I also have a couple of Linux boxes available to test Wine apps/games, and I can get a Mac to try Wine for Mac (and this) out.

[Billybobhumphrey]

So would this "simply" mean Mac users could freely run this game?

[Daffyflyer]

We will attempt to make it work on WINE, but it'll very much be a "If it works, good luck to you, no promises" kind of arrangment

[Disturbed666]

Also run linux here (Ubuntu 10.10) I've had alot of success running games with wine, keep me in mind if you want any wine testing done

[Disturbed666]

just thought I'd post about my attempts to run Automation in wine. The installation of the launcher seems to go fine, but when I run the game I get "starting automation" in the task bar for a few seconds then nothing, anyone made any progress with wine?

[GTMoraes]

Me too, buddy.

Looks like this is related to NET 3.5, which is WINE incompatible. 64 Bit NET 3.5 doesn't finish installing, and 32 bit complains my system is 64 bits (it is).

Aww.. if this game were programmed in Java.. life would be SO much easier (for us, players with nothing to do with programming and bug-fixing, of course lol).. Cross platform with no problems. It would also be a helluva smartphone game.

But focusing on the actual game state: Everything seems to be Linux-Mac-Whatever compatbile. It doesn't work deeply connected with the O.S., as it seems. The only problem seems to be the .NET. .NET 2 seems to work on WINE, but I don't know much about .NET to say "devs, use 2.0 instead of 3.5!".
I'm not sure if the whole game is .NET 3.5 dependant, or just the launcher. One can't launch the game without the launcher-updater, so I can't do much here to make it work.

[Disturbed666]

just installed .net and the launcher is now running, i think may still be having issues tho, i don't seem to be able to run the game

EDIT:
so here are the errors I am having so far:

when I try to update: "The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine"

when I say no to the update the launcher just crashes, so i figured i'd disable my internet and relaunch. I got a little progress, launcher simply said it couldnt connect to the internet and enabled the play demo and play game buttons, clicking them leads to another error:

" Unhandled exception has occurred blah blah blah. Value cannot be null"

and in the details box I get

************** Exception Text **************
System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: ptr
at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer(IntPtr ptr, Type t)
at Automation_Launcher.AutomationLauncherWindow.LoadDLL()
at Automation_Launcher.AutomationLauncherWindow.btPlayDemo_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
Automation Launcher
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Automation/Automation%20Launcher.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D
Assembly Version: 1.0.2902.0
Win32 Version: 9.05.132.0000
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC/Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D/1.0.2902.0__31bf3856ad364e35/Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.dll
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.DirectX
Assembly Version: 1.0.2902.0
Win32 Version: 5.04.00.2904
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC/Microsoft.DirectX/1.0.2902.0__31bf3856ad364e35/Microsoft.DirectX.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------

hope this helps someone

EDIT:

decided to try running inside VMWare with an old copy of windows7 beta (ya i know not the best choice, but its all i could find) got much farther, i now realized that inside wine the game itself wasnt even downloading, it was crashing before that occured. after installing, the game ran everthing was flickery (probably VMWare) but useable, tried to enter sandbox and create a new engine but when the engine designer loaded the vm crashed and threw an OpenGL error (this was VMWares fault). I am now going to try to copy the installed data from the windows vm and run it in linux using wine see where that gets me. i'll be back with updates

[autofrank]

Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[07CobaltGirl]

Automation in Linux (Fedora 16):

Crossover 13 will run Automation. I had it running for about 2 months. Crossover 14 will not. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly changed when I upgraded on my Fedora 16 box. I downgraded to Crossover 13 again, but the change did not correct the issue. It also runs the launcher, and then crashes on the game start.

I did not have any luck running it in vanilla WINE. .NET 3.5 will install in WINE. There were some VB issues in the logs, but I'm not convinced they are the problem. I think it is DirectX 9.0c causing my issues. Some files seem to be missing in the registry, even though they are still present in the directory. WINE behaves just as Crossover 14 did on startup.