Author Topic: [solved] Running on Linux with CD installer?  (Read 700 times)

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[solved] Running on Linux with CD installer?
I still have my Freespace2 CDs from when I bought the game at retail several years ago. Today I randomly thought about it, and did a quick Google search, which brought me here,

It looks like the installer for fs2_open uses the installer from GOG, but is there a way to use the installer from the actual CD (preferably without installing Wine)?

(Figuring out how to actually use a CD in 2021 is the next task, but I think I have a USB CD drive around here somewhere...)
« Last Edit: November 30, 2021, 04:21:18 pm by noobspace »

 

Offline jg18

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Re: Running on Linux with CD installer?
Rather than trying to get the installer working, I think you're better off manually copying the game files into a folder on your hard drive.

The only must-have game data files:
Code: [Select]
Root_fs2.vp
smarty_fs2.vp
sparky_fs2.vp
sparky_hi_fs2.vp
stu_fs2.vp
tango1_fs2.vp
tango2_fs2.vp
tango3_fs2.vp
warble_fs2.vp

I'd copy them to a folder (maybe ~/.fs2_open ?) and point Knossos to that folder.

I'm not sure which file is on which CD, and I think a couple files have (hopefully identical?) copies on multiple CDs, who knows why.

The MediaVPs mod (which adds high-quality graphics) includes high-res cutscenes IIRC, so you don't need the movie files from the retail CDs.

Maybe also useful are the player HUD color pre-sets. They're called hud_1.hcf, hud_2.hcf, and hud_3.hcf. No idea which CD they're on. Create a data folder in your new local folder, then a players subfolder within that, then put those files there.

Since you're on Linux, I assume you have a reasonable amount of computer savvy.

If you want to build the latest Knossos, your best bet is asking for help on the HLP Discord. Here's the GitHub repo (yes, it's "old knossos") with slightly outdated build instructions.

Hope that helps.

 

Offline taylor

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Re: Running on Linux with CD installer?
Like jg18 said, just install manually. There really isn't a way to install off of the CDs without using wine as far as I'm aware.

CDs 2 & 3 contains some of the VP archives (*.vp) and movies (*.MVE) which you can directly copy where you want them. There should be some HD versions of the movies available for download so you can skip the CD versions if you want. Keep them only for nostalgia or if you want to also try the icculus.org port.

The main VP files that you need are in the installer though. Fortunately you can use the "unshield" command line utility to extract those files from "data1.cab" on the first CD. It's been a long time since I needed to install off of the CD so I don't remember the exact procedure, but if you have trouble let me know and I'll come up with some instructions. It's really not that tough though.

Once you've got the needed files I suggest backing them up so that you've got them ready for next time. The VP archives compress fairly well too using 7zip or even just gzip.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2021, 11:58:16 pm by taylor »

 
Re: Running on Linux with CD installer?
Thanks for the help! I'll give that a shot!

  
Re: Running on Linux with CD installer?
Sorry to wait so long for an update, but it took me ages to find a system with a CD drive.

Basically, I followed the advice from jg18 and it worked!

I used the unshield command-line utility to extract the data1.cab file from CD1. unshield didn't see the other two .cab files as valid archives, but it seems as though the .cab on CD1 was all I needed. I copied all the .vp files (as you suggested, there were some duplicates) to my folder and gave that folder to knossos as the source for my commercial FS2 installation.

After letting Knossos do its thing, I copied the hud files to the data/players folder (which was already created by knossos) and copied all the .mve files to the Movies folder (just in case I wanted them for something).

Thank you so much for your help!