Standoff Works Nicely on Linux

H

hellcatv

Swabbie
Banned
I have hacked together a working solution to run 3d accelerated Standoff and Secret Ops using only free and redistributable software, specifically under Linux through a hacked version of WINE (http://www.winehq.org ) and no microsoft system in reach.
This also means that a 3d accelerated Macintosh version of wing commander prophecy will be forthcoming as soon as Apple releases their x86 systems next year.

Linux users may receive step-by-step instructions to run standoff here http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users/hellcatv/Standoff-Linux-HOWTO

This has improved my standoff experience an order of magnitude (I was really getting sick and tired of the 5-8 minute crashes on Windows 2000, and the only WinXP license I have activated is for my linux-only computer! I hate microsoft! I paid for one XP and it's tied to a computer that isn't running XP)

Anyhow, I've played through the first mission of Standoff Ep2 and all the standoff ep1 missions under linux and have had 0 crashes (fewer, even than WindowXP system I played on at a friend's house, due to Wine's excellent windows 98 compatability) The only glitches I've encountered are as follows:
ingame 3d cutscenes (not inflight) are sometimes drawn backwards.
if you have not locked a target, only ships in front of you appear on radar. This is remedied by 'L', but I rather like it (To quote BillyG: it's a feature, not a bug)

I had to significantly hack on the Direct3d over OpenGL implementation in WINE... the hack isn't perfect as demonstrated by the inability to render ingame cutscenes properly... I wouldn't mind talking to someone who has had more experience in the Vision engine 3d internals to work out the kinks in the inengine cutscene beauty.
 
Can Fix Windows 2000 Compatability Issues

After a night's thought, this technique of using wine could fix Windows 2000 stability issues (though unfortunately it won't improve the framerate).

Since there's a windows version of wine (basically a open source Win9x compat layer for any OS on x86), it would be nearly certain that where Standoff would crash under vanilla win2k it would work without crashes using wine under win2k.

If you Standoff folks have a developer who wants to see stable support under Win2k (i.e. not crashing every 5-8 min) I'd be glad to lend my knowledge about wine and my hacks to directDraw to that person so we can see Standoff Episode 3 working as nicely Win2k as on Linux.
 
Well, I don't think we have anyone on the team using Linux (though I could be wrong), but it's good to hear that the game works on it. And definitely, a complete Windows 2000 solution would be good.

One thing I'm curious about - what do you mean when you say the in-game cutscenes are drawn backwards? Do you mean that they are mirrored on the screen?
 
Backwards as in: without proper Z_buffer support.

Direct3D has all sorts of strange z-buffer conventions... I haven't quite found the right values, but it manages to work in flight--so I called it an evening.

basically direct3d tries to set the zbuffer range from 0 to FLT_MAX.... and OpenGL rejects that with an invalid value--so I attempted to clamp the z-values into a range and selected that range instead--unfortunately things like the background seem to be drawn very close---so I had to specifically disable the zbuffer for textures like the background
I suspect the background is potentially a different texture in inengine cutscenes and hence my hack/solution isn't working
 
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