New winex2.2 - Basic EQ support

[Exo]

xfesty,
Could you post some more details about your configuration?

Currently it looks like it will work for me but is being horribly slow. It takes about 20 minutes to load the character select screen and I probably haven't given it enough time to get past that. My machine is an 800 Mhz with 256 Ram so it's not the top of the line but isn't total crap either.

[Cryonic]

Saw the release notes for Transgamings Wine:

http://downloads.transgaming.com/fil...leasenotes.txt

Support for EQ is only in the preliminary stage.

[Exo]

If you are running RedHat take note that the kernel that ships with 8.0 and 7.3 blows for WinEX ... grab a kernel from www.kernel.org to fix this.

[landaile]

I dont use RedHat so Im not sure what version they use. Anyone know what it is? I have a gentoo system and am using the gentoo kernel which I think is 2.4.19 with a bunch of added stuffs. Anyone used WineX with gentoo and had a good experience? My only experience with it was less then wonderful but it was also on crappy hardware.

[Cryonic]

EQ needs good hardware to run in Windows. To run it in an "emulator" would require better hardware since you now have the load of the Windows libraries and EQ on top of X (which is also a memory resource hog) and the linux drivers for the hardware and interaction.

[fryfrog]

my windows box that i tossed an extra drive and gentoo onto is pretty beefy for eq. its not the best, but it should work.

amd 1700+ (running at 1ghz due to old mb), 512mb pc133, gf4 ti 4200 on a 10gb 7200rpm drive.

i'm also using the gentoo-sources version of the kernel, and it isn't working for me. i really don't know what to try next, its probably the first real linux problem that i haven't been able to figure out. the patcher tries to run, but just brings up the initial "connecting to server" thing and eventually dies with "couldn't reach server". it seems like it MAY just be networking or something... but i dunno.

[Mr. Suspicious]

To run it in an "emulator" would require better hardware since you now have the load of the Windows libraries and EQ on top of X (which is also a memory resource hog) and the linux drivers for the hardware and interaction.

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Overall tho, given that:

a) most Everquest addicts only eat/sleep/shower after a Windows BSOD ends their 15 hour EQ session;
b) Linux can run for months or even years without a reboot;

I conclude that this is a bad idea.

[fryfrog]

WOO WOO, it is (almost!) working i think!

today, i unmerged winex, wine and winex-cvs. i then searched for all wine/winex/transgaming stuff and NUKED it. i THEN edited /usr/portage/profile/package.mask and #commented out the TWO winex lines (one for winex-cvs and one for winex-20021008 (i think, it was the latest).

after compiling, i was able to run the patcher in a vnc session, and went all the way through selecting options for display. course, its a patch day and i know it won't work in vnc so i didn't try.

i THINK my WHOLE problem was that i copied over my c:\winnt dir from my win2k install. the winex and i think winex-cvs COMES with a windows and programfiles drive/dir which i think works better than the dlls i tried to use in my winnt dir.

anyway, can't wait to go home and ACTUALLY try it ;)

[StarTux]

Originally posted by Exo
xfesty,
Could you post some more details about your configuration?

Currently it looks like it will work for me but is being horribly slow. It takes about 20 minutes to load the character select screen and I probably haven't given it enough time to get past that. My machine is an 800 Mhz with 256 Ram so it's not the top of the line but isn't total crap either.

Use the Source and a little extra patch, in this case sleep.diff, get it here:

http://www.ping.uio.no/~ovehk/sleep.diff

Instructions here, so you don't think I'm too smart:

http://www.transgaming.com/postlist.php?forum=14

Hope that helps,

StarTux

[vern]

Downloaded the CVS and the sleep.diff patch as Startux says and EQ works for me. Performance is pretty good (Not much different from windows), but it sucks a lot of memory @~1GB.

I found that things wouldn't work right if I just mounted my FAT32 partition and tried to run from there. So, I installed from the original EQ cd, and then copied my EQ dir from windows into the Everquest directory on the 'Fake Windows' C drive. It patched and fired right up.

I had the same problem as xfesty though, SEQ doesn't seem to see the packets. I would think they would look the same, but maybe SEQ is looking for some Windows quirk that doesn't happen under Linux? Any thoughts? This is on a separate machine that is able to detect the packets when the EQ machine is booted to 2K.

FYI, the EQ machine is a Tbird @ 1.53 Ghz, with 512MB ram and a GF4-4200

SEQ is a Inspiron 8100 w/ a P3 1ghz and on-board LAN

Thanks.

[hellraiser]

I was also trying on Gentoo 1.4 RC1

After emerge app-emulation/winex-cvs/winex-cvs-2.2.ebuild,
the patcher run just fine, although it hang at the end of patching, so I had to run eqgame.exe with the patchme option.

I disabled all the Luclin Character models, switched X11/EQ to 16 bit and it was running without any problems

Of course, I only tried on the test server. I think I will be emailing Verant to ask if the appreciate further testing, and also are interested in feedback.

I'll do more tests this weekend, but from what I have seen, I really runs very well

My System:

P4 1.8 GHZ
768 MB Ram
2G Swap
Geforce 2 GTS / 64MB (the Asus version)
X11 with NVidia glx drivers

[flipper]

Here's a data point for those of you with low-end graphics cards.

Athlon XP1800+
512MB PC2100
Gentoo Linux 1.4_rc1 (/w Alsa sound, KDE, KDE sound server disabled)
Geforce256 (yep, the first gen geforce)

I downloaded the CVS release (the 2-0 branch) myself using the cvs command (not emerge). Before compiling it, I modified the ./tools/Makefile to insert the following optimization parameters:
-march=athlon-xp -m3dnow -mmmx -fomit-frame-pointer -O3 -pipe -ffast-math -fthread-jumps -funroll-loops -falign-loops=2

Then I compiled using the provided compiler script:
./tools/winexinstall (this must be run from the top level cvs directory)

I'm getting very playable frame rates (actually silky smooth) at 800x600. At 1024x768 it is playable but there is some screen lag. Sound has been nearly flawless for me -- better than my Windows box does with sound. Everything was fast (loading, zoning, playing, patching).

[StarTux]

Now we've got SEQ up running again I found something a bit of an irony...SEQ does not seem to be able to decrypt my winex version of EQ .

Anyway, latest news is that EQ under Winex will be even better when the new Winex comes out, fixed fonts and they added some speed increases.

StarTux

[jonnyboy]

I noticed also that seq doesnt seem to detect clients from winex. upon investigating the issue, I discovered that packets from a winex machine originate from a high port number (32850, 32851), whereas packets from a windows machine are low (1143, 1139). Being not so well versed in C, i poked into the source but couldnt find anything, my guess is the packet capture stuff in seq uses a data structure that cannot hold port numbers greater than 32767? maybe its signed when it shouldnt be? i couldnt find anything in it. Well if anyone out there knows how there are 2 ways to do this, make winex start sending at lower port numbers, or let seq work with the large port numbers.

[myleftfoot]

Everquest wants to, by default, use port numbers below 1024 for most communication. You cannot bind to ports below 1024 or create raw socket connections unless you run an application as root. The workaround for this, I think, is to either run Everquest as root (ugh!) or possibly create a setuid wrapper that runs EQ and intercepts raw socket / <1024 port connections.

Going to be testing this theory out in a little while when I get some time, just have to figure out what's EQ's port addressing scheme so I don't gunk it up.