Reply to Dink Smallwood works well on Linux with wine
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January 15th 2006, 11:13 PM
HoKi
Yesterday I wondered if Dink could save the world on a Linux workstation too. Indeed, he can, but its a little bit of a quest itself as there are no linux binaries yet. I took the windows binaries (1.08 rc4) and started them with wine (a free emulator for M$ windos). The installation program started quickly and finished without any errors. DFArc started well, too, and had no problem launching dink.exe - and then I got a white screen, as dink.exe had some problems with the colour and the mouse, as it seemed. And I had problems, too, because dink.exe had changed the desktop resolution, and i wasn't able to get rid of my white screen. I had to shut down my xserver from a console. I decided to use knoppix, as it runs from CD and makes no problems, if I had to stop the computer rudely.
ok, I'll make it quick: I got it, it's just a question of the exactly fitting flags. You have to start wine with this line:
"DESKTOP" = "640x480"
(or: "DESKTOP" = "800x600")
or: "DESKTOP" = "1024x768")
... size doesn't matter
in the file "config" in your /home/"enter-here-your-username"/.wine directory. And you have to give dink.exe the flag for truecolor and fullscreen (NOT windowed). This results in dink running in a 640*480 window, which is managed by wine. If you want, you can change the resolution of xour desktop. I suggest 800*600, but you can also use 640*480. In this case, you should arrange the dink-window exactly, though you will not be able to see the hole window (because of the window border).
If you have several programs which use wine, you could change your config, if the "DESKTOP" option bothers while using the other programs. Look in the config file which comes with wine, or create one with wineconfig and change the apps-section at the end, so it fits your needings.
Oh, there should also be a way to play dink in really fullscreen, but I didn't try it myself: you can start a second XServer without a Windowmanager and force wine to use this XServer (there's an option in config, too). Obviously there shouldn't be any borders around dink, as there would be no windowmanager to create them. Maybe this would be a fine choice on very old computers: booting in runlevel 2, starting only the xserver, no KDE or Gnome, which slow down old computers a lot. I remember the command should be xstart (or startx ??). Maybe Dink runs even faster than on an original window system, especially if you have only few RAM.
Oh, the speed of "LinDink" seems to be quite good, anyway. I didn't play much, but I noticed no difference in speed, when display resolution is set to 800*600 or 640*480. Maybe in heavy battles, I dunno. The Wave-Sounds worked well, the MIDIs should too, but I can't test this myself as on my Linux System MIDI doesn't work. I had never noticed this before, and it took me quite a time to understand that the problem is nor dink- neither wine-related. MIDI works well when booting Windows 2000, but not on Linux. I tested also with Knoppix 4.0., but it doesn't work there too. Doesn't bother me very much, I don't need MIDI. By the way, will there sometime be a support for ogg vorbis or mp3 music?
These was the system I tested on:
PentiumII 450 MHz, Debian GNU/Linux Sarge 3.1 (last System-Update in early 2005), wine 20040716, kde 3.2, kernel 2.6.
I tested also with the actual Version 4.0 (released end of 2005) of Knoppix. Works fine, too. Wine was even better, as I was able to xkill it when using wrong flags for dink.
If there is need for it, I could write a tutorial for playing Dink on linux. I like this old-fashioned, outdated Dink Smallwood very much. I think it has a certain charme, it's quite funny, and there exist really outstanding DMODs, which are even better than the original game. I'd like to contribute a little bit.
ok, I'll make it quick: I got it, it's just a question of the exactly fitting flags. You have to start wine with this line:
"DESKTOP" = "640x480"
(or: "DESKTOP" = "800x600")
or: "DESKTOP" = "1024x768")
... size doesn't matter
in the file "config" in your /home/"enter-here-your-username"/.wine directory. And you have to give dink.exe the flag for truecolor and fullscreen (NOT windowed). This results in dink running in a 640*480 window, which is managed by wine. If you want, you can change the resolution of xour desktop. I suggest 800*600, but you can also use 640*480. In this case, you should arrange the dink-window exactly, though you will not be able to see the hole window (because of the window border).
If you have several programs which use wine, you could change your config, if the "DESKTOP" option bothers while using the other programs. Look in the config file which comes with wine, or create one with wineconfig and change the apps-section at the end, so it fits your needings.
Oh, there should also be a way to play dink in really fullscreen, but I didn't try it myself: you can start a second XServer without a Windowmanager and force wine to use this XServer (there's an option in config, too). Obviously there shouldn't be any borders around dink, as there would be no windowmanager to create them. Maybe this would be a fine choice on very old computers: booting in runlevel 2, starting only the xserver, no KDE or Gnome, which slow down old computers a lot. I remember the command should be xstart (or startx ??). Maybe Dink runs even faster than on an original window system, especially if you have only few RAM.
Oh, the speed of "LinDink" seems to be quite good, anyway. I didn't play much, but I noticed no difference in speed, when display resolution is set to 800*600 or 640*480. Maybe in heavy battles, I dunno. The Wave-Sounds worked well, the MIDIs should too, but I can't test this myself as on my Linux System MIDI doesn't work. I had never noticed this before, and it took me quite a time to understand that the problem is nor dink- neither wine-related. MIDI works well when booting Windows 2000, but not on Linux. I tested also with Knoppix 4.0., but it doesn't work there too. Doesn't bother me very much, I don't need MIDI. By the way, will there sometime be a support for ogg vorbis or mp3 music?
These was the system I tested on:
PentiumII 450 MHz, Debian GNU/Linux Sarge 3.1 (last System-Update in early 2005), wine 20040716, kde 3.2, kernel 2.6.
I tested also with the actual Version 4.0 (released end of 2005) of Knoppix. Works fine, too. Wine was even better, as I was able to xkill it when using wrong flags for dink.
If there is need for it, I could write a tutorial for playing Dink on linux. I like this old-fashioned, outdated Dink Smallwood very much. I think it has a certain charme, it's quite funny, and there exist really outstanding DMODs, which are even better than the original game. I'd like to contribute a little bit.
