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Carma on Linux

Of course you can have Carmageddon when running Linux. sunglasses

These are my specs on wich this tutorial is based:
Linux SuSE 10.2
Custom compiled kernel
KDE 3.5.5 (update repository)
X11 7.2 (update repository)
Wine (update repository)
Zeckensack's GlideWrapper (0.84)
AMD 2200 XP+
512 Mb DDR-SDram
Carmageddon on FAT32 partition
GeForce 3 Ti 200
Sidewinder gamepad
Carmageddon 2 (heavily customized over the years :-) )

The (dutch) Carmageddon 2 starter in KDE.

To get Carma 2 running using Wine is not too complicated.
You need the NVIDIA-drivers installed first and your soundcard and gamepad working in KDE.

With the version installed from the SuSE-CD you can run Carma2 in hardware(Direct3d) mode.
But of course you want to use Zeckensack's GlideWrapper.
The version of Wine on the CD is rather old and not working with the Glidewrapper. So, uninstall this one and get yourself a newer version from winehq.org.
You can install this RPM inside Yast from Konqueror filemanager.
Then install the GlideWrapper into your Wine-installation.
Only annoying thing in my situation is that automatic gamepad detection isn't working so i have to enable it everytime i start the game.

Important: Carmageddon need to be installed on a FAT32-partition since Linux doesn't have write-support for NTFS. You can run Carma from a NTFS-partition, but you can't edit it and your games will not be saved.

Cared running in KDE.

Cared runs on Linux without the help of Wine, since it's a Java program. Of course you need the Java JRE installed first. But you also need the Java3d extensions added to your Java JRE.
Run the downloaded bin-file in the directory where your JRE lives, wich will simple add some files to this directory.

Then start Cared from the directory where it's installed with 'java -classpath cared.jar CarEd'
Unlike in Windows, you don't need to specify the path to the JRE or use an old version of Java3d.

Carmageddon 2 seems not to run when you have XGL/Compiz because it needs the xvidmode extension wich isn't working in XGL. Unhappy
With normal X-server it runs fine on SuSE 10.2

january 11, 2006
i don't use Compiz anymore, because i 'm using Beryl, now, wich is another variant of Compiz.
If you have an Nvidia card don't bother using XGL. Beryl works without it (if you have installed the drivers, of course)
Great thing about it is that you can easily switch off Beryl if you want to play Carma2 as long as the combination doesn't work.

Some issue i have with Wine and Carmageddon: Gamepad is constantly full throttle and left steering. This is because the game seems to detect two gamepads and using the one wich isn't working.
This can be solved to restart with Windows, run the game and set your gamepad preferences. Then make the file joystick.txt (wich should exist then) be read-only. Making the file read-only on Linux isn't working (this will only make it read-only for the moment since FAT32 doesn't support 0600 style attributes Wink )

August 15, 2010
Well, recently i started playing with Carmageddon again and things have changed a bit.
I'm trying to make it work on my laptop with OpenSuSE 11.3 and ATI graphics and on my PC with Gentoo Linux and NVIDIA graphics.
Everything works excellent, using the Glidewrapper. Wine is configured to use Alsa or Pulseaudio. It complaints about a missing mixer device though. Wine is also configured to use a virtual desktop. Thus Carmageddon is running in a window so it won't be stretched on a widescreen monitor. I found that setting the desktop size to 1280x960 finally made the hi res option work for Carmageddon. I have the game 'installed' (copied the folder) to my home folder, so it's running from an ext3 filesystem. In the Glidewrapper config I have checked 'try hires' and frequency to 'don't care'.
I'm using xvidcap to make video's of the game (including sound). For OpenSuSE this program is available from the Packman repository, for Gentoo I had to download and compile it.

More coming soon...