A big bunch of broken installers

[Letiliel]

Broken:

• Chasm (demo) - Here, the most annoying is that chmodx doesn't work ¿ Other than this, the linux launcher requires mono. And xboxdrv really tries to exist even if not installed, with lots of error messages. All of this just for a demo, not sure it's worth spending time on it right now.
• Daggerfall - Installation not happening, needs [wineexec & dosexec] Add better management of their executable #99 fixed. Needs instructions on dos install process.
• Doom 3
• Marathon 1, 2 & 3 - Missing libpng15.so.15
• Minetest - Misses libIrrlicht.so.1
• OpenRA - "mscorlib.dll was not found"
• Serious Sam - The installer requires "data" on the CD, well I DLed a supposedly clean CD image, there is no "data" folder in it. Right, so I changed for a "requires" that I actually have on the disc, loaded it with CDEmu, but hitting the big OK button in the installer does nothing. No debug info.
• Shadow Warrior Classic - Launches the Dosbox window, doesn't seem to use the .conf files.
• Urban Terror - Broken DL link.

Needs work:

• Alien Arena - "The file crx could not be found". You picked the wrong archive ? It downloads the source code.
• Civilization - Installer very basic expecting us to know where to get the archive from and how to crawl our way through DOS to setup/launch the game.
• Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max - Asking for a zip is quite shady and not working when you have the game in CD format, it should rather ask for a folder containing the files needed by ScummVM. [Changed it to ask for the three required files separately]
• Jedi Outcast - Provides no clue about were to find the xlava stuff

[strycore]

That's some extensive testing you did there :D
Will take some time to review these installers one by one (the chasm one should be considered done).

[Letiliel]

(the chasm one should be considered done)

Not yet-i-yet ! ^^ "Cannot run program xboxdrv: No such file or directory"

[strycore]

Ok, that another issue: chack that xboxdrv is installed before launching it

[Letiliel]

Actually it doesn't work after installing xboxdrv either : System.DllNotFoundException: libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0

[strycore]

Ok, that's another issue: Make a Lutris runtime folder, like Steam and Desura has, with a bunch of 32 and 64 libs.

[Letiliel]

I'm going through this list again, trying to fix what I can. You're ok if I unpublish those who still don't work?

[strycore]

yep, go on

[Letiliel]

Ok, I'm done checking that list again, most of them are still broken. You should notably have an eye to Quake, Open Arena and Mania Drive, same issue for all, described next to them in the list.

[strycore]

ok, I'll have a look on them.
how did you handle the missing .so in Marathon or Minetest? I usually put the libs in http://lutris.net/files/lib32/ but you don't have access to that.

For Alien Arena, I distribute the source because it's the only option I found. I should check how Desura handles this game because this games forces you to do a "sudo make install" and to never move your files after that (which is often considered as a bad practice).

[Letiliel]

I didn't try to handle the missing libs, I was waiting for you to bundle them with Lutris. :D

[Letiliel]

Commit 5bf7fce actually fixes this error with Shadow Warrior Classic and other games that use Windows Steam data :

"Steam will now install game xxxx" but Steam doesn't launch :
wine: cannot find '"/home/ovo/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/Steam.exe"'

Shadow Warrior now installs, but still doesn't work. Launches a basic dosbox window, doesn't seem to use the .conf file.

[Letiliel]

Added Daggerfall and Civilization

[strycore]

I installed civ tuesday, when demoing lutris to a friend. Took the first abandonwasre archived I found, installed it and worked out of the box.

[Letiliel]

Ok, civ is launching now with fix 4170f4b. So it's not technically broken anymore but it's not in a state to be published. I will probably sound patronizing – sorry about that – but you're expecting a lot too much from the random user (and relying on unpredictable things like hoping that every archive of Civ that one can find or make will have the right structure and file names). Who are we making Lutris for ? Tech-savvy people looking to ease up management of their games a little ? Or anyone ?

Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know a lot about computers, DOS or anything and wants to try Civ just to see what the historical version looks like because one's been playing Civ5 on Steam.
One launches the installer and after accepting the default install folder, one gets asked "Please select civ-archive":
_ Huh... yeah? What's that? Where am I supposed to get that thing?
=> aborts installation because no idea at all.

Now what if one knows about abandonware enough and was able to find a correct archive. one installs the game OK and launches it and now gets asked to select graphics mode. VGA, MCGA, EGA or Tandy 1000?
_ Alriiiight ! Well, I think VGA rings a little bell and it's the first, let's go with that one.
Ok, now the sound mode... oops, a bit harder (the right solution is 4):
_ Jesus, what do I know? Ok I want sounds so not 1), let's try 2) IBM.
=> Plays a bit with shitty sound thinking it's normal.
=> Quits the game, falls on the DOS command line and doesn't know how to close the thing. No mouse, alt-tab not working, even alt-F4 doesn't work. Reset PC ?

If you don't have time to make a more advanced script that takes care of the configuration, ok, but the minimum is to provide written instructions.

[strycore]

Sure, the installer could be better. It's always better to add a bit of explaination after N/A files to point the user to the correct file (Maybe we could even add a link to Abandonia or a similar site).
But at one point, there's so much we can do. We can't host the game so we can only hope that the user will point to a sane install of the game.
We already handle 2 cases: all game files at the root of the archive and game files in a single folder.

We could a quick check post-install to see if a particular file is were it's supposed to be, but that's as far as we can go.
Now, DOSBox games are very customizable and I'm sure we could manage to ship a config for civ that would run the game out of the box, like Steam or GOG does. Meanwhile, a "raw" installer seems legit. If you're worried about DOS being too complicated, then just try to run a few 8bit computer games (Atari 800, C64, Amstrad and such). More often than not, you have to enter cryptic BASIC command to even start loading the game. Then the load time takes ages and it asks you to do weird things to your cassette player. Sure there are "images" that will just load the game to RAM, but that's when you're lucky.
All I'm saying is that if you want ot run games that are more than 20 years old, at some point you're going to need to know what's going on and how to deal with it.

About the "quitting the game" issue. This won't happen for quite some time but I'd like to have a common ground for all runners: SDL2 fullscreen. F12 or XBox middle button brings a config menu. Alt-Enter or F11 toggles fullscreen and Alt+F4 quits.
This requires heavy patching of most runners and at some point I'd like to work with the upstream whenever that's possible.

Anyway, that's just a long way of saying that the Civ installer works and I won't delay the release of 0.3.5 because it could be better (we should add a feature to add a "Needs work" on specific installer, and installer notes, we still need to have that)

[Letiliel]

Yes, it's not blocking 0.3.5.

But trust me on that: if you want Lutris to be a real success, we need to raise the bar on published games and installers. Or if you want to allow bare bones installers, there needs to be a rating showing the state of the installer so that people know what they are getting into.

[strycore]

I agree. Ideally, all DOS game should be launched by a conf file and not directly by the exe.
Regarding the installer ratings, I'm thinking of replacing "published" field by a status field with different values:

• WIP: not working
• minimal: game runs by requires user actions to be playable
• ok: game runs out the box with optimal gaming experience

[Letiliel]

It sounds good. That plus a "needs work" flag for scripters indeed.

[strycore]

minimal is need works

[Letiliel]

Not exactly, minimal will probably be the best we can do for some installers. But we can certainly wait to see how often it happens.

[Letiliel]

I fixed Quake. Though it doesn't look like it's a freeware... :
It's available on Steam for $10 (sorry, $9.99...)

[strycore]

Yes, Quake is pretty much the first game i have written an installer for and the full game somehow was uploaded on my server.
I'll replace the full game data with the shareware version and also make a 2nd installer based on the steam game.

[strycore]

What did you mean by "i fixed quake"? this installer was full of deprecated stuff

[Letiliel]

I mean that after removing an obsolete move task, it installed and launched ok.

[strycore]

Right, the extract commands had an invalid argument (destination instead of dst) and an invalid destinatation (cache instead of $CACHE) but the extract function will extract to GAMEDIR if no dst is passed, making it do the right thing

[strycore]

Putting Serious sam in Trello so we can close this issue