If you're like me, you only grudgingly use Windows. Theoretically, we have always had the ability to play SOD on Linux (using Wine), but I've never tried it. Till today.
It does work, amazingly well in fact! So much so that, once I've had a chance to test drive it and work out bugs, I'll put together an installer, as there are a few dependencies.
For folks wanting to play with it, here's the setup that worked for me:
--------------------------------
- Distro: Sabayon 8 (very similar to Gentoo, works off the same ebuilds, but it's binary). Should work with more common variants too
- Wine 1.5.13
- Official SOE "live" installer: http://everquest.station.sony.com (free, but must create/use a station account)
- Current SoD patcher
--------------------------------
1) Install the following packages from your favorite package manager: wine, mono, cabextract
2) Install the winetricks package from your favorite package manager, or get it from http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks. It was in Entropy for Sabayon users.
The remaining steps DO NOT need root privilege.
3) Run "winetricks directx9". It will download some stuff and walk you through a simple installer
4) Run "winetricks corefonts". Must have cabextract installed or it will fail
5) Run "wine (path to EQ_setup.exe downloaded from SOE)". This requires a Station account, and will download 7+GB of data. Grab a beer or 2.
6) When the install finishes, QUIT. DO NOT RUN THE GAME.
7) Run "wine (path to SoD patcher)". Browse to your EQ installation directory, by default, this will be ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest.
8) Let SoD patcher do its thing. Uncheck the box to run in EQW (I haven't tried this, may or may not work).
9) Initially, the game will start in full-screen mode, which ran very poorly for me. Manage to click the buttons somehow, then quit out. Go into your EQ installation folder, find eqclient.exe and change "WindowedMode=TRUE". You can also change Width and Height under VideoMode too if you wish - I found that to be the most reliable means of changing resolution anyway. Turn on any models you want too, though you can always run "wine eqoptions.exe" to alter those.
10) Re-run "wine sodpatcher.exe" (this is how you should always start SoD). For me, after I did this, I got a bunch of "String not Found" errors on the buttons. The solution is to quit, and re-run the patcher, opting to do a full-repatch of all files.
From there, everything worked great for me! As I said, if this is truly workable, I will put together a nice script to step through the process, verify dependencies and automate as much as I can.
Serinar
It does work, amazingly well in fact! So much so that, once I've had a chance to test drive it and work out bugs, I'll put together an installer, as there are a few dependencies.
For folks wanting to play with it, here's the setup that worked for me:
--------------------------------
- Distro: Sabayon 8 (very similar to Gentoo, works off the same ebuilds, but it's binary). Should work with more common variants too
- Wine 1.5.13
- Official SOE "live" installer: http://everquest.station.sony.com (free, but must create/use a station account)
- Current SoD patcher
--------------------------------
1) Install the following packages from your favorite package manager: wine, mono, cabextract
2) Install the winetricks package from your favorite package manager, or get it from http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks. It was in Entropy for Sabayon users.
The remaining steps DO NOT need root privilege.
3) Run "winetricks directx9". It will download some stuff and walk you through a simple installer
4) Run "winetricks corefonts". Must have cabextract installed or it will fail
5) Run "wine (path to EQ_setup.exe downloaded from SOE)". This requires a Station account, and will download 7+GB of data. Grab a beer or 2.
6) When the install finishes, QUIT. DO NOT RUN THE GAME.
7) Run "wine (path to SoD patcher)". Browse to your EQ installation directory, by default, this will be ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest.
8) Let SoD patcher do its thing. Uncheck the box to run in EQW (I haven't tried this, may or may not work).
9) Initially, the game will start in full-screen mode, which ran very poorly for me. Manage to click the buttons somehow, then quit out. Go into your EQ installation folder, find eqclient.exe and change "WindowedMode=TRUE". You can also change Width and Height under VideoMode too if you wish - I found that to be the most reliable means of changing resolution anyway. Turn on any models you want too, though you can always run "wine eqoptions.exe" to alter those.
10) Re-run "wine sodpatcher.exe" (this is how you should always start SoD). For me, after I did this, I got a bunch of "String not Found" errors on the buttons. The solution is to quit, and re-run the patcher, opting to do a full-repatch of all files.
From there, everything worked great for me! As I said, if this is truly workable, I will put together a nice script to step through the process, verify dependencies and automate as much as I can.
Serinar