11-26-2008, 01:11 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Austin, TX
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GCA In Linux
I recently had a really hard time tracking down the steps required to get GCA working in Wine on Linux, so I thought I'd document what I found a the top of a thread and make it easier to find.
Know that I'm running Ubuntu's Hardy Heron distribution and using Wine to emulate Windows XP. I have XP dual booted on the same machine, as well. In order for this to be legally solid, you should probably have the same dual-boot setup. 1. On your Windows machine, go to C:\\Windows\System32\ and copy riched20.dll and oleaut32.dll. This will be called something like 123.4 GB Volume in Ubuntu and you can navigate from there. 2. On your Linux box, go to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ and rename riched20.dll and oleaut32.dll to whatever you want, then paste in the versions you grabbed from your Windows partition. Note that .wine indicates a hidden directory, so you'll have to reveal those. 3. Run Wine's config app and add gca4.exe to the Application Settings. Select it, go to the Libraries tab and tell it to run those two DLLs are "native then built-in". While you're there, make sure Wine is set to emulate the same version of Windows as is installed on your Windows partition. That should do it. Most helpful single post I found (though I read a lot and many were helpful) was this one. I hope (re)posting this helps save someone else the pain of wading through page after page of discussions to find this information spread about. Legality note: You should only do this if you have a valid Windows license and are copying it from that install. If the install is on a different machine, that's probably bad mojo. If you copy these and then uninstall so the license is not in use anywhere, I couldn't speculate. Best bet is to have both installed on the same machine. 117
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My roleplaying blog: Maximizing Rockmost Quirk: Describes real people in GURPS character creation terms. [-1] Azure, two bars ermine. Last edited by OneSeventeen; 11-26-2008 at 03:48 PM. Reason: Added legality thoughts that hadn't occured to me until Eric pointed them out. |
11-26-2008, 01:29 PM | #2 |
GCA Prime
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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Re: GCA In Linux
Thanks! I've thrown a quick link to this post on the GCA Wiki, and hopefully we'll get that fleshed out a bit, so maybe it'll be less troublesome for others to find this info in the future.
Armin
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Armin D. Sykes | Visit my GCA5 blog for updates and previews. | Get GURPS Character Assistant 5 now at Warehouse 23. |
11-26-2008, 02:40 PM | #3 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
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Re: GCA In Linux
Quote:
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Eric B. Smith GURPS Data File Coordinator GURPSLand I shall pull the pin from this healing grenade and... Kaboom-baya. Last edited by ericbsmith; 11-29-2008 at 06:27 AM. |
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11-26-2008, 04:09 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: GCA In Linux
I have been able to get GCA working when just installing the download from the e23 servers but once I run the two latest updates it no longer works loading all the books and starting up only to give an error window
GCA modForms:BuildSmardBar: Error 30002: Picture is invalid |
11-26-2008, 09:18 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: GCA In Linux
Note I got a marked improvement in performance once I put the GCA in wineconfig>Graphics in its own emulated desktop and had its windows not be managed by the window manager.
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11-26-2008, 09:56 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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Re: GCA In Linux
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11-28-2008, 07:55 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: GCA In Linux
I do have it working now. However it still is very slow, much slower than I'd expect such a program to be and it has a tendency to hang up.
I really wish SJgames would open source the engine and sell the datasets as well as provide development support to the oss engine. |
11-28-2008, 11:49 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Krotz Springs, LA US
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Re: GCA In Linux
On GCA slowness in Wine:
I don't have time to search the forums now, but I recall several posts about how to make GCA much faster in Wine, not as fast as native, but much faster than the default Wine setup. I think it had to do with the OS emulation setting or something. Searching the other GCA+Linux threads might help you out. On SJG open-sourcing GCA:
I apologize if that came off overly rant'ish and/or harsh, that wasn't my intention as I started, but I think it got away from me. I just tire of the spiral of GCA bashing that seems to flow without thought through here sometimes. Again, my apologies if I've come across poorly.
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Thomas M. EDWARDS <tmedwards@motoslave.net> GCA4 resources: GCA Repository, Phoenix (r66), GMCS (2.17), Bookish (r12) |
11-29-2008, 02:43 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: GCA In Linux
no tm you were not harsh. I infact didn't know that about the GCA. I assumed that it was SJGames proprietary and a more recent codebase at that.
Still I think it might be better to start working on doing/supporting/funding an OSS version, perhaps one where companies can sell datasets for a small fee. To me it seems like a logical next step in pdf online publishing. Adding software tools to enhance gameplay. Since so many games are similar in their character generation routines it figures that a decent bit of software could be devised and a standard be made for rpg mechanics material. |
11-29-2008, 03:01 AM | #10 | |
Guest
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Re: GCA In Linux
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If you thought GCA was slow, you ain't seen nothing! Takes almost 5 minutes just to open my D&D characters, and about 15 seconds to respond when I change tabs. This is on a 3.2 GHz P4 laptop with 1 GB RAM.... And believe me, it's not a simple task to add support for a completely different system (e.g., GURPS)! There's a huge amount of code that would need to be modified. Apologies for getting off-topic. |
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