Update: Mouse Warp Patch Problem

I was hoping to slip in my ported mouse patch but it looks like 1.4 source has changed quite a few things in the mouse implementation.  I got this error while compiling.


mouse.c: In function ‘dinput_mouse_hook’:
mouse.c:359: error: ‘SysMouseImpl’ has no member named ‘mapped_center’
mouse.c:359: error: ‘SysMouseImpl’ has no member named ‘mapped_center’

Looks like I will need to read the code to reintroduce the hack.

Wine 1.4 Backport notes

Have a new spanking build of Wine on Karmic using 1.4 from the Launchpad PPA.  Here's a few notes on what I noticed here.

• I had to repackage wine1.3_1.4.orig.tar.gz to rename the folder to wine1.3-1.4
• ttf-symbol-replacement-wine1.3 is back in this build.
• changed the dependency debhelper >=5
• removed gcc-4.4-multilib
• removed oss4-dev
• remove in /debian/rules CC="gcc-4.4" line 51

Rebuilt it and there were no build problems.  I installed it and it looked like it didn't find anything wrong.  winecfg and wineboot works fine.

Winetricks was backported from precise pangolin.  Very easy to update for Karmic.  Just update the debhelper >= 5 and change the compat file to 5.

A few Linux stuff...

While doing some debugging on some production server, I had a bad bout with daemontools where my script was just failing without errors output.  I spent quite some time reading about this figuring out what went wrong and it just wasn't working out.  I could execute the service run manually but I couldn't via svc -u.  At the end of it, I decided to kill svscanboot and the svscan processes to re-execute the daemontools startup script.  My services ran just fine after.  Phew!  I think what caused it was the killing of readproctitle which is used by daemontools to tell us what happened (by using ps).

As an additional point, I managed to get multilog working by creating this /service/runme/log/run script.  The script basically executes: exec setuidgid user multilog t /location/to/the/log/

Next is fiddling with fonts.  To install fonts, create the .fonts folder and run sudo fc-cache -f (or sudo fc-cache -fv for verbose flag).

Lastly, it seems that I may have to backport wine-1.4.  wine-1.3.33 has served me well, but it is also now pretty old.  Also with this is the latest winetricks backport.

Yes!!! Witcher 2 Keys!

After staring through days of the download of Witcher 2 Steam, hoping to fire it up and get a CD key, I was getting desperate that I wouldn't be able to avail of the GOG.com Witcher 2 backup promo.  After going through CD Projekt RED's website for a replacement key, I was told to wait for 72 hours.

I'm always skeptical about these things, but apparently after just 48 hours, they've responded with my new key.  Thank you very much CD Projekt RED and thank you GOG.com! You guys rock!

MMA Journalism Thoughts

Yesterday, I listened to Ariel's MMA debate with Pat Miletich and they seemed to be locked into this talk on Chael Sonnen's latest samples of crazy talk.  I don't think Pat Miletich made a compelling case against Ariel who really seemed flustered by the entire thing.  It did made me dig up Mauro Ranallo's interview with Kenny Rice back on April 4. 

I really have to say that I agree with Kenny here.  Journalists ought to be trying to get the truth out there and you can't just let crazy stuff fly out like that unchallenged.  Ariel Helwani is a great journalist and interviewer.  You just have to see the way he cracked Nick Diaz's barriers to really appreciate what the guy can do.  Getting anything out of Nick Diaz that feels genuine, raw and special is always interesting.  Sad to say, I get the total 180 impression when he does interviews with the likes of Chael.

Chael Sonnen talks crazy stuff.  He does it all the time, and I think people know it.  His style attracts in the same way media punditry does in the world of cable news.  It is sad that someone of Ariel's expertise would stoop so low as to give Chael a forum to spew nonsense and never really choose to hold that guy accountable for what he says.  It really looks like he's out to get more page hits on his site because everyone knows sound bites sell.  Everyone knows that conflict sells.  It's why CNN and other cable news spend a lot of money on graphics and showmanship.  

To me, it's not news.  It's BS.  If Ariel wants this kind of interview with Chael, he should put up a late night talk show where Chael can do whatever he wants and Ariel can laugh while the money rolls in.

Patching Steam's Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection

I managed to get the game patched before but that was after numerous tries to get the auto-updater to work.  I'm posting this as an archive so I don't lose this information.  

64-bit

"C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive\Updates\57520fa2\Content\setup.exe" /f "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\mortal kombat arcade kollection"

32-bit

"C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft \XLive\Updates\57520fa2\Content\setup.exe" /f "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\mortal kombat arcade kollection"

This is a very helpful thread on that.

Witcher and Wine Update

Playing a lot of Witcher lately but I've run into some interesting findings.  One is that on a fresh boot, I have to run Witcher twice to fix the graphics problem (puppeteer bug), so this has very little to do with the Launcher.exe.  Having it run directly from desktop menu is also added convenience and less clicks to do.

At least one time, I had an error dialog box telling me that Witcher crashed.  Once I clicked OK, the game launched anyway, but there was no sound at all.  This has been consistent in that everytime the dialog box shows up before launch, the game loses sound.  I don't know what causes that but after a reboot, it fixes by itself.  The sound is also automatically disabled by the game so you have to go the option and re-enable it.

Witcher and Wine Update

So, in my session yesterday I found more interesting clues.  After work, I fired up Witcher straight away and predictably Geralt was invisible and this warranted a hard reboot to fix.  Something about Ubuntu is doing this I am sure as my playtime in older Ubuntu systems wasn't like this.  You can tell if Witcher is going to have graphical glitches if you're not seeing the flying crows in the background of the main menu (lower left hand corner of the screen).

Next thing I did after a reboot was run the desktop icon which runs the Launcher.  The game didn't have the crows in the menu but it turns out it wasn't Geralt being invisible.  It was the puppeteer bug.  So what I did was run the witcher.exe directly (something I always did on my first playthrough).  This fixed everything and Witcher ran well after that.  I updated the desktop icon to run the executable file so I expect this to be fixed for good.

Witcher and Wine

Long ago, I started playing Witcher.  I haven't finished it yet because it's a darn long game.  When I played with it, I was running the Cross Over Lame Duck edition but I had to use version 7.2.2 because version 8 would just silently crash.  Running that had a few graphical glitches like the trees and the vitality and endurance bar, but other than that, perfect.

I just reinstalled the game and it's running on Wine 1.3.33, but I noticed a few peculiarities in addition to the graphical glitches. 

The first was that Geralt would only walk for a few steps.  Then he would start to glide on the floor.  I believe this has something to do with the keyboard input that is bugged in Ubuntu 9.10.  If you pull out the sword, you will notice Geralt walking a few steps and then perform a roll on the floor, indicating that the game was reading double-tap direction input.

Second was this occasional problem of Geralt not being rendered.  I toggled UseGLSL to disable which seems to help although it does still happen.  Restarting the computer seems to fix things, so I'm not sure what it is.

Third was an issue with the so-called puppeteer lines that are rendered on Geralt.  I noticed this when I ran the game from the launcher but when I ran the game from Witcher.exe it didn't have this problem.  I deduced that this has something to do with the fact that my AppDefaults on Witcher.exe weren't getting picked up when I run Launcher.exe.  Since I have separate Wine bottles for each game I have installed, I decided to push the AppDefaults into the actual Direct3D settings.

Lastly was a lack of sound.  My experience with Wine apps and sound (and PulseAudio) is that the longer my computer runs, the more Wine performance seems to suffer.  My suspicions are that PulseAudio is still not in a good implemented state.  After copying my audio settings from Tomb Raider Underworld, I rebooted the machine and ran the game.  The game gave me a good scare when it still didn't have audio but after checking the game's options, I realized there was a toggle to disable sound.  Bah!

I hope to finish Witcher this time around.  The game is really huge and I really want this to be over in preparation for Witcher 2.

A few thoughts...

I'll keep this short.  Figured out that deleting Sims on Sims FreePlay is a matter of customizing the Sim for their clothes and hairdo.  There's a red icon on the upper left corner.

Been getting some sweet stuff out of GOG lately.  I'm plan to play Fallout and (finally finish) Witcher Enhanced Edition.

Sims FreePlay: Relocating Pets

Every once in a while, this menu pops up with the 'Relocate' button and I'm befuddled as how I got that.  I've tried searching EA's FAQs for an answer to a different way of relocating Sims.  Apparently, the menu that I got was on relocating pets.  Double tap the dog you own and you'll be able to select which household the dog goes, or you can put it up for adoption.  Sometimes, I wish I got the memo!

Reversion Movie Trailer

Check it out!  More info on the The Reversion Movie Official Blog.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Thoughts

HOLY F*CKING BOSS BATTLES, BATMAN!

The Adventures of Tintin Wii Edition

Let's get this out of the way.  I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I would have wanted to.  It was just a kiddie fun fluff movie with way too much action shoehorned into the story.  I didn't care for the much touted CG art either.  In one word: 'meh'.

In picking up the Wii game, I wasn't expecting much out of it.  After all, it was based on a pretty lame movie.  What piqued my interest however was how quickly the game's narrative was deviating from the film.  The main plot is intact, but much of the details have been altered making it Ubisoft's own version of Tintin's search for the Secret of the Unicorn.

Issue with Real Video

I bumped into an issue with real video and it was something like Could not open required DirectShow codec drvc.so, or something to that effect.  I didn't read all of it and went immediately to search online for the answer.  The solution to my problem was actually just chmodding it.  I should have paid more attention to the error output.

sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/win32/*

sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/codecs/*

Ha!