Quoting: Eduardo-Thiesen

Quoting: CaldathrasDrakan: Order of the Flame is my favorite dx6 game.

Thank you very much, I was beginning to think I had imagined this thing 😅.

You're welcome.

Unfortunately, Drakan: Order of the Flame is abandonware now. You won't find it for sale anywhere. Surreal Software no longer exists and the IP is apparently owned by Warner. They seem indifferent to it. There is a strong fan community out there, however.

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Can't be bothered. I just go to the IsThereAnyDeal site for most of that info. So this plugin doesn't interest me.

I don't trust LLM summaries. They are woefully inaccurate and have to be double-checked for accuracy. I've found that, most of the time, they substitute unrelated info and create a false report.

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I'm quite happy with Linux Mint myself.

I tried rolling / semi-rolling distros for a while. The constant updates kept destabilizing my game installs. I finally got frustrated and decided to give my daily driver distro a try as a gaming O/S. The only thing I changed was the desktop environment. I went with XFCE instead of Cinnamon. I have been quite happy with the stability I've gained.

Tried Fedora once. It was just too unfamiliar an environment for me, despite the intuitiveness of KDE Plasma.

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Quoting: TevurYeah, you will get ignorant and stupid af, but at least you're happy

Nah. Most of it is just propaganda and fear-porn anyway. Just find a less manipulative, unbiased source for your news instead, and accept that a lot of the so-called "news" is not actually stuff you need to know -- especially opinion pieces. And, yes, you will be much happier less stressed. (Being ignorant does not make you stupid, btw.)

And now, back to the topic of this thread ...

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This is for those looking for a solution that doesn't involve Flatpak. It is primarily intended for desktop Linux users. Although, I imagine with a little tweaking, It might work for Steam Deck as well.

Spoiler, click me

There are many ways to install OpenMW. There is even an unofficial AppImage available. The distro repositories almost always offer an out-of-date version. In the past, I used to install via the LaunchPad PPA (only works for Ubuntu derivatives). The problem with PPAs is that they have to be reinstalled with every major version upgrade of your distro. If you are slow to upgrade, the PPA will eventually update to a version of OpenMW that will not run on your outdated distro. Updating uninstalls the version that currently works and then fails on installing the new version.

Option 3) Direct Download

https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/manuals/installation/install-openmw.html#direct-download

Recently, I discovered that OpenMW offers a Direct Download "installer" on their GitHub site. This archive acts just like the Windows installer, allowing you to keep multiple versions of OpenMW installed in Linux.

Spoiler, click me

NOTE: By default, all installations share the same saves and configuration. There is a feature that was introduced with version 0.48 that allows you to set up a "portable install", which allows you to isolate a particular version with its own configuration and save files.

https://modding-openmw.com/tips/portable-install/

The problem is that the installation instructions from the online guide are written very poorly. All they say is "run the install package once downloaded. It’s now installed!". It is not that easy. For one, the "installer" is an archive, not an executable. For two, they assume that you know what file to run once the archive is extracted. Here are my expanded instructions:

1) Download the latest Direct Download archive from the GitHub Releases page.

2) Extract the archive to the folder/location of your choice.

Spoiler, click me

NOTE: If you want to maintain multiple versions, keep in mind that only one of them can be in your default PATH. In fact, it would probably be better to keep the lot of them out of your PATH altogether. Instead of treating the executable/script like a system command, you will just have to provide the entire folder address to launch the game.

This, however, also makes the installation somewhat portable since you can place folder wherever you want. Combined with the "portable install" feature described above, this means you won't even have to have the game installed in your File System partition at all.

3) Launch the "openmw-launcher" script from within the folder.
.... a) If you are simply upgrading, it will use your existing configuration. You are good to go.
.... b) If this is a fresh installation, the launcher will offer to run the OpenMW Wizard to help you set everything up (see Option 1 of Liam's guide above for the rest of the steps).

4) If the launcher script will not start, then you have very likely encountered the rather infamous glibc issue (you can verify this by trying to launching the script in a terminal).

Spoiler, click me

GLIBC Compatibility Issues

One of the big concerns that I have with the OpenMW project is that they don't clearly notify Linux users of a change in system requirements (which they could include with the text for each release on GitHub). The OpenMW Team occasionally increases the version of the glibc library required without clearly advising their Linux users of this change.

For example, the latest version of OpenMW (0.50.0) requires glibc 2.38. This is only available on Ubuntu 24.04 (Mint 22) or higher. (Still running an earlier distro version? Surprise!)

The solution is quite simple. You need to integrate the game into the Steam Client and set the compatibility to Steam Linux Runtime 4, which is based on Debian 13.2 Trixie (and supports glibc 2.38).

5) Make sure to download the latest version of the Steam Linux Runtime (currently Steam Linux Runtime 4).

6) To add OpenMW to the Steam client, choose the option "Add a Non-Steam Game ...". You may have to manually point Steam at the location of the openmw-launcher script (I did).

7) Go to the Properties menu for openmw-launcher and select "Install Compatibility Tool". Choose the latest Steam Linux Runtime, which you downloaded in Step 5.

8) Update and customize the Steam Library entry to your preferences. You should now be good to go.

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The thing I don't get is why does it have to be a 100% switchover? Such binary thinking -- either all-in or all-out. Why not set up a dual-boot first? Then the new Linux user could gradually shift over as they learn to work with Linux and/or find alternatives that do work for them in Linux. All they have to do is persevere.

There are always going to be one or two pieces of Windows software that won't work solidly in Linux. That is what dual-boots or virtual machines are for...

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Drakan: Order of the Flame is my favorite dx6 game. Has anyone tested this with D7VK yet?

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Quoting: Tethys84I'm done with these conversations. I have better things to do, like trying to find reasons to keep living in a world that's completely falling apart more and more every day when I turn on the news.

The first step to recovery would be to stop watching the news (especially mainstream media). If you're still doing television, cancel that too. Removing the news and advertising from your daily life will help immensely. You'd be surprised by how much it reduces your stress levels.
😊

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Quoting: CaldathrasAre you sure?

Quoting: Nostalgia_Realmwhen using the DX8 wrapper

Ah, I missed that when I read it the first time. Carry on then ...

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Quoting: Nostalgia_Realm

Quoting: legluondunetDid you try DXWrapper? Main dev Elisha is Wine friendly.

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I have tried DXWrapper on some DX7 and 8 games, but most of them did not work at all with that wrapper. Additionally, it seems that - when using the DX8 wrapper - there is no way to force the rendering resolution which is the main reason I use DgVoodoo2 at all. Being able to play a 640x480 game at 1920x1440 on my 1440p display is a big difference in quality.

Are you sure?

Features - Resolution and Renderer Enhancements

Resolution unlock for Direct3D 1–7 using LegacyD3DResolutionHack — enables 4K and beyond

I found this in the readme on the DXWrapper GitHub site [External Link].

Further,

Legacy Direct3D Resolution Hack

Simple proxy DLL which removes artificial limitation from legacy Direct3D 7 and below, allowing older Direct3D applications and games to run at resolution which width/height exceeds 2048 pixels.

The application must be able to pick the desired resolution on its own, this doesn't add new resolutions to applications with hardcoded resolution list, it merely prevents Direct3D device creation function from returning an error when passed DirectDraw surface with width/height exceeding 2048 pixels.

The current implementation doesn't work with all games, need to make ddraw.dll based proxy.

I may be misunderstanding, but this sounds like it may do what you want it to do.

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