sabato 31 marzo 2012

Wine 1.5.1 released


The Wine development release 1.5.1 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Built-in JavaScript now preferred over Gecko in most cases.
  - Support for scalable font resources.
  - Fixes for audio and video playback.
  - Support for script decoding in JScript.
  - Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

  http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.5.1.tar.bz2
  http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.5.1.tar.bz2

For more infos and the complete list of bug fixes follow this link:

http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.5.1

mercoledì 28 marzo 2012

Snuggle Truck added to the Humble Bundle for Android #2

http://www.humblebundle.com

Hey there! Good news! Trial racing game Snuggle Truck has been added to the Humble Bundle for Android 2!!!



If you already purchased the bundle, go and download it!
If you didn't purchase the bundle, what are you waiting for? You still have 5 days!

martedì 20 marzo 2012

Let's Play: Test Drive Unlimited



Today i tested for you a racing game, a great racing game, with wonderful landscapes and awesome cars... Ladies and gentlemen, Test Drive Unlimited!

A very hard choice!

That's true. This time the choice is very hard! Wanna know why? Please continue reading...

Test Drive Unlimited on GameTree Linux:

The game is not supported so i'm not gonna consider that.

Test Drive Unlimited on Crossover XI (11.0.0 version):

Alright, the game installs fine, and with a couple of tweaks it runs great (apart from a little water textures issue)! You need a noDVD crack (see below for more infos), you need to set "Windows Vista" as OS into wine configuration to make mouse work, and you have to do a little trick to set your joypad. So:

- Needs a noDVD crack (this one http://dl.gamecopyworld.com/?c=725495341&d=2007&f=vty-tdu!rar)
- Set "Windows Vista" into Wine Configuration to make mouse work.
- If you want to play with a joypad, you can't bind the keys running the original executable. You have to click on "run command...", set "/pathtoinstalldirectory/TestDriveUnlimited.exe 2>&1 | grep joydev_enum_device" as executable, click on "Debug Options", then "Create log file" and put the line "+dinput" into "Other:". Then run. Now you can bind your joypad buttons. You have to do it the first time only, then it's no more necessary.
- Water textures displays over the other textures (a minor issue, anyway).

Test Drive Unlimited on PlayOnLinux 4.0.15 (1.4-rc4 wine version):

The game installs fine and runs great with the same tweaks as Crossover XI. The only difference is how you set the joypad. So:

- Needs a noDVD crack (this one http://dl.gamecopyworld.com/?c=725495341&d=2007&f=vty-tdu!rar)
- Set "Windows Vista" into Wine Configuration to make mouse work.
- If you want to play with a joypad, you can't bind the keys running the original executable. You have to go click on your Test Drive Unlimited shortcut, then "Configure", then go into "miscellaneous" tab and "Open a shell". Now navigate into TDU's directory and run "WINEDEBUG=+dinput wine TestDriveUnlimited.exe 2>&1 | grep joydev_enum_device". Now you can bind your joypad buttons. You have to do it the first time only, then it's no more necessary.
- Water textures displays over the other textures (a minor issue, anyway).

Performances... Performances....

First of all, my hardware:

agp_aperture_size: 256
cpu: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor
cpu_ghz: 0.80
distro: Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric
kernel: 3.0.0-17-generic
machine_bitness: 64
memory: 3960
soundcard: HDA ATI SB at 0xfbcf4000 irq 16
soundcard_driver: ALSA Version 1.0.24
videocard_direct: True
videocard_driver_version: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.20
videocard_manufacturer: NVIDIA Corporation
videocard_ram: 1024
videocard_type: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
x_version: X.Org X Server 1.10.4

Test Drive Unlimited had some performance issues with older wine versions (1.1.xx specifically), but Wine and Crossover teams have done a great job, so now it is possible to play the game with good performances! Let's see...

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As you can see, i tested the game in 2 different ways: enabling HDR/disabling AA and enabling AA/disabling HDR. It is just a choice (i prefer using HDR which provides awesome natural light effects). Analyzing these tests i found out that Crossover works better than Wine, providing about a 20-30% more FPS. Anyway, the game is fully playable and enjoyable, and the average FPS guarantee a smooth gameplay.

Conclusion: use Crossover XI.

Installation



This process takes about 8 minutes.
The site at the beginning is "www.gamecopyworld.com".
At the end of the installation:

- Download a noDVD crack (this one http://dl.gamecopyworld.com/?c=725495341&d=2007&f=vty-tdu!rar)
- Set "Windows Vista" into Wine Configuration.
- If you use a joypad, use the method explained above to set the keys.

Running



P.S. I'm sorry but i couldn't take a fullscreen gameplay (i don't know why my screencasting applications crashed everytime i started the game on fullscreen mode), but i tell you: the game WORKS on fullscreen!!

That's all. Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment if you got some problems or if you just wanna ask me a question. I will always answer you!

lunedì 19 marzo 2012

The Humble Bundle for Android #2

http://www.humblebundle.com
Hi everybody! It's time for a new Humble Bundle! This is the second bundle for Android too, and as the slogan says "pay what you want for awesome games, Mac, Windows, Linux AND Android"!!!!



You already now the quality of these bundles, but i want to repeat it.
Pay what you want for a bunch of spectacular indie games, in this case:

- Indie parkour platformer "Canabalt"



- Meditative puzzle game "Zen Bound 2"



- 3D puzzle game "Cogs"



- RPG fantasy game "Avadon: the Black Fortress"



And, if you pay more than the average price (now $5,67), you get also:

- Side-scrolling strategy game "Swords & Soldiers"



You can also redeem all of these games on Steam!
You have 14 days to get this bundle. C'mon, you can't miss it!!! Don't be stupid and be quick!!

domenica 18 marzo 2012

Screenshot of the week #3

"Honeeeeeeey, i'm baaaaaaaaaack!!" - Test Drive Unlimited - 1920x1080 - High details

sabato 17 marzo 2012

Wine 1.5.0 released


The Wine development release 1.5.0 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - New version of the Gecko engine.
  - Partial support for using the Trash on Mac OS X.
  - Support for path gradients in GdiPlus.
  - Various MSXML improvements.
  - Fixes to 64-bit exception handling.
  - Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.5.0.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.5.0.tar.bz2

For more details and the complete list of bug fixes follow this link:
http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.5.0

mercoledì 7 marzo 2012

Wine 1.4 released

The stable release Wine 1.4 is now available.
This release represents 20 months of development effort and over 16,000 individual changes. The main highlights are the new DIB graphics engine, a redesigned audio stack, and full support for bidirectional text and character shaping.
It also contains a lot of improvements across the board, as well as support for many new applications, notably Microsoft Office 2010. See the release notes below for a summary of the major changes.


The source is available from the following location:


http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.4.tar.bz2


For more details follow this link:


http://www.winehq.org/news/2012030701

Crossover XI released

On March 6, 2012, Codeweavers team has released an update for Crossover!
This time it was huge, here are the main changes:

- Now there's only 1 product, called simply "Crossover XI".
- It is now based on newest Wine 1.4 version.
- It is now supporting a lot of new windows applications.

For the complete changelog, visit the page:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/faq/change_log/

If you want to try (or buy) Crossover XI, visit the page:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

Here's the full announcement on Codeweavers forum:

http://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/announce/?t=24;msg=122145

sabato 3 marzo 2012

Wine 1.4-rc6 released


The Wine development release 1.4-rc6 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):

- Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.4-rc6.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.4-rc6.tar.bz2


For more details and the complete list of bug fixes follow this link:
http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.4-rc6