linux gaming

I recently found out that it isn't too difficult getting my favourite racing game, Need for Speed III, to run with Wine.

My current installation is Slackware Linux 12.1 with Wine 1.0 from SlackBuilds.org. My system supports 3D acceleration, so I compiled Wine with OpenGL support (as is the default in the SlackBuild script).

1. Execute winecfg and set the Windows version to 98. Add your CD-ROM mountpoint to the list of drives in Wine. I used drive letter D.
2. Mount the Need for Speed CD-ROM or image.
3. Execute /SETUP/ENGLISH/SETUP.EXE, or choose Spanish if you prefer. Click through the setup options as you would normally. I chose the "full installation" option. There should be no errors during the copying of the files to your hard disk, if there is, try to copy the files manually. There may be an error like Could not get 'HardWareKey' value at the end of the installation, which can be ignored. At this point the game can be run by executing WINEDEBUG=+relay wine nfs3.exe -d3d0 from the directory to which the game was installed. This way the game will also use 3D acceleration, limited to a display size of 800x600. Note: executing wine nfs3.exe will result in the game complaining about corrupted files.
4. To get the game to use a display size of up to 1152x864, the file d3da.dll needs to be patched and renamed to voodoo2a.dll as is explained by Robert Schuster in the Wine AppDB. This will only work if you have the exact same version of the file. I've attached the full file at the bottom of this page to save you some trouble.
5. Now the game can be started using WINEDEBUG=+relay wine nfs3.exe -voodoo2. At this point I was able to play the game without major trouble, though it does tend to get stuck after finishing a race sometimes.

I have been satisfied with the range of games on my Linux systems for a while, but recently I've gone hunting for new games again.

Although there seems to be no lack of Linux native first person shooters, the number of 3D racing games seems to lag behind a bit (unless Tux Racer fits all your needs). My favourite Windows racing game has always been Need for Speed III, but even though I've been able to run it with Wine to some extent, I wanted to try something more stable. I had heard of Torcs before, but never managed to play it properly (most likely because of a lack of patience). Torcs uses OpenGL and it seems to work fine on my Slackware 12 installation with my (now) older NVidia card, using its proprietary kernel module.

Torcs has a number of racing modes, such as quick race, championship race, endurance race and a practice mode. By default there are 50 cars to choose from, some better looking than others. There are road tracks, dirt tracks and oval tracks to choose from, so one is able to choose a track which best fits the type of race that's about to start.

There are also a lot of different camera views, after all this is a 3D game. One of them is a view from up above, which makes the game look somewhat like the first two of the GTA games. Check out the screenshots that I made of the game and download the game from the Torcs website at SourceForge to give it a try. The game is distributed for Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X and Windows. Oh, of course this is an open source project, so its free for download and you can also obtain the source code if you're into that kind of thing.