I've always been a fan of Wing Commander, X-Wing and their ilk. Really liked Privateer and currently have been playing Freelancer in my Windows partition. This is the only real reason I keep Windows around. As a game platform.

Can any of these be played on Linux through Wine? I know that Freespace2 has a site to allow it to be played on Linux, but I'm afraid I only have the original Freespace and haven't been able to find anywhere to buy Freespace2 now.

So, any thoughts?

Thanks for any thought on this.

stunter

yea, freespace2 is kind of hard to find for windows now............it's a very cool sim.........you might be able to find it on ebay......BUT it is 3 disks!!
so if someone tries to sell you freespace2 and says they only have 2 disks-----don't buy it.......you will need all 3 to make it work properly.

FreeSpace 1&2 will work natively:
http://icculus.org/~ravage/

There is also Terminus (hard to find), try ebay.

If you want free and not necessarily state of the art,... there is VegaStrike:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/

You may be able to get the original Privateer to work with DOSBox:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

Plus there are a few other Space Sims around for Linux, like Descent and Descent 3 (not really space but close), and some beta stuff in development that looks promising. Getting stuff working through WineX can be a problem though. For Instance, the Star Wars games won't work. LucasArts does something screwy that is hard to get around.

>>FreeSpace 1&2 will work natively:
http://icculus.org/~ravage/<<

But you still need the original disks. I'm looking.

>>You may be able to get the original Privateer to work with DOSBox:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/<<

DOSbox is possible, but the original Privateer used a special memory program called JEMM. I'm told DOSbox can't simulate it, but there is supposed to be some sort of JEMM emulator out there somewhere.

I tried XWars. Not too great. Also tried some other linux games, but nothing looks that great so far.

One of the problems with games like X-Wing, the Wing Commander games and such is that they were state of the art when they came out and really pushed the limits of hardware at the time. The programmers cut corners and did a lot of direct hardware access and wedging of the DOS (and Windows) to get additional performance. They often violated rules and did things that Microsoft never imagined. This can't be easily simulated.

Sure like to see a first person spaceflight simulator game such as Wing Commander for Linux.

edit: wish I could type.

As for FreeSpace,... yeah, you need the original disks to install it. If you trashed them or tossed them, you are SOL. Both versions FreeSpace: The Great War, and FreeSpace 2 are both supported.

Try VegaStrike...

It's free and very mod-able.

It's not too polished (particularly in the saving department), but what do you want for the cost of a download!?!?! You may even find RPMs for it.

There is something else called Orbital, which is very much a Wing-Commander/Elite-ish clone. It's a little hard to find, but comes right in some distros, like SuSE.

There is also an initial SDL port of Homeworld:
http://www.thereisnospork.com/projects/homeworld/
You can use WineX to patch it and then try the native. Or you can use Homeworld 1 or 2 through WineX from transgaming (single player only, a multi requires directplay, which hasn't been emulated yet).

I hadn't realised that FreeSpace: The great War was supported. I have that.

Thanks.

I'll also look at VegaStrike again. I haven't tried it in quite some time.

Orbital is a little "too" real. Actual spaceflight with real world physics is pretty tedious. If you've ever played Elite: Frontier or Elite III, you know what I mean. For just having fun, I prefer the cartoon physics of Wing Commander.

stunter

I actually prefer the realistic physics.

Terminus, for example, uses the realistic physics model. You can however adjust that to be more "cartoonish" as you say.

Frontier First Encounters, the sequel to Frontier Elite II (yes, I have them both) is available for Linux as the Linux version of JJFFE, a reverse engineered version of it (requires the original data, that you should have on the original floppy or CD). It requires that you compile it, as there is no known RPM for it.

VegaStrike has mods available that mimic the cartoonish physics of Wing Commander and also the ships of the Wing Commander series.

dang. is there a rpm of it yet? say for suse 9.1?

if not, could someone point me in the direction of the nearest compiling crash course for newbies, please? ta.

There is a linux version of privateer available on their website, haven't had much luck with it yet though.

Linux version of Privateer on what website?

http://priv.solsector.net/announcements.htm is where I found it, turns out it is a remake, but everything looks pretty good for it so far.

In looking at the site, I take it it's a mod for vegastrike? Could be fun. I spent a lot of time playing the original Privateer.

It IS a mod for VegaStrike.

VegaStrike can be a biotch to install because there are no (decent) RPMs for it. You need to make/install it from source.

I got it running on my older distro, but haven't gotten it working since changing to SuSE 9.1.

X-Wing was really cool. I've just purchased the classic release which includes X-Wing, Tie Fighter and X-Wing VS Tie Fighter for under 20 bucks . Anyway, I've not tried it under Linux, but according to Cedega's Unofficial Wiki, the game runs flawlessly:

http://digital-conquest.ath.cx/wiki/index.php/X-Wing

Good luck and Merry Christmas!

Megaman X:

YES-
X-Wing Collector's Edition WILL run under Linux,... all but Xwing vs. TIE Fighter Flight School (a limited version of the original title,... the original Xwing vs. TIE Fighter will work),... under WineX/Cedega...

My subscription has currently run out on WineX... so I can't donwload anything more recent. But I managed to get version 4.2 before my subscription ran out.

All you need to do is have a joystick working in Linux, and use Cedega to launch the executable with the game executable rather than the launcher...