I scanned through the EULA (both of them), and I can find no reference to the question of whether EA/Mythic/Bioware will allow for running Dark Age of Camelot on an Ubuntu installation. I know there are ways to make it work, and have read posts where is does work, but is it PERMISSIBLE? Thank you.

Posted on Tech Forums too.

 

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So far as I know, Mythic has never had a rule against running DAOC on Linux. However they do publish the following warning:





Source: http://support.darkageofcamelot.com/kb/article.php?id=348

 

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Sounds like running DAoC on my Ubuntu box would be fine then, as the program for installing Windows applications (known as WINE) is NOT emulation. It is often said, teasingly I suppose, that Wine Is Not Emulation...W I N E...sneaky acronym, yes?

 

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Wine is an emulator. It's basically an emulator of the Win32 API. The Wine people now admit this. They now say that it's reasonable to call it a "Windows emulator," and they attempt to justify the acronym by saying that Wine is not just an emulator. See question 1.3 in their FAQ. Be sure to notice the last few words in that item -- "Wine API replacement." That gives the whole game away. "API replacement" is synonomous with "API emulator."


But let's not argue about the definition of "emulator." Few things in life are sillier than arguing about meanings of words. People can call Wine anything they like -- they can call it a word processor if it makes them happy.


The important thing for you is whether Wine can trigger Mythic's anti-cheat software and get your account terminated. Whether Wine has this effect has nothing to do with definitions of words. If I were you, I wouldn't assume that Wine can't trigger that software just because Wine stands for "Wine is not an emulator."


My guess is that the author of that Knowledgebase article was thinking of Wine. Does that matter? Maybe not. That article was written years ago. It may no longer apply. Wine's emulation of Windows may be more accurate now.


I've known several people who ran DAOC on Wine without trouble for years. Maybe that means Wine is safe. Or maybe it means they never got appealed for anything, so the CSRs never had any reason to use their speed-hack-detection tool on them.

 

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I'm pretty sure they would love to have your $14.95 or $29.90 (BOT) no matter how you manage to make the game run.

 

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Perhaps I have always been under the mistaken understanding that WINE is a compatability layer, and an emulator actually runs a full blown version of the 'emulated' software?

 

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A compatibility layer is an emulator. It's a particular type of emulator that emulates (i.e. simulates) a system API and which is built on top of an operating system that's different from the emulated system. Here's the first definition for "compatibility layer" listed by Google (my emphases):





Wine's name is simply wrong. I think what happened was, the person who picked the name was under the misimpression that "emulator" necessarily implied a CPU instruction set emulator. This misimpression is understandable because most early emulators were CPU instruction set emulators. Somewhere on Wine's site there's an explanation of why they chose the name "Wine is not an emulator," and it says something like, "Wine is not an x86 emulator." That's what they apparently were thinking when they chose the name.





No, the emulator doesn't run the emulated software. It substitutes for the emulated software.


The whole point of the emulator is that the emulated software isn't present. The emulator provides a run-time environment for programs which normally run on top of the emulated software. Since the emulated software isn't there, the programs run on the emulator instead. The emulator is a sort of masquerade artist.


To make this concrete: normally the DAOC client runs on Windows. But instead you can run it on Wine. DAOC doesn't realize it's running on Wine. It thinks it's running on Windows. Wine pretends to be Windows and DAOC believes it. Wine is an emulator (a substitute) for Windows.


An emulator is an imposter, a substitute for the emulated software.


By the way, with regard to the recursive quality of the acronym "Wine is not an emulator," yes it's cute, but in case you don't know, this kind of acronym was invented by somebody else years earlier. Recursive acronyms are common (practically cliches) in the open source community. The earliest recursive acronym that I've seen in articles was "TINT is not Teco" from 1977.


The most famous recursive acronym is probably GNU (GNU's not Unix) created by Richard Stallman, father of the open source movement, author of the GPL, author of the gcc compiler, etc.

 

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I've tried many, many times to get the game to run under Ubuntu.
I actually did get in, ONCE on my bot.. and the lag was so horrible, and I couldn't see a
mouse cursor, I just gave up.
Thats been about 2 years ago.
I've tired it just a few months ago, and couldn't get past the patcher.
Never making it to the login screen. It would always hang, right after entering
your username and password. And then, attempting to connect to login server...
over and over, and then, fail.. try again. same thing.

 

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Hugger, I think if you do the things in this link DAoC will run under Wine in Ubuntu/Linux.

http://govtbad.blogspot.com/2008/12/daoc-on-linux-under-wine-ubuntu-810.html

I highly recommend trying step 13 of the link above. This at least partially fixed a sound
issue whereupon the audio was choppy, then dropped completely after a few minutes.

For sound dropping issue, it may also help to install the libsdl1.2debian-all, version
1.2.14-4ubuntu1.1. In Synaptic Package Manager, do a quick search for Pulse and install libsdl1.2debian-all, because it encompasses more audio packages than the X11 and Pulseadio
sound version that may be allready installed. It includes additional formats for audio,
graphics, and mouse/keyboard drivers. Worked for me!


Step 6 on the second list on that page is remedied at this link...

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=9368

Specifically, a slow login may be fixed by deleting/removing the root directory (the one
not labeled 'c:'. The root directory was called Z or something, and I just selected
it and then clicked 'remove' and I logged in as quickly as I would expect.


Another link that may help.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1011497


Some things you may notice being goofy:

- The EULA windows and login window may move with the cursor at first. Click on them
and they should hold still.
- DAoC may not be completely full screen untill you are fully logged in. This resulted
in my mouse pointer not pointing directly at what it was visually on; the active point
was many pixels above where my pointer was. Once fully logged in, it was fine, and at
the character select screen when switching characters as well.
- Also, alt-tabbing (or if you switch visible desktops) full screen WINE DAoC may cause
your video to freeze, though audio still works as does all commands. If you type /q when it is frozen,
your character will log out to the character select screen where you can then simply click 'play' and log back in.


If I think of anything else, I will post again! Good luck!

 

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Looks like I was the one who wrote all 3 of those guides, etc. The wine appdb one is the most current. Nice it is being used . I spent a helluva long time trying to figure out that slow login problem.

[edit] nvm, 2/3

 

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