OK I haven't posted in awhile, but this will be my geekiest post to date. Not only do I talk about Star Trek, I talk about a Star Trek game, not only is it a game, it's an online game, a massively multi-player, online game (MMO). Now if that weren't geeky enough, at the end of this post I'm going to provide links that will allow you to install Star Trek Online under Linux. So if you are not already having spasms of geek joy just thinking about playing your geeky game about your geeky TV show with other geeks on the Internet on the geekiest (and most user friendly, ahem!) operating system on the planet, then read on.
I've really been enjoying this game, it's very cool to get my Kling-On :p. So far PvP as a Klingon is the best part of the game. There's a mission called "A Good Day To Die" where the object is to be killed 50 times in PvP. The only drawback with PvP'ing is that PvP is the primary way for a Klingon to level, Federation types have all types of missions they can run to level up and get good loot. It also means Federation types are soft and squishy. They don't PvP much, whereas the Klingons pretty much have to PvP to level or get any good loot. The alternative for Klingons is to grind exploration missions. I think once more content is added for Klingons, they will become less the PvP elite that they are now and it will balance out a bit. Still though, Klingon vs. Federation at the moment is pretty much a game of burn down the noob, hehe.
So on with how to get this sucker installed on Linux (Ubuntu Hardy Heron w/ Upgrades was what I installed on). First I tried to install this under VMWare. Even with the latest release and much gnashing of Teeth, no go. Next I tried VirtualBox. I really liked VirtualBox and I think I will move to it for my personal use of things like GotoMeeting, etc. Things I have to run I have to have Windoze for. Anyway, VirtualBox had a problem, even though I had read people had gotten it to work. Of those who reported it to to work it worked very slow.
In comes Wine, yeah Wine. The difference between Wine and VMWare or VirtualBox, is that VMWare and VirtualBox, at their base are hardware emulators. They emulate a virtual piece of hardware, that any operating system can be installed on. Wine on the other hand is an API that interfaces Windows applications to the Linux OS. It's more of a bridge than an emulator. That being said. I found this nifty YouTube Video where this clever chap shows step by step how to install it.
The application he's using is PlayOnLinux, which helps you install your Windoze games on Linux. It can be downloaded from http://www.playonlinux.com
You'll also want to install the PlayOnLinux plugin POL Helper (Also in the video)
Instructions for that can be found in the following thread:
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-2415-Plugin_POL_Helper.html
So my friends, sit back, relax, and geek out!
2 comments:
Hi, how did this work out for you, and what was the gameplay performance like? It looks OK from the video, but what was your own experience like?
I never did get it to work. I wound up just dual booting. I got very close though. With a bit more tweaking, I feel like I could have had it.
I've moved on to the game APB. Awesome game. As with most FPS's thought, lots of botters, and since Real Time Worlds is having "funding" issues, there isn't a lot of bot banning going on.
Been real busy with real life to play games though, got lots to post soon.
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